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

‘Are we highly educated women?’ asked Maria.

‘I am sure you ought to be, my dear.  Nothing was grudged for your education,’ said her mother.

‘Well, then, I’ll always play at bagatelle, and have a German band at the door,’ quoth Maria, conclusively.

‘Did you go to St. Matthew’s?’ again interrupted Phœbe.

‘Yes, Bevil took me.  It is the oddest place.  A white brick wall with a red cross built into it over the gate, and the threshold is just a step back four or five hundred years.  A court with buildings all round, church, schools, and the curates’ rooms.  Such a sitting-room; the floor matted, and a great oak table, with benches, where they all dine, schoolmaster, and orphan boys, and all, and the best boy out of each class.’

‘It is a common room, like one at a college,’ explained Phœbe.  ‘Robert has his own rooms besides.’

‘Such a hole!’ continued Bertha.  ‘It is the worst of all the curates’ sitting-rooms, looking out into the nastiest little alley.  It was a shame he did not have the first choice, when it is all his own.’

‘Perhaps that is the reason he took the worst,’ said Phœbe.

‘A study in extremes,’ said Bertha.  ‘Their dinner was our luncheon—the very plainest boiled beef, the liquor given away and at dinner, at the Bannermans’, there were more fine things than Bevil said he could appreciate, and Augusta looking like a full-blown dahlia.  I was always wanting to stick pins into her arms, to see how far in the bones are.  I am sure I could bury the heads.’

Here, seeing her mother look exhausted, Phœbe thought it wise to clear the room; and after waiting a few minutes to soothe her, left her to her maid.  Bertha had waited for her sister, and clinging round her, said, ‘Well, Phœbe, aren’t you glad of us?  Have you seen a living creature?’

‘Miss Charlecote twice, Mr. Henderson once, besides all the congregation on Sunday.’

‘Matter-of-fact Phœbe!  Perhaps you can bear it, but does not your mind ache, as if it had been held down all this time?’

‘So that it can’t expand to your grand intellect?’ said Phœbe.

‘It is no great self-conceit to hope one is better company than Maria!  But come, before we fall under the dominion of the Queen of the West Wing, I have a secret for you.’  Then, after a longer stammer than usual, ‘How should you like a French sister-in-law?’

‘Nonsense, Bertha!’

‘Ah! you’ve not had my opportunities.  I’ve seen her—both of them.  Juliana says the mother is his object; Augusta, the daughter.  The mother is much the most brilliant; but then she has a husband—a mere matter of faith, for no one ever sees him.  Mervyn is going to follow them to Paris, that’s certain, as soon as the Epsom day is over.’

‘You saw them!’

‘Only in the Park—oh, no! not in a room!  Their ladyships would never call on Madame la Marquise; she is not received, you know.  I heard the sisters talk it all over when they fancied me reading, and wonder what they should do if it should turn out to be the daughter.  But then Juliana thinks Mervyn might never bring her home, for he is going on at such a tremendous rate, that it is the luckiest thing our fortunes do not depend on the business.’

Phœbe looked quite appalled as she entered the schoolroom, not only at Mervyn’s fulfilment of his threat, but at Bertha’s flippancy and shrewdness.  Hitherto she had been kept ignorant of evil, save what history and her own heart could tell her.  But these ten days had been spent in so eagerly studying the world, that her girlish chatter was fearfully precocious.

‘A little edged tool,’ said Miss Fennimore, when she talked her over afterwards with Phœbe.  ‘I wish I could have been with her at Lady Bannerman’s.  It is an unsafe age for a glimpse of the world.’

‘I hope it may soon be forgotten.’

‘It will never be forgotten’ said Miss Fennimore.  ‘With so strong a relish for society, such keen satire, and reasoning power so much developed, I believe nothing but the devotional principle could subdue her enough to make her a well-balanced woman.  How is that to be infused?—that is the question.’

‘It is, indeed.’

‘I believe,’ pursued the governess, ‘that devotional temper is in most cases dependent upon uncomprising, exclusive faith.  I have sometimes wondered whether Bertha, coming into my hands so young as she did, can have imbibed my distaste to dogma; though, as you know, I have made a point of non-interference.’

‘I should shudder to think of any doubts in poor little Bertha’s mind,’ said Phœbe.  ‘I believe it is rather that she does not think about the matter.’

‘I will read Butler’s Analogy with her,’ exclaimed Miss Fennimore.  ‘I read it long ago, and shall be glad to satisfy my own mind by going over it again.  It is full time to endeavour to form and deepen Bertha’s convictions.’

‘I suppose,’ said Phœbe, almost to herself, ‘that all naughtiness is the want of living faith—’

But Miss Fennimore, instead of answering, had gone to another subject.

‘I have seen St. Matthew’s, Phœbe.’

‘And Robert?’ cried Phœbe.  ‘Bertha did not say you were with her.’

‘I went alone.  No doubt your brother found me a great infliction; but he was most kind, and showed me everything.  I consider that establishment a great fact.’

Phœbe showed her gratification.

‘I heard him preach,’ continued Miss Fennimore.  ‘His was a careful and able composition, but it was his sermon in brick and stone that most impressed me.  Such actions only arise out of strong conviction.  Now, the work of a conviction may be only a proof of the force of the will that held it; and thus the effect should not establish the cause.  But when I see a young man, brought up as your brother has been, throwing himself with such energy, self-denial, and courage into a task so laborious and obscure, I must own that, such is the construction of the human mind, I am led to reconsider the train of reasoning that has led to such results.’

And Miss Fennimore’s sincere admiration of Robert was Phœbe’s one item of comfort.

Gladly she shared it with Miss Charlecote, who, on her side, knew more than she told Phœbe of the persecution that Robert was undergoing from a vestry notoriously under the influence of the Fulmort firm, whose interest it was to promote the vice that he came to withstand.  Even the lads employed in the distillery knew that they gratified their employer by outrages on the clergy and their adherents, and there had been moments when Robert had been exposed to absolute personal danger, by mobs stimulated in the gin-shops; their violence against his attacks on their vicious practices being veiled by a furious party outcry against his religious opinions.  He meanwhile set his face like a rock, and strong, resolute, and brave, went his own way, so unmoved as apparently almost to prefer his own antagonistic attitude, and bidding fair to weary out his enemies by his coolness, or to disarm them by the charities of which St. Matthew’s was the centre.

As Phœbe never read the papers, and was secluded from the world’s gossip, it was needless to distress her with the knowledge of the malignity of the one brother, or the trials of the other; so Honor obeyed Robert by absolute silence on this head.  She herself gave her influence, her counsel, her encouragement, and, above all, her prayers, to uphold the youth who was realizing the dreams of her girlhood.

It might be that the impress of those very dreams had formed the character she was admiring.  Many a weak and fragile substance, moulded in its softness to a noble shape, has given a clear and lasting impress to a firm and durable material, either in the heat of the furnace, or the ductility of growth.  So Robert and Phœbe, children of the heart that had lost those of her adoption, cheered these lonely days by their need of her advice and sympathy.

Nor was she without tasks at home.  Mr. Henderson, the vicar, was a very old man, and was constantly growing more feeble and unequal to exertion.  He had been appointed by the squire before last, and had the indolent conservative orthodoxy of the old school, regarding activity as a perilous innovation, and resisting all Miss Charlecote’s endeavours at progress in the parish.  She had had long patience, till, when his strength failed, she ventured to entreat him to allow her to undertake the stipend of a curate, but this was rejected with displeasure, and she was forced to redouble her own exertions; but neither reading to the sick, visiting the cottages, teaching at school, nor even setting up a night-school in her own hall, availed to supply the want of an active pastor and of a resident magistrate.

Hiltonbury was in danger of losing its reputation as a pattern parish, which it had retained long after the death of him who had made it so.  The younger race who had since grown up were not such as their fathers had been, and the disorderly household at Beauchamp had done mischief.  The primitive manners, the simplicity, and feudal feeling were wearing off, and poor Honor found the whole charge laid to her few modern steps in education!  If Hiltonbury were better than many of the neighbouring places, yet it was not what it had been when she first had known it, and she vexed herself in the attempt to understand whether the times or herself were the cause.

Even her old bailiff, Brooks, did not second her.  He had more than come to the term of service at which the servant becomes a master, and had no idea of obeying her, when he thought he knew best.  Backward as were her notions of modern farming, they were too advanced for him, and either he would not act on them at all, or was resolved against their success when coerced.  There was no dismissing him, and without Mr. Saville to come and enforce her authority, Honor found the old man so stubborn that she had nearly given up the contest, except where the welfare of men, not of crops, was concerned.

A maiden’s reign is a dreary thing, when she tends towards age.  And Honor often felt what it would have been to have had Owen to back her up, and infuse new spirit and vigour.

The surly ploughboy, who omitted to touch his cap to the lady, little imagined the train of painful reflections roused by this small indication of the altering spirit of the place!

CHAPTER XVI

Even in our ashes glow the wonted fires.

    —Gray

‘My dear, I did not like the voice that I heard just now.’

‘I am sure I was not out of temper.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Well, I am sure any one would be vexed.’

‘Cannot you tell me what was the matter without being sure so often?’