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

Phœbe was surprised, while gratified, by the eager tenderness of her meeting with Bertha, who, quite revived, was in the sitting-room to greet her, and seemed to expand like a plant in the sunshine, under the influence of those sweet brown eyes.  Her liveliness and drollery awoke, and her sister was proud that her new friend should see her cleverness and intelligence; but all the time the likeness to that photograph continued to haunt Phœbe’s mind, as she continued to discover more resemblances, and to decide that if such were impressed by the Christian name, Bertha was a little witch to detect it.

Afternoon came, and as usual they all walked seawards.  As Bertha said, they had had enough of the heights, and tried going towards the sea, as their new friend wished, although warned by the Fulmorts that it was a long walk, the étangs, or great salt-pools, spoiling the coast as a beach.  But all were brave walkers, and exercise always did Bertha good.  They had lovely views of the town as they wound about the hills, and admired its old streets creeping up the hill, and the two long wings stretching on either side.  An iron cross stood up before the old church, relieved by the exquisite radiance of the sunset sky.  ‘Ah!’ said Honor, ‘I always choose to believe that is the cross to which the legend belongs.’  ‘Tell it, please, Miss Charlecote,’ cried Maria.

And Honor told a veritable legend of Hyères:—A Moorish princess, who had been secretly baptized and educated as a Christian by her nurse, a Christian slave, was beloved by a genie.  She regarded him with horror, pined away, and grew thin and pale.  Her father thought to raise her spirits by marrying her, and bestowed her on the son of a neighbouring king, sending her off in full procession to his dominions.  On the way, however, lay a desert, where the genie had power to raise a sand-storm, with which he overwhelmed the suite, and flew away with the princess.  But he could not approach her; she kept him at bay with the sign of the cross, until, enraged, he drove her about on a whirlwind for three days, and finally dashed her dead upon this coast.  There she lay, fair as an almond blossom, and royally robed, and the people of Hyères took her up and gave her honourable burial.  When the king her father heard of it, he offered to reward them with a cross of gold of the same weight as his daughter; but, said the townsmen, ‘Oh, king, if we have a cross of gold, the Moors will come and slay us for its sake, therefore give us the gold in coin, and let the cross be of iron.’

‘And there it stands,’ said the guest, looking up.

‘I hope it does,’ said Honor, confronting, as usual, the common-sense led pupils of Miss Fennimore, with her willing demi-credulity.

‘It is a beautiful story!’ was the comment; ‘and, like other traditions, full of unconscious meaning.’

A speech this, as if it had been made to delight Honor, whose eyes were met by a congratulatory glance from Phœbe.  At the farther words, ‘It is very striking—the evil spirit’s power ending with the slaying the body, never harming the soul, nor bending the will—’

‘Bending the will is harming the soul,’ said Phœbe.

‘Nay,’ was her companion’s answer, ‘the fatal evil is, when both wills are bent.’

Phœbe was too single-minded, too single-willed, at once to understand this, till Miss Charlecote whispered a reference to St. Paul’s words of deep experience, ‘To will is present with me.’

‘I see,’ she said; ‘she might even have preferred the genie, but as long as her principle and better will resisted, she was safe from herself as well as from him.’

‘Liked the nasty genie?’ said Maria, who had listened only as to a fairy tale.  ‘Why, Phœbe, genies come out of bottles, and go away in smoke, Lieschen told me.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Bertha, in a low voice of feeling, piteous in one of her years, ‘if so, it needed no outward whirlwind to fling her dead on the coast!’

‘And there she found peace,’ answered the guest, with a suppressed, but still visible sign of weariness.  ‘Oh! it was worth the whirlwind!’

Phœbe was forced to attend to Maria, whose imagination had been a good deal impressed, and who was anxious to make another attempt on a pilgrimage to castle and cross.

‘When Mervyn comes back, Maria, we may try.’

The guest, who was speaking, stopped short in the midst.  Had she been infected by Bertha’s hesitation?  She began again, and seemed to have forgotten what she meant to have said.  However, she recovered herself; and there was nothing remarkable through the rest of the walk, but, on coming indoors, she managed to detain Phœbe behind the others, saying, lightly, ‘Miss Fulmort, you have not seen the view from my window.’  Phœbe followed to her little bed-room, and gazed out at the lovely isles, bathed in light so as to be almost transparent, and the ship of war in the bay, all shadowy and phantom-like.  She spoke her admiration warmly, but met with but a half assent.  The owner of the room was leaning her head against the glass, and, with an effort for indifference said, ‘Did I hear that—that you were expecting your brother?’

‘You are Cecily!’ exclaimed Phœbe, instead of answering.

And Cecily, turning away from the window, leant against the wall for support, and her pale face crimsoning, said, ‘I thought you did not know.’

‘My sisters do not,’ said Phœbe; ‘but he told me, when—when he hoped—’

‘And now you will help me?’ said Cecily, hurrying out her words, as if overpowering one of her wills.  ‘You will, I know!  I have promised my father and uncle to have nothing to do with him.  Do not let me be taken by surprise.  Give me notice, that I may get Aunt Holmby away before he comes.’

‘Oh! must it be so?’ cried Phœbe.  ‘He is not like what he used to be.’

‘I have promised,’ repeated Cecily; and grasping Phœbe’s wrist, she added, ‘you will help me to keep my promise.’

‘I will,’ said Phœbe, in her grave, reliable voice, and Cecily drew a long breath.

There were five minutes of silence, while Phœbe stood studying Cecily, and thinking how much injustice she had done to her, how little she had expected a being so soft and feeling in her firmness, and grieving the more at Mervyn’s loss.  Cecily at last spoke, ‘When will he come?’

‘We cannot tell; most likely not for a week, perhaps not for a fortnight.  It depends on how he likes Corsica.’

‘I think my aunt will be willing to go,’ said Cecily.  ‘My uncle has been talking of Nice.’

‘Then must we lose you,’ said Phœbe, ‘when you are doing Bertha so much good?’

‘I should like to be with you while I can, if I may,’ said Cecily, her eyes full of tears.

‘Did you know us at first?’ said Phœbe.

‘I knew you were in this hotel; and after your sisters had spoken, and I saw Bertha’s face, I was sure who she was.  I thought no one was with you but Miss Charlecote, and that no one knew, so that I might safely indulge myself.’  The word was out before she could recall it, and trying, as it were, to hide it, she said, ‘But how, if you knew what had passed, did you not sooner know it was I?’

‘Because we thought your name was Holmby.’

‘Did you, indeed.  You did not know that my aunt Holmby is my mother’s sister?  She kindly took me when my uncle was ordered to spend this winter abroad.’

‘You were ill and tried.  Bertha read that in your face.  Oh! when you see how much difference—’

‘I must not see.  Do not talk of it, or we must not be together; and indeed it is very precious to me.’  She rested her head on Phœbe’s shoulder, and put an arm round her waist.  ‘Only one thing I must ask,’ she said, presently; ‘is he well?’

‘Quite well,’ said Phœbe.  ‘He has been getting better ever since we left home.  Then you did not know he was with us?’

‘No.  It is not right for me to dwell on those things, and they never mention any of you to me.’

‘But you will write to us now?  You will not desert Bertha?  You do not know how much you are doing for her.’

‘Dear child!  She is so like what he was when first he came.’

‘If you could guess what she has suffered, and how fond he is of her, you would not turn away from her.  You will let her be your friend?’

‘If it be right,’ said Cecily, with tearful eyes, but her mouth set into a steadfast expression, as resolute as sweetly sad.

‘You know better what is right than I do,’ said Phœbe; ‘I who feel for him and Bertha.  But if you have not heard from him for so long, I think there are things you ought to know.’

‘At home, at home,’ said Cecily; ‘there it may be right to listen.  Here I am trusted alone, and I have only to keep my promise.  Tell me when I am at home, and it will make me happy.  Though, nonsense! my wizened old face is enough to cure him,’ and she tried to laugh.  Phœbe regretted what she had said of Bertha’s impression, and believed that the gentle, worn face ought to be far more touching than the most radiant charms, but when she strove to say that it was not beauty that Mervyn loved, she was hushed at once, and by the same mild authority turned out of the room.

Well for her that she could tell her story to Miss Charlecote without breach of confidence!  Honor’s first impulse was displeasure with the aunt, who she was sure had let her speak of, though not to, Miss Holmby without correcting her, and must purposely have kept the whole Raymond connection out of sight.  ‘Depend upon it, Phœbe,’ she said, ‘she will keep her niece here.’

‘Poor Cecily, what will she do?  I wish they would go, for I feel sure that she will think it her duty to hold out against him, till she has her father’s sanction; she will seem hard, and he—’

‘Do not reckon too much on him, Phœbe.  Yes, it is a hard saying, but men care so much for youth and beauty, that he may find her less attractive.  He may not understand how superior she must have become to what she was when he first knew her.  Take care how you plead his cause without being sure of his sentiments.’

In fact, Honor thought Cecily Raymond so infinitely above Mervyn Fulmort, at his very best, that she could not regard the affair as hopeful under any aspect; and the parties concerned being just at the time of life when a woman becomes much the elder of a man of the same years, she fully expected that Cecily’s loss of bloom would entirely take away his desire to pursue his courtship.

The next event was a diplomatic call from Mrs. Holmby, to sound Miss Charlecote, whose name she knew as a friend both of the Fulmorts and Moorcroft Raymonds, and who, she had feared, would use her influence against so unequal a match for the wealthy young squire.  When convinced of her admiration of Cecily, the good aunt proceeded to condemn the Raymond pride.  They called it religion, but she was not so taken in.  What reasonable person heeded what a young man might have done when he was sowing his wild oats?  No, it was only that the Baronet blood disdained the distillery, whereas the Fulmorts represented that good old family, the Mervyns, and it was a very fine estate, was not it?  She had no patience with such nonsense, not she!  All Sir John’s doing; for, between themselves, poor dear George Raymond had no spirit at all, and was quite under his brother’s thumb.  Such a family, and such a thing as it would be for them to have that girl so well married.  She would not take her away.  The place agreed with the Major, and she had told Cecily she could not think of leaving it.

Phœbe saw how close a guard Cecily must have learnt to keep on herself, for not a tone nor look betrayed that she was suffering unusual emotion.  She occupied herself quietly, and was most tenderly kind to Bertha and Maria, exerting herself to converse with Bertha, and to enter into her pursuits as cheerfully as if her mind was disengaged.  Sometimes Phœbe fancied that the exceeding gentleness of her voice indicated when she was most tried, but she attempted no more tête-à-têtes, and Miss Charlecote’s conjecture that in the recesses of her heart she was rejoiced to be detained by no fault of her own, remained unverified.  Phœbe resigned Cecily for the present to Bertha’s exclusive friendship.  Competition would have been unwise, even if the forbidden subject had not been a restraint where the secret was known, while to soothe and cherish Bertha and settle her mind to begin life again was a welcome and fitting mission for Cecily, and inclination as well as discretion therefore held Phœbe aloof, preventing Maria from interfering, and trusting that Cecily was becoming Bertha’s Mr. Charlecote.

Mervyn came back sooner than she had expected him, having soon tired of Corsica.  His year of ill-health and of her attendance had made him dependent on her; he did not enter into novelty or beauty without Bertha; and his old restless demon of discontent made him impatient to return to his ladies.  So he took Phœbe by surprise, walking in as she was finishing a letter to Augusta before joining the others in the olivettes.

‘Well, Phœbe, how’s Bertha?  Ready to leave this hot-vapour-bath of a hole?’

‘I don’t know what you will say to it now,’ she answered looking down, and a little tremulous.  ‘Who do you think is here?’

‘Not Hastings?  If he dares to show his nose here, I’ll get him hissed out of the place.’

‘No, no, something very different.’

‘Well, make haste,’ he said, in the grim voice of a tired man.

‘She is here—Cecily Raymond.’

‘What of that?’  He sat down, folded his arms, and crossed his ankles, the picture of dogged indifference.

‘Mervyn!’

‘What does it matter to me who comes or goes?  Don’t stop to rehearse arrivals, but ring for something to eat.  An atrocious mistral!  My throat is like a turnpike road?  Call it January?  It is a mockery!’

Phœbe obeyed him; but she was in a ferment of wrath and consternation, and clear of nothing save that Cecily must be prepared for his appearance.  She was leaving the room when he called her to ask what she was doing.

‘I am going to tell the others that you are come.’

‘Where are they?’

‘In the olive yards behind the hotel.’

‘Don’t be in such a hurry, and I’ll come.’

‘Thank you, but I had better go on before.  Miss Raymond is with them.’

‘It makes no odds to her.  Stop a minute, I tell you.  What is the matter with her?’  (Said with some uneasiness, hidden by gruffness.)

‘She is not here for her own health, but Major Holmby is rheumatic.’

‘Oh! that intolerable woman is here, is she?  Then you may give Miss Charlecote notice to pack up her traps, and we’ll set off to-morrow!’

If a desire to box a man’s ears ever tingled in Phœbe’s fingers, it was at that moment.  Not trusting herself to utter a word, she went up-stairs, put on her hat, and walked forth, feeling as if the earth had suddenly turned topsy-turvy with her, and as if she could look no one in the face.  Set off to-morrow!  He might tell Miss Charlecote himself, she would not!  Yet, after all, he had been rejected.  His departure might not torture Cecily like the sight of his indifference.  But what despair for Bertha, thought Phœbe, as she saw the friends pacing the paths between the rows of olives, while Miss Charlecote and Maria were gathering magnificent blue violets.  At the first hint, Miss Charlecote called to Bertha, who came reluctantly, while Phœbe, with almost sickening pity, murmured her tidings to Cecily—adding, ‘I do not think he is coming out.  He is having something to eat,’ in hopes that this tardiness might be a preparation.  She was relieved that Bertha rushed back again to monopolize Miss Raymond, and overwhelm her with schemes for walks under Mervyn’s escort.  Cecily let her talk, but made no promises, and the soft gentleness of those replies thrilled as pangs of pain on Phœbe’s pitying heart.

As they walked homewards, Mervyn himself appeared, slowly sauntering towards them.  The younger sisters sprang to meet him, Cecily fell back to Miss Charlecote.  Phœbe held her breath, and scarcely durst look.  There was a touch of the hand, a greeting, then Bertha pounced on her brother to tell the adventure of the ravine; and Cecily began to set Maria off about the flowers in her nosegay.  Phœbe could only come close to Miss Charlecote and squeeze her hand vehemently.

The inn-door was reached, and Mervyn waiting till Cecily came up, said with grave formality, ‘I hear my sisters are indebted to you for your assistance in a very unpleasant predicament.

She bowed, and he bowed.  That was all, and they were in their several apartments.  Phœbe had never felt in such a fever.  She could discern character, but love was but an external experience to her, and she could not read the riddle of Mervyn’s repudiation of intercourse with their fellow-inmates, and his restlessness through the evening, checking Bertha for boring about her friend, and then encouraging her to go on with what she had been saying.  At last, however, Bertha voluntarily ceased her communications and could be drawn out no farther; and when the candle was put out at night, she electrified Phœbe with the remark, ‘It is Mervyn, and you know it; so you may as well tell me all about it.’

Phœbe had no choice but compliance; advising Bertha not to betray her knowledge, and anxious to know the conclusions which this acute young woman would draw from the present conjuncture.  But Bertha was too fond of both parties not to be full of unmitigated hope.  ‘Oh, Phœbe!’ she said, ‘with Cecily there, I shall not mind going home, I shall not mind anything.’

‘If only she will be there.’

‘Stuff, Phœbe!  The more Mervyn sulks, the more it shows that he cares for her; and if she cares for him, of course it will come right.’

‘Do you remember what she said about the two wills contending?’

‘Well, if she ever did think Mervyn the genie, she has crossed him once, twice, thrice, till she may turn him from Urgan into Ethert Brand.’

‘She thinks it her duty not to hear that she has.’

‘Oh, oh! from you who know all about it; but didn’t I tell her plenty about Mervyn’s kindness to me?  Yes, indeed I did.  I couldn’t help it, you know.  It did not seem true to let anybody begin to be my friend unless she knew—all that.  So I told her—and oh! Phœbe, she was so dear and nice, better than ever after that,’ continued Bertha, with what sounded like sobs; ‘and then you know she could not help hearing how good and patient he was with me—only growing kinder and kinder the more tiresome I was.  She must feel that, Phœbe, must not she?  And then she asked about Robert, and I told her how Mervyn has let him get a chaplain to look after the distillery people, and the Institute that that old gin-palace is to be made into.’

‘Those were just the things I was longing to tell her.’

‘She could not stop me, you know, because I knew nothing,’ cried Bertha, triumphantly.  ‘Are not you satisfied, Phœbe?’

‘I ought to be, if I were sure of his feelings.  Don’t plunge about so, Bertha,—and I am not sure either that she will believe him yet to be a religious man.’

‘Don’t say that, Phœbe.  I was just going to begin to like religion, and think it the only true key to metaphysics and explanation of existence, but if it sticks between those two, I shall only see it as a weak, rigid superstition, parting those who were meant for one another.’

Phœbe was strongly tempted to answer, but the little travelling clock struck, and thus acted as a warning that to let Bertha pursue an exciting discussion at this time of night would be ruinous to her nerves the next day.  So with a good-night, the elder sister closed her ears, and lay pondering on the newly disclosed stage in Bertha’s mind, which touched her almost as closely as the fate of her brother’s attachment.

The ensuing were days of suppressed excitement, chiefly manifested by the yawning fits that seized on Bertha whenever no scene in the drama was passing before her.  In fact, the scenes presented little.  Cecily was not allowed to shut herself up, and did nothing remarkable, though avoiding the walks that she would otherwise have taken with the Fulmort party; and when she found that Bertha was aware of her position, firmly making silence on that head the condition of their interviews.  Mervyn let her alone, and might have seemed absolutely indifferent, but for the cessation of all complaints of Hyères, and for the noteworthy brightness, obligingness, and good humour of his manners.  Even in her absence, though often restless and strangely watchful, he was always placable and good-tempered, never even scolding Phœbe; and in her presence, though he might not exchange three words, or offer the smallest service, there was a repose and content on his countenance that gave his whole expression a new reading.  He was looking particularly well, fined down into alertness by his disciplined life and hill climbing, his complexion cleared and tanned by mountain air, and the habits and society of the last year leaving an unconscious impress unlike that which he used to bring from his former haunts.  Phœbe wondered if Cecily remarked it.  She was not aware that Cecily did not know him without that restful look.

Phœbe came to the conclusion that Cecily was persuaded of the cessation of his attachment, and was endeavouring to be thankful, and to accustom herself to it.  After the first, she did not hide herself to any marked degree; and, probably to silence her aunt, allowed that lady to take her on one of the grand Monday expeditions, when all the tolerably sound visiting population of Hyères were wont to meet, to the number of thirty or forty, and explore the scenery.  Exquisite as were the views, these were not romantic excursions, the numbers conducing to gossip and chatter, but there were some who enjoyed them the more in consequence; and Mervyn, who had been loudest in vituperation of his first, found the present perfectly delightful, although the chief of his time was spent in preventing Mrs. Holmby’s cross-grained donkey from lying down to roll, and administering to the lady the chocolate drops that he carried for Bertha’s sustenance; Cecily, meantime, being far before with his sisters, where Mrs. Holmby would gladly have sent him if bodily terror would have permitted her to dismiss her cavalier.

Miss Charlecote and Phœbe, being among the best and briskest of the female walkers, were the first to enter the town, and there, in the Place des Palmiers, looking about him as if he were greatly amazed at himself, they beheld no other than the well-known figure of Sir John Raymond, standing beside the Major, who was sunning himself under the palm-trees.

‘Miss Charlecote, how are you?  How d’ye do, Miss Fulmort?  Is your sister quite well again?  Where’s my little niece?’

‘Only a little way behind with Bertha.’

‘Well, we never thought to meet in such a place, did we?  What a country of stones I have come over to-day, enough to break the heart of a farmer; and the very sheep are no better than goats!  Vineyards?  What they call vineyards are old black stumps that ought to be grubbed up for firewood!’

‘Nay, I was struck by the wonderful cultivation of every available inch of ground.  It speaks well for the Provençals, if we judge by the proverb, “Autant vaut l’homme que vaut sa terre.”’

‘Ah! there she comes;’ and he hastened to join Cecily, while the deserted Bertha, coming up to her sister, muttered, ‘Wretched girl!  I hear she had written to him to fetch her home.  That was what made her stay so quietly, was it?’

No one could accuse Mervyn of indifference who saw the blank look that overspread his face on hearing of Sir John’s arrival, but he said not a word, only hurried away to dress for the table d’hôte.  The first notice the anxious ladies had that the tedious dinner was broken up, was a knock at their door, and Cecily’s entrance, looking exceedingly white, and speaking very low.  ‘I am come to wish you good-bye,’ she said.  ‘Uncle John has been so kind as to come for me, and I believe we shall set out to-morrow.’

Maria alone could dare to shriek out, ‘Oh! but you promised to show me how to make a crown of my pink heaths, and I have been out with Lieschen, and gathered such beauties!’

‘If you will come with me to my room I will show you while I pack up,’ said Cecily, reducing Bertha to despair by this most effectual barrier to confidence; but she entreated leave to follow, since seeing Cecily playing with Maria was better than not seeing her at all.

After some time, Mervyn came in, flushed and breathless, and Honor kindly made an excuse for leaving him alone with Phœbe.  After diligently tossing a book from one hand to the other for some minutes, he observed, sotto voce, ‘That’s a more decent old fellow than I gave him credit for.’