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

‘Could you reach the moral without the religious?’

‘I should tell you that I have seldom reared a pupil from childhood.  Mine have been chiefly from fifteen to eighteen, whose parents required their instruction, not education, from me; and till I came here, I never fully beheld the growth and development of character.  I found that whereas all I could do for Phœbe was to give her method and information, leaving alone the higher graces elsewhere derived, with Bertha, my efforts were inadequate to supply any motive for overcoming her natural defects; and I believe that association with a person of my sceptical habit has tended to prevent Phœbe’s religion from influencing her sister.’

‘This is the reason you tell me?’

‘Partly; and likewise because I esteem you very differently from my former employers, and know that your views for your sisters are not like those of the persons with whom I have been accustomed to deal.’

‘You know that I have no power.  It rests entirely with my brother and Mr. Crabbe.’

‘I am perfectly aware of it; but I could not allow myself to be forced on your sisters by any family arrangement contrary to the wishes of that member of it who is most qualified to judge for them.’

‘Thank you, Miss Fennimore; I will treat you as openly as you have treated me.  I have often felt indignant that my sisters should be exposed to any risk of having their faith shaken; and this morning I almost hoped to hear that you did not consent to Mervyn’s scheme.  But what you have said convinces me that, whatever you may have been previously, you are more likely to strengthen and confirm them in all that is good than half the people they would meet.  I know that it would be a heavy affliction to Phœbe to lose so kind a friend; it might drive her from the home to which she clings, and separate Bertha, at least, from her; and under the circumstances, I cannot wish you to leave the poor girls at present.’  He spoke rather confusedly, but there was more consent in manner than words.

‘Thank you,’ she replied, fervently.  ‘I cannot tell you what it would cost me to part with Phœbe, my living lesson.’

‘Only let the lesson be still unconscious.’

‘I would not have it otherwise for worlds.  The calm reliance that makes her a ministering spirit is far too lovely to be ruffled by a hint of the controversies that weary my brain.  If it be effect of credulity, the effects are more beauteous than those of clear eyesight.’

‘You will not always think it credulity.’

‘There would be great rest in being able to accept all that you and she do,’ Miss Fennimore answered with a sigh; ‘in finding an unchanging answer to “What is truth?”  Yet even your Gospel leaves that question unanswered.’

‘Unanswered to Pilate; but those who are true find the truth; I verily trust that your eyes will become cleared to find it.  Miss Fennimore, you know that I am unready and weak in argument, and you have often left me no refuge but my positive conviction; but I can refer you to those who are strong.  If I can help you by carrying your difficulties to others, or by pointing out books, I should rejoice—’

‘You cannot argue—you can only act,’ said Miss Fennimore, smiling, as a message called him away.

The schoolroom had been left undisturbed, for the sisters were otherwise occupied.  By Mr. Fulmort’s will, the jewels, excepting certain Mervyn heirlooms, were to be divided between the daughters, and their two ladyships thought this the best time for their choice, though as yet they could not take possession.  Phœbe would have given the world that the sets had been appropriated, so that Mervyn and Mr. Crabbe should not have had to make her miserable by fighting her battles, insisting on her choosing, and then overruling her choice as not of sufficiently valuable articles, while Bertha profited by the lesson in harpy-hood, and regarded all claimed by the others as so much taken from herself; and poor Maria clasped on every bracelet one by one, threaded every ring on her fingers, and caught the same lustre on every diamond, delighting in the grand exhibition, and in her own share, which by general consent included all that was clumsy and ill-set.  No one had the heart to disturb her, but Phœbe felt that the poor thing was an eyesore to them all, and was hardly able to endure Augusta’s compliment, ‘After all, Phœbe, she is not so bad; you may make her tolerably presentable for the country.’

Lady Acton patronized Bertha, in opposition to Phœbe; and Sir Bevil was glad to have one sister to whom he could be good-natured without molestation.  The young lady, heartily weary of the monotony of home, was much disappointed at the present arrangement; Phœbe had become the envied elder sister instead of the companion in misfortune, and Juliana was looked on as the sympathizing friend who would fain have opened the prison doors that Phœbe closed against her by making all that disturbance about Maria.

‘It is all humbug about Maria,’ said Juliana.  ‘Much Phœbe will let her stand in her way when she wants to come to London for the season—but I’ll not take her out, I promise her.’

‘But you will take me,’ cried Bertha.  ‘You’ll not leave me in this dismal hole always.’

‘Never fear, Bertha.  This plan won’t last six months.  Mervyn and Phœbe will get sick of one another, and Augusta will be ready to take her in—she is pining for an errand girl.’

‘I’ll not go there to read cookery books and meet old fogies.  You will have me, Juliana, and we will have such fun together.’

‘When you are come out, perhaps—and you must cure that stammer.’

‘I shall die of dulness before then!  If I could only go to school!’

‘I wouldn’t be you with Maria for your most lively companion.’

‘It is much worse than when we used to go down into the drawing-room.  Now we never see any one but Miss Charlecote, and Phœbe is getting exactly like her!’

‘What, all her sanctimonious ways?  I thought so.’

‘And to make it more aggravating, Miss Fennimore is going to get religious too.  She made me read all Butler’s Analogy, and wants to put me into Paley, and she is always running after Robert.’

‘Middle-aged governesses always do run after young clergymen—especially the most outré’s.’

‘And now she snaps me up if I say anything the least comprehensive or speculative, or if I laugh at the conventionalities Phœbe learns at the Holt.  Yesterday I said that the progress of common sense would soon make people cease to connect dulness with mortality, or to think a serious mistiness the sole evidence of respect, and I was caught up as if it were high treason.’

‘You must not get out of bounds in your talk, Bertha, or sound unfeeling.’

‘I can’t help being original,’ said Bertha.  ‘I must evolve my ideas out of my individual consciousness, and assert my independence of thought.’

Juliana laughed, not quite following her sister’s metaphysical tone, but satisfied that it was anti-Phœbe, she answered by observing, ‘An intolerable fuss they do make about that girl!’

‘And she is not a bit clever,’ continued Bertha.  ‘I can do a translation in half the time she takes, and have got far beyond her in all kinds of natural philosophy!’

‘She flatters Mervyn, that’s the thing; but she will soon have enough of that.  I hope he won’t get her into some dreadful scrape, that’s all!’

‘What sort of scrape?’ asked Bertha, gathering from the smack of the hope that it was something exciting.

‘Oh, you are too much of a chit to know—but I say, Bertha, write to me, and let me know whom Mervyn brings to the house.’

With somewhat the like injunction, only directed to a different quarter, Robert likewise left Beauchamp.

As he well knew would be the case, nothing in his own circumstances was changed by his mother’s death, save that he no longer could call her inheritance his home.  She had made no will, and her entire estate passed to her eldest son, from whom Robert parted on terms of defiance, rather understood than expressed.  He took leave of his birthplace as one never expecting to return thither, and going for his last hour at Hiltonbury to Miss Charlecote, poured out to her as many of his troubles as he could bear to utter.  ‘And,’ said he, ‘I have given my approval to the two schemes that I most disapproved beforehand—to Mervyn’s giving my sisters a home, and to Miss Fennimore’s continuing their governess!  What will come of it?’

‘Do not repent, Robert,’ was the answer.  ‘Depend upon it, the great danger is in rashly meddling with existing arrangements, especially by a strain of influence.  It is what the young are slow to learn, but experience brings it home.’

‘With you to watch them, I will fear the less.’

Miss Charlecote wondered whether any disappointment of his own added to his depression, and if he thought of Lucilla.

CHAPTER XVIII

My sister is not so defenceless left
As you imagine.  She has a hidden strength
Which you remember not.

    —Comus

Phœbe was left to the vacancy of the orphaned house, to a blank where her presence had been gladness, and to relief more sad than pain, in parting with her favourite brother, and seeing him out of danger of provoking or being provoked.

To have been the cause of strife and object of envy weighed like guilt on her heart, and the tempest that had tossed her when most needing peace and soothing, left her sore and suffering.  She did not nurse her grief, and was content that her mother should be freed from the burthen of existence that had of late been so heavy; but the missing the cherished recipient of her care was inevitable, and she was not of a nature to shake off dejection readily, nor to throw sorrow aside in excitement.

Mervyn felt as though he had caught a lark, and found it droop instead of singing.  He was very kind, almost oppressively so; he rode or drove with her to every ruin or view esteemed worth seeing, ordered books for her, and consulted her on improvements that pained her by the very fact of change.  She gave her attention sweetly and gratefully, was always at his call, and amused his evenings with cards or music, but she felt herself dull and sad, and saw him disappointed in her.

Then she tried bringing in Bertha as entertainment for both, but it was a downright failure.  Bertha was far too sharp and pert for an elder brother devoid both of wit and temper, and the only consequence was that she fathomed his shallow acquirements in literature and the natural sciences, and he pronounced her to be eaten up with conceit, and the most intolerable child he ever saw—an irremediable insult to a young woman of fifteen; nor could Bertha be brought forward without disappointing Maria, whose presence Mervyn would not endure, and thus Phœbe was forced to yield the point, and keep in the background the appendages only tolerated for her sake.

Greatly commiserating Bertha’s weariness of the schoolroom, she tried to gratify the governess and please her sisters by resuming her studies; but the motive of duty and obedience being gone, these were irksome to a mind naturally meditative and practical, and she found herself triumphed over by Bertha for forgetting whether Lucca were Guelf or Ghibelline, putting oolite below red sandstone, or confusing the definition of ozone.  She liked Bertha to surpass her; but inattention she regarded as wrong in itself, as well as a bad example, and her apologies were so hearty as quite to affect Miss Fennimore.

Mervyn’s attentions wore off with the days of seclusion.  By the third week he was dining out, by the fourth he was starting for Goodwood, half inviting Phœbe to come with him, and assuring her that it was just what she wanted to put her into spirits again.  Poor Phœbe—when Mr. Henderson talking to Miss Fennimore, and Bertha at the same time insisting on Decandolle’s system to Miss Charlecote, had seemed to create a distressing whirl and confusion!