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

Phœbe was surprised, while gratified, by the eager tenderness of her meeting with Bertha, who, quite revived, was in the sitting-room to greet her, and seemed to expand like a plant in the sunshine, under the influence of those sweet brown eyes.  Her liveliness and drollery awoke, and her sister was proud that her new friend should see her cleverness and intelligence; but all the time the likeness to that photograph continued to haunt Phœbe’s mind, as she continued to discover more resemblances, and to decide that if such were impressed by the Christian name, Bertha was a little witch to detect it.

Afternoon came, and as usual they all walked seawards.  As Bertha said, they had had enough of the heights, and tried going towards the sea, as their new friend wished, although warned by the Fulmorts that it was a long walk, the étangs, or great salt-pools, spoiling the coast as a beach.  But all were brave walkers, and exercise always did Bertha good.  They had lovely views of the town as they wound about the hills, and admired its old streets creeping up the hill, and the two long wings stretching on either side.  An iron cross stood up before the old church, relieved by the exquisite radiance of the sunset sky.  ‘Ah!’ said Honor, ‘I always choose to believe that is the cross to which the legend belongs.’  ‘Tell it, please, Miss Charlecote,’ cried Maria.

And Honor told a veritable legend of Hyères:—A Moorish princess, who had been secretly baptized and educated as a Christian by her nurse, a Christian slave, was beloved by a genie.  She regarded him with horror, pined away, and grew thin and pale.  Her father thought to raise her spirits by marrying her, and bestowed her on the son of a neighbouring king, sending her off in full procession to his dominions.  On the way, however, lay a desert, where the genie had power to raise a sand-storm, with which he overwhelmed the suite, and flew away with the princess.  But he could not approach her; she kept him at bay with the sign of the cross, until, enraged, he drove her about on a whirlwind for three days, and finally dashed her dead upon this coast.  There she lay, fair as an almond blossom, and royally robed, and the people of Hyères took her up and gave her honourable burial.  When the king her father heard of it, he offered to reward them with a cross of gold of the same weight as his daughter; but, said the townsmen, ‘Oh, king, if we have a cross of gold, the Moors will come and slay us for its sake, therefore give us the gold in coin, and let the cross be of iron.’

‘And there it stands,’ said the guest, looking up.

‘I hope it does,’ said Honor, confronting, as usual, the common-sense led pupils of Miss Fennimore, with her willing demi-credulity.

‘It is a beautiful story!’ was the comment; ‘and, like other traditions, full of unconscious meaning.’

A speech this, as if it had been made to delight Honor, whose eyes were met by a congratulatory glance from Phœbe.  At the farther words, ‘It is very striking—the evil spirit’s power ending with the slaying the body, never harming the soul, nor bending the will—’

‘Bending the will is harming the soul,’ said Phœbe.

‘Nay,’ was her companion’s answer, ‘the fatal evil is, when both wills are bent.’

Phœbe was too single-minded, too single-willed, at once to understand this, till Miss Charlecote whispered a reference to St. Paul’s words of deep experience, ‘To will is present with me.’

‘I see,’ she said; ‘she might even have preferred the genie, but as long as her principle and better will resisted, she was safe from herself as well as from him.’

‘Liked the nasty genie?’ said Maria, who had listened only as to a fairy tale.  ‘Why, Phœbe, genies come out of bottles, and go away in smoke, Lieschen told me.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Bertha, in a low voice of feeling, piteous in one of her years, ‘if so, it needed no outward whirlwind to fling her dead on the coast!’

‘And there she found peace,’ answered the guest, with a suppressed, but still visible sign of weariness.  ‘Oh! it was worth the whirlwind!’

Phœbe was forced to attend to Maria, whose imagination had been a good deal impressed, and who was anxious to make another attempt on a pilgrimage to castle and cross.

‘When Mervyn comes back, Maria, we may try.’

The guest, who was speaking, stopped short in the midst.  Had she been infected by Bertha’s hesitation?  She began again, and seemed to have forgotten what she meant to have said.  However, she recovered herself; and there was nothing remarkable through the rest of the walk, but, on coming indoors, she managed to detain Phœbe behind the others, saying, lightly, ‘Miss Fulmort, you have not seen the view from my window.’  Phœbe followed to her little bed-room, and gazed out at the lovely isles, bathed in light so as to be almost transparent, and the ship of war in the bay, all shadowy and phantom-like.  She spoke her admiration warmly, but met with but a half assent.  The owner of the room was leaning her head against the glass, and, with an effort for indifference said, ‘Did I hear that—that you were expecting your brother?’

‘You are Cecily!’ exclaimed Phœbe, instead of answering.

And Cecily, turning away from the window, leant against the wall for support, and her pale face crimsoning, said, ‘I thought you did not know.’

‘My sisters do not,’ said Phœbe; ‘but he told me, when—when he hoped—’

‘And now you will help me?’ said Cecily, hurrying out her words, as if overpowering one of her wills.  ‘You will, I know!  I have promised my father and uncle to have nothing to do with him.  Do not let me be taken by surprise.  Give me notice, that I may get Aunt Holmby away before he comes.’

‘Oh! must it be so?’ cried Phœbe.  ‘He is not like what he used to be.’

‘I have promised,’ repeated Cecily; and grasping Phœbe’s wrist, she added, ‘you will help me to keep my promise.’

‘I will,’ said Phœbe, in her grave, reliable voice, and Cecily drew a long breath.

There were five minutes of silence, while Phœbe stood studying Cecily, and thinking how much injustice she had done to her, how little she had expected a being so soft and feeling in her firmness, and grieving the more at Mervyn’s loss.  Cecily at last spoke, ‘When will he come?’

‘We cannot tell; most likely not for a week, perhaps not for a fortnight.  It depends on how he likes Corsica.’

‘I think my aunt will be willing to go,’ said Cecily.  ‘My uncle has been talking of Nice.’

‘Then must we lose you,’ said Phœbe, ‘when you are doing Bertha so much good?’

‘I should like to be with you while I can, if I may,’ said Cecily, her eyes full of tears.

‘Did you know us at first?’ said Phœbe.

‘I knew you were in this hotel; and after your sisters had spoken, and I saw Bertha’s face, I was sure who she was.  I thought no one was with you but Miss Charlecote, and that no one knew, so that I might safely indulge myself.’  The word was out before she could recall it, and trying, as it were, to hide it, she said, ‘But how, if you knew what had passed, did you not sooner know it was I?’

‘Because we thought your name was Holmby.’

‘Did you, indeed.  You did not know that my aunt Holmby is my mother’s sister?  She kindly took me when my uncle was ordered to spend this winter abroad.’

‘You were ill and tried.  Bertha read that in your face.  Oh! when you see how much difference—’

‘I must not see.  Do not talk of it, or we must not be together; and indeed it is very precious to me.’  She rested her head on Phœbe’s shoulder, and put an arm round her waist.  ‘Only one thing I must ask,’ she said, presently; ‘is he well?’

‘Quite well,’ said Phœbe.  ‘He has been getting better ever since we left home.  Then you did not know he was with us?’

‘No.  It is not right for me to dwell on those things, and they never mention any of you to me.’

‘But you will write to us now?  You will not desert Bertha?  You do not know how much you are doing for her.’

‘Dear child!  She is so like what he was when first he came.’

‘If you could guess what she has suffered, and how fond he is of her, you would not turn away from her.  You will let her be your friend?’

‘If it be right,’ said Cecily, with tearful eyes, but her mouth set into a steadfast expression, as resolute as sweetly sad.

‘You know better what is right than I do,’ said Phœbe; ‘I who feel for him and Bertha.  But if you have not heard from him for so long, I think there are things you ought to know.’

‘At home, at home,’ said Cecily; ‘there it may be right to listen.  Here I am trusted alone, and I have only to keep my promise.  Tell me when I am at home, and it will make me happy.  Though, nonsense! my wizened old face is enough to cure him,’ and she tried to laugh.  Phœbe regretted what she had said of Bertha’s impression, and believed that the gentle, worn face ought to be far more touching than the most radiant charms, but when she strove to say that it was not beauty that Mervyn loved, she was hushed at once, and by the same mild authority turned out of the room.

Well for her that she could tell her story to Miss Charlecote without breach of confidence!  Honor’s first impulse was displeasure with the aunt, who she was sure had let her speak of, though not to, Miss Holmby without correcting her, and must purposely have kept the whole Raymond connection out of sight.  ‘Depend upon it, Phœbe,’ she said, ‘she will keep her niece here.’

‘Poor Cecily, what will she do?  I wish they would go, for I feel sure that she will think it her duty to hold out against him, till she has her father’s sanction; she will seem hard, and he—’

‘Do not reckon too much on him, Phœbe.  Yes, it is a hard saying, but men care so much for youth and beauty, that he may find her less attractive.  He may not understand how superior she must have become to what she was when he first knew her.  Take care how you plead his cause without being sure of his sentiments.’

In fact, Honor thought Cecily Raymond so infinitely above Mervyn Fulmort, at his very best, that she could not regard the affair as hopeful under any aspect; and the parties concerned being just at the time of life when a woman becomes much the elder of a man of the same years, she fully expected that Cecily’s loss of bloom would entirely take away his desire to pursue his courtship.

The next event was a diplomatic call from Mrs. Holmby, to sound Miss Charlecote, whose name she knew as a friend both of the Fulmorts and Moorcroft Raymonds, and who, she had feared, would use her influence against so unequal a match for the wealthy young squire.  When convinced of her admiration of Cecily, the good aunt proceeded to condemn the Raymond pride.  They called it religion, but she was not so taken in.  What reasonable person heeded what a young man might have done when he was sowing his wild oats?  No, it was only that the Baronet blood disdained the distillery, whereas the Fulmorts represented that good old family, the Mervyns, and it was a very fine estate, was not it?  She had no patience with such nonsense, not she!  All Sir John’s doing; for, between themselves, poor dear George Raymond had no spirit at all, and was quite under his brother’s thumb.  Such a family, and such a thing as it would be for them to have that girl so well married.  She would not take her away.  The place agreed with the Major, and she had told Cecily she could not think of leaving it.

Phœbe saw how close a guard Cecily must have learnt to keep on herself, for not a tone nor look betrayed that she was suffering unusual emotion.  She occupied herself quietly, and was most tenderly kind to Bertha and Maria, exerting herself to converse with Bertha, and to enter into her pursuits as cheerfully as if her mind was disengaged.  Sometimes Phœbe fancied that the exceeding gentleness of her voice indicated when she was most tried, but she attempted no more tête-à-têtes, and Miss Charlecote’s conjecture that in the recesses of her heart she was rejoiced to be detained by no fault of her own, remained unverified.  Phœbe resigned Cecily for the present to Bertha’s exclusive friendship.  Competition would have been unwise, even if the forbidden subject had not been a restraint where the secret was known, while to soothe and cherish Bertha and settle her mind to begin life again was a welcome and fitting mission for Cecily, and inclination as well as discretion therefore held Phœbe aloof, preventing Maria from interfering, and trusting that Cecily was becoming Bertha’s Mr. Charlecote.

Mervyn came back sooner than she had expected him, having soon tired of Corsica.  His year of ill-health and of her attendance had made him dependent on her; he did not enter into novelty or beauty without Bertha; and his old restless demon of discontent made him impatient to return to his ladies.  So he took Phœbe by surprise, walking in as she was finishing a letter to Augusta before joining the others in the olivettes.