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

‘Why could he not have told me?’ she said.  ‘I could so easily have forgiven him for generous love, if I alone had been offended, and there had been no falsehood; but after the way he has used us all, and chiefly that poor young thing, I can never feel that he is the same.’

And, though the heart that knew no guile had been saved from suffering, the thought of the intimacy that she had encouraged, and the wishes she had entertained for Phœbe, filled her with such dismay, that it required the sight of the innocent, serene face, and the sound of the happy, unembarrassed voice, to reassure her that her darling’s peace had not been wrecked.  For, though Owen had never overpassed the bounds of the familiar intercourse of childhood, there had been an implication of preference in his look and tone; nor had there been error in the intuition of poor Edna’s jealous passion.  Something there was of involuntary reverence that had never been commanded by the far more beautiful and gifted girl who had taken him captive.

So great was the shock that Honora moved about mechanically, hardly able to think.  She knew that in time she should pardon her boy; but she could not yearn to do so till she had seen him repent.  He had sinned too deeply against others to be taken home at once to her heart, even though she grieved over him with deep, loving pity, and sought to find the original germs of error rather in herself than in him.

Had she encouraged deceit by credulous trust?  Alas! alas! that should but have taught him generosity.  It was the old story.  Fond affection had led her to put herself into a position to which Providence did not call her, and to which she was, therefore, unequal.  Fond affection had blinded her eyes, and fostered in its object the very faults most hateful to her.  She could only humble herself before her Maker for the recurring sin, and entreat for her own pardon, and for that of the offender with whose sins she charged herself.

And to man she humbled herself by her confession to Captain Charteris, and by throwing herself unreservedly on the advice of Mr. Saville and Sir John Raymond, for her future conduct towards the culprit.  If he were suffering now for her rejection of the counsel of manhood and experience, it was right that they should deal with him now, and she would try to bear it.  And she also tried as much as possible to soften the blow to Lucilla, who was still abroad with her cousins.

CHAPTER XII

A little grain of conscience made him sour.

    Tennyson

‘A penny for your thoughts, Cilly,’ said Horatia, sliding in on the slippery boards of a great bare room of a lodging-house at the celebrated Spa of Spitzwasserfitzung.

‘My thoughts?  I was trying to recollect the third line of

“Sated at home, of wife and children tired,
Sated abroad, all seen and naught admired.”’

‘Bless me, how grand!  Worth twopence.  So good how Shakspeare, as the Princess Ottilie would say!’

‘Twopence for its sincerity!  It is not for your sake that I am not in Old England.’

‘Nor for that of the three flaxen-haired princesses, with religious opinions to be accommodated to those of the crowned heads they may marry?’

‘I’m sick of the three, and their raptures.  I wish I was as ignorant as you, and that Shakspeare had never been read at the Holt.’

‘This is a sudden change.  I thought Spitzwasserfitzung and its princesses had brought halcyon days.’

‘Halcyon days will never come till we get home.’

‘Which Lolly will never do.  She passes for somebody here, and will never endure Castle Blanch again.’

‘I’ll make Owen come and take me home.’

‘No,’ said Rashe, seriously, ‘don’t bring Owen here.  If Lolly likes to keep Charles where gaming is man’s sole resource, don’t run Owen into that scrape.’

‘What a despicable set you are!’ sighed Lucilla.  ‘I wonder why I stay with you.’

‘You might almost as well be gone,’ said Ratia.  ‘You aren’t half so useful in keeping things going as you were once; and you won’t be ornamental long, if you let your spirits be so uncertain.’

‘And pray how is that to be helped?  No, don’t come out with that stupid thing.’

‘Commonplace because it is reasonable.  You would have plenty of excitement in the engagement, and then no end of change, and settle down into a blooming little matron, with all the business of the world on your hands.  You have got him into excellent training by keeping him dangling so long; and it is the only chance of keeping your looks or your temper.  By the time I come and stay with you, you’ll be so agreeable you won’t know yourself—’

‘Blessings on that hideous post-horn for stopping your mouth!’ cried Lucilla, springing up.  ‘Not that letters ever come to me.’

Letters and Mr. and Mrs. Charteris all entered together, and Rashe was busy with her own share, when Lucilla came forward with a determined face, unlike her recent listless look, and said, ‘I am wanted at home.  I shall start by the diligence to-night.’

‘How now?’ said Charles.  ‘The old lady wanting you to make her will?’

‘No,’ said Lucilla, with dignity.  ‘My brother’s wife is very ill.  I must go to her.’

‘Is she demented?’ asked Charles, looking at his sister.

‘Raving,’ was the answer.  ‘She has been so the whole morning.  I shall cut off her hair, and get ice for her head.’

‘I tell simple truth,’ returned Cilla.  ‘Here is a letter from Honor Charlecote, solving the two mysteries of last summer.  Owen’s companion, who Rashe would have it was Jack Hastings—’

‘Ha! married, then!  The cool hand!  And verily, but that Cilly takes it so easily, I should imagine it was her singing prodigy—eh?  It was, then?’

‘Absurd idiot!’ exclaimed Charles.  ‘There, he is done for now!’

‘Yes,’ drawled Eloïsa; ‘one never could notice a low person like that.’

‘She is my sister, remember!’ cried Lucilla, with stamping foot and flashing eye.

‘Cunning rogue!’ continued Horatia.  ‘How did he manage to give no suspicion?  Oh! what fun!  No wonder she looked green and yellow when he was flirting with the little Fulmort!  Let’s hear all, Cilly—how, when, and where?’

‘At the Registrar’s, at R–, July 14th, 1854,’ returned Lucilla, with defiant gravity.

‘Last July!’ said Charles.  ‘Ha! the young donkey was under age—hadn’t consent of guardian.  I don’t believe the marriage will hold water.  I’ll write to Stevens this minute.’

‘Well, that would be luck!’ exclaimed Rashe.

‘Much better than he deserves,’ added Charles, ‘to be such a fool as to run into the noose and marry the girl.’

Lucilla was trembling from head to foot, and a light gleamed in her eyes; but she spoke so quietly that her cousins did not apprehend her intention in the question—

‘You mean what you say?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Charles.  ‘I’m not sure of the law, and some of the big-wigs are very cantankerous about declaring an affair of this sort null; but I imagine there is a fair chance of his getting quit for some annual allowance to her; and I’ll do my best, even if I had to go to London about it.  A man is never ruined till he is married.’

‘Thank you,’ returned Lucilla, her lips trembling with bitter irony.  ‘Now I know what you all are made of.  We are obliged for your offered exertion, but we are not inclined to become traitors.’

‘Cilly! I thought you had more sense!  You are no child!’

‘I am a woman—I feel for womanhood.  I am a sister—I feel for my brother’s honour.’

Charles burst into a laugh.  Eloïsa remonstrated—‘My dear, consider the disgrace to the whole family—a village schoolmistress!’

‘Our ideas differ as to disgrace,’ said Lucilla.  ‘Let me go, Ratia; I must pack for the diligence.’

The brother and sister threw themselves between her and the door.  ‘Are you insane, Cilly?  What do you mean should become of you?  Are you going to join the ménage, and teach the A B C?’

‘I am going to own my sister while yet there is time,’ said Lucilla.  ‘While you are meditating how to make her a deserted outcast, death is more merciful.  Pining under the miseries of an unowned marriage, she is fast dying of pressure on the brain.  I am going in the hope of hearing her call me sister.  I am going to take charge of her child, and stand by my brother.’