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

Miss Fennimore bade Robert compose his voice to pray aloud, and what he read tranquillized all except Mervyn, who understood this to mean the worst, and burst away to sit cowering in suspense over his fire.  Miss Fennimore then offered Bertha a morsel of roll dipped in port wine, but fasting and agitation had really produced a contraction of the muscles of the throat, and the attempt failed.  Bertha was dreadfully terrified, and Phœbe could hardly control herself, but she was the only person unbanished by Miss Fennimore.  Even Robert’s distress became too visible for the absolute calm by which the governess hoped to exhaust the hysteria while keeping up vitality by outward applications of warmth and stimulants, and from time to time renewing the endeavour to administer nourishment.

It was not till two terrible hours had passed that Phœbe came to the school-room, and announced to her brothers that after ten minutes’ doze, Bertha had waked, and swallowed a spoonful of arrowroot and wine without choking.  She could not restrain her sobs, and wept uncontrollably as Mervyn put his arm round her.  He was the most composed of the three, for her powers had been sorely strained, and Robert had suffered most of all.

He had on this day suspected that Bertha was burning the provisions forced on her, but he had kept silence, believing that she would thus reduce herself to a more amenable state than if she were angered by compulsion, and long before serious harm could ensue.  Used to the sight of famine, he thought inanition would break the spirit without injuring the health.  Many a time had he beheld those who professed to have tasted nothing for two days, trudge off tottering but cheerful, with a soup-ticket, and he had not calculated on the difference between the children of want and the delicately nurtured girl, full of overwrought feeling.  Though he had been watching in loving intercession for the unhappy child, and had resolved on forcing his way to her in the morning, he felt as if he had played the part of the Archbishop of Pisa, and that, had she perished in her fearful determination, her blood would have been on himself.  He was quite overcome, and forced to hurry to his own room to compose himself, ere he could return to inquire further; but there was little more to hear.  Miss Fennimore desired to be alone with the patient; Phœbe allowed herself to be laid on the sofa and covered with shawls; Mervyn returned to his bed, and Robert still watched.

There was a great calm after the storm, and Phœbe did not wake till the dim wintry dawn was struggling with the yellow candlelight, and a consultation was going on in low tones between Robert and the governess, both wan and haggard in the uncomfortable light, and their words not more cheering than their looks.  Bertha had become feverish, passing from restless, talking sleep to startled, painful wakening, and Miss Fennimore wished Dr. Martyn to be sent for.  Phœbe shivered with a cold chill of disappointment as she gathered their meaning, and coming forward, entreated the watchers to lie down to rest, while she relieved guard; but nothing would persuade Miss Fennimore to relinquish her post; and soon Phœbe had enough to do elsewhere; for her own peculiar patient, Mervyn, was so ill throughout the morning, that she was constantly employed in his room, and Robert looking on and trying to aid her, hated himself doubly for his hasty judgments.

Maria alone could go to church on that Sunday morning, and her version of the state of affairs brought Miss Charlecote to Beauchamp to offer her assistance.  She saw Dr. Martyn, and undertook the painful preliminary explanation, and she saw him again after his inspection of Bertha.

‘That’s a first-rate governess!  Exactly so!  An educational hot-bed.  Why can’t people let girls dress dolls and trundle hoops, as they used to do?’

‘I have never thought Bertha oppressed by her lessons.’

‘So much the worse!  Those who can’t learn, or won’t learn, take care of themselves.  Those who have a brain and use it are those that suffer!  To hear that poor child blundering algebra in her sleep might be a caution to mothers!’

‘Did you ever see her before, so as to observe the little hesitation in her speech?’

‘No, they should have mentioned that.’

‘It is generally very slight; but one of them—I think, Maria—told me that she always stammered more after lessons—’

‘The blindness of people!  As if that had not been a sufficient thermometer to show when they were overworking her brain!  Why, not one of these Fulmorts has a head that will bear liberties being taken with it!’

‘Can you let us hope that this whole affair came from an affection of the brain?’

‘The elopement!  No; I can’t flatter you that health or sanity were in fault there.  Nor is it delirium now; the rambling is only in sleep.  But the three days’ fast—’

‘Two days, was it not?’

‘Three.  She took nothing since breakfast on Thursday.’

‘Have you made out how she passed the last two days?’

‘I wrung out some account.  I believe this would never have occurred to her if her brother had given her a sandwich at Paddington; but she came home exhausted into a distaste for food, which other feelings exaggerated into a fancy to die rather than face the family.  She burnt the provisions in a rage at their being forced on her, and she slept most of the time—torpor without acute suffering.  Last night in sleep she lost her hold of her resolution, and woke to the sense of self-preservation.’

‘An infinite mercy!’

‘Not that the spirit is broken; all her strength goes to sullenness, and I never saw a case needing greater judgment.  Now that she is reduced, the previous overwork tells on her, and it will be a critical matter to bring her round.  Who can be of use here?  Not the married sisters, I suppose?  Miss Fulmort is all that a girl can be at nineteen or twenty, but she wants age.’

‘You think it will be a bad illness?’

‘It may not assume an acute form, but it may last a good while; and if they wish her to have any health again, they must mind what they are about.’

Honora felt a task set to her.  She must be Phœbe’s experience as far as her fifty years could teach her to deal with a little precocious rationalist in a wild travestie of Thekla.  Ich habe geliebt und gelebet was the farewell laid on Bertha’s table.  What a Thekla and what a Max!  O profanation!  But Honor felt Bertha a charge of her own, and her aid was the more thankfully accepted that the patient was quite beyond Phœbe.  She had too long rebelled against her sister to find rest in her guardianship.  Phœbe’s voice disposed her to resistance, her advice to wrangling, and Miss Fennimore alone had power to enforce what was needful; and so devoted was she, that Honor could scarcely persuade her to lie down to rest for a few hours.

Honor was dismayed at the change from the childish espiègle roundness of feature to a withered, scathed countenance, singularly old, and mournfully contrasting with the mischievous-looking waves and rings of curly hair upon the brow.  Premature playing at passion had been sport with edged tools.  Sleeping, the talk was less, however, of the supposed love, than of science and metaphysics; waking, there was silence between weakness and sullenness.

Thus passed day after day, always in the same feverish lethargic oppression which baffled medical skill, and kept the sick mind beyond the reach of human aid; and so uniform were the days, that her illness seemed to last for months instead of weeks.

Miss Fennimore insisted on the night-watching for her share.  Phœbe divided with her and Lieschen the morning cares; and Miss Charlecote came in the forenoon and stayed till night, but slept at home, whither Maria was kindly invited; but Phœbe did not like to send her away without herself or Lieschen, and Robert undertook for her being inoffensive to Mervyn.  In fact, she was obliging and unobtrusive, only speaking when addressed, and a willing messenger.  Mervyn first forgot her presence, then tolerated her saucer eyes, then found her capable of running his errands, and lastly began to care to please her.  Honora had devised employment for her, by putting a drawer of patchwork at her disposal, and suggesting that she should make a workbag for each of Robert’s 139 school girls; and the occupation this afforded her was such a public benefit, that Robert was content to pay the tax of telling her the destination of each individual bag, and being always corrected if he twice mentioned the same name.  When Mervyn dozed in his chair, she would require from Robert ‘stories’ of his scholars; and it even came to pass that Mervyn would recur to what had then passed, as though he had not been wholly asleep.

Mervyn was chiefly dependent on his brother for conversation, entertainment, and assistance in his affairs; and though not a word passed upon their differences and no professions were made, the common anxiety, and Mervyn’s great need of help, had swept away all traces of unfriendliness.  Not even when children in the nursery had they been so free from variance or bitterness as while waiting the issue of their sister’s illness; both humbled, both feeling themselves in part the cause, each anxious to cheer and console the other—one, weak, subdued, dependent—the other, considerate, helpful, and eager to atone for past harshness.  Strange for brothers to wait till the ages of twenty-nine and twenty-seven to find out that they really did prefer each other to every one else, in spite of the immense differences between their characters and habits!

‘I say,’ asked Mervyn, one day, when resting after having brought on giddiness and confusion by directing Robert how to answer a letter from the office, ‘what would you do with this bore of a business, if it came to you?’

‘Get rid of it,’ said Robert, surveying him with startled eyes.

‘Aye—sell it, and get the devilry, as you call it, multiplied to all infinity.’

‘Close it.’

‘Boil soup in the coppers; bake loaves in the furnaces?  It makes you look at me perilously—and a perilous game you would find it, most likely to swallow this place and all the rest.  Why, you, who had the making of a man of business in you, might reflect that you can’t annihilate property without damage to other folks.’

‘I did not reflect,’ said Robert, gravely; ‘the matter never occurred to me.’

‘What is the result of your reflection now?’

‘Nothing at all,’ was the somewhat impatient reply.  ‘I trust never to have to consider.  Get it out of my hands at any sacrifice, so as it may do the least harm to others.  Had I no other objection to that business, I should have no choice.’

‘Your cloth?  Well, that’s a pity, for I see how it could be mitigated, so as to satisfy your scruples;’ and Mervyn, whose head could work when it was not necessary, detailed a scheme for gradually contracting the most objectionable traffic, and adopting another branch of the trade.

‘Excellent,’ said Robert, assenting with delight at each pause.  ‘You will carry it out.’

‘I?  I’m only a reprobate distiller.’

There it ended, and Robert must have patience.

The guardian, Mr. Crabbe, came as soon as his gout would permit, and hemmed and grunted in reply to the strange narrative into which he had come to inquire.  Acting was as yet impossible; Mervyn was forbidden to transact business, and Bertha was far too ill for the removal of the young ladies to be attempted.  Miss Fennimore did indeed formally give in her resignation of her situation, but she was too necessary as a nurse for the time of her departure to be fixed, and Mr. Crabbe was unable to settle anything definitively.  He found Robert—who previously had spurred him to strong measures—bent on persuading him to lenity, and especially on keeping Phœbe with Mervyn; and after a day and night of perplexity, the old gentleman took his leave, promising to come again on Bertha’s recovery, and to pacify the two elder sisters by representing the condition of Beauchamp, and that for the present the Incumbent of St. Matthew’s and Miss Charlecote might be considered as sufficient guardians for the inmates.  ‘Or if their Ladyships thought otherwise,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘why did they not come down themselves?’

Mervyn made a gesture of horror, but all knew that there was little danger.  Augusta was always ‘so low’ at the sight of illness, and unless Phœbe had been the patient out of sight, Juliana would not have brought her husband; obvious as would have been the coming of an elder sister when the sickness of the younger dragged on so slowly and wearily.

No one went through so much as Miss Fennimore.  Each hour of her attendance on Bertha stamped the sense of her own failure, and of the fallacies to which her life had been dedicated.  The sincerity, honour, and modesty that she had inculcated, had been founded on self-esteem alone; and when they had proved inadequate to prevent their breach, their outraged relics had prompted the victim to despair and die.  Intellectual development and reasoning powers had not availed one moment against inclination and self-will, and only survived in the involuntary murmurs of a disordered nervous system.  All this had utterly overthrown that satisfaction in herself and her own moral qualities in which Miss Fennimore had always lived; she had become sensible of the deep flaws in all that she had admired in her own conduct; and her reason being already prepared by her long and earnest study to accept the faith in its fulness, she had begun to crave after the Atoning Mercy of which she sorely felt the need.  But if it be hard for one who has never questioned to take home individually the efficacy of the great Sacrifice, how much harder for one taught to deny the Godhead which rendered the Victim worthy to satisfy Eternal Justice?  She accepted the truth, but the gracious words would not reach her spirit; they were to her as a feast in a hungry man’s dream.  Robert alone was aware of the struggles through which she was passing, and he could do little in direct aid of her; the books—even the passages of Scripture that he found for her—seemed to fall short; it was as though the sufferer in the wilderness lay in sight of the brazen serpent, but his eyes were holden that he could not see it.

Only the governess’s strong and untaxed health could have carried her through her distress and fatigue, for she continued to engross the most trying share of the nursing, anxious to shield Phœbe from even the knowledge of all the miseries of Bertha’s nights, when the poor child would start on her pillow with a shriek, gaze wildly round, trembling in every limb, the dew starting on her brow, face well-nigh convulsed, teeth chattering, and strange, incoherent words—

‘A dream, only a dream!’ she murmured, recovering consciousness.

‘What was only a dream?’ asked Miss Fennimore, one night.

‘Oh, nothing!’ but she still shivered; then striving to catch hold of the broken threads of her philosophy, ‘How one’s imagination is a prey to—to—what is it?  To—to old impressions—when one is weak.’

‘What kind of impressions?’ asked Miss Fennimore, resolved to probe the matter.

Bertha, whose defect of speech was greatly increased by weakness, was long in making her answer comprehensible; but Miss Fennimore gathered it at last, and it made her spirit quake, for it referred to the terrors beyond the grave.  Yet she firmly answered—

‘Such impressions may not always result from weakness.’

‘I thought,’ cried Bertha, rising on her elbow, ‘I thought that an advanced state of civilization dispenses with sectarian—I mean superstitious—literal threats.’