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

‘Must I not sketch, then?’ said Phœbe, smiling.

‘You are very welcome, if you would do it for your pleasure, not as an act of bondage.’

‘Not as bondage,’ said Phœbe; ‘it is only because I ought that I care to do so at all.’

‘And that’s the reason you only make maps of the landscape.’

It was quite true that Phœbe had no accomplished turn, and what had been taught her she only practised as a duty to the care and cost expended on it, and these were things where ‘all her might’ was no equivalent for a spark of talent.  ‘Ought’ alone gave her the zest that Bertha would still have found in ‘ought not.’

‘It is all I can do,’ she said, ‘and Miss Fennimore may like to see them; so, Bertha, I shall continue to carry the sketchbook by which the English woman is known like the man by his “Murray.”  Miss Charlecote has letters to write, so we must go out by ourselves.’

The Provençal natives of Hyères had little liking for the foreigners who thronged their town, but did not molest them, and ladies walked about freely in the lovely neighbourhood, so that Honor had no scruple in sending out her charges, unaccompanied except by Lieschen, in case the two others might wish to dispose of Maria, while they engaged in some pursuit beyond her powers.

Poor Lieschen, a plump Prussian, grown portly on Beauchamp good living, had little sympathy with the mountain tastes of her frauleins, and would have wished all Hyères like the shelf on the side of the hill where stood their hotel, whence the party set forth for the Place des Palmiers, so called from six actual palms bearing, but not often ripening, dates.  Two sides were enclosed by houses, on a third an orange garden sloped down the descent; the fourth, where the old town climbed straight up the hill, was regarded by poor Lieschen with dread, and she vainly persuaded Maria at least to content herself with joining the collection of natives resting on the benches beneath the palms.  How willingly would the good German have produced her knitting, and sought a compatriot among the nurses who sat gossiping and embroidering, while Maria might have played among their charges, who were shovelling about, or pelting each other with the tiny white sea-washed pebbles that thickly strewed the place.

But Maria, with the little Maltese dog in her arms, to guard him from a hailstorm of the pebbles, was inexorably bent on following her sisters; and Bertha had hurried nervously across from the strangers, so that Lieschen must pursue those light steps through the winding staircase streets, sometimes consisting of broad shallow steps, sometimes of actual flights of steep stairs hewn out in the rock, leading to a length of level terrace, where, through garden gates, orange trees looked out, dividing the vantage ground with houses and rocks—up farther, past the almost desolate old church of St. Paul—farther again—till, beyond all the houses, they came forth on the open mountainside, with a crest of rock far above, surmounted by the ruins of a castle, said to have been fortified by the Saracens, and taken from them by Charles Martel.  It was to this castle that Phœbe’s sketching duty was to be paid, and Maria and Bertha expressed their determination of climbing up to it, in hopes, as the latter said, of finding Charles Martel’s original hammer.  Lieschen, puffing and panting already, looked horrified, and laughingly they bade her sit down and knit, whilst they set out on their adventure.  Phœbe smiled as she looked up, and uttered a prognostic that made Bertha the more defiant, exhilarated as she was by the delicious compound of sea and mountain breeze, and by the exquisite view, the roofs of the town sloping rapidly down, and the hills stretching round, clothed in pine woods, into which the gray olivettes came stealing up, while beyond lay the sea, intensely blue, and bearing on its bosom the three Isles d’Or flushed with radiant colour.

The sisters bravely set themselves to scramble among the rocks, each surface turned to the sea-breeze exquisitely and fantastically tinted by coloured lichens, and all interspersed with the classical acanthus’ noble leaves, the juniper, and the wormwood.  On they went, winding upwards as Bertha hoped, but also sideways, and their circuit had lasted a weary while, and made them exhausted and breathless, when looking round for their bearings, they found themselves in an enchanted maze of gray rocks, half hidden in myrtle, beset by the bristly battledores of prickly pear, and shaded by cork trees.  Above was the castle, perched up, and apparently as high above them as when they began their enterprise; below was a steep descent, clothed with pines and adorned with white heaths.  The place was altogether strange; they had lost themselves; Bertha began to repent of her adventure, and Maria was much disposed to cry.

‘Never mind, Maria,’ said Bertha, ‘we will not try to go any higher.  See, here is the dry bed of a torrent that will make a famous path down.  There, that’s right.  What a picture it is! what an exquisite peep of the sea between the boughs!  What now, what frightens you?’

‘The old woman, she looks so horrid.’

‘The witch for the lost children?  No, no, Maria, she is only gathering fir cones, and completing the picture in her red basquine, brown jacket, and great hat.  I would ask her the way, but that we could not understand her Provençal.’

‘Oh, dear! I wish Phœbe was here! I wish we were safe!’

‘If I ever come mountain-climbing again with you at my heels!  Take care, there’s no danger if you mind your feet, and we must come out somewhere.’

The somewhere, when the slope became less violent, was among vineyards and olivettes, no vestige of a path through them, only a very small cottage, picturesquely planted among the rocks, whence proceeded the sounds of a cornet-à-piston.  As Bertha stood considering which way to take, a dog flew out of the house and began barking.  This brought out a man, who rudely shouted to the terrified pair that they were trespassing.  They would have fled at once up the torrent-bed, bad as it was for ascent, but there was a derisive exclamation and laugh, and half-a-dozen men, half-tipsy, came pouring out of the cottage, bawling to Colibri, the rough, shaggy white dog, that seemed disposed to spring at the Maltese in Bertha’s arms.

The foremost, shouting in French for the sisters to stop, pointed to what he called the way, and Bertha drew Maria in that direction, trusting that they should escape by submission, but after going a little distance, she found herself at the edge of a bare, deep, dry ravine, steep on each side, almost so as to be impassable.  The path only ran on the other side.  There was another shout of exultation and laughter at the English girls’ consternation.  At this evident trick of the surly peasants, Maria shook all over, and burst into tears, and Bertha, gathering courage, turned to expostulate and offer a reward, but her horrible stammer coming on worse than ever, produced nothing but inarticulate sounds.

‘Monsieur, there is surely some mistake,’ said a clear voice in good French from the path on the other side, and looking across, the sisters were cheered by an unmistakable English brown hat.  The peasants drew back a little, believing that the young ladies were not so unprotected as they had supposed, and the first speaker, with something like apology, declared that this was really the path, and descending where the sides were least steep, held out his hand to help Bertha.  The lady, whose bank was more practicable, came down to meet them, saying in French, with much emphasis, that she would summon ‘those gentlemen’ to their assistance if desired; words that had considerable effect upon the enemy.

Poor Maria was in such terror that she could hardly keep her footing, and the hands both of Bertha and the unknown friend were needed to keep her from affording still more diversion to the peasants by falling prostrate.  The lady seemed intuitively to understand what was best for both, and between them they contrived to hush her sobs, and repress her inclination to scream for Phœbe, and thus to lead her on, each holding a hand till they were at a safe distance; and Bertha, whose terror had been far greater than at the robbery at home, felt that she could let herself speak, when she quivered out an agony of trembling thanks.  ‘I am glad you are safe from these vile men,’ said the lady, kindly, ‘though they could hardly have done anything really to hurt you!’

‘Frenchmen should not laugh at English girls,’ cried Bertha.  ‘Oh, I wish my brothers were here,’ and she turned round with a fierce gesture.

‘Phœbe, Phœbe; I want Phœbe and Lieschen!’ was Maria’s cry.

‘Can I help you find your party?’ was the next question; and the voice had a gentle, winning tone that reassured Maria, who clung tight to her hand, exclaiming, ‘Don’t go away;’ and though for months past the bare proposal of encountering a stranger would have made Bertha almost speechless, she felt a soothing influence that enabled her to reply with scarcely a hesitation.  On comparing notes, it was discovered that the girls had wandered so far away from their sister that they could only rejoin her by re-entering the town and mounting again; and their new friend, seeing how nervous and agitated both still were, offered to escort them, only giving notice to her own party what had become of her.

She had come up with some sketching acquaintance, and not drawing herself, had, like the sisters, been exploring among the rocks, when she had suddenly come on them in the distress which had so much shaken them, that, reluctant to lose sight of their guardian, they accompanied her till she saw one of her friends, and then waited while she ran down with the announcement.  ‘How ridiculous it is in me,’ muttered Bertha to herself, discontentedly; ‘she will think us wild creatures.  I wish we were not both so tall.’

And embarrassment, together with the desire to explain, deprived her so entirely of utterance, that Maria volunteered, ‘Bertha always speaks so funnily since she was ill.’  Rather a perplexing speech for the lady to hear; but instead of replying, she asked which was their hotel; and Bertha answering, she turned with a start of surprise and interest, as if to see their faces better, adding, ‘I have not seen you at the table d’hôte;’ and under the strange influence of her voice and face, Bertha was able to answer, ‘No.  As Maria says, I have been very silly since my illness in the winter, and—and they have given way to me, and let me see no one.’

‘But we shall see you; you are in our hotel,’ cried Maria.  ‘Do come and let me show you all my Swiss costumes.’

‘Thank you; if—’ and she paused, perhaps a little perplexed by Maria; and Bertha added, in the most womanly voice that she could muster, ‘My sister and Miss Charlecote will be very glad to see you—very much obliged to you.’

Then Maria, who was unusually demonstrative, put another question—

‘Are you ill?  Bertha says everybody here is ill.  I hope you are not.’

‘No, thank you,’ was the reply.  ‘I am here with my uncle and aunt.  It is my uncle who has been unwell.’

Bertha, afraid that Maria might blunder into a history of her malady, began to talk fast of the landscape and its beauties.  The stranger seemed to understand her desire to lead away from herself, and readily responded, with a manner that gave sweetness to all she said.  She was not very young-looking, and Maria’s notion might be justified that she was at Hyères on her own account, for there was hardly a tint of colour on her cheek; she was exceedingly spare and slender, and there was a wasted, worn look about the lower part of her face, and something subdued in her expression, as if some great, lasting sorrow had passed over her.  Her eyes were large, brown, soft, and full of the same tender, pensive kindness as her voice and smile; and perhaps it was this air of patient suffering that above all attracted Bertha, in the soreness of her wounded spirit, just as the affectionateness gained Maria, with the instinct of a child.

However it might be, Phœbe, who had become uneasy at their absence, and only did not go to seek them from the conviction that nothing would set them so completely astray as not finding her at her post, was exceedingly amazed to be hailed by them from beneath instead of above, and to see them so amicably accompanied by a stranger.  Maria went on in advance to greet the newly-recovered sister, and tell their adventure; and Bertha, as she saw Phœbe’s pretty, grateful, self-possessed greeting, rejoiced that their friend should see that one of the three, at least, knew what to say, and could say it.  As they all crept down together through the rugged streets, Phœbe felt the same strange attraction as her sisters, accompanied by a puzzling idea that she had seen the young lady before, or some one very like her.  Phœbe was famous for seeing likenesses; and never forgetting a face she had once seen, her recognitions were rather a proverb in the family; and she felt her credit almost at stake in making out the countenance before her; but it was all in vain, and she was obliged to resign herself to discuss the Pyrenees, where it appeared that their new friend had been spending the summer.

At the inn-door they parted, she going along a corridor to her aunt’s rooms, and the three Fulmorts hurrying simultaneously to Miss Charlecote to narrate their adventure.  She was as eager as they to know the name of their rescuer, and to go to thank her; and ringing for the courier, sent him to make inquiries.  ‘Major and Mrs. Holmby, and their niece,’ was the result; and the next measure was Miss Charlecote’s setting forth to call on them in their apartments, and all the three young ladies wishing to accompany her—even Bertha!  What could this encounter have done to her?  Phœbe withdrew her claim at once, and persuaded Maria to remain, with the promise that her new friend should be invited to enjoy the exhibition of the book of Swiss costumes; and very soon she was admiring them, after having received an explanation sufficient to show her how to deal with Maria’s peculiarities.  Mrs. Holmby, a commonplace, good-natured woman, evidently knew who all the other party were, and readily made acquaintance with Miss Charlecote, who had, on her side, the same strange impression of knowing the name as Phœbe had of knowing the face.

Bertha, who slept in the same room with Phœbe, awoke her in the morning with the question, ‘What do you think is Miss Holmby’s name?’

‘I did not hear it mentioned.’

‘No, but you ought to guess.  Do you not see how names impress their own individuality?  You need not laugh; I know they do.  Could you possibly have been called Augusta, and did not Katherine quite pervade Miss Fennimore?’

‘Well, according to your theory, what is her name?’

‘It is either Eleanor or Cecily.’

‘Indeed!’ cried Phœbe; ‘what put that into your head?’

‘Her expression—no, her entire Wesen.  Something homely, simple, a little old-fashioned, and yet refined.’

‘It is odd,’ said Phœbe, pausing.

‘What is odd?’

‘You have explained the likeness I could not make out.  I once saw a photograph of a Cecily, with exactly the character you mention.  It was that of which she reminded me.’

‘Cecily?  Who could it have been?’

‘One of the Raymond cousinhood.  What o’clock is it?’

‘Oh, don’t get up yet, Phœbe; I want to tell you Miss Holmby’s history, as I make it out.  She said she was not ill, but I am convinced that her uncle and aunt took her abroad to give her change, not after illness, but sorrow.’

‘Yes, I am sure she has known trouble.’

‘And,’ said Bertha, stifling her voice, so that her sister could hardly hear, ‘that sorrow could have been only of one kind.  Patient waiting is stamped on her brow.  She is trying to lift up her head after cruel disappointment.  Oh, I hope he is dead!’

And, to Phœbe’s surprise and alarm, the poor little fortune-teller burst into tears, and sobbed violently.  There could be no doubt that her own disappointment, rather than that which she ascribed to a stranger, prompted this gush of feeling; but it was strange, for in all the past months the poor child’s sorrow and shame had been coldly, hardly, silently borne.  The new scenes had thrust it into abeyance, and spirits and strength had forced trouble aside, but this was the only allusion to it since her conversation with Miss Charlecote on her sick bed, and the first sign of softening.  Phœbe durst not enter into the subject, but soothed and composed her by caresses and cheerfulness; but either the tears, or perhaps their original cause—the fatigue and terror of the previous day—had entirely unhinged her, and she was in such a nervous, trembling state, and had so severe a headache, that she was left lying down, under Lieschen’s charge, when the others went to the English chapel.  Her urgent entreaty was that they would bring Miss Holmby to her on their return.  She had conceived almost a passion for this young lady.  Secluded as she had been, no intercourse beyond her own family had made known to her the pleasure of a friendship; and her mind, in its revival from its long exhaustion, was full of ardour, in the enthusiasm of a girl’s adoration of a full-grown woman.  The new and softening sensation was infinite gain, even by merely lessening her horror of society; and when the three churchgoers joined the Holmby party on their way back from the chapel, they begged, as a kindness to an invalid, for a visit to Bertha.

It was granted most readily, as if equally pleasant to the giver of the kindness and to the receiver, and the two young maidens walked home together.  Phœbe could not but explain their gratitude to any one who could rouse Bertha, saying that her spirits had received a great shock, and that the effects of her illness on her speech and her eyes had made her painfully bashful.

‘I am so glad,’ was the hurried, rather quivering answer.  ‘I am glad if I can be of any use.’