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

‘Oh! surely you go with us!’ said Eloïsa; ‘I like to take you out, because you are in so different a style of beauty, and you talk and save one trouble!  Will not she go, Charles?’

‘You see, Lolly wants you for effect!’ he said, sneeringly.  ‘But you are always welcome, Cilly; we are woefully slow when you ain’t there to keep us going, and I should like to show you a thing or two.  I only did not ask you, because I thought you had not hit it off with Rashe, or have you made it up?’

‘Oh! Rashe and I understand each other,’ said Cilly, secure that though she would never treat Rashe with her former confidence, yet as long as they travelled en grand seigneur, there was no fear of collisions of temper.

‘Rashe is a good creature,’ said Lolly, ‘but she is so fast and so eccentric that I like to have you, Cilly; you look so much younger, and more ladylike.’

‘One thing more,’ said Charles, in his character of head of the family; ‘shouldn’t you look up Miss Charlecote, Cilly?  There’s Owen straining the leash pretty hard, and you must look about you, that she does not take up with these new pets of hers and cheat you.’

‘The Fulmorts?  Stuff!  They have more already than they know what to do with.’

‘The very reason she will leave them the more.  I declare, Cilly,’ he added, half in jest, half in earnest, ‘the only security for you and Owen is in a double marriage.  Perhaps she projects it.  You fire up as if she had!’

‘If she had, do you think that I should go back?’ said Cilly, trying to answer lightly, though her cheeks were in a flame.  ‘No, no, I am not going to let slip a chance of Paris.’

She stopped short, dismayed at having committed herself, and Horatia coming down, was told by acclamation that Cilly was going.

‘Of course she is,’ said forgiving and forgetting Rashe.  ‘Little Cilly left behind, to serve for food to the Rouge Dragon?  No, no! I should have no fun in life without her.’

Rashe forgot the past far more easily that Cilla could ever do.  There was a certain guilty delight in writing—

‘My dear Honor,—Many thanks for your letter, and intended kindnesses.  The scene must, however, be deferred, as my cousins mean to winter at Paris, and I can’t resist the chance of hooking a Marshal, or a Prince or two.  Rashe’s strain was a great sell but we had capital fun, and shall hope for more success another season.  I would send you my diary if it were written out fair.  We go so soon that I can’t run up to London, so I hope no one will be disturbed on my account.

    ‘Your affectionate     Cilly.’

No need to say how often Lucilla would have liked to have recalled that note for addition or diminution, how many misgivings she suffered on her peculiar mode of catching Robins, how frequent were her disgusts with her cousin, and how often she felt like a captive—the captive of her own self-will.

‘That’s right!’ said Horatia to Lolly.  ‘I was mortally afraid she would stay at home to fall a prey to the incipient parson, but now he is choked off, and Calthorp is really in earnest, we shall have the dear little morsel doing well yet.’

CHAPTER X

O ye, who never knew the joys
Of friendship, satisfied with noise,
Fandango, ball, and rout,
Blush, when I tell you how a bird
A prison, with a friend, preferred,
To liberty without.

    —Cowper

Had Lucilla Sandbrook realized the effect of her note, she would never have dashed it off; but, like all heedless people, pain out of her immediate ken was nothing to her.

After the loving hopes raised by the curate’s report, and after her own tender and forgiving letter, Honor was pierced to the quick by the scornful levity of those few lines.  Of the ingratitude to herself she thought but little in comparison with the heartless contempt towards Robert, and the miserable light-mindedness that it manifested.

‘My poor, poor child!’ was all she said, as she saw Phœbe looking with terror at her countenance; ‘yes, there is an end of it.  Let Robert never vex himself about her again.’

Phœbe took up the note, read it over and over again, and then said low and gravely, ‘It is very cruel.’

‘Poor child, she was born to the Charteris nature, and cannot help it!  Like seeks like, and with Paris before her, she can see and feel nothing else.’

Phœbe vaguely suspected that there might be a shadow of injustice in this conclusion.  She knew that Miss Charlecote imagined Lucilla to be more frivolous than was the case, and surmised that there was more offended pride than mere levity in the letter.  Insight into character is a natural, not an acquired endowment; and many of poor Honor’s troubles had been caused by her deficiency in that which was intuitive to Phœbe, though far from consciously.  That perception made her stand thoughtful, wondering whether what the letter betrayed were folly or temper, and whether, like Miss Charlecote, she ought altogether to quench her indignation in contemptuous pity.

‘There, my dear,’ said Honor, recovering herself, after having sat with ashy face and clasped hands for many moments.  ‘It will not bear to be spoken or thought of.  Let us go to something else.  Only, Phœbe, my child, do not leave her out of your prayers.’

Phœbe clung about her neck, kissed and fondled her, and felt her cheeks wet with tears, in the passionate tenderness of the returning caress.

The resolve was kept of not going back to the subject, but Honora went about all day with a soft, tardy step, and subdued voice, like one who has stood beside a death-bed.

When Phœbe heard those stricken tones striving to be cheerful, she could not find pardon for the wrong that had not been done to herself.  She dreaded telling Robert that no one was coming whom he need avoid, though without dwelling on the tone of the refusal.  To her surprise, he heard her short, matter-of-fact communication without any token of anger or of grief, made no remark, and if he changed countenance at all, it was to put on an air of gloomy satisfaction, as though another weight even in the most undesirable scale were preferable to any remnant of balancing, and compunction for possible injustice were removed.

Could Lucilla but have seen that face, she would have doubted of her means of reducing him to obedience.

The course he had adopted might indeed be the more excellent way in the end, but at present even his self-devotion was not in such a spirit as to afford much consolation to Honor.  If good were to arise out of sorrow, the painful seed-time was not yet over.  His looks were stern even to harshness, and his unhappiness seemed disposed to vent itself in doing his work after his own fashion, brooking no interference.

He had taken a lodging over a baker’s shop at Turnagain Corner.  Honor thought it fair for the locality, and knew something of the people, but to Phœbe it was horror and dismay.  The two small rooms, the painted cupboard, the cut paper in the grate, the pictures in yellow gauze, with the flies walking about on them, the round mirror, the pattern of the carpet, and the close, narrow street, struck her as absolutely shocking, and she came to Miss Charlecote with tears in her eyes, to entreat her to remonstrate, and tell Robin it was his duty to live like a gentleman.

‘My dear,’ said Honor, rather shocked at a speech so like the ordinary Fulmort mind, ‘I have no fears of Robert not living like a gentleman.’

‘I know—not in the real sense,’ said Phœbe, blushing; ‘but surely he ought not to live in this dismal poky place, with such mean furniture, when he can afford better.’

‘I am afraid the parish affords few better lodgings, Phœbe, and it is his duty to live where his work lies.  You appreciated his self-denial, I thought?  Do you not like him to make a sacrifice?’

‘I ought,’ said Phœbe, her mind taking little pleasure in those acts of self-devotion that were the delight of her friend.  ‘If it be his duty, it cannot be helped, but I cannot be happy at leaving him to be uncomfortable—perhaps ill.’

Coming down from the romance of martyrdom which had made her expect Phœbe to be as willing to see her brother bear hardships in the London streets, as she had herself been to dismiss Owen the first to his wigwam, Honor took the more homely view of arguing on the health and quietness of Turnagain Corner, the excellence of the landlady, and the fact that her own cockney eyes had far less unreasonable expectations than those trained to the luxuries of Beauchamp.  But by far the most efficient solace was an expedition for the purchase of various amenities of life, on which Phœbe expended the last of her father’s gift.  The next morning was spent in great secrecy at the lodgings, where Phœbe was so notable and joyous in her labours, that Honor drew the conclusion that housewifery was her true element; and science, art, and literature only acquired, because they had been made her duties, reckoning all the more on the charming order that would rule in Owen Sandbrook’s parsonage.

All troubles and disappointments had faded from the young girl’s mind, as she gazed round exulting on the sacred prints on the walls, the delicate statuettes, and well-filled spill-holder and match-box on the mantelshelf, the solid inkstand and appurtenances upon the handsome table-cover, the comfortable easy-chair, and the book-cases, whose contents had been reduced to order due, and knew that the bedroom bore equal testimony to her skill; while the good landlady gazed in admiration, acknowledging that she hardly knew her own rooms, and promising with all her heart to take care of her lodger.

Alas! when, on the way to the station, Honor and Phœbe made an unexpected raid to bring some last improvements, Robert was detected in the act of undoing their work, and denuding his room of even its original luxuries.  Phœbe spoke not, but her face showed her discomfiture, and Honora attacked him openly.

‘I never meant you to know it,’ he said, looking rather foolish.

‘Then to ingratitude you added treachery.’

‘It is not that I do not feel your kindness—’

‘But you are determined not to feel it!’

‘No, no! only, this is no position for mere luxuries.  My fellow-curates—’

‘Will use such conveniences of life as come to them naturally,’ said Honor, who had lived long enough to be afraid of the freaks of asceticism.  ‘Hear me, Robert.  You are not wise in thrusting aside all that brings home to you your little sister’s love.  You think it cannot be forgotten, but it is not well to cast away these daily memorials.  I know you have much to make you severe—nay, morose—but if you become so, you will never do your work efficiently.  You may repel, but never invite; frighten, but not soothe.’

‘You want me to think my efficiency dependent on arm-chairs and table-covers.’

‘I know you will be harder to all for living in needless discomfort, and that you will be gentler to all for constantly meeting tokens of your sister’s affection.  Had you sought these comforts for yourself, the case would be different; but, Robert, candidly, which of you is the self-pleasing, which the mortified one, at this moment?’

Robert could not but look convicted as his eyes fell on the innocent face, with the tears just kept back by strong effort, and the struggling smile of pardon.

‘Never mind, Robin,’ said Phœbe, as she saw his air of vexation; ‘I know you never meant unkindness.  Do as you think right, only pray think of what Miss Charlecote says.’