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

‘You don’t mean that we are going to be ruined?’

‘Better that we were than to go on as we do!  Phœbe, it is wickedness.’  There was a long pause.  Robert rested his brow on his hand, Phœbe gazed intently at him, trying to unravel the idea so suddenly presented.  She had reasoned it out before he looked up, and she roused him by softly saying, ‘You mean that you do not like the manufacture of spirits because they produce so much evil.’

Though he did not raise his head, she understood his affirmation, and went on with her quiet logic, for, poor girl, hers was not the happy maiden’s defence—‘What my father does cannot be wrong.’  Without condemning her father, she instinctively knew that weapon was not in her armoury, and could only betake herself to the merits of the case.  ‘You know how much rather I would see you a clergyman, dear Robin,’ she said; ‘but I do not understand why you change your mind.  We always knew that spirits were improperly used, but that is no reason why none should be made, and they are often necessary.’

‘Yes,’ he answered; ‘but, Phœbe, I have learnt to-day that our trade is not supported by the lawful use of spirits.  It is the ministry of hell.’

Phœbe raised her startled eyes in astonished inquiry.

‘I would have credited nothing short of the books, but there I find that not above a fifth part of our manufacture goes to respectable houses, where it is applied properly.  The profitable traffic, which it is the object to extend, is the supply of the gin palaces of the city.  The leases of most of those you see about here belong to the firm, it supplies them, and gains enormously on their receipts.  It is to extend the dealings in this way that my legacy is demanded.’

The enormity only gradually beginning to dawn upon Phœbe, all she said was a meditative—‘You would not like that.’

‘You did not realize it,’ he said, nettled at her quiet tone.  ‘Do not you understand?  You and I, and all of us, have eaten and drunk, been taught more than we could learn, lived in a fine house, and been made into ladies and gentlemen, all by battening on the vice and misery of this wretched population.  Those unhappy men and women are lured into the gaudy palaces at the corners of the streets to purchase a moment’s oblivion of conscience, by stinting their children of bread, that we may wear fine clothes, and call ourselves county people.’

‘Do not talk so, Robert,’ she exclaimed, trembling; ‘it cannot be right to say such things—’

‘It is only the bare fact! it is no pleasure to me to accuse my own father, I assure you, Phœbe, but I cannot blind myself to the simple truth.’

‘He cannot see it in that light.’

‘He will not.’

‘Surely,’ faltered Phœbe, ‘it cannot be so bad when one does not know it is—’

‘So far true.  The conscience does not waken quickly to evils with which our lives have been long familiar.’

‘And Mervyn was brought up to it—’

‘That is not my concern,’ said Robert, too much in the tone of ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’

‘You will at least tell your reasons for refusing.’

‘Yes, and much I shall be heeded!  However, my own hands shall be pure from the wages of iniquity.  I am thankful that all I have comes from the Mervyns.’

‘It is a comfort, at least, that you see your way.’

‘I suppose it is;’ but he sighed heavily, with a sense that it was almost profanation to have set such a profession in the balance against the sacred ministry.

‘I know she will like it best.’

Dear Phœbe! in spite of Miss Fennimore, faith must still have been much stronger than reason if she could detect the model parsoness in yonder firefly.

Poor child, she went to bed, pondering over her brother’s terrible discoveries, and feeling as though she had suddenly awakened to find herself implicated in a web of iniquity; her delightful parcel of purchases lost their charms, and oppressed her as she thought of them in connection with the rags of the squalid children the rector had described, and she felt as if there were no escape, and she could never be happy again under the knowledge of the price of her luxuries, and the dread of judgment.  ‘Much good had their wealth done them,’ as Robert truly said.  The house of Beauchamp had never been nearly so happy as if their means had been moderate.  Always paying court to their own station, or they were disunited among themselves, and not yet amalgamated with the society to which they had attained, the younger ones passing their elders in cultivation, and every discomfort of change of position felt, though not acknowledged.  Even the mother, lady as she was by birth, had only belonged to the second-rate class of gentry, and while elevated by wealth, was lowered by connection, and not having either mind or strength enough to stand on her own ground, trod with an ill-assured foot on that to which she aspired.

Not that all this crossed Phœbe’s mind.  There was merely a dreary sense of depression, and of living in the midst of a grievous mistake, from which Robert alone had the power of disentangling himself, and she fell asleep sadly enough; but, fortunately, sins, committed neither by ourselves, nor by those for whom we are responsible, have not a lasting power of paining; and she rose up in due time to her own calm sunshiny spirit of anticipation of the evening’s meeting between Robin and Lucy—to say nothing of her own first dinner-party.

CHAPTER IV

And instead of ‘dearest Miss,’
Jewel, honey, sweetheart, bliss,
And those forms of old admiring,
Call her cockatrice and siren.

    —C. Lamb

The ladies of the house were going to a ball, and were in full costume: Eloïsa a study for the Arabian Nights, and Lucilla in an azure gossamer-like texture surrounding her like a cloud, turquoises on her arms, and blue and silver ribbons mingled with her blonde tresses.

Very like the clergyman’s wife!

O sage Honor, were you not provoked with yourself for being so old as to regard that bewitching sprite, and marvel whence comes the cost of those robes of the woof of Faerie?

Let Oberon pay Titania’s bills.

That must depend on who Oberon is to be.

Phœbe, to whom a doubt on that score would have appeared high treason, nevertheless hated the presence of Mr. Calthorp as much as she could hate anything, and was in restless anxiety as to Titania’s behaviour.  She herself had no cause to complain, for she was at once singled out and led away from Miss Charlecote, to be shown some photographic performances, in which Lucy and her cousin had been dabbling.

‘There, that horrid monster is Owen—he never will come out respectable.  Mr. Prendergast, he is better, because you don’t see his face.  There’s our school, Edna Murrell and all; I flatter myself that is a work of art; only this little wretch fidgeted, and muddled himself.’

‘Is that the mistress?  She does not look like one.’

‘Not like Sally Page?  No; she would bewilder the Hiltonbury mind.  I mean you to see her; I would not miss the shock to Honor.  No, don’t show it to her!  I won’t have any preparation.’

‘Do you call that preparation?’ said Owen, coming up, and taking up the photograph indignantly.  ‘You should not do such things, Cilly!’

‘’Tisn’t I that do them—it’s Phœbe’s brother—the one in the sky I mean, Dan Phœbus, and if he won’t flatter, I can’t help it.  No, no, I’ll not have it broken; it is an exact likeness of all the children’s spotted frocks, and if it be not of Edna, it ought to be.’

‘Look, Robert,’ said Phœbe, as she saw him standing shy, grave, and monumental, with nervous hands clasped over the back of a chair, neither advancing nor retreating, ‘what a beautiful place this is!’

‘Oh! that’s from a print—Glendalough!  I mean to bring you plenty of the real place.’

‘Kathleen’s Cave,’ said the unwelcome millionaire.

‘Yes, with a comment on Kathleen’s awkwardness!  I should like to see the hermit who could push me down.’

‘You!  You’ll never tread in Kathleen’s steps!’

‘Because I shan’t find a hermit in the cave.’

‘Talk of skylarking on “the lake whose gloomy shore!”’  They all laughed except the two Fulmorts.

‘There’s a simpler reason,’ said one of the Guardsmen, ‘namely, that neither party will be there at all.’

‘No, not the saint—’

‘Nor the lady.  Miss Charteris tells me all the maiden aunts are come up from the country.’  (How angry Phœbe was!)

‘Happily it is an article I don’t possess.’