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

‘Your opposition would have made no difference.’

He looked at her silently, but with a half smile in lip and eye that showed her that the moment was coming when the man’s will might be stronger than the woman’s.

Indeed, he was so thoroughly displeased and annoyed that she durst not discuss the subject with him, lest she should rouse him to take some strong authoritative measures against it.  He had always trusted to the improbability of her meeting with a situation before his departure, when, between entreaty and command, he had reckoned on inducing her to go home; and this engagement came as a fresh blow, making him realize what he had brought on those nearest and dearest to him.  Even praise of Mrs. Prendergast provoked him, as if implying Lucilla’s preference for her above the tried friend of their childhood; he was in his lowest spirits, hardly speaking to his sister all dinner-time, and hurried off afterwards to pour out his vexation to Robert Fulmort.  Poor Robert! what an infliction!  To hear of such a step, and be unable to interfere; to admire, yet not approve; to dread the consequences, and perceive so much alloy as to dull the glitter of the gold, as well as to believe his own stern precipitation as much the cause as Owen’s errors; yet all the time to be the friend and comforter to the wounded spirit of the brother!  It was a severe task; and when Owen left him, he felt spent and wearied as by bodily exertion, as he hid his face in prayer for one for whom he could do no more than pray.

Feelings softened during the fortnight that the brother and sister spent together.  Childishly as Owen had undergone the relations and troubles of more advanced life, pettishly as he had striven against feeling and responsibility, the storm had taken effect.  Hard as he had struggled to remain a boy, manhood had suddenly grown on him; and probably his exclusion from Hiltonbury did more to stamp the impression of his guilt than did its actual effects.  He was eager for his new life, and pleased with his employer, promising himself all success, and full of enterprise.  But his banishment from home and from Honor clouded everything; and, as the time drew nearer, his efforts to forget and be reckless gradually ceased.  Far from shunning Lucilla, as at first, he was unwilling to lose sight of her, and they went about together wherever his preparations called him, so that she could hardly make time for stitching, marking, and arranging his purchases.

One good sign was, that, though hitherto fastidiously expensive in dress and appointments, he now grudged himself all that was not absolutely necessary, in the endeavour to leave as large a sum as possible with Mrs. Murrell.  Even in the tempting article of mathematical instruments he was provident, though the polished brass, shining steel, and pure ivory, in their perfection of exactitude, were as alluring to him as ever gem or plume had been to his sister.  That busy fortnight of chasing after the ‘reasonable and good,’ speeding about till they were foot-sore, discussing, purchasing, packing, and contriving, united the brother and sister more than all their previous lives.

It was over but too soon.  The last evening was come; the hall was full of tin cases and leathern portmanteaus, marked O. C. S., and of piles of black boxes large enough to contain the little lady whose name they bore.  Southminster lay in the Trent Valley, so the travellers would start together, and Lucilla would be dropped on the way.  In the cedar parlour, Owen’s black knapsack lay open on the floor, and Lucilla was doing the last office in her power for him, and that a sad one, furnishing the Russia-leather housewife with the needles, silk, thread, and worsted for his own mendings when he should be beyond the reach of the womankind who cared for him.

He sat resting his head on his hand, watching her in silence, till she was concluding her work.  Then he said, ‘Give me a bit of silk,’ turned his back on her, and stood up, doing something by the light of the lamp.  She was kneeling over the knapsack, and did not see what he was about, till she found his hand on her head, and heard the scissors close, when she perceived that he had cut off one of her pale, bright ringlets, and saw his pocket-book open, and within it a thick, jet-black tress, and one scanty, downy tuft of baby hair.  She made no remark; but the tears came dropping, as she packed; and, with a sudden impulse to give him the thing above all others precious to her, she pulled from her bosom a locket, hung from a slender gold chain, and held it to him—

‘Owen, will you have this?’

‘Whose?  My father’s?’

‘And my mother’s.  He gave it to me when he went to Nice.’

Owen took it and looked at it thoughtfully.

‘No, Lucy,’ he said; ‘I would not take it from you on any account.  You have always been his faithful child.’

‘Mind you tell me if any one remembers him in Canada,’ said Lucilla, between relief and disappointment, restoring her treasure to the place it had never left before.  ‘You will find out whether he is recollected at his mission.’

‘Certainly.  But I do not expect it.  The place is a great town now.  I say, Lucy, if you had one bit of poor Honor’s hair!’

‘No: you will never forgive me.  I had some once, made up in a little cross, with gold ends; but one day, when she would not let me go to Castle Blanch, I shied it into the river, in a rage.’

She was touched at his being so spiritless as not even to say that she ought to have been thrown in after it.

‘I wonder,’ she said, by way of enlivening him, ‘whether you will fall in with the auburn-haired Charlecote.’

‘Whereas Canada is a bigger place than England, the disaster may be averted, I hope.  A colonial heir-at-law might be a monstrous bore.  Moreover, it would cancel all that I can’t but hope for that child.’

‘You might hope better things for him than expectations.’

‘He shall never have any!  But it might come without.  Why, Lucy, a few years in that country, and I shall be able to give him the best of educations and release you from drudgery; and when independent, we could go back to the Holt on terms to suit even your proud stomach, and might make the dear old thing happy in her old age.’

‘If that Holt were but out of your head.’

‘If I knew it willed to the County Hospital, shouldn’t I wish as much to be with her as before?  I mean to bring up my son as a gentleman, with no one’s help!  But you see, Lucy, it is impossible not to wish for one’s child what one has failed in oneself—to wish him to be a better edition.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘For these first few years the old woman will do well enough for him, poor child.  Robert has promised to look in on him.’

‘And Mrs. Murrell is to write to me once a month.  I shall make a point of seeing him at least twice a year.’

‘Thank you; and by the time he is of any size I shall have a salary.  I may come back, and we would keep house together, or you might bring him out to me.’

‘That will be the hope of my life.’

‘I’ll not be deluded into reckoning on young ladies.  You will be disposed of long before!’

‘Don’t, Owen!  No, never.’

‘Never?’

‘Never.’

‘I always wanted to know,’ continued Owen, ‘what became of Calthorp.’

‘I left him behind at Spitzwasserfitzung, with a message that ends it for ever.’

‘I am afraid that defection is to be laid to my door, like all the rest.’

‘If so, I am heartily obliged to you for it!  The shock was welcome that brought me home.  A governess?  Oh! I had rather be a scullery-maid, than go on as I was doing there!’

‘Then you did not care for him?’

‘Never!  But he pestered me, Rashe pestered me; nobody cared for me—I—I—’ and she sobbed a long, tearless sob.

‘Ha!’ said Owen, gravely and kindly, ‘then there was something in the Fulmort affair after all.  Lucy, I am going away; let me hear it for once.  If I ever come back, I will not be so heedless of you as I have been.  If he have been using you ill!’

‘I used him ill,’ said Lucy, in an inward voice.

‘Nothing more likely!’ muttered Owen, in soliloquy.  ‘But how is it, Cilla: can’t you make him forgive?’

‘He does, but as Honor forgives you.  You know it was no engagement.  I worked him up to desperation last year.  Through Phœbe, I was warned that he would not stand my going to Ireland.  I answered that it was no concern of his; I defied him to be able to break with me.  They bothered me so that I was forced to go to spite them.  He thought—I can’t wonder at it—that I was irreclaimable; he was staying here, was worked on by the sight of this horrible district, and, between pique and goodness run mad, has devoted self and fortune.  He gave me to understand that he has made away with every farthing.  I don’t know if he would wish it undone.’

She spoke into the knapsack, jerking out brief sentences.

‘He didn’t tell you he had taken a vow of celibacy?’

‘I should not think it worth while.’

‘Then it is all right!’ exclaimed Owen, joyously.  ‘Do you think old Fulmort, wallowing in gold, could see a son of his living with his curates, as in the old Sussex rhyme?—

There were three ghostisses
Sitting on three postisses,
Eating of three crustisses.

No, depend on it, the first alarm of Robert becoming a ghost, there will be a famous good fat living bought for him; and then—’

‘No, I shall have been a governess.  They won’t consent.’

‘Pshaw!  What are the Fulmorts?  He would honour you the more!  No, Lucy,’ and he drew her up from the floor, and put his arm round her, ‘girls who stick to one as you have done to me are worth something, and so is Robert Fulmort.  You don’t know what he has been to me ever since he came to fetch me.  I didn’t believe it was in his cloth or his nature to be so forbearing.  No worrying with preachments; not a bit of “What a good boy am I;” always doing the very thing that was comfortable and considerate, and making the best of it at Hiltonbury.  I didn’t know how he could be capable of it, but now I see, it was for your sake.  Cheer up, Lucy, you will find it right yet.’