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

It was a welcome invitation, and in no more time than it took to fetch a shawl, the two old friends were pacing the paved terrace together.

‘Well, what do you think of him?’ began Sir John.  ‘There must be more good in him than I thought.’

‘Much more than I thought.’

‘He has been speaking to me, and I can’t say but that I was sorry for him, though why it should have gone so hard with so sensible and good a girl as Cecily to give up such a scamp, I never could guess!  I told George that seeing what I saw of him, and knowing what I knew, I could think it nothing better than a sacrifice to give her to him!’

‘Exactly what I thought!’

‘After the way he had used her, too—talking nonsense to her, and then playing fast and loose, trying his luck with half the young ladies in London, and then fancying she would be thankful to him as soon as he wanted a wife to keep house!  Poor child, that would not have weighed with her a moment though—it puts me out of patience to know how fond she is of him—but for his scampishness, which made it a clear duty to refuse him.  Very well she behaved, poor thing, but you see how she pined away—though her mother tells me that not a fretful word was ever heard from her, as active and patient and cheerful as ever.  Then the Holmbys took her abroad, the only thing to save her health, but I never trusted the woman, and when by and by she writes to her father that Fulmort was coming, and her aunt would not take her away, “George,” I said, “never mind; I’ll go at once, and bring her home—she shall not be kept there to be torn to pieces between her feelings and her duty.”  And now I am come, I declare I don’t know what to be at—I should think nothing of it if the lad only talked of reforming—but he looks so downcast, and owns so honestly that we were quite right, and then that excellent little sister of his is so fond of him, and you have stood his company this whole year—that I declare I think he must be good for something!  Now you who have looked on all his life, just say what you think of him—such a way as he went on in last year, too—the crew that he got about him—’

‘Phœbe thinks that was the consequence of his disappointment.’

‘A man that could bring such a lot into the same house with that sister of his, had no business to think of Cecily.’

‘He has suffered for it, and pretty severely, and I do think it has done him good.  You must remember that he had great disadvantages.’

‘Which didn’t hinder his brother from turning out well.’

‘Robert went to a public school—’ and there she perceived she was saying something awkward, but Sir John half laughed, and assented.

‘Quite right, Miss Charlecote; private pupils are a delusion?  George never had one without a screw loose about him.  Parish priests were never meant for tutors—and I’ve told my boy, Charlie, that the one thing I’ll never consent to is his marrying on pupils—and doing two good things by halves.  It has well nigh worried his uncle to death, and Cecily into the bargain.’

‘Robert was younger, and the elders were all worse managed.  Besides, Mervyn’s position, as it was treated, made him discontented and uncomfortable; and this attachment, which he was too—too—I can find no word for it but contemptible—to avow, must have preyed on his temper and spirits all the time he was trying to shake it off.  He was brought up to selfishness, and nothing but what he underwent last year could have shaken him out of it.’

‘Then you think he is shaken out of it?’

‘Where Bertha is concerned I see that he is—therefore I should hope it with his wife.’

‘Well, well, I suppose what must be must be.  Not that I have the least authority to say anything, but I could not help telling the poor fellow thus much—that if he went on steadily for a year or so, and continued in the same mind, I did not see why he should not ask my brother and Cecily to reconsider it.  Then it will be for them to decide, you know.’

For them!  As if Sir John were not in character as well as name the guiding head of the family.

‘And now,’ he added, ‘you will let me come to your rooms this evening, for Mrs. Holmby is in such displeasure with me, that I shall get nothing but black looks.  Besides, I want to see a little more of that nice girl, his sister.’

‘Ah! Sir John, if ever you do consent, it will be more than half for love of Phœbe!’

‘Well, for a girl like that to be so devoted to him—her brother though he be—shows there must be more in him than meets the eye.  That’s just the girl that I would not mind John’s marrying.’

CHAPTER XXV

Turn again, Whittington!

    —Bow Bells

May had come round again before Robert Fulmort stood waiting at the Waterloo Station to welcome the travellers, who had been prohibited from putting Bertha’s restored health to the test of east winds.  It was a vista of happy faces that he encountered as he looked into the carriage window, yet the first questions and answers were grave and mournful.

‘Is Mr. Henderson still alive?’ asked Honora.

‘No, he sank rapidly, and died on Sunday week.  I was at the funeral on Saturday.’

‘Right; I am glad you went.  I am sorry I was away.’

‘It was deeply felt.  Nearly all the clergy in the archdeaconry, and the entire parish, were present.’

‘Who is taking care of the parish?’

‘Charlecote Raymond has been coming over for the Sundays, and giving great satisfaction.’

‘I say, Robert, where’s the Bannerman carriage?  Phœbe is to be victimized there—more’s the pity,’ interposed Mervyn.

‘There is their brougham.  I meant to drive to Albury-street with her,’ said Robert, gazing at his brother as if he scarcely knew him without the characteristic knitting of the brow under a grievance, the scowl, or the half-sneering smile; and with the cleared and lightened air that he had worn ever since that little spark of hope had been left to burn and shine undamped by dissipation or worldly policy.  Bertha also was changed.  She had grown tall and womanly, her looks beyond her age, and if her childish vivacity were gone, the softened gravity became her much better.  It was Phœbe’s report, however, for which he chiefly longed, and he was soon seated beside her on the way to Albury-street, while the others betook themselves Citywards.

‘So, Phœbe, it is all right, and you are satisfied?’

‘Satisfied, grateful, thankful to the utmost,’ said Phœbe, fervently.  ‘I think I never was so happy as all through the latter part of the journey.’

‘You think well of Bertha?’

‘I cannot call her restored, for she is far more than she was before.  That meeting with Cecily Raymond did for her what we could not do, and she is growing to be more than we knew how to wish for.’

‘Her spirits?’

‘Never high, and easily shaken.  Her nerves are not strong yet, and she will never, I fear, be quite girlishly careless and merry, but she is grave and sweet.  She does not shrink from people now, and when I saw her among other girls at Paris, she seemed older, much deeper, and altogether superior.’

‘Does she think seriously?’

‘She thinks and reads, but it is not easy to guess what she thinks, for she keeps silence, and has happily quite left off arguing with Miss Charlecote.  I believe Cecily has great influence over her, and I think she will talk a great deal to Miss Fennimore.  Robin, do you think we could have dear Miss Fennimore again?’

‘I do not know what Mr. Parsons would say to you.  As you know, she told him that she wanted to do the most useful work he could trust to her, so he has made her second mistress at the day-school for his tradesmen’s daughters; and what they would do without her I cannot think!’

‘She must have very insufficient pay.’

‘Yes, but I think she is glad of that, and she had saved a good deal.’

‘I give you notice that I shall try hard to get her, if Mr. Crabbe will only let us be as we were before.  Do you think there is any hope for us?’

‘I cannot tell.  I suspect that he will not consent to your going home till Mervyn is married; and Augusta wants very much to have you, for the season at least.’

‘Mervyn and Miss Charlecote both say I ought to see a little of the London world, and she promises to keep Maria and Bertha till we see our way.  I should not like them to be without me anywhere else.  You have not told me of poor Bevil.  You must have seen him often.’

‘Yes, he clings very much to me, poor fellow, and is nearly as much cast down as at first.  He has persuaded himself that poor Juliana always continued what he thought her when they met in their youth.  Perhaps she had the germs of it in her, but I sometimes hardly know which way to look when he is talking about her, and then I take shame to myself for the hard judgments I cannot put away even now!’

‘Poor Juliana!’ said Phœbe, saddened by her own sense that the difficulties of her present position were lessened by the removal of this sister.  ‘And little Elizabeth?’

‘She is a nice little thing, and her father hardly lets her out of his sight.  I have sometimes speculated whether he might not ask you to keep house for him, but last time I saw him, I fancied that he was inclined to hold aloof from you.’

‘I had rather he did not ask us,’ said Phœbe.