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

Honor thought so too, and proposed giving the invitation.

‘Don’t,’ said Robert, ‘she’d be cross; I’ll bring them.’

And so he did.  Two days after, the broad German face and the flaxen head appeared, leading that fat ball, Phœbe, and Robin frisking in triumph beside her.  Henceforth a great friendship arose between the children.  Phœbe soon lost all dread of those who petted her, and favoured them with broad smiles and an incomprehensible patois.  Owen made very much of her, and pursued and imitated Robert with the devotion of a small boy to a larger one.  Lucilla devoted herself to him for want of better game, and moreover he plainly told her that she was the prettiest little girl he ever saw, and laid all manner of remarkable treasures at her feet.  Miss Charlecote believed that he made some curious confidences to her, for once Owen said, ‘I want to know why Robin hasn’t a Sweet Honey to make him good?’

‘Robin has a papa and mamma, and a governess.’

‘Robin was telling Lucy he wanted some one to teach him to be good, and she said she would, but I think she is not old enough.’

‘Any one who is good is teaching others, my Owen,’ said Honor.  ‘We will ask in our prayers that poor little Robin may be helped.’

When Mr. and Mrs. Fulmort came home, there was an interchange of calls, many thanks for her kindness to the children, and sanction of future intercourse.  Mr. Fulmort was a great distiller, who had married a county heiress, and endeavoured to take his place among the country squires, whom he far exceeded in display; and his wife, a meek, sickly person, lived a life of slavery to the supposed exigencies of fashion.  She had always had, in her maiden days, a species of awe of the Charlecotes’ London cousin, and was now disposed to be rather gratified by her notice of her children.  Mervyn had been disposed of at a tutor’s, and Robert was adrift for many hours of the day.  As soon as he had discovered the possibility of getting to the Holt alone, he was frequently there, following Honora about in her gardening and farming, as much at home as the little Sandbrooks, sharing in their sports, and often listening to the little books that she read aloud to them.  He was very far from being such an angelic little mortal as Owen, with whom indeed his sympathies were few.  Once some words were caught from him by both children, which startled Honor exceedingly, and obliged her to tell him that if ever she found him to have repeated the like, she should forbid his coming near them.  He looked excessively sullen, and did not come for a week, during which Lucilla was intolerably naughty, and was twice severely punished for using the identical expressions in defiance.

Then he came again, and behaved as if nothing had happened, but the offence never recurred.  Some time after, when he boasted of having come away with a lesson unlearnt, in flat disobedience to Mademoiselle, Honor sent him straight home, though Lucilla stamped and danced at her in a frenzy.  Another time Owen rushed up to her in great agony at some torture that Robin was inflicting upon a live mouse.  Upon this, Honor, full of the spirit of indignation, fairly struck the offender sharply on the fingers with her riding-whip.  He scowled at her, but it was only for a moment.  She held him tightly by the hand, while she sent the gardener to put his victim out of its misery, and then she talked to him, not sentimentally, her feelings were too strongly stirred, but with all her horror of cruelty.  He muttered that Mervyn and the grooms always did it; but he did not hold out long—Lucilla was holding aloof, too much horrified to come near—and finally he burst into tears, and owned that he had never thought!

Every now and then, such outbreaks made Honor wonder why she let him come, perhaps to tempt her children; but she remembered that he and Humfrey had been fond of one another, and she felt drawn towards him, though in all prudence she resolved to lessen the attractions of the Holt by being very strict with all, and rather ungracious to him.  Yet, strange to say, the more regulations she made, and the more she flashed out at his faults, the more constant was her visitor, the Robin who seemed to thrive upon the veriest crumbs of good-nature.

Positively, Honora was sometimes amazed to find what a dragon she could be upon occasion.  Since she had been brought into subordination at six or eight years old, she had never had occasion to find out that she had a spirit of her own, till she found herself astonishing Jones and Brooks for taking the liberty of having a deadly feud; making Brooks understand that cows were not to be sold, nor promises made to tenants, without reference to her; or showing a determined marauder that Humfrey’s wood was not to be preyed upon any more than in his own time.  They were very feminine explosions to be sure, but they had their effect, and Miss Charlecote’s was a real government.

The uproar with nurse came at last, through a chance discovery that she had taken Owen to a certain forbidden house of gossip, where he had been bribed to secrecy with bread and treacle.

Honora wrote to Mrs. Charteris for permission to dismiss the mischievous woman, and obtained full consent, and the most complete expression of confidence and gratitude.  So there ensued a month, when every visit to the nursery seemed to be spent in tears.  Nurse was really very fond of the children, and cried over them incessantly, only consoling herself by auguring a brilliant future for them, when Master Owen should reign over Hiltonbury, like the gentleman he was.

‘But, nurse, Cousin Honor says I never shall—I’m to be a clergyman, like papa.  She says . . . ‘

Nurse winked knowingly at the housemaid.  ‘Yes, yes, my darling, no one likes to hear who is to come after them.  Don’t you say nothing about it; ain’t becoming; but, by and by, see if it don’t come so, and if my boy ain’t master here.’

‘I wish I was, and then nursey would never go.’

However, nurse did go, and after some tears Owen was consoled by promotion to the habits of an older boy.

Lucilla was very angry, and revenged herself by every variety of opposition in her power, all which were put down by the strong hand.  It was a matter of necessity to keep a tight grasp on this little wilful sprite, the most fiery morsel of engaging caprice and naughtiness that a quiet spinster could well have lit upon.  It really sometimes seemed to Honora as if there were scarcely a fault in the range of possibilities that she had not committed; and indeed a bit of good advice generally seemed to act by contraries, and served to suggest mischief.  Softness and warmth of feeling seemed to have been lost with her father; she did not show any particular affection towards her brother or Honora.  Perhaps she liked Miss Wells, but that might be only opposition; nay, Honor would have been almost thankful if she had melted at the departure of the undesirable nurse, but she appeared only hard and cross.  If she liked any one it was Robert Fulmort, but that was too much in the way of flirtation.

Vanity was an extremely traceable spring of action.  When nurse went, Miss Lucilla gave the household no peace, because no one could rightly curl the long flaxen tresses upon her shoulders, until the worry became so intolerable that Honora, partly as penance, partly because she thought the present mode neither conducive to tidiness nor comfort, took her scissors and trimmed all the ringlets behind, bowl-dish fashion, as her own carrots had figured all the days of her childhood.

Lucilla was held by Mrs. Stubbs during the operation.  She did not cry or scream after she felt herself conquered by main strength, but her blue eyes gleamed with a strange, wild light; she would not speak to Miss Charlecote all the rest of the day, and Honora doubted whether she were ever forgiven.

Another offence was the cutting down her name into Lucy.  Honor had avoided Cilly from the first; Silly Sandbrook would be too dreadful a sobriquet to be allowed to attach to any one, but Lucilla resented the change more deeply than she showed.  Lucy was a housemaid’s name, she said, and Honor reproved her for vanity, and called her so all the more.  She did not love Miss Charlecote well enough to say that Cilly had been her father’s name for her, and that he had loved to wind the flaxen curls round his fingers.

Every new study, every new injunction cost a warfare, disobedience, and passionate defiance and resistance on the one hand, and steady, good-tempered firmness on the other, gradually growing a little stern.  The waves became weary of beating on the rock at last.  The fiery child was growing into a girl, and the calm will had the mastery of her; she succumbed insensibly; and owing all her pleasures to Cousin Honor, she grew to depend upon her, and mind, manners, and opinions were taking their mould from her.

CHAPTER V

Too soon the happy child
His nook of heavenward thought must change
For life’s seducing wild.

    —Christian Year

The summer sun peeped through the Venetian blinds greenly shading the breakfast-table.

Only three sides were occupied.  For more than two years past good Miss Wells had been lying under the shade of Hiltonbury Church, taking with her Honora Charlecote’s last semblance of the dependence and deference of her young ladyhood.  The kind governess had been fondly mourned, but she had not left her child to loneliness, for the brother and sister sat on either side, each with a particular pet—Lucilla’s, a large pointer, who kept his nose on her knee; Owen’s, a white fan-tailed pigeon, seldom long absent from his shoulder, where it sat quivering and bending backwards its graceful head.

Lucilla, now nearly fourteen, looked younger from the unusual smallness of her stature, and the exceeding delicacy of her features and complexion, and she would never have been imagined to be two years the senior of the handsome-faced, large-limbed young Saxon who had so far outstripped her in height; and yet there was something in those deep blue eyes, that on a second glance proclaimed a keen intelligence as much above her age as her appearance was below it.

‘What’s the matter?’ said she, rather suddenly.

‘Yes, sweetest Honey,’ added the boy, ‘you look bothered.  Is that rascal not paying his rent?’

‘No!’ she said, ‘it is a different matter entirely.  What do you think of an invitation to Castle Blanch?’

‘For us all?’ asked Owen.

‘Yes, all, to meet your Uncle Christopher, the last week in August.’

‘Why can’t he come here?’ asked Lucilla.

‘I believe we must go,’ said Honora.  ‘You ought to know both your uncles, and they should be consulted before Owen goes to school.’

‘I wonder if they will examine me,’ said Owen.  ‘How they will stare to find Sweet Honey’s teaching as good as all their preparatory schools.’

‘Conceited boy.’

‘I’m not conceited—only in my teacher.  Mr. Henderson said I should take as good a place as Robert Fulmort did at Winchester, after four years in that humbugging place at Elverslope.’

‘We can’t go!’ cried Lucilla.  ‘It’s the last week of Robin’s holidays!’

‘Well done, Lucy!’ and both Honor and Owen laughed heartily.

‘It is nothing to me,’ said she, tossing her head, ‘only I thought Cousin Honor thought it good for him.’

‘You may stay at home to do him good,’ laughed Owen; ‘I’m sure I don’t want him.  You are very welcome, such a bore as he is.’

‘Now, Owen.’

‘Honey dear, I do take my solemn affidavit that I have tried my utmost to be friends with him,’ said Owen; ‘but he is such a fellow—never has the least notion beyond Winchester routine—Latin and Greek, cricket and football.’

‘You’ll soon be a schoolboy yourself,’ said Lucilla.

‘Then I shan’t make such an ass of myself,’ returned Owen.

‘Robin is a very good boy, I believe,’ said Honor.

‘That’s the worst of him!’ cried Lucilla, running away and clapping the door after her as she went.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Owen, very seriously, ‘he says he does not care about the Saints’ days because he has no one to get him leave out.’

‘I remember,’ said Honor, with a sweet smile of tender memory, ‘when to me the merit of Saints’ days was that they were your father’s holidays.’