Hopes and Fears or, scenes from the life of a spinster

‘Her lips move,’ gasped Phœbe, as she rubbed the temples with the stimulant.

‘Thank God!’ and again they put the spoon to her lips, as the nostrils expanded, the eyes opened, and she seemed to crave for the cordial.  But vainly Robert raised her in his arms, and Phœbe steadied her own trembling hand to administer it, there were only choking, sobbing efforts for words, resulting in hoarse shrieks of anguish.

Mervyn and Miss Fennimore, entering nearly at the same moment, found Phœbe pale as death, urging composure with a voice of despair; and Robert with looks of horror that he could no longer control, holding up the sinking child, her face livid, her eyes strained.  ‘I can’t, I can’t,’ she cried, with frightful catches of her breath; ‘I shall die—’ and the screams recurred.

Mervyn could not bear the spectacle for an instant, and fled only to return to listen outside.  Miss Fennimore brought authority and presence of mind.  ‘Hysterical,’ she said.  ‘There, lay her down; don’t try again yet.’

‘It is hunger,’ whispered the trembling Phœbe; but Miss Fennimore only signed to be obeyed, and decidedly saying, ‘Be quiet, Bertha, don’t speak,’ the habit of submission silenced all but the choking sobs.  She sent Robert to warm a shawl, ordered away the frightened maids, and enforced stillness, which lasted till Bertha had recovered breath, when she sobbed out again, ‘Robert!  Where is he!  I shall die!  He must pray!  I can’t die!’

Miss Fennimore bade Robert compose his voice to pray aloud, and what he read tranquillized all except Mervyn, who understood this to mean the worst, and burst away to sit cowering in suspense over his fire.  Miss Fennimore then offered Bertha a morsel of roll dipped in port wine, but fasting and agitation had really produced a contraction of the muscles of the throat, and the attempt failed.  Bertha was dreadfully terrified, and Phœbe could hardly control herself, but she was the only person unbanished by Miss Fennimore.  Even Robert’s distress became too visible for the absolute calm by which the governess hoped to exhaust the hysteria while keeping up vitality by outward applications of warmth and stimulants, and from time to time renewing the endeavour to administer nourishment.

It was not till two terrible hours had passed that Phœbe came to the school-room, and announced to her brothers that after ten minutes’ doze, Bertha had waked, and swallowed a spoonful of arrowroot and wine without choking.  She could not restrain her sobs, and wept uncontrollably as Mervyn put his arm round her.  He was the most composed of the three, for her powers had been sorely strained, and Robert had suffered most of all.

He had on this day suspected that Bertha was burning the provisions forced on her, but he had kept silence, believing that she would thus reduce herself to a more amenable state than if she were angered by compulsion, and long before serious harm could ensue.  Used to the sight of famine, he thought inanition would break the spirit without injuring the health.  Many a time had he beheld those who professed to have tasted nothing for two days, trudge off tottering but cheerful, with a soup-ticket, and he had not calculated on the difference between the children of want and the delicately nurtured girl, full of overwrought feeling.  Though he had been watching in loving intercession for the unhappy child, and had resolved on forcing his way to her in the morning, he felt as if he had played the part of the Archbishop of Pisa, and that, had she perished in her fearful determination, her blood would have been on himself.  He was quite overcome, and forced to hurry to his own room to compose himself, ere he could return to inquire further; but there was little more to hear.  Miss Fennimore desired to be alone with the patient; Phœbe allowed herself to be laid on the sofa and covered with shawls; Mervyn returned to his bed, and Robert still watched.

There was a great calm after the storm, and Phœbe did not wake till the dim wintry dawn was struggling with the yellow candlelight, and a consultation was going on in low tones between Robert and the governess, both wan and haggard in the uncomfortable light, and their words not more cheering than their looks.  Bertha had become feverish, passing from restless, talking sleep to startled, painful wakening, and Miss Fennimore wished Dr. Martyn to be sent for.  Phœbe shivered with a cold chill of disappointment as she gathered their meaning, and coming forward, entreated the watchers to lie down to rest, while she relieved guard; but nothing would persuade Miss Fennimore to relinquish her post; and soon Phœbe had enough to do elsewhere; for her own peculiar patient, Mervyn, was so ill throughout the morning, that she was constantly employed in his room, and Robert looking on and trying to aid her, hated himself doubly for his hasty judgments.

Maria alone could go to church on that Sunday morning, and her version of the state of affairs brought Miss Charlecote to Beauchamp to offer her assistance.  She saw Dr. Martyn, and undertook the painful preliminary explanation, and she saw him again after his inspection of Bertha.

‘That’s a first-rate governess!  Exactly so!  An educational hot-bed.  Why can’t people let girls dress dolls and trundle hoops, as they used to do?’

‘I have never thought Bertha oppressed by her lessons.’

‘So much the worse!  Those who can’t learn, or won’t learn, take care of themselves.  Those who have a brain and use it are those that suffer!  To hear that poor child blundering algebra in her sleep might be a caution to mothers!’

‘Did you ever see her before, so as to observe the little hesitation in her speech?’

‘No, they should have mentioned that.’

‘It is generally very slight; but one of them—I think, Maria—told me that she always stammered more after lessons—’

‘The blindness of people!  As if that had not been a sufficient thermometer to show when they were overworking her brain!  Why, not one of these Fulmorts has a head that will bear liberties being taken with it!’

‘Can you let us hope that this whole affair came from an affection of the brain?’

‘The elopement!  No; I can’t flatter you that health or sanity were in fault there.  Nor is it delirium now; the rambling is only in sleep.  But the three days’ fast—’

‘Two days, was it not?’

‘Three.  She took nothing since breakfast on Thursday.’

‘Have you made out how she passed the last two days?’

‘I wrung out some account.  I believe this would never have occurred to her if her brother had given her a sandwich at Paddington; but she came home exhausted into a distaste for food, which other feelings exaggerated into a fancy to die rather than face the family.  She burnt the provisions in a rage at their being forced on her, and she slept most of the time—torpor without acute suffering.  Last night in sleep she lost her hold of her resolution, and woke to the sense of self-preservation.’

‘An infinite mercy!’

‘Not that the spirit is broken; all her strength goes to sullenness, and I never saw a case needing greater judgment.  Now that she is reduced, the previous overwork tells on her, and it will be a critical matter to bring her round.  Who can be of use here?  Not the married sisters, I suppose?  Miss Fulmort is all that a girl can be at nineteen or twenty, but she wants age.’

‘You think it will be a bad illness?’

‘It may not assume an acute form, but it may last a good while; and if they wish her to have any health again, they must mind what they are about.’

Honora felt a task set to her.  She must be Phœbe’s experience as far as her fifty years could teach her to deal with a little precocious rationalist in a wild travestie of Thekla.  Ich habe geliebt und gelebet was the farewell laid on Bertha’s table.  What a Thekla and what a Max!  O profanation!  But Honor felt Bertha a charge of her own, and her aid was the more thankfully accepted that the patient was quite beyond Phœbe.  She had too long rebelled against her sister to find rest in her guardianship.  Phœbe’s voice disposed her to resistance, her advice to wrangling, and Miss Fennimore alone had power to enforce what was needful; and so devoted was she, that Honor could scarcely persuade her to lie down to rest for a few hours.

Honor was dismayed at the change from the childish espiègle roundness of feature to a withered, scathed countenance, singularly old, and mournfully contrasting with the mischievous-looking waves and rings of curly hair upon the brow.  Premature playing at passion had been sport with edged tools.  Sleeping, the talk was less, however, of the supposed love, than of science and metaphysics; waking, there was silence between weakness and sullenness.

Thus passed day after day, always in the same feverish lethargic oppression which baffled medical skill, and kept the sick mind beyond the reach of human aid; and so uniform were the days, that her illness seemed to last for months instead of weeks.

Miss Fennimore insisted on the night-watching for her share.  Phœbe divided with her and Lieschen the morning cares; and Miss Charlecote came in the forenoon and stayed till night, but slept at home, whither Maria was kindly invited; but Phœbe did not like to send her away without herself or Lieschen, and Robert undertook for her being inoffensive to Mervyn.  In fact, she was obliging and unobtrusive, only speaking when addressed, and a willing messenger.  Mervyn first forgot her presence, then tolerated her saucer eyes, then found her capable of running his errands, and lastly began to care to please her.  Honora had devised employment for her, by putting a drawer of patchwork at her disposal, and suggesting that she should make a workbag for each of Robert’s 139 school girls; and the occupation this afforded her was such a public benefit, that Robert was content to pay the tax of telling her the destination of each individual bag, and being always corrected if he twice mentioned the same name.  When Mervyn dozed in his chair, she would require from Robert ‘stories’ of his scholars; and it even came to pass that Mervyn would recur to what had then passed, as though he had not been wholly asleep.

Mervyn was chiefly dependent on his brother for conversation, entertainment, and assistance in his affairs; and though not a word passed upon their differences and no professions were made, the common anxiety, and Mervyn’s great need of help, had swept away all traces of unfriendliness.  Not even when children in the nursery had they been so free from variance or bitterness as while waiting the issue of their sister’s illness; both humbled, both feeling themselves in part the cause, each anxious to cheer and console the other—one, weak, subdued, dependent—the other, considerate, helpful, and eager to atone for past harshness.  Strange for brothers to wait till the ages of twenty-nine and twenty-seven to find out that they really did prefer each other to every one else, in spite of the immense differences between their characters and habits!

‘I say,’ asked Mervyn, one day, when resting after having brought on giddiness and confusion by directing Robert how to answer a letter from the office, ‘what would you do with this bore of a business, if it came to you?’

‘Get rid of it,’ said Robert, surveying him with startled eyes.

‘Aye—sell it, and get the devilry, as you call it, multiplied to all infinity.’

‘Close it.’

‘Boil soup in the coppers; bake loaves in the furnaces?  It makes you look at me perilously—and a perilous game you would find it, most likely to swallow this place and all the rest.  Why, you, who had the making of a man of business in you, might reflect that you can’t annihilate property without damage to other folks.’

‘I did not reflect,’ said Robert, gravely; ‘the matter never occurred to me.’

‘What is the result of your reflection now?’

‘Nothing at all,’ was the somewhat impatient reply.  ‘I trust never to have to consider.  Get it out of my hands at any sacrifice, so as it may do the least harm to others.  Had I no other objection to that business, I should have no choice.’

‘Your cloth?  Well, that’s a pity, for I see how it could be mitigated, so as to satisfy your scruples;’ and Mervyn, whose head could work when it was not necessary, detailed a scheme for gradually contracting the most objectionable traffic, and adopting another branch of the trade.

‘Excellent,’ said Robert, assenting with delight at each pause.  ‘You will carry it out.’

‘I?  I’m only a reprobate distiller.’

There it ended, and Robert must have patience.

The guardian, Mr. Crabbe, came as soon as his gout would permit, and hemmed and grunted in reply to the strange narrative into which he had come to inquire.  Acting was as yet impossible; Mervyn was forbidden to transact business, and Bertha was far too ill for the removal of the young ladies to be attempted.  Miss Fennimore did indeed formally give in her resignation of her situation, but she was too necessary as a nurse for the time of her departure to be fixed, and Mr. Crabbe was unable to settle anything definitively.  He found Robert—who previously had spurred him to strong measures—bent on persuading him to lenity, and especially on keeping Phœbe with Mervyn; and after a day and night of perplexity, the old gentleman took his leave, promising to come again on Bertha’s recovery, and to pacify the two elder sisters by representing the condition of Beauchamp, and that for the present the Incumbent of St. Matthew’s and Miss Charlecote might be considered as sufficient guardians for the inmates.  ‘Or if their Ladyships thought otherwise,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘why did they not come down themselves?’

Mervyn made a gesture of horror, but all knew that there was little danger.  Augusta was always ‘so low’ at the sight of illness, and unless Phœbe had been the patient out of sight, Juliana would not have brought her husband; obvious as would have been the coming of an elder sister when the sickness of the younger dragged on so slowly and wearily.

No one went through so much as Miss Fennimore.  Each hour of her attendance on Bertha stamped the sense of her own failure, and of the fallacies to which her life had been dedicated.  The sincerity, honour, and modesty that she had inculcated, had been founded on self-esteem alone; and when they had proved inadequate to prevent their breach, their outraged relics had prompted the victim to despair and die.  Intellectual development and reasoning powers had not availed one moment against inclination and self-will, and only survived in the involuntary murmurs of a disordered nervous system.  All this had utterly overthrown that satisfaction in herself and her own moral qualities in which Miss Fennimore had always lived; she had become sensible of the deep flaws in all that she had admired in her own conduct; and her reason being already prepared by her long and earnest study to accept the faith in its fulness, she had begun to crave after the Atoning Mercy of which she sorely felt the need.  But if it be hard for one who has never questioned to take home individually the efficacy of the great Sacrifice, how much harder for one taught to deny the Godhead which rendered the Victim worthy to satisfy Eternal Justice?  She accepted the truth, but the gracious words would not reach her spirit; they were to her as a feast in a hungry man’s dream.  Robert alone was aware of the struggles through which she was passing, and he could do little in direct aid of her; the books—even the passages of Scripture that he found for her—seemed to fall short; it was as though the sufferer in the wilderness lay in sight of the brazen serpent, but his eyes were holden that he could not see it.

Only the governess’s strong and untaxed health could have carried her through her distress and fatigue, for she continued to engross the most trying share of the nursing, anxious to shield Phœbe from even the knowledge of all the miseries of Bertha’s nights, when the poor child would start on her pillow with a shriek, gaze wildly round, trembling in every limb, the dew starting on her brow, face well-nigh convulsed, teeth chattering, and strange, incoherent words—

‘A dream, only a dream!’ she murmured, recovering consciousness.

‘What was only a dream?’ asked Miss Fennimore, one night.

‘Oh, nothing!’ but she still shivered; then striving to catch hold of the broken threads of her philosophy, ‘How one’s imagination is a prey to—to—what is it?  To—to old impressions—when one is weak.’

‘What kind of impressions?’ asked Miss Fennimore, resolved to probe the matter.

Bertha, whose defect of speech was greatly increased by weakness, was long in making her answer comprehensible; but Miss Fennimore gathered it at last, and it made her spirit quake, for it referred to the terrors beyond the grave.  Yet she firmly answered—

‘Such impressions may not always result from weakness.’

‘I thought,’ cried Bertha, rising on her elbow, ‘I thought that an advanced state of civilization dispenses with sectarian—I mean superstitious—literal threats.’

‘No civilization can change those decrees, nor make them unmerited,’ said Miss Fennimore, sadly.

‘How?’ repeated Bertha, frowning.  ‘You, too?  You don’t mean that?  You are not one of the narrow minds that want to doom their fellow-creatures for ever.’  Her eyes had grown large, round, and bright, and she clutched Miss Fennimore’s hand, gasping, ‘Say, not for ever!’

‘My poor child! did I ever teach you it was not?’

‘You thought so!’ cried Bertha; ‘enlightened people think so.  O say—only say it does not last!’

‘Bertha, I cannot.  God forgive me for the falsehoods to which I led you, the realities I put aside from you.’

Bertha gave a cry of anguish, and sank back exhausted, damps of terror on her brow; but she presently cried out, ‘If it would not last!  I can’t bear the thought!  I can’t bear to live, but I can’t die!  Oh! who will save me?’

To Miss Fennimore’s lips rose the words of St. Paul to the jailer.

‘Believe! believe!’ cried Bertha, petulantly, ‘believe what?’

‘Believe that He gave His Life to purchase your safety and mine through that Eternity.’

And Miss Fennimore sank on her knees, weeping and hiding her face.  The words which she had gazed at, and listened to, in vain longing, had—even as she imparted them—touched herself in their fulness.  She had seen the face of Truth, when, at Mrs. Fulmort’s death-bed, she had heard Phœbe speak of the Blood that cleanseth from all sin.  Then it had been a moment’s glimpse.  She had sought it earnestly ever since, and at length it had come to nestle within her own bosom.  It was not sight, it was touch—it was embracing and holding fast.

Alas! the sight was hidden from Bertha.  She moodily turned aside in vexation, as though her last trust had failed her.  In vain did Miss Fennimore, feeling that she had led her to the brink of an abyss of depth unknown, till she was tottering on the verge, lavish on her the most tender cares.  They were requited with resentful gloom, that the governess felt to be so just towards herself that she would hardly have been able to lift up her head but for the new reliance that gave peace to deepening contrition.

That was a bad night, and the day was worse.  Bertha had more strength, but more fever; and the much-enduring Phœbe could hardly be persuaded to leave her to Miss Charlecote at dusk, and air herself with her brothers in the garden.  The weather was close and misty, and Honora set open the door to admit the air from the open passage window.  A low, soft, lulling sound came in, so much softened by distance that the tune alone showed that it was an infant school ditty sung by Maria, while rocking herself in her low chair over the school-room fire.  Turning to discover whether the invalid were annoyed by it, Honor beheld the hard, keen little eyes intently fixed, until presently they filled with tears; and with a heavy sigh, the words broke forth, ‘Oh! to be as silly as she is!’

‘As selig, you mean,’ said Honor, kindly.

‘It is the same thing,’ she said, with a bitter ring in her poor worn voice.

‘No, it is not weakness that makes your sister happy.  She was far less happy before she learnt to use her powers lovingly.’

With such earnestness that her stuttering was very painful to hear, she exclaimed, ‘Miss Charlecote, I can’t recollect things—I get puzzled—I don’t say what I want to say.  Tell me, is not my brain softening or weakening?  You know Maria had water on the head once!’ and her accents were pitiably full of hope.

‘Indeed, my dear, you are not becoming like Maria.’

‘If I were,’ said Bertha, certainly showing no such resemblance, ‘I suppose I should not know it.  I wonder whether Maria be ever conscious of her Ich,’ said she, with a weary sigh, as if this were a companion whence she could not escape.

‘Dear child, your Ich would be set aside by living to others, who only seek to make you happier.’

‘I wish they would let me alone.  If they had, there would have been an end of it.’

‘An end—no indeed, my poor child!’

‘There!’ cried Bertha; ‘that’s what it is to live!  To be shuddered at!’

‘No, Bertha, I did not shudder at the wild delusion and indiscretion, which may be lived down and redeemed, but at the fearful act that would have cut you off from all hope, and chained you to yourself, and such a self, for ever, never to part from the shame whence you sought to escape.  Yes, surely there must have been pleading in Heaven to win for you that instant’s relenting.  Rescued twice over, there must be some work for you to do, something to cast into shade all that has passed.’

‘It will not destroy memory!’ she said, with hopeless indifference.

‘No; but you may be so occupied with it as to rise above your present pain and humiliation, and remember them only to gather new force from your thankfulness.’

‘What, that I was made a fool of?’ cried Bertha, with sharpness in her thin voice.

‘That you were brought back to the new life that is before you.’

Though Bertha made no answer, Honor trusted that a beginning had been made, but only to be disappointed, for the fever was higher the next day, and Bertha was too much oppressed for speech.  The only good sign was that in the dusk she desired that the door should be left open, in case Maria should be singing.  It was the first preference she had evinced.  The brothers were ready to crown Maria, and she sang with such good-will that Phœbe was forced to take precautions, fearing lest the harmony should lose ‘the modest charm of not too much.’

There ensued a decided liking for Maria’s company, partly no doubt from her envied deficiency, and her ignorance of the extent of Bertha’s misdemeanour, partly because there was less effort of mind in intercourse with her.  Her pleasure in waiting on her sister was likewise so warm and grateful, that Bertha felt herself conferring a favour, and took everything from her in a spirit very different from the dull submission towards Miss Fennimore or the peevish tyranny over Phœbe.  Towards no one else save Miss Charlecote did she show any favour, for though their conversation was never even alluded to, it had probably left a pleasant impression, and possibly she was entertained by Honor’s systematic habit of talking of the world beyond to the other nurses in her presence.

But these likings were far more scantily shown than her dislikes, and it was hard for her attendants to acquiesce in the physician’s exhortations to be patient till her spirits and nerves should have recovered the shock.  Even the entrance of a new housemaid threw her into a trepidation which she was long in recovering, and any proposal of seeing any person beyond the few who had been with her from the first, occasioned trembling, entreaties, and tears.

Phœbe, after her brief heroineship, had lapsed into quite a secondary position.  In the reaction of the brothers’ feeling towards each other, they almost left her out.  Both were too sure of her to be eager for her; and besides, as Bertha slowly improved, Mervyn’s prime attention was lavished on the endeavour to find what would give her pleasure.  And in the sick room, Miss Fennimore and Miss Charlecote could better rule; while Maria was preferred as a companion.  Honor often admired to see how content Phœbe was to forego the privilege of waiting on her sister, preparing pleasures and comforts for her in the background, and committing them to the hands whence they would be most welcome, without a moment’s grudge at her own distastefulness to the patient.  She seemed to think it the natural consequence of the superiority of all the rest, and fully acquiesced.  Sometimes a tear would rise for a moment at Bertha’s rude petulance, but it was dashed off for a resolute smile, as if with the feeling of a child against tears, and she as plainly felt the background her natural position, as if she had never been prominent from circumstances.  Whatever was to be done, she did it, and she was far more grateful to Mervyn for loving Robert and enduring Maria, than for any preference to herself.  Always finding cause for thanks, she rejoiced even in the delay caused by Bertha’s illness, and in Robert’s stay in his brother’s home, where she had scarcely dared to hope ever to have seen him again.  Week after week he remained, constantly pressed by Mervyn to delay his departure, and not unwillingly yielding, since he felt that there was a long arrear of fraternal kindness to be made up, and that while St. Matthew’s was in safe hands, he might justly consider that his paramount duty was to his brother and sisters in their present need.  At length, however, the Lent services claimed him in London, and affairs at Beauchamp were so much mended, that Phœbe owned that they ought no longer to detain him from his parish, although Bertha was only able to be lifted to a couch, took little notice of any endeavour to interest her, and when he bade her farewell, hardly raised eye or hand in return.