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

All was darkness and perplexity before her, but submission and trust were her refuge, and each day of waiting before the crisis was to her feelings a gain.

CHAPTER XXI

O fy gar ride and fy gar rin
And haste ye to find these traitors agen,
For shees be burnt and hees been slein,
The wearifu gaberlunzie man.
Some rade upon horse, some ran afit,
The wife was wud and out of her wit,
She couldna gang, nor yet could she sit,
But aye did curse and ban.

    —King James V

Mervyn and Phœbe were playing at billiards, as a means of inducing him to take exercise enough to make him sleep.  The governess and the two girls were gone to the dentist’s at Elverslope.  The winter’s day was closing in, when there was a knock at the door, and they beheld Miss Fennimore, deadly white, and Maria, who flew up to Phœbe, crying—‘Bertha’s gone, Phœbe!’

‘The next up-train stops at Elverslope at 8.30,’ said the governess, staring in Mervyn’s face, as though repeating a lesson.  ‘A carriage will be here by seven.  I will bring her home, or never return.’

‘Gone!’

‘It was inexcusable in me, sir,’ said Miss Fennimore, resting a hand on the table to support herself.  ‘I thought it needlessly galling to let her feel herself watched; and at her request, let her remain in the waiting-room while her sister was in the dentist’s hands.  When, after an hour, Maria was released, she was gone.’

‘Alone?’ cried Phœbe.

‘Alone, I hope.  I went to the station; the train had been ten minutes gone; but a young lady, alone, in mourning, and with no luggage but a little bag, had got in there for London.  Happily, they did not know her; and it was the parliamentary train, which is five hours on the road.  I telegraphed at once to your brother to meet her at the terminus.’

‘I have no hope,’ said Mervyn, doggedly, seating himself on the table, his feet dangling.  ‘He will be in the lowest gutter of Whittingtonia, where no one can find him.  The fellow will meet that miserable child, go off to Ostend this very night, marry her before to-morrow morning.  There’s an end of it!’

‘Where does Mr. Hastings lodge, sir?’

‘Nowhere that I know of.  There will be no end of time lost in tracing him!  No train before 8.30!  I’ll go in at once, and have a special.’

‘They cannot put on one before nine, because of the excursion trains for the cattle-show.  I should not have been in time had I driven to catch the express at W.,’ said Miss Fennimore, in her clear voice of desperation.  ‘The 8.30 reaches town at 11.23.  Will you give me the addresses where I may inquire, sir?’

‘You!  I am going myself.  You would be of no use,’ said Mervyn, in a stunned, mechanical way; and looking at his watch, he went to give orders.

‘He should not go, Phœbe.  In his state the mere journey is a fearful risk.’

‘It can’t be helped,’ said Phœbe.  ‘I shall go with him.  You stay to take care of Maria.  There will be Robert to help us;’ and as the governess would have spoken farther, she held up her hands in entreaty—‘O pray don’t say anything!  I can’t go on if I do anything but act.’

Yet in the endeavour to keep her brother quiet, and to husband his powers, Phœbe’s movements and words had rather an additional gentleness and deliberation; and so free from bustle was her whole demeanour, that he never comprehended her intention of accompanying him till she stepped into the carriage beside him.

‘What’s this?  You coming?’

‘I will give you no trouble.’

‘Well, you may help to manage the girl;’ and he lay back, relieved to be off, but already spent by the hurry of the last two hours.  Phœbe could sit and—no—not think, except that Robert was at the other end of the line.

The drive seemed to have lasted half the night ere the lamps of Elverslope made constellations in the valley, and the green and red lights of the station loomed out on the hill.  They drove into the circle of gaslights, among the vaporous steeds of omnibuses and flies, and entered the station, Phœbe’s veil down, and Mervyn shading his dazzled eyes from the glare.  They were half an hour too soon; and while waiting, it occurred to Phœbe to inquire whether a telegram for Beauchamp had been received.  Even so, and they must have crossed the express; but a duplicate was brought to them.

‘Safe.  We shall be at Elverslope at 10.20, P.M.’

Assuredly Phœbe did not faint, for she stood on her feet; and Mervyn never perceived the suspension of senses, which lasted till she found him for the second time asking whether she would go home or await the travellers at Elverslope.

‘Home,’ she said, instinctively, in her relief forgetting all the distress of what had taken place, so that her sensations were little short of felicity; and as she heard the 8.30 train roaring up, she shed tears of joy at having no concern therewith.  The darkness and Mervyn’s silence were comfortable, for she could wipe unseen her showers of tears at each gust of thankfulness that passed over her; and it was long before she could command her voice even to ask her companion whether he were tired.  ‘No,’ he said; but the tone was more than half-sullen; and at the thought of the meeting between the brothers, poor Phœbe’s heart seemed to die within her.  Against their dark looks and curt sayings to one another she had no courage.

When they reached home, she begged him to go at once to bed, hoping thus to defer the meeting; but he would not hear of doing so; and her only good augury was that his looks were pale, languid, and subdued, rather than flushed and excited.  Miss Fennimore was in the hall, and he went towards her, saying, in a friendly tone, ‘So, Miss Fennimore, you have heard that this unlucky child has given us a fright for nothing.’

The voice in which she assented was hoarse and scarcely audible, and she looked as if twenty years had passed over her head.

‘It was all owing to your promptitude,’ said Mervyn; ‘a capital thought that telegram.’

‘I am glad,’ said Miss Fennimore; ‘but I do not lose sight of my own negligence.  It convinces me that I am utterly unfit for the charge I assumed.  I shall leave your sisters as soon as new plans can be formed.’

‘Why, I’ll be bound none of your pupils ever played you such a trick before!’

Miss Fennimore only looked as if this convinced her the more; but it was no time for the argument, and Phœbe caressingly persuaded her to come into the library and drink coffee with them, judging rightly that she had tasted nothing since morning.

Afterwards Phœbe induced Mervyn to lie on the sofa, and having made every preparation for the travellers, she sat down to wait.  She could not read, she could not work; she felt that tranquillity was needful for her brother, and had learnt already the soothing effect of absolute repose.  Indeed, one of the first tokens by which Miss Fennimore had perceived character in Phœbe was her faculty of being still.  Only that which has substance can be motionless.  There she sat in the lamplight, her head drooping, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyes bent down, not drowsy, not abstracted, not rigid, but peaceful.  Her brother lay in the shade, watching her with a half-fascinated gaze, as though a magnetic spell repressed all inclination to work himself into agitation.

The stillness became an effort at last, but it was resolutely preserved till the frost-bound gravel resounded with wheels.  Phœbe rose, Mervyn started up, caught her hand and squeezed it hard.  ‘Do not let him be hard on me, Phœbe,’ he said.  ‘I could not bear it.’

She had little expected this.  Her answer was a mute caress, and she hurried out, but in a tumult of feeling, retreated behind the shelter of a pillar, and silently put her hand on Robert’s arm as he stepped out of the carriage.

‘Wait,’ he whispered, holding her back.  ‘Hush!  I have promised that she shall see no one.’

Bertha descended, unassisted, her veil down, and neither turning to the right nor the left, crossed the hall and went upstairs.  Robert took off his overcoat and hat, took a light and followed her, signing that Phœbe should remain behind.  She found Mervyn at the library door, like herself rather appalled at the apparition that had swept past them.  She put her hand into his, with a kind of common feeling that they were awaiting a strict judge.

Robert soon reappeared, and in a preoccupied way, kissed the one and shook hands with the other, saying, ‘She has locked her door, and says she wants nothing.  I will try again presently—not you, Phœbe; I could only get her home on condition she should see no one without her own consent.  So you had my telegram?’

‘We met it at the station.  How did you find her?’

‘Had the man been written to?’ asked Robert.

‘No,’ said Mervyn; ‘we thought it best to treat it as childish nonsense, not worth serious notice, or in fact—I was not equal to writing.’

The weary, dejected tone made Robert look up, contrary to the brothers’ usual habit of avoiding one another’s eye, and he exclaimed, ‘I did not know!  You were not going to London to-night?’

‘Worse staying at home,’ murmured Mervyn, as, leaning on a corner of the mantelshelf, he rested his head on his hand.

‘I was coming with him,’ said Phœbe; ‘I thought if he gave directions, you could act.’

Robert continued to cast at him glances of dismay and compunction while pursuing the narrative.  ‘Hastings must have learnt by some means that the speculation was not what he had imagined; for though he met her at Paddington—’

‘He did?’

‘She had telegraphed to him while waiting at Swindon.  He found her out before I did, but he felt himself in a predicament, and I believe I was a welcome sight to him.  He begged me to do him the justice to acquit him of all participation in this rash step, and said he had only met Bertha with a view to replacing her in the hands of her family.  How it would have been without me, I cannot tell, but I am inclined to believe that he did not know how to dispose of her.  She clung to him and turned away from me so decidedly that I was almost grateful for the line he took; and he was obliged to tell her, with many fine speeches, that he could not expose her to share his poverty; and when the poor silly child declared she had enough for both, he told her plainly that it would not be available for six years, and he could not let her—tenderly nurtured, etc., etc.  Then supposing me uninformed, he disclaimed all betrayal of your confidence, and represented all that had passed as sport with a child, which to his surprise she had taken as earnest.’

‘Poor Bertha!’ exclaimed Phœbe.