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

‘Well, we will not differ about technicalities, as long as the fact is the same.  You’ll remember my words when you are kept on a diet of Hannah More and Miss Edgeworth till you shall have abjured hounds, balls, and salmon-flies.’

‘The woman lives not who has the power!’

‘What bet will you take, Miss Sandbrook?’

‘What bet will you take, Lord William, that, maiden aunts and all, I appear on the 3rd, in a dress of salmon-flies?’

‘A hat trimmed with goose feathers to a pocket-handkerchief, that by that time you are in the family mansion, repenting of your sins.’

Phœbe looked on like one in a dream, while the terms of the wager were arranged with playful precision.  She did not know that dinner had been announced, till she found people moving, and in spite of her antipathy to Mr. Calthorp, she rejoiced to find him assigned to herself—dear, good Lucy must have done it to keep Robin to herself, and dear, good Lucy she shall be, in spite of the salmon, since in the progress down-stairs she has cleared the cloud from his brow.

It was done by a confiding caressing clasp on his arm, and the few words, ‘Now for old friends!  How charming little Phœbe looks!’

How different were his massive brow and deep-set eyes without their usual load, and how sweet his gratified smile!

‘Where have you been, you Robin?  If I had not passed you in the Park, I should never have guessed there was such a bird in London.  I began to change my mind, like Christiana—“I thought Robins were harmless and gentle birds, wont to hop about men’s doors, and feed on crumbs, and such-like harmless food.”’

‘And have you seen me eating worms?’

‘I’ve not seen you at all.’

‘I did not think you had leisure—I did not believe I should be welcome.’

‘The cruellest cut of all! positive irony—’

‘No, indeed! I am not so conceited as—’

‘As what?’

‘As to suppose you could want me.’

‘And there was I longing to hear about Phœbe!  If you had only come, I could have contrived her going to the Zauberflöte with us last night, but I didn’t know the length of her tether.’

‘I did not know you were so kind.’

‘Be kinder yourself another time.  Don’t I know how I have been torn to pieces at Hiltonbury, without a friend to say one word for the poor little morsel!’ she said, piteously.

He was impelled to an eager ‘No, no!’ but recalling facts, he modified his reply into, ‘Friends enough, but very anxious!’

‘There, I knew none of you trusted me,’ she said, pretending to pout.

‘When play is so like earnest—’

‘Slow people are taken in!  That’s the fun!  I like to show that I can walk alone sometimes, and not be snatched up the moment I pop my head from under my leading-strings.’

Her pretty gay toss of the head prevented Robert from thinking whether woman is meant to be without leading-strings.

‘And it was to avoid countenancing my vagaries that you stayed away?’ she said, with a look of injured innocence.

‘I was very much occupied,’ answered Robert, feeling himself in the wrong.

‘That horrid office!  You aren’t thinking of becoming a Clarence, to drown yourself in brandy—that would never do.’

‘No, I have given up all thoughts of that!’

‘You thought, you wretched Redbreast!  I thought you knew better.’

‘So I ought,’ said Robert, gravely, ‘but my father wished me to make the experiment, and I must own, that before I looked into the details, there were considerations which—which—’

‘Such considerations as £ s. d.?  For shame!’

‘For shame, indeed,’ said the happy Robert.  ‘Phœbe judged you truly.  I did not know what might be the effect of habit—’ and he became embarrassed, doubtful whether she would accept the assumption on which he spoke; but she went beyond his hopes.

‘The only place I ever cared for is a very small old parsonage,’ she said, with feeling in her tone.

‘Wrapworth? that is near Castle Blanch.’

‘Yes!  I must show it you.  You shall come with Honor and Phœbe on Monday, and I will show you everything.’

‘I should be delighted—but is it not arranged?’

‘I’ll take care of that.  Mr. Prendergast shall take you in, as he would a newly-arrived rhinoceros, if I told him.  He was our curate, and used to live in the house even in our time.  Don’t say a word, Robin; it is to be.  I must have you see my river, and the stile where my father used to sit when he was tired.  I’ve never told any one which that is.’

Ordinarily Lucilla never seemed to think of her father, never named him, and her outpouring was doubly prized by Robert, whose listening face drew her on.

‘I was too much of a child to understand how fearfully weak he must have been, for he could not come home from the castle without a rest on that stile, and we used to play round him, and bring him flowers.  My best recollections are all of that last summer—it seems like my whole life at home, and much longer than it could really have been.  We were all in all to one another.  How different it would have been if he had lived!  I think no one has believed in me since.’

There was something ineffably soft and sad in the last words, as the beautiful, petted, but still lonely orphan cast down her eyelids with a low long sigh, as though owning her errors, but pleading this extenuation.  Robert, much moved, was murmuring something incoherent, but she went on.  ‘Rashe does, perhaps.  Can’t you see how it is a part of the general disbelief in me to suppose that I come here only for London seasons, and such like?  I must live where I have what the dear old soul there has not got to give.’

‘You cannot doubt of her affection.  I am sure there is nothing she would not do for you.’

‘“Do!” that is not what I want.  It can’t be done, it must be felt, and that it never will be.  When there’s a mutual antagonism, gratitude becomes a fetter, intolerable when it is strained.’

‘I cannot bear to hear you talk so; revering Miss Charlecote as I do, and feeling that I owe everything to her notice.’

‘Oh, I find no fault, I reverence her too!  It was only the nature of things, not her intentions, nor her kindness, that was to blame.  She meant to be justice and mercy combined towards us, but I had all the one, and Owen all the other.  Not that I am jealous!  Oh, no!  Not that she could help it; but no woman can help being hard on her rival’s daughter.’

Nothing but the sweet tone and sad arch smile could have made this speech endurable to Robert, even though he remembered many times when the trembling of the scale in Miss Charlecote’s hands had filled him with indignation.  ‘You allow that it was justice,’ he said, smiling.

‘No doubt of that,’ she laughed.  ‘Poor Honor!  I must have been a grievous visitation, but I am very good now; I shall come and spend Sunday as gravely as a judge, and when you come to Wrapworth, you shall see how I can go to the school when it is not forced down my throat—no merit either, for our mistress is perfectly charming, with such a voice!  If I were Phœbe I would look out, for Owen is desperately smitten.’

‘Phœbe!’ repeated Robert, with a startled look.

‘Owen and Phœbe!  I considered it une affaire arrangée as much as—’  She had almost said you and me: Robert could supply the omission, but he was only blind of one eye, and gravely said, ‘It is well there is plenty of time before Owen to tame him down.’

‘Oney,’ laughed Lucilla; ‘yes, he has a good deal to do in that line, with his opinions in such a mess that I really don’t know what he does believe.’

Though the information was not new to Robert, her levity dismayed him, and he gravely began, ‘If you have such fears—’ but she cut him off short.