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

‘I am sorry for it,’ seriously returned Phœbe, who had by this time, by quiet resistance, caused him to land her under the lee of Miss Charlecote, instead of promenading with her about the room.  He wanted her to dance with him again, saying she owed it to him for having sacrificed the first to common humanity, but great as was the pleasure of a polka, she shrank from him in this complimentary mood, and declared she should dance no more that evening.  He appealed to Honora, who, disliking to have her boy balked of even a polka, asked Phœbe if she were very tired, and considering her ‘rather not’ as equivalent to such a confession, proposed a retreat to their own room.

Phœbe was sorry to leave the brilliant scene, and no longer to be able to watch Lucilla, but she wanted to shake Owen off, and readily consented.  She shut her door after one good night.  She was too much grieved and disappointed to converse, and could not bear to discuss whether the last hope were indeed gone, and whether Lucilla had decided her lot without choosing to know it.  Alas! how many turning-points may be missed by those who never watch!

How little did Phœbe herself perceive the shoal past which her self-respect had just safely guided her!

‘I wonder if those were ball-room manners?  What a pity if they were, for then I shall not like balls,’ was all the thought that she had leisure to bestow on her own share in the night’s diversions, as through the subsequent hours she dozed and dreamt, and mused and slept again, with the feverish limbs and cramp-tormented feet of one new to balls; sometimes teased by entangling fishing flies, sometimes interminably detained in the moonlight, sometimes with Miss Fennimore waiting for an exercise, and the words not to be found in the dictionary; and even this unpleasant counterfeit of sleep deserting her after her usual time for waking, and leaving her to construct various fabrics of possibilities for Robin and Lucy.

She was up in fair time, and had written a long and particular account to Bertha of everything in the festivities not recorded in this narrative, before Miss Charlecote awoke from the compensating morning slumber that had succeeded a sad and unrestful night.  Late as they were, they were down-stairs before any one but the well-seasoned Rashe, who sat beguiling the time with a Bradshaw, and who did not tell them how intolerably cross Cilly had been all the morning.

Nor would any one have suspected it who had seen her, last of all, come down at a quarter to eleven, in the most exultant spirits, talking the height of rodomontade with the gentlemen guests, and dallying with her breakfast, while Phœbe’s heart was throbbing at the sight of two grave figures, her brother and the curate, slowly marching up and down the cloister, in waiting till this was over.

And there sat Lucilla inventing adventures for an imaginary tour to be brought out on her return by the name of ‘Girls in Galway’—‘From the Soirée to the Salmon’—‘Flirts and Fools-heads,’ as Owen and Charles discontentedly muttered to each other, or, as Mr. Calthorp proposed, ‘The Angels and the Anglers.’  The ball was to be the opening chapter.  Lord William entreated for her costume as the frontispiece, and Mr. Calthorp begged her to re-assume it, and let her cousin photograph her on the spot.

Lucilla objected to the impracticability of white silk, the inconvenience of unpacking the apparatus, the nuisance of dressing, the lack of time; but Rashe was delighted with the idea, and made light of all, and the gentlemen pressed her strongly, till with rather more of a consent than a refusal, she rose from her nearly untasted breakfast, and began to move away.

‘Cilla,’ said Mr. Prendergast, at the window, ‘can I have a word with you?’

‘At your service,’ she answered, as she came out to him, and saw that Robert had left him.  ‘Only be quick; they want to photograph me in my ball-dress.’

‘You won’t let them do it, though,’ said the curate.

‘White comes out hideous,’ said Lucilla; ‘I suppose you would not have a copy, if I took one off for you?’

‘No; I don’t like those visitors of yours well enough to see you turned into a merry-andrew to please them.’

‘So that’s what Robert Fulmort told you I did last night,’ said Lucilla, blushing at last, and thoroughly.

‘No, indeed; you didn’t?’ he said, regarding her with an astonished glance.

‘I did wear a dress trimmed with salmon-flies, because of a bet with Lord William,’ said Lucilla, the suffusion deepening on brow, cheek, and throat, as the confiding esteem of her fatherly friend effected what nothing else could accomplish.  She would have given the world to have justified his opinion of his late rector’s little daughter, and her spirits seemed gone, though the worst he did was to shake his head at her.

‘If you did not know it, why did you call me that?’ she asked.

‘A merry-andrew?’ he answered; ‘I never meant that you had been one.  No; only an old friend like me doesn’t like the notion of your going and dressing up in the morning to amuse a lot of scamps.’

‘I won’t,’ said Lucilla, very low.

‘Well, then,’ began Mr. Prendergast, as in haste to proceed to his own subject; but she cut him short.

‘It is not about Ireland?’

‘No; I know nothing about young ladies; and if Mr. Charteris and your excellent friend there have nothing to say against it, I can’t.’

‘My excellent friend had so much to say against it, that I was pestered into vowing I would go!  Tell me not, Mr. Prendergast,—I should not mind giving up to you;’ and she looked full of hope.

‘That would be beginning at the wrong end, Cilla; you are not my charge.’

‘You are my clergyman,’ she said, pettishly.

‘You are not my parishioner,’ he answered.

‘Pish!’ she said; ‘when you know I want you to tell me.’

‘Why, you say you have made the engagement.’

‘So what I said when she fretted me past endurance must bind me!’

Be it observed that, like all who only knew Hiltonbury through Lucilla, Mr. Prendergast attributed any blemishes which he might detect in her to the injudicious training of an old maid; so he sympathized.  ‘Ah! ladies of a certain age never get on with young ones!  But I thought it was all settled before with Miss Charteris.’

‘I never quite said I would go, only we got ready for the sake of the fun of talking of it, and now Rashe has grown horridly eager about it.  She did not care at first—only to please me.’

‘Then wouldn’t it be using her ill to disappoint her now?  You couldn’t do it, Cilla.  Why, you have given your word, and she is quite old enough for anything.  Wouldn’t Miss Charlecote see it so?’

To regard Ratia as a mature personage robbed the project of romance, and to find herself bound in honour by her inconsiderate rattle was one of the rude shocks which often occur to the indiscriminate of tongue; but the curate had too much on his mind to dwell on what concerned him more remotely, and proceeded, ‘I came to see whether you could help me about poor Miss Murrell.  You made no arrangement for her getting home last night?’

‘No!’

‘Ah, you young people!  But it is my fault; I should have recollected young heads.  Then I am afraid it must have been—’

‘What?’

‘She was seen on the river very late last night with a stranger.  He went up to the school with her, remained about a quarter of an hour, and then rowed up the river again.  I am afraid it is not the first time she has been seen with him.’

‘But, Mr. Prendergast, she was here till at least ten!  She fainted away just as she was to have sung, and we carried her out into the cloister.  When she recovered she went away to the housekeeper’s room—’ (a bold assertion, built on Owen’s partially heard reply to Phœbe).  ‘I’ll ask the maids.’

‘It is of no use, Cilla; she allows it herself.’

‘And pray,’ cried Lucilla, rallying her sauciness, ‘how do you propose ever to have banns to publish, if young men and maidens are never to meet by water nor by land?’

‘Then you do know something?’

‘No; only that such matters are not commonly blazoned in the commencement.’

‘I don’t wish her to blazon it, but if she would only act openly by me,’ said the distressed curate.  ‘I wish nothing more than that she was safe married; and then if you ladies appoint another beauty, I’ll give up the place, and live at – college.’

‘We’ll advertise for the female Chimpanzee, and depend upon it she will marry at the end of six weeks.  So you have attacked her in person.  What did she say?’

‘Nothing that she could help.  She stood with those great eyes cast down, looking like a statue, and sometimes vouchsafing “yes, sir,” or “no, sir.”  It was “no, sir,” when I asked if her mother knew.  I am afraid it must be something very unsatisfactory, Cilla; but she might say more to you if you were not going away.’

‘Oh! Mr. Prendergast, why did you not come sooner?’

‘I did come an hour ago, but you were not come down.’

‘I’ll walk on at once; the carriage can pick me up.  I’ll fetch my hat.  Poor Edna!  I’ll soon make her satisfy your mind.  Has any one surmised who it can be?’

‘The notion is that it is one of your musicians—very dangerous, I am afraid; and I say, Cilla, did you ever do such a thing—you couldn’t, I suppose—as lend her Shelley’s poems?’

‘I?  No; certainly not.’