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

‘Phœbe,’ he said, turning with her into her room, ‘what is the matter with Lucy?’

‘The matter?’

‘Do you mean that you have not observed how ill she is looking?’

‘No; nothing particular.’

‘Phœbe, I cannot imagine what you have been thinking about.  I thought you would have saved her, and helped Miss Charlecote, and you absolutely never noticed her looks!’

‘I am very sorry.  I have been so much engaged.’

‘Absorbed, you should call it!  Who would have thought you would be so heedless of her?’

He was gone.  ‘Still crazy about Lucy,’ was Phœbe’s first thought; her second, ‘Another brother finding me heedless and selfish!  What can be the matter with me?’  And when she looked at Lucilla with observant eyes, she did indeed recognize the justice of Robert’s anxiety and amazement.  The brilliant prettiness had faded away as if under a blight, the eyes were sinking into purple hollows, the attitude was listless, the whole air full of suffering.  Phœbe was dismayed and conscience-stricken, and would fain have offered inquiries and sympathy, but no one had more thoroughly than Lucy the power of repulsion.  ‘No, nothing was amiss—of course she felt the frost.  She would not speak to Honor—there was nothing to speak about;’ and she went up to her brother’s room.

Mr. Randolf was out with Mr. Currie, and Phœbe, still exceedingly busy writing notes and orders, and packing for her journey, did not know that there was an unconscious resolution in her own mind that her business should not be done till he came home, were it at one o’clock at night!  He did come at no unreasonable hour, and found her fastening directions upon the pile of boxes in the hall.

‘What are you doing?  Miss Charlecote is not going away?’

‘No; but I am going to-morrow.’

‘You!’

‘Yes; I must get into our new house, and receive my sisters there the day after to-morrow.’

‘I thought you lived with Miss Charlecote.’

‘Is it possible that you did not know what I have been doing all this week?’

‘Were you not preparing a house for your brother?’

‘Yes, and another for myself.  Did you not understand that we set up housekeeping separately upon his marriage?’

‘I did not understand,’ said Humfrey Randolf, disconsolately.  ‘You told me you owed everything to Miss Charlecote.’

‘I am afraid your colonial education translated that into £ s. d.’

‘Then you are not poor?’

‘No, not exactly,’ said Phœbe, rather puzzled and amused by his downcast air.

‘But,’ he exclaimed, ‘your brother is in business; and Mr. Fulmort of St. Matthew’s—’

‘Mr. Fulmort of St. Matthew’s is poor because he gave all to St. Matthew’s,’ said Phœbe; ‘but our business is not a small one, and the property in the country is large.’

He pasted on her last direction in disconsolate silence, then reading, ‘Miss Fulmort, The Underwood, Hiltonbury, Elverslope Station,’ resumed with fresh animation, ‘At least you live near Miss Charlecote?’

‘Yes, we are wedged in between her park and our own—my brother’s, I mean.’

‘That is all right then!  She has asked me for Christmas.’

‘I am very glad of it,’ said Phœbe.  ‘There, thank you, good night.’

‘Is there nothing more that I can do for you?’

‘Nothing—no, no, don’t hammer that down, you will wake Owen.  Good night, good-bye; I shall be gone by half-past six.’

Though Phœbe said good-bye, she knew perfectly well that the hours of the morning were as nothing to the backwoodsman, and with spirits greatly exhilarated by the Christmas invitation, she went to bed, much too sleepy to make out why her wealth seemed so severe a shock to Humfrey Randolf.

The six o’clock breakfast was well attended, for Miss Charlecote was there herself, as well as the Canadian, Phœbe, and Mervyn, who was wonderfully amiable considering the hour in the morning.  Phœbe felt in some slight degree less unfeeling when she found that Lucilla’s fading looks had been no more noticed by Miss Charlecote than by herself; but Honor thought Owen’s illness accounted for all, and only promised that the doctor should inspect her.

A day of exceeding occupation ensued.  Mervyn talked the whole way of Cecily, his plans and his prospects; and Phœbe had to draw her mind out of one world and immerse it into another, straining ears and voice all the time to hear and be heard through the roar of the train.  He left her at the cottage: and then began the work of the day, presiding over upholsterers, hanging pictures, arranging books, settling cabinets of collections, disposing of ornaments, snatching meals at odd times, in odder places, and never daring to rest till long after dark, when, with fingers freshly purified from dust, limbs stiff with running up and down stairs, and arms tired with heavy weights, she sat finally down before the drawing-room fire with her solitary cup of coffee, and a book that she was far too weary to open.

Had she never been tired before, that her heart should sink in this unaccountable way?  Why could she not be more glad that her sisters were coming home, and dear Miss Fennimore?  What made every one seem so dull and stupid, and the comings and goings so oppressive, as if everything would be hateful till Christmas?  Why had she belied all her previous good character for method and punctuality of late, and felt as if existence only began when—one person was in the room?

Oh! can this be falling in love?

There was a chiffonier with a looking-glass back just opposite to her, and, raising her eyes, poor Phœbe beheld a young lady with brow, cheeks, and neck perfectly glowing with crimson!

‘You shan’t stand there long at any rate,’ said she, almost vindictively, getting up and pushing the table with its deep cover between her and the answering witness.

‘Love!  Nonsense!  Yet I don’t see why I should be ashamed!  Yes!  He is my wise man, he is the real Humfrey Charlecote!  His is the very nature I always thought some one must still have—the exact judgment I longed to meet with.  Not stern like Robin’s, not sharp like Mervyn’s, nor high-flying like dear Miss Charlecote’s, nor soft like Bevil’s, nor light like Lucy’s, nor clear and clever like Miss Fennimore’s—no, but considerate and solid, tender and true—such as one can lean upon!  I know why he has the steadfast eyes that I liked so much the first evening.  And there is so much more in him than I can measure or understand.  Yes, though I have known him but ten days, I have seen much more of him than of most men in a year.  And he has been so much tried, and has had such a life, that he may well be called a real hero in a quiet way.  Yes, I well may like him!  And I am sure he likes me!’ said another whisper of the heart, which, veiled as was the lady in the mirror, made Phœbe put both hands over her face, in a shamefaced ecstatic consciousness.  ‘Nay—I was the first lady he had seen, the only person to speak to.  No, no; I know it was not that—I feel it was not!  Why, otherwise, did he seem so sorry I was not poor?  Oh! how nice it would be if I were!  We could work for each other in his glorious new land of hope!  I, who love work, was made for work!  I don’t care for this mere young lady life!  And must my trumpery thousand a year stand in the way?  As to birth, I suppose he is as well or better born than I—and, oh! so far superior in tone and breeding to what ours used to be!  He ought to know better than to think me a fine young lady, and himself only an engineer’s assistant!  But he won’t!  Of course he will be honourable about it—and—and perhaps never dare to say another word till he has made his fortune—and when will that ever be?  It will be right—’  ‘But’ (and a very different but it was this time) ‘what am I thinking about?  How can I be wishing such things when I have promised to devote myself to Maria?  If I could rough it gladly, she could not; and what a shameful thing it is of me to have run into all this long day dream and leave her out.  No, I know my lot!  I am to live on here, and take care of Maria, and grow to be an old maid!  I shall hear about him, when he comes to be a great man, and know that the Humfrey Charlecote I dreamt about is still alive!  There, I won’t have any more nonsense!’

And she opened her book; but finding that Humfrey Randolf’s remarks would come between her and the sense, she decided that she was too tired to read, and put herself to bed.  But there the sense of wrong towards Maria filled her with remorse that she had accepted her rights of seniority, and let the maids place her in the prettiest room, with the best bay window, and most snug fireplace; nor could she rest till she had pacified her self-reproach, by deciding that all her own goods should move next day into the chamber that did not look at the Holt firs, but only at the wall of the back yard.

‘Yes,’ said Phœbe, stoutly in her honest dealing with herself in her fresh, untried morning senses.  ‘I do love Humfrey Charlecote Randolf, and I think he loves me!  Whether anything more may come of it, will be ordered for me; but whether it do so or not, it is a blessing to have known one like him, and now that I am warned, and can try to get back self-control, I will begin to be the better for it.  Even if I am not quite so happy, this is something more beautiful than I ever knew before.  I will be content!’

And when Bertha and Maria arrived, brimful of importance at having come home with no escort but a man and maid, and voluble with histories of Sutton, and wedding schemes, they did not find an absent nor inattentive listener.  Yet the keen Bertha made the remark, ‘Something has come over you, Phœbe.  You have more countenance than ever you had before.’

Whereat Phœbe’s colour rushed into her cheeks, but she demanded the meaning of countenance, and embarked Bertha in a dissertation.

When Phœbe was gone, Robert found it less difficult to force Lucilla to the extremity of a tête-à-tête.  Young Randolf was less in the house, and, when there, more with Owen than before, and Lucilla was necessarily sometimes to be caught alone in the drawing-room.

‘Lucy,’ said Robert, the first time this occurred, ‘I have a question to ask you.’

‘Well!’—she turned round half defiant.

‘A correspondent of Mervyn, on the Spanish coast, has written to ask him to find a chaplain for the place, guaranteeing a handsome stipend.’

‘Well,’ said Lucilla, in a cold voice this time.

‘I wished to ask whether you thought it would be acceptable to Mr. Prendergast.’

‘I neither know nor care.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Robert, after a pause; ‘but though I believe I learnt it sooner than I ought, I was sincerely glad to hear—’

‘Then unhear!’ said Lucilla, pettishly.  ‘You, at least, ought to be glad of that.’