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

‘Then surely you should be taking care.’

‘So I am.  These are very good-natured people, and I’m a treasure of a governess, you know.  I have refections ten times a day, and might swim in port wine, and the little Swiss bonne walks the children, and gives them an awful accent, which their mamma thinks the correct thing.’

‘Change—rest—you should have them.’

‘I shall, when Owen comes.  It is summer-time, and I shall hold on till then, when it will be plenty of time to see whether this is nonsense.’

‘Whether what is?’

‘About my lungs.  Don’t look horrified.  He could only trace the remains of a stupid old cold, and if it were more, I know of no fact of so little moment to anybody.’

‘You should not say that, Lucy; it is wrong and cruel.’

‘It is your fault; I did not want to have talked of it, and in good time here comes half my flock.  Edie, Reggie, Flo, come and show Miss Fulmort what my torments are.’

They ran in, apparently on excellent terms with her, and greeted her guest without shyness; but after a little whispering and shoving the youngest spoke.  ‘Edie and Reggie want to know if she is the lady that put out the light?’

‘Ah! you heroine,’ said Lucy, ‘you don’t know how often I have told of your doughty deeds!  Ay, look at her, she is the robber-baffler; though now I look at her I don’t quite believe it myself.’

‘But it is true?’ asked the little girl, puzzled.

‘Tell us all the story,’ added the boy.

‘Yes; tell us,’ said Lucilla.  ‘I read all your evidence, so like yourself as it was, but I want to know where you were sleeping.’

Phœbe found her present audience strangely more embarrassing than the whole assize court, perhaps because there the solemn purpose swallowed up the sense of admiration; but she laughed at last at the boy’s disappointment at the escape of the thieves; ‘he would have fired a pistol through the keyhole and shot them!’  When she rose to go, the children entreated her to stay and be seen by the others, but this she was glad to escape, though Lucilla clung to her with a sort of anguish of longing, yet stifled affection, that would have been most painful to witness, but for the hopes for her relief.

Phœbe ordered her brother’s carriage in time to take her to breakfast in Woolstone-lane the next morning, and before ten o’clock Honor had heard the account of the visit in Essex.  Tearfully she thanked the trusty reconnoitrer as for a kindness to herself, dwelling on the tokens of relenting, yet trembling at the tidings of the malady.  To write and recall her child to her motherly nursing was the foremost thought in her strange medley of grief and joy, hope and fear.

‘Poor Robert,’ she said, when she understood that he had organized Phœbe’s mission; ‘I am glad I told him to give no answer for a week.’

‘Mervyn told me how kind you were about Hiltonbury.’

‘Kind to myself, my dear.  It seems like a crime when I look at St. Matthew’s; but when I think of you all, and of home, I believe it is right that he should have the alternative.  And now, if poor Lucy come, and it be not too late—’

‘Did he say anything?’ said Phœbe.

‘I only wrote to him; I thought he had rather not let me see his first impulse, so I told him to let me hear nothing till Thursday evening.  I doubted before, now I feel sure he will take it.’

‘Lucy has the oldest claim,’ said Phœbe, thoughtfully, wishing she could feel equally desirous of success in this affair as in that of Mervyn and Cecily.

‘Yes, she was his first love, before Whittingtonia.  Did you mention the vacancy at Hiltonbury?’

‘No; there was so much besides to talk of.’

‘That is well; for perhaps if she knew, that spirit of hers might keep her aloof.  I feel like Padre Cristoforo dispensing Lucia from her vow!  If she will only get well!  And a little happiness will do more than all the cods in Hammerfest!  Phœbe, we will have a chapel-school at the hamlet, and a model kitchen at the school: and Robert will get hold of all the big boys.  His London experience is exactly what we want to brighten Hiltonbury, and all our clergy.’

Hiltonbury had a right to stand first with Honora, and Whittingtonia had sunk into a mere training-school for her pattern parson.  If there were a sigh to think that Owen was exactly of the right age to have been ordained to Hiltonbury, she put it away, for this was next best.

Her note to Lucilla was penned with trembling caution, and each word was reconsidered day and night, in case the perverse temper might take umbrage.  The answer came.

‘My dear Honor,

‘It is beyond my deserts to be so kindly taken home.  I have learnt what that means now.  I can be spared for a fortnight; and as Mr. Bostock dines in town the day after to-morrow, he will set me down.    Your affectionate

L. Sandbrook.’

‘Miss Charlecote is like a person ten years younger,’ observed Bertha to Phœbe, when she came with the rest to ‘quite a family party,’ at Albury-street.  Robert alone was absent, it being what Augusta called ‘a fast or something;’ i.e. a meeting of St. Wulstan’s Young Men’s Institute.  Bertha heartily wished she could call herself a young man, for her morbid sense of disgrace always recurred with those whom she knew to be cognizant of her escapade.  However, this evening made a change in her ladyship’s views, or rather she had found Phœbe no longer the mere submissive handmaid of schoolroom days, but a young woman accustomed to liberty of action and independence of judgment; and though perfectly obliging and unselfish, never admitting Augusta’s claims on her time to the exclusion of those of others of the family, and quietly but decidedly carrying out her intentions.  Bertha’s shrinking silence and meekness of demeanour persuaded her sister that she would be more comfortable, and her womanly appearance not only rendered the notion of school ridiculous, but inspired the desire of bringing her out.  Phœbe might dedicate herself to Maria if she pleased; Bertha should shine through the season under her sister’s patronage.

Not since the adventure with the Hyères peasants had Bertha’s tongue been so unmanageable, as when she tried to protest against going into society; and when Mervyn came to her help, Augusta owned that such hesitation was indeed an objection, but it might easily be cured by good management; cordials would prevent nervousness, and, after all, no one would care when a girl had such a fortune.  Poor Bertha crept away, feeling as if she could never open her mouth again.

Meanwhile Mervyn and Augusta amicably agreed on the excellence of Hiltonbury parsonage as a home for the girls, the latter only regretting what Robert had sunk on his fancies at Whittingtonia.  ‘I don’t know that,’ returned Mervyn; ‘all I regret is, that we never took our share.  It is a different thing now, I assure you, to see the turn out from the distillery since the lads have come under his teaching!  I only hope his successor may do as well!’

‘Well, I don’t understand about such things,’ said Augusta, crossly.  ‘Poor papa never made such a rout about the hands.  It would not have been thought good taste to bring them forward.’

‘If you wish to understand,’ said Mervyn, maliciously, ‘you had better come and see.  Robert would be very glad of your advice for the kitchen he is setting going—sick cookery and cheap dinners.’

‘And pray who pays for them?  Robert has made himself a beggar.  Is it you?’

‘No; those who eat.  It is to be self-supporting.  I do nothing but lend the house.  You don’t remember it.  It is the palace at the corner of Richard Alley.’

‘It is no concern of mine, I know; but what is to become of the business if you go giving away the houses?’

‘Oh! I am getting into the foreign and exportation line.  It is infinitely less bother.’

‘Ah, well!  I am glad my poor father does not see it.  He would have said the business was going to the dogs!’

‘No; he was fast coming into Robert’s views, and I heartily wish I had not hindered him.’

Augusta told her admiral that evening that there was no hope for the family, since Robert had got hold of Mervyn as well as of the rest of them.  People in society actually asked her about the schools and playground at Mr. Fulmort’s distillery; there had been an educational report about them.  Quite disgusting!

There passed a day of conflicting hope and fear, soothed by the pleasure of preparation, and at seven in the evening there came the ring at the house door, and Lucilla was once more in Honora’s arms.  It was for a moment a convulsive embrace, but it was not the same lingering clinging as when she met Phœbe, nor did she look so much changed as then, for there was a vivid tint of rose on either cheek; she had restored her hair to the familiar fashion, and her eyes were bright with excitement.  The presence of Maria and Bertha, which Miss Charlecote had regretted, was probably a relief; for Lucilla, as she threw off her bonnet, and sat down to the ‘severe tea’ awaiting her, talked much to them, observed upon their growth, noticed the little Maltese dog, and compared her continental experiences with Bertha’s.  To Honor she scarcely spoke voluntarily, and cast down her eyes as she did so, making brief work of answers to inquiries, and showing herself altogether disappointingly the old Cilly.  Robert’s absence was also a disappointment to Honor, though she satisfied herself that it was out of consideration.

Lucy would not go up to her room till bed-time; and when Honor, accompanying her thither, asked tender and anxious questions about her health, she answered them, not indeed petulantly, as of old, but with a strange, absent manner, as if it were duty alone that made her speak.  Only when Honor spoke of her again seeing the physician whom she had consulted, she at first sharply refused, then, as if recollecting herself, meekly said: ‘As you think fit, but I had rather it was not the same.’

‘I thought he was your own preference,’ said Honor, ‘otherwise I should have preferred Dr. F.’

‘Very well, let it be,’ said Lucy, hastily.

The good-nights, the kisses past, and Honor went away, with a heavy load of thwarted hopes and baffled yearning at her heart—yearnings which could be stilled only in one way.

A knock.  She started up, and called ‘Come in,’ and a small, white, ghostly figure glided in, the hands tightly clasped together.

‘Lucy, dear child, you are ill!’

‘I don’t know what is the matter with me,’ said a husky, stifled voice; ‘I meant it—I wanted it.  I longed after it when it was out of reach, but now—’

‘What, my dear?’ asked Honor, appalled at the effort with which she spoke.

‘Your pardon!’ and with a pressure of hands and contraction of the brow as of physical agony, she exclaimed, ‘Honor, Honor, forgive me!’

Honor held out her arms, she flung herself prone into them, and wept.  Tears were with her an affection as violent as rare, and her sobs were fearful, heaving her little fragile frame as though they would rend it, and issuing in short cries and gasps of anguish.  Honor held her in her arms all the time, much alarmed, but soothing and caressing, and in the midst, Lucilla had not lost all self-control, and though unable to prevent the paroxysm, restrained it as much as possible, and never attempted to speak; but when her friend laid her down, her whole person still quivering with the long swell of the last uncontrollable sobbing, she looked up with the sweetest smile ever seen by Honor, who could not help thinking that such a sight might have met the eyes of the mother who found the devil gone out and her daughter laid on the bed.

The peace was such that neither could bear to speak for many seconds.  At last Lucy said, ‘Dear Honor.’

‘My dearest’

‘Lie down by me; please put your arms round me.  There!  Oh! it is so comfortable.  Why did I never find it out before?  I wish I could be a little child, and begin again from the time my father made me over to you.’

‘Lucy, we all would begin again if we could.  I have come to the perception how often I exasperated you.’

‘An angel who did his duty by me would have exasperated me in your place.’

‘Yes, that was one error of mine.  I thrust myself in against the wishes of your nearest relative.’

‘My thanklessness has made you feel that.’

‘Don’t talk on, dear one—you are exhausting yourself.’

‘A little more I must say before I can sleep under your roof in peace, then I will obey you in all things.  Honor, these few years have shown me what your education did for me against my will.  What would have become of me if I had been left to the poor Castle Blanch people?  Nothing could have saved me but my spirit of contradiction!  No; all that saved my father’s teaching from dying out in me—all that kept me at my worst from the Charteris standard, all that has served me in my recent life, was what you did for me!  There! I have told you only the truth.’

Honor could only kiss her and whisper something of unlooked-for happiness, and Lucilla’s tears flowed again at the tenderness for which she had learnt to hunger; but it was a gentle shower this time, and she let herself be hushed into calmness, till she slept peacefully on Honor’s bed, in Honor’s arms, as she had never done, even as a young child.  Honor watched her long, in quiet gladness and thankfulness, then likewise slept; and when awakened at last by a suppressed cough, looked up to see the two stars of blue eyes, soft and gentle under their swollen lids, gazing on her full of affection.

‘I have wakened you,’ Lucy said.

‘Have you been awake long?’

‘Not very; but to lie and look at the old windows, and smell the cedar fragrance, and see you, is better than sleep.’

Still the low morning cough and the pallor of the face filled Honor with anxiety; and though Lucilla attributed much to the night’s agitation, she was thoroughly languid and unhinged, and fain to lie on the sofa in the cedar parlour, owning that no one but a governess could know the full charm of doing nothing.

The physician was the same who had been consulted by her father, and well remembered the flaxen-haired child whom he had so cruelly detached from his side.  He declared her to be in much the same reduced and enfeebled condition as that in which her father brought on his malady by reckless neglect and exposure, and though he found no positive disease in progress, he considered that all would depend upon anxious care, and complete rest for the autumn and winter, and he thought her constitution far too delicate for governess life, positively forbidding her going back to her situation for another day.

Honor had left the room with him.  She found Lucilla with her face hidden in the sofa cushions, but the next moment met a tremulous half-spasmodic smile.

‘Am I humbled enough?’ she said.  ‘Failed, failed, failed!  One by my flirting, two by my temper, three by my health!  I can’t get my own living, and necessity sends me home, without the grace of voluntary submission.’

‘Nay, my child, the very calling it home shows that it need not humble you to return.’

‘It is very odd that I should like it so much!’ said Lucy; ‘and now,’ turning away as usual from sentiment, ‘what shall I say to Mrs. Bostock?  What a wretch she will think me!  I must go over and see all those children once more.  I hope I shall have a worthy successor, poor little rogues.  I must rouse myself to write!’

‘Not yet, my dear.’

‘Not while you can sit and talk.  I have so much to hear of at home!  I have never inquired after Mr. Henderson!  Not dead?’

‘You have not heard?  It was a very long, gradual decay.  He died on the 12th.’

‘Indeed! he was a kind old man, and home will not be itself without his white head in the reading-desk.  Have you filled up the living.’

‘I have offered it’—and there was a pause—‘to Robert Fulmort.’

‘I thought so!  He won’t have it.’

Honor durst not ask the grounds of this prediction, and the rest of that family were discussed.  It was embarrassing to be asked about the reports of last winter, and Lucy’s keen penetration soon led to full confidence.

‘Ah! I was sure that a great flood had passed over that poor child!  I was desperate when I wrote to Phœbe, for it seemed incredible that it should be either of the others, but I might have trusted her.  I wonder what will become of her.  I have not yet seen the man good enough for her.’

‘I have seen one—and so have you—but I could not have spared him to her, even if she had been in his time.’

Truly Lucilla was taken home when Honor was moved to speak thus.

For her sake Honor had regretted that the return dinner to the Albury-street household and the brothers was for this day, but she revived towards evening, and joined the party, looking far less pretty and piquante, and her dress so quiet as to be only just appropriate, but still a fair bright object, and fitting so naturally into her old place, that Lady Bannerman was scandalized at her presumption and Miss Charlecote’s weakness.  Honor and Phœbe both watched the greeting between her and Robert, but could infer nothing, either from it or from their deportment at dinner, both were so entirely unembarrassed and easy.  Afterwards Robert sought out Phœbe, and beguiled her into the window where his affairs had so often been canvassed.

‘Phœbe,’ he said, ‘I must do what I fear will distress you, and I want to prepare you.’

Was it coming?  But how could he have guessed that she had rather not?

‘I feel deeply your present homeless condition.  I wish earnestly that I could make a home for you.  But, Phœbe, once you told me you were content to be sacrificed to my foremost duty—’

‘I am,’ she said.

‘Well, then, I love this smoky old black wife of mine, and don’t want to leave her even for my sisters.’

‘I never thought of your leaving her for your sisters, but—’ and as Lucilla’s music effectually veiled all words—‘I had thought that there might be other considerations.’  Her eyes spoke the rest.

‘I thought you knew that folly had passed away,’ he said, somewhat sternly.  ‘I trust that no one else has thought of it!’ and he indicated Miss Charlecote.

‘Not when the offer was made to you, but since she heard of my mission.’

‘Then I am glad that on other grounds my mind was made up.  No,’ after a pause, ‘there is a great change.  She is far superior to what she was in the days of my madness, but it is over, and never could be renewed.  She herself does not desire it.’

Phœbe was called to the piano, not sorry that such should be Robert’s conviction, and glad that he should not be disturbed in work that suited him so well as did St. Matthew’s, but thinking him far too valuable for Lucy not to suffer in losing her power over him.

And did she?

She was alone in the cedar parlour with Honor the next day, when the note was brought in announcing his refusal on the ground that while he found his strength and health equal to the calls of his present cure, and his connection with the Fulmort firm gave him unusual facilities in dealing with the workmen, he did not think he ought to resign his charge for another for which many better men might be found.

‘Quite right; I knew it,’ said Lucilla, when Honor had with some attempt at preparation shown her the note.

‘How could you know it?’

‘Because I saw a man in his vocation.’

A long silence, during which Cilly caught a pitying glance.

‘Please to put that out of your head!’ she exclaimed.  ‘There’s no pity, no ill-usage in the case.  I wilfully did what I was warned that he would not bear, and there was an end of it.’

‘I had hoped not past recall.’

‘Well, if you will have the truth, when it was done and not to be helped, we were both very sorry; I can answer at least for one, but he had bound himself heart and soul to his work, and does not care any longer for me.  What, you, the preacher of sacrifice, wishing to see your best pupil throw up your pet work for the sake of a little trumpery crushed fire-fly?’

‘Convict me out of my own mouth,’ said Honor, sadly, ‘it will not make me like to see my fire-fly crushed.’

‘When the poor fire-fly has lit the lamp of learning for six idle children, no other cause for dimness need be sought.  No, I was well and wicked in the height of the pain, and long after it wore out—for wear out it did—and I am glad he is too wise to set it going again.  I don’t like emotions.  I only want to be let alone.  Besides, he has got into such a region of goodness, that his wife ought to be super-excellent.  I know no one good enough for him unless you would have him!’

As usual, Honor was balked by bestowing sympathy, and could only wonder whether this were reserve, levity, or resignation, and if she must accept it as a fact that in the one the attachment had been lost in the duties of his calling, in the other had died out for want of requital.  For the present, in spite of herself, her feeling towards Robert verged more on distant rather piqued admiration than on affection, although he nearly approached the ideal of her own first love, and Owen Sandbrook’s teaching was, through her, bearing good fruit in him, even while recoiling on her woman’s heart through Owen’s daughter.

Mervyn was easily reconciled to the decision, not only because his brother was even more valuable to him in London than in the country, but because Miss Charlecote’s next alternative was Charlecote Raymond, Sir John’s second son, a fine, open-tempered young man of thirty, who had made proof of vigour and judgment in the curacy that he had just left, and who had the farther recommendation of bearing the name of the former squire, his godfather.  Anything called Raymond was at present so welcome to Mervyn that he felt himself under absolute obligations to Robert for having left the field clear.  When no longer prejudiced, the sight of Robert’s practical labours struck him more and more, and his attachment grew with his admiration.

‘I’ll tell you what, Phœbe,’ he said, when riding with her.  ‘I have a notion of pleasing the parson.  Yesterday we got obstructed by an interminable procession of school children going out for a lark in the country by an excursion train, and he began envying their keepers for being able to give them such a bath of country air.  Could we not let him do the same by his lot at Beauchamp?’

‘Oh, Mervyn, what a mass of happiness you would produce!’

‘Mass of humbug!  I only want to please Robin and have no trouble.  I shan’t come near it.  You only tell me what it will cost, carriage, provender, and all, and let me hear no more of it.’

He was destined to hear a good deal more.  The proposal caused the utmost gratitude and satisfaction, except that Honor and Robert doubted whether it were a proper moment for merry-making at Hiltonbury.  They were in full consultation when in walked Sir John Raymond, who could not help coming to town at once to express his thanks at having his son settled so near him.  Ere long, he learnt what was under discussion, and made the amendment that the place should be the Forest, the occasion the Horticultural Show.  He knew of a capital spot for the whole troop to dine in, even including the Wulstonians proper, whom Honor, wondering she had never thought of it before, begged to include in the treat at her own expense.  But conveyance from the station for nearly two thousand?

‘Never mind,’ said Sir John; ‘I’ll undertake for that!  We’ll make it a county concern, and get the farmers to lend their wagons, borrow all the breaks we can, and I know of some old stage-coaches in dock.  If there’s not room for all, they must ride and tye.  It is only three miles from the little Forest station, and we’ll make the train stop there.  Only, young ladies, you must work Whittington’s cat upon all the banners for your kittens.’

Lucilla clapped her hands, and undertook that the Whittingtonians should be marshalled under such an array of banners as never were seen before.  Maria was in ecstasies, and Bertha was, in the excitement, forgetting her dread of confronting the county.

‘But where’s Miss Phœbe?’ asked Sir John, who had sat half an hour waiting in vain for her to appear; and when he heard, he declared his intention of calling on her.  And where was Mervyn himself?  He was at the office, whither Robert offered to conduct the Baronet, and where Mervyn heard more of his proposal than he had bargained for; though, perhaps, not more than he liked.  He was going to an evening party at the Bannermans’, and seeing Sir John’s inclination to see Phœbe, proposed to call for him and take him there.