Hopes and Fears Part 41

'Oh! Lucy, stand still, please, or you'll get another hook in.'

'Give me the scissors; I know I could do it quicker. Never mind the curtain, I say; n.o.body will care.'

She put up her hand, and shook head and feet to the entanglement of a third hook; but Phoebe, decided damsel that she was, used her superior height to keep her mastery, held up the scissors, pressed the fidgety shoulder into quiescence, and kept her down while she extricated her, without fatal detriment to the satin, though with scanty thanks, for the liberation was no sooner accomplished than the sprite was off, throwing out a word about Rashe wanting her.

Phoebe emerged to find that she had not been missed, and presently the concert was over, and tea coming round, there was a change of places.

Robert came towards her. 'I am going,' he said.

'Oh! Robert, when dancing would be one chance?'

'She does not mean to give me that chance; I would not ask it while she is in that dress. It is answer sufficient. Good night, Phoebe; enjoy yourself.'

Enjoy herself! A fine injunction, when her brother was going away in such a mood! Yet who would have suspected that rosy, honest apple face of any grievance, save that her partner was missing?

Honora was vexed and concerned at his neglect, but Phoebe appeased her by reporting what Lucy had said. 'Thoughtless! reckless!' sighed Honora; 'if Lucy _would_ leave the poor girl on his hands, of course he is obliged to make some arrangement for getting her home! I never knew such people as they are here! Well, Phoebe, you _shall_ have a partner next time!'

Phoebe had one, thanks chiefly to Rashe, and somehow the rapid motion shook her out of her troubles, and made her care much less for Robin's sorrows than she had done two minutes before. She was much more absorbed in hopes for another partner.

Alas! he did not come; neither then nor for the ensuing. Owen's value began to rise.

Miss Charlecote did not again bestir herself in the cause, partly from abstract hatred of waltzes, partly from the constant expectation of Owen's reappearance, and latterly from being occupied in a discussion with the excellent mother upon young girls reading novels.

At last, after a _galoppe_, at which Phoebe had looked on with wishful eyes, Lucilla dropped breathless into the chair which she relinquished to her.

'Well, Phoebe, how do you like it?'

'Oh! very much,' rather ruefully; 'at least it would be if--'

'If you had any partners, eh, poor child? Hasn't Owen turned up?

'It's that billiard-room; I tried to make Charlie shut it up. But we'll disinter him; I'll rush in like a sky-rocket, and scatter the gentlemen to all quarters.'

'No, no, don't!' cried Phoebe, alarmed, and catching hold of her. 'It is not that, but Robin is gone.'

'Atrocious,' returned Cilly, disconcerted, but resolved that Phoebe should not perceive it; 'so we are both under a severe infliction,--both ashamed of our brothers.'

'I am not ashamed of mine,' said Phoebe, in a tone of gravity.

'Ah! there's the truant,' said Lucilla, turning aside. 'Owen, where have you hidden yourself? I hope you are ready to sink into the earth with shame at hearing you have rubbed off the bloom from a young lady's first ball.'

'No! it was not he who did so,' stoutly replied Phoebe.

'Ah! it was all the consequence of the green and white; I told you it was a sinister omen,' said Owen, chasing away a shade of perplexity from his brow, and a.s.suming a certain air that Phoebe had never seen before, and did not like. 'At least you will be merciful, and allow me to retrieve my character.'

'You had nothing to retrieve,' said Phoebe, in the most straightforward manner; 'it was very good in you to take care of poor Miss Murrell. What became of her? Lucy said you would know.'

'I--I?' he exclaimed, so vehemently as to startle her by the fear of having ignorantly committed some egregious blunder; 'I'm the last person to know.'

'The last to be seen with the murdered always falls under suspicion,'

said Lucilla.

'Drowned in the fountain?' cried Owen, affecting horror.

'Then you must have done it,' said his sister, 'for when I came back, after ransacking the house for salts, you had both disappeared. Have you been washing your hands all this time after the murder?'

'Nothing can clear me but an appeal to the fountain,' said Owen; 'will you come and look in, Phoebe? It is more delicious than ever.'

But Phoebe had had enough of the moonlight, did not relish the subject, and was not pleased with Owen's manner; so she refused by a most decided 'No, thank you,' causing Lucy to laugh at her for thinking Owen dangerous.

'At least you will vouchsafe to trust yourself with me for the Lancers,'

said Owen, as Cilla's partner came to claim her, and Phoebe rejoiced in anything to change the tone of the conversation; still, however, asking, as he led her off, what had become of the poor schoolmistress.

'Gone home, very sensibly,' said Owen; 'if she is wise she will know how to trust to Cilly's invitations! People that do everything at once never do anything well. It is quite a rest to turn to any one like you, Phoebe, who are content with one thing at a time! I wish--'

'Well, then, let us dance,' said Phoebe, abruptly; 'I can't do that well enough to talk too.'

It was not that Owen had not said the like things to her many times before; it was his eagerness and fervour that gave her an uncomfortable feeling. She was not sure that he was not laughing at her by putting on these devoted airs, and she felt herself grown up enough to put an end to being treated as a child. He made her a profound bow in a mockery of acquiescence, and preserved absolute silence during the first figures, but she caught his eye several times gazing on her with looks such as another might have interpreted into mingled regret and admiration, but which were to her simply discomfiting and disagreeable, and when he spoke again, it was not in banter, but half in sadness. 'Phoebe, how do you like all this?'

'I think I could like it very much.'

'I am almost sorry to hear you say so; anything that should tend to make you resemble others is detestable.'

'I should be very sorry not to be like other people.'

'Phoebe, you do not know how much of the pleasure of my life would be lost if you were to become a mere conventional young lady.'

Phoebe had no notion of being the pleasure of any one's life except Robin's and Maria's, and was rather affronted that Owen should profess to enjoy her childish ignorance and _naivete_.

'I believe,' she said, 'I was rude just now when I told you not to talk.

I am sorry for it; I shall know better next time.'

'Your knowing better is exactly what I deprecate. But there it is; unconsciousness is the charm of simplicity. It is the very thing aimed at by Rashe and Cilly, and all their crew, with their eccentricities.'

'I am sorry for it,' seriously returned Phoebe, who had by this time, by quiet resistance, caused him to land her under the lee of Miss Charlecote, instead of promenading with her about the room. He wanted her to dance with him again, saying she owed it to him for having sacrificed the first to common humanity, but great as was the pleasure of a polka, she shrank from him in this complimentary mood, and declared she should dance no more that evening. He appealed to Honora, who, disliking to have her boy balked of even a polka, asked Phoebe if she were _very_ tired, and considering her 'rather not' as equivalent to such a confession, proposed a retreat to their own room.

Phoebe was sorry to leave the brilliant scene, and no longer to be able to watch Lucilla, but she wanted to shake Owen off, and readily consented. She shut her door after one good night. She was too much grieved and disappointed to converse, and could not bear to discuss whether the last hope were indeed gone, and whether Lucilla had decided her lot without choosing to know it. Alas! how many turning-points may be missed by those who never watch!

How little did Phoebe herself perceive the shoal past which her self-respect had just safely guided her!

'I wonder if those were ball-room manners? What a pity if they were, for then I shall not like b.a.l.l.s,' was all the thought that she had leisure to bestow on her own share in the night's diversions, as through the subsequent hours she dozed and dreamt, and mused and slept again, with the feverish limbs and cramp-tormented feet of one new to b.a.l.l.s; sometimes teased by entangling fishing flies, sometimes interminably detained in the moonlight, sometimes with Miss Fennimore waiting for an exercise, and the words not to be found in the dictionary; and even this unpleasant counterfeit of sleep deserting her after her usual time for waking, and leaving her to construct various fabrics of possibilities for Robin and Lucy.

She was up in fair time, and had written a long and particular account to Bertha of everything in the festivities not recorded in this narrative, before Miss Charlecote awoke from the compensating morning slumber that had succeeded a sad and unrestful night. Late as they were, they were down-stairs before any one but the well-seasoned Rashe, who sat beguiling the time with a Bradshaw, and who did _not_ tell them how intolerably cross Cilly had been all the morning.

Nor would any one have suspected it who had seen her, last of all, come down at a quarter to eleven, in the most exultant spirits, talking the height of rodomontade with the gentlemen guests, and dallying with her breakfast, while Phoebe's heart was throbbing at the sight of two grave figures, her brother and the curate, slowly marching up and down the cloister, in waiting till this was over.

And there sat Lucilla inventing adventures for an imaginary tour to be brought out on her return by the name of 'Girls in Galway'--'From the Soiree to the Salmon'--'Flirts and Fools-heads,' as Owen and Charles discontentedly muttered to each other, or, as Mr. Calthorp proposed, 'The Angels and the Anglers.' The ball was to be the opening chapter. Lord William entreated for her costume as the frontispiece, and Mr. Calthorp begged her to re-a.s.sume it, and let her cousin photograph her on the spot.

Lucilla objected to the impracticability of white silk, the inconvenience of unpacking the apparatus, the nuisance of dressing, the lack of time; but Rashe was delighted with the idea, and made light of all, and the gentlemen pressed her strongly, till with rather more of a consent than a refusal, she rose from her nearly untasted breakfast, and began to move away.