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

‘She distinctly says she is married.’

‘Yes, but she gives no name nor place.  What’s that worth?  After such duplicity as she has been practising so long, I don’t know how to take her statement.  Those people are pleased to talk of a marriage in the sight of heaven, when they mean the devil’s own work!’

‘No, no!  I will not think it!’

‘Then don’t, my dear.  You were very young and innocent, and thought no harm.’

‘I’m not young—I’m not innocent!’ furiously said Cilly.  ‘Tell me downright all you suspect.’

‘I’m not given to suspecting,’ said the poor clergyman, half in deprecation, half in reproof; ‘but I am afraid it is a bad business.  If she had married a servant or any one in her own rank, there would have been no need of concealing the name, at least from her mother.  I feared at first that it was one of your cousin Charles’s friends, but there seems more reason to suppose that one of the musical people at your concert at the castle may have thought her voice a good speculation for the stage.’

‘He would marry her to secure her gains.’

‘If so, why the secrecy?’

‘Mrs. Jenkins has taught you to make it as bad as possible,’ burst out Lucy.  ‘O, why was not I at home?  Is it too late to trace her and proclaim her innocence!’

‘I was wishing for your help.  I went to Mr. Charteris to ask who the performers were, but he knew nothing about them, and said you and his sister had managed it all.’

‘The director was Derval.  He is fairly respectable, at least I know nothing to the contrary.  I’ll make Charlie write.  There was an Italian, with a black beard and a bass voice, whom we have had several times.  I saw him looking at her.  Just tell me what sort of woman is the mother.  She lets lodgings, does not she?’

‘Yes, in Little Whittington-street.’

‘Dear me!  I trust she is no friend of Honor Charlecote’s.’

‘Out of her beat, I should think.  She dissents.’

‘What a blessing!  I beg your pardon, but if anything could be an aggravation, it would be Honor Charlecote’s moralities.’

‘So you were not aware of the dissent?’

‘And you are going to set that down as more deceit, as if it were the poor thing’s business to denounce her mother.  Now, to show you that I can be sure that Edna was brought up to the Church, I will tell you her antecedents.  Her father was Sir Thomas Deane’s butler; they lived in the village, and she was very much in the nursery with the Miss Deanes—had some lessons from the governess.  There was some notion of making her a nursery governess, but Sir Thomas died, the ladies went abroad, taking her father with them; Edna was sent to a training school, and the mother went to live in the City with a relation who let lodgings, and who has since died, leaving the concern to Mrs. Murrell, whose husband was killed by an upset of the carriage on the Alps.’

‘I heard all that, and plenty besides!  Poor woman, she was in such distress that one could not but let her pour it all out, but I declare the din rang in my ears the whole night after.  A very nice, respectable-looking body she was, with jet-black eyes like diamonds, and a rosy, countrified complexion, quite a treat to see in that grimy place, her widow’s cap as white as snow, but oh, such a tongue!  She would give me all her spiritual experiences—how she was converted by an awakening minister in Cat-alley, and yet had a great respect for such ministers of the Church as fed their flocks with sincere milk, mixed up with the biography of all the shopmen and clerks who ever lodged there, and to whom she acted as a mother!’

‘It was not their fault that she did not act as a mother-in-law.  Edna has told me of the unpleasantness of being at home on account of the young men.’

‘Exactly!  I was spared none of the chances she might have had, but the only thing worthy of note was about a cashier who surreptitiously brought a friend from the “hopera,” to overhear her singing hymns on the Sunday evening, and thus led to an offer on his part to have her brought out on the stage.’

‘Ha! could that have come to anything?’

‘No.  Mrs. Murrell’s suspicions took that direction, and we hunted down the cashier and the friend, but they were quite exonerated.  It only proves that her voice has an unfortunate value.’

‘If she be gone off with the Italian bass, I can’t say I think it a fatal sign that she was slow to present him to her domestic Mause Headrigg, who no doubt would deliberately prefer the boards of her coffin to the boards of the theatre.  Well, come along—we will get a letter from Charles, and rescue her—I mean, clear her.’

‘Won’t you look into school, and see how we go on?  The women complained so much of having their children on their hands, though I am sure they had sent them to school seldom enough of late, that I got this young woman from Mrs. Stuart’s asylum till the holidays.  I think we shall let her stay on, she has a good deal of method, and all seem pleased with the change.’

‘You have your wish of a fright.  No, I thank you!  I’m not so glad as the rest of you to get rid of refinement and superiority.’

There was no answer, and more touched by silence than reply, she hastily said, ‘Never mind!  I dare say she may do better for the children, but you know, I, who am hard of caring for any one, did care for poor Edna, and I can’t stand pæans over your new broom.’

Mr. Prendergast gave a smile such as was only evoked by his late rector’s little daughter, and answered, ‘No one can be more concerned than I.  She was not in her place here, that was certain, and I ought to have minded that she was not thrust into temptation.  I shall remember it with shame to my dying day.’

‘Which means to say that so should I.’

‘No, you did not know so much of the evils of the world.’

‘I told you before, Mr. Pendy, that I am twenty times more sophisticated than you are.  You talk of knowing the world!  I wish I didn’t.  I’m tired of everybody.’

And on the way home she described her expedition, and had the pleasure of the curate’s sympathy, if not his entire approval.  Perhaps there was no other being whom she so thoroughly treated as a friend, actually like a woman friend, chiefly because he thoroughly believed in her, and was very blind to her faults.  Robert would have given worlds to have found her once what Mr. Prendergast found her always.

She left him to wait in the drawing-room, while she went on her mission, but presently rushed back in a fury.  Nobody cared a straw for the catastrophe.  Lolly begged her not to be so excited about a trifle, it made her quite nervous; and the others laughed at her; Rashe pretended to think it a fine chance to have changed ‘the life of an early Christian’ for the triumphs of the stage; and Charles scouted the idea of writing to the man’s employer.  ‘He call Derval to account for all the tricks of his fiddlers and singers?  Much obliged!’

Mr. Prendergast decided on going to town by the next train, to make inquiries of Derval himself, without further loss of time, and Cilly declared that she would go with him and force the conceited professor to attend; but the curate, who had never found any difficulty in enforcing his own dignity, and thought it no business for a young lady, declined her company, unless, he said, she were to spend the day with Miss Charlecote.

‘I’ve a great mind to go to her for good and all.  Let her fall upon me for all and sundry.  It will do me good to hear a decent woman speak again! besides, poor old soul, she will be so highly gratified, that she will be quite meek’ (and so will some one else, quoth the perverse little heart); ‘I’ll put up a few things, and not delay you.’

‘This is very sudden!’ said the curate, wishing to keep the peace between her and her friends, and not willing that his sunbeam should fleet ‘so like the Borealis race!’  ‘Will it not annoy your cousins?’

‘They ought to be annoyed!’

‘And are you certain that you would find Miss Charlecote in town?  I thought her stay was to be short.’

‘I’m certain of nothing, but that every place is detestable.’

‘What would you do if you did not find her?’

‘Go on to Euston-square.  Do you think I don’t know my way to Hiltonbury, or that I should not get welcome enough—ay, and too much—there?’

‘Then if you are so uncertain of her movements, do you not think you had better let me learn them before you start?  She might not even be gone home, and you would not like to come back here again; if—’

‘Like a dog that has been out hunting,’ said Lucilla, who could bear opposition from this quarter as from no other.  ‘You won’t take the responsibility, that’s the fact.  Well, you may go and reconnoitre, if you will; but mind, if you say one word of what brings you to town, I shall never go near the Holt at all.  To hear—whenever the Raymonds, or any other of the godly school-keeping sort come to dinner—of the direful effects of certificated schoolmistresses, would drive me to such distraction that I cannot answer for the consequences.’

‘I am sure it is not a fact to proclaim.’

‘Ah! but if you run against Mr. Parsons, you’ll never abstain from telling him of his stray lamb, nor from condoling with him upon the wolf in Cat-alley.  Now there’s a fair hope of his having more on his hands than to get his fingers scratched by meddling with the cats, and so that this may remain unknown.  So consider yourself sworn to secrecy.’

Mr. Prendergast promised.  The good man was a bit of a gossip, so perhaps her precaution was not thrown away, for he could hardly have helped seeking the sympathy of a brother pastor, especially of him to whose fold the wanderer primarily belonged.  Nor did Lucy feel certain of not telling the whole herself in some unguarded moment of confidence.  All she cared for was, that the story should not transpire through some other source, and be brandished over her head as an illustration of all the maxims that she had so often spurned.  She ran after Mr. Prendergast after he had taken leave, to warn him against calling in Woolstone-lane, and desired him instead to go to Masters’s shop, where it was sure to be known whether Miss Charlecote were in town or not.

Mr. Prendergast secretly did grateful honour to the consideration that would not let him plod all the weary way into the City.  Little did he guess that it was one part mistrust of his silence, and three parts reviving pride, which forbade that Honora should know that he had received any such commission.

The day was spent in pleasant anticipations of the gratitude and satisfaction that would be excited by her magnanimous return, and her pardon to Honor and to Robert for having been in the right.  She knew she could own it so graciously that Robert would be overpowered with compunction, and for ever beholden to her; and now that the Charterises were so unmitigatedly hateful, it was time to lay herself out for goodness, and fling him the rein, with only now and then a jerk to remind him that she was a free agent.

A long-talked-of journey on the Continent was to come to pass as soon as Horatia’s strain was well.  In spite of wealth and splendour, Eloïsa had found herself disappointed in the step that she had hoped her marriage would give her into the most élite circles.  Languid and indolent as her mind was, she could not but perceive that where Ratia was intimate and at ease, she continued on terms of form and ceremony, and her husband felt more keenly that the society in his house was not what it had been in his mother’s time.  They both became restless, and Lolly, who had already lived much abroad, dreaded the dulness of an English winter in the country; while Charles knew that he had already spent more than he liked to recollect, and that the only means of keeping her contented at Castle Blanch, would be to continue most ruinous expenses.

With all these secret motives, the tour was projected as a scheme of amusement, and the details were discussed between Charles and Rashe with great animation, making the soberness of Hiltonbury appear both tedious and sombre, though all the time Lucy felt that there she should again meet that which her heart both feared and yearned for, and without which these pleasures would be but shadows of enjoyment.  Yet that they were not including her in their party, gave her a sense of angry neglect and impatience.  She wanted to reject their invitation indignantly, and make a merit of the sacrifice.

The after-dinner discussion was in full progress when she was called out to speak to Mr. Prendergast.  Heated, wearied, and choking with dust, he would not come beyond the hall, but before going home he had walked all this distance to tell her the result of his expedition.  Derval had not been uncivil, but evidently thought the suspicion an affront to his corps, which at present was dispersed by the end of the season.  The Italian bass was a married man, and had returned to his own country.  The clue had failed.  The poor leaf must be left to drift upon unknown winds.