Hopes and Fears Part 54

('Oh, so you complacently think, "now I have made her sorry!"')

'--but I believe uncertainty, waiting, and heart sickness would cost you far more. Trust me, as one who has felt it, that it is far better to feel oneself unworthy than to learn to doubt or distrust the worthiness or constancy of another.'

('My father to wit! A pretty thing to say to his daughter! What right has she to be pining and complaining after him? He, the unworthy one? I'll never forgive that conceited inference! Just because he could not stand sentiment! Master Robert gone! Won't I soon have him repenting of his outbreak?')

'I have no doubt that his feelings are unchanged, and that he is solely influenced by principle. He is evidently exceedingly unhappy under all his reserve--'

('He shall be more so, till he behaves himself, and comes back humble! I've no notion of his flying out in this way.')

'--and though I have not exchanged a word with him on the subject, I am certain that his good opinion will be retrieved, with infinite joy to himself, as soon as you make it possible for his judgment to be satisfied with your conduct and sentiments. Grieved as I am, it is with a hopeful sorrow, for I am sure that nothing is wanting on your part but that consistency and sobriety of behaviour of which you have newly learnt the necessity on other grounds. The Parsonses have gone to their own house, so you will not find any one here but two who will feel for you in silence, and we shall soon be in the quiet of the Holt, where you shall have all that can give you peace or comfort from your ever-loving old H. C.'

'Feel for me! Never! Don't you wish you may get it? Teach the catechism and feed caterpillars till such time as it pleases Mrs. Honor to write up and say "the specimen is tame"? How nice! No, no. I'll not be frightened into their lording it over me! I know a better way! Let Mr. Robert find out how little I care, and get himself heartily sick of St. Wulstan's, till it is "turn again Whittington indeed!" Poor fellow, I hate it, but he must be cured of his airs, and have a good fright. Why don't they ask me to go to Paris with them? Where can I go, if they don't. To Mary Cranford's? Stupid place, but I _will_ show that I'm not so hard up as to have no place but the Holt to go to! If it were only possible to stay with Mr. Prendergast, it would be best of all! Can't I tell him to catch a chaperon for me? Then he would think Honor a regular dragon, which would be a shame, for it was n.o.body's fault but his! I shall tell him I'm like the Christian religion, for which people are always making apologies that it doesn't want! Two years! Patience! It will be very good for Robin, and four-and-twenty is quite soon enough to bite off one's wings, and found an ant-hill. As to being bullied into being kissed, pitied, pardoned, and trained by Honor, I'll never sink so low! No, at _no_ price.'

Poor Mr. Prendergast! Did ever a more innocent mischief-maker exist?

Poor Honora! Little did she guess that the letter written in such love, such sympathy, such longing hope, would only excite fierce rebellion.

Yet it was at the words of Moses that the king's heart was hardened; and what was the end? He was taken at his word. 'Thou shalt see my face no more.'

To be asked to join the party on their tour had become Lucilla's prime desire, if only that she might not feel neglected, or driven back to Hiltonbury by absolute necessity; and when the husband and wife came down, the wish was uppermost in her mind.

Eloisa remarked on her quiet style of dress, and observed that it would be quite the thing in Paris, where people were so much less _outre_ than here.

'I have nothing to do with Paris.'

'Oh! surely you go with us!' said Eloisa; 'I like to take you out, because you are in so different a style of beauty, and you talk and save one trouble! Will not she go, Charles?'

'You see, Lolly wants you for effect!' he said, sneeringly. 'But you are always welcome, Cilly; we are woefully slow when you ain't there to keep us going, and I should like to show you a thing or two. I only did not ask you, because I thought you had not hit it off with Rashe, or have you made it up?'

'Oh! Rashe and I understand each other,' said Cilly, secure that though she would never treat Rashe with her former confidence, yet as long as they travelled _en grand seigneur_, there was no fear of collisions of temper.

'Rashe is a good creature,' said Lolly, 'but she is so fast and so eccentric that I like to have you, Cilly; you look so much younger, and more ladylike.'

'One thing more,' said Charles, in his character of head of the family; 'shouldn't you look up Miss Charlecote, Cilly? There's Owen straining the leash pretty hard, and you must look about you, that she does not take up with these new pets of hers and cheat you.'

'The Fulmorts? Stuff! They have more already than they know what to do with.'

'The very reason she will leave them the more. I declare, Cilly,' he added, half in jest, half in earnest, 'the only security for you and Owen is in a double marriage. Perhaps she projects it. You fire up as if she had!'

'If she had, do you think that I should go back?' said Cilly, trying to answer lightly, though her cheeks were in a flame. 'No, no, I am not going to let slip a chance of Paris.'

She stopped short, dismayed at having committed herself, and Horatia coming down, was told by acclamation that Cilly was going.

'Of course she is,' said forgiving and forgetting Rashe. 'Little Cilly left behind, to serve for food to the Rouge Dragon? No, no! I should have no fun in life without her.'

Rashe forgot the past far more easily that Cilla could ever do. There was a certain guilty delight in writing--

'MY DEAR HONOR,--Many thanks for your letter, and intended kindnesses. The scene must, however, be deferred, as my cousins mean to winter at Paris, and I can't resist the chance of hooking a Marshal, or a Prince or two. Rashe's strain was a great sell but we had capital fun, and shall hope for more success another season. I would send you my diary if it were written out fair. We go so soon that I can't run up to London, so I hope no one will be disturbed on my account.

'Your affectionate CILLY.'

No need to say how often Lucilla would have liked to have recalled that note for addition or diminution, how many misgivings she suffered on her peculiar mode of catching Robins, how frequent were her disgusts with her cousin, and how often she felt like a captive--the captive of her own self-will.

'That's right!' said Horatia to Lolly. 'I was mortally afraid she would stay at home to fall a prey to the incipient parson, but now he is choked off, and Calthorp is really in earnest, we shall have the dear little morsel doing well yet.'

CHAPTER X

O ye, who never knew the joys Of friendship, satisfied with noise, Fandango, ball, and rout, Blush, when I tell you how a bird A prison, with a friend, preferred, To liberty without.--COWPER

Had Lucilla Sandbrook realized the effect of her note, she would never have dashed it off; but, like all heedless people, pain out of her immediate ken was nothing to her.

After the loving hopes raised by the curate's report, and after her own tender and forgiving letter, Honor was pierced to the quick by the scornful levity of those few lines. Of the ingrat.i.tude to herself she thought but little in comparison with the heartless contempt towards Robert, and the miserable light-mindedness that it manifested.

'My poor, poor child!' was all she said, as she saw Phoebe looking with terror at her countenance; 'yes, there is an end of it. Let Robert never vex himself about her again.'

Phoebe took up the note, read it over and over again, and then said low and gravely, 'It is very cruel.'

'Poor child, she was born to the Charteris nature, and cannot help it!

Like seeks like, and with Paris before her, she can see and feel nothing else.'

Phoebe vaguely suspected that there might be a shadow of injustice in this conclusion. She knew that Miss Charlecote imagined Lucilla to be more frivolous than was the case, and surmised that there was more offended pride than mere levity in the letter. Insight into character is a natural, not an acquired endowment; and many of poor Honor's troubles had been caused by her deficiency in that which was intuitive to Phoebe, though far from consciously. That perception made her stand thoughtful, wondering whether what the letter betrayed were folly or temper, and whether, like Miss Charlecote, she ought altogether to quench her indignation in contemptuous pity.

'There, my dear,' said Honor, recovering herself, after having sat with ashy face and clasped hands for many moments. 'It will not bear to be spoken or thought of. Let us go to something else. Only, Phoebe, my child, do not leave her out of your prayers.'

Phoebe clung about her neck, kissed and fondled her, and felt her cheeks wet with tears, in the pa.s.sionate tenderness of the returning caress.

The resolve was kept of not going back to the subject, but Honora went about all day with a soft, tardy step, and subdued voice, like one who has stood beside a death-bed.

When Phoebe heard those stricken tones striving to be cheerful, she could not find pardon for the wrong that had not been done to herself. She dreaded telling Robert that no one was coming whom he need avoid, though without dwelling on the tone of the refusal. To her surprise, he heard her short, matter-of-fact communication without any token of anger or of grief, made no remark, and if he changed countenance at all, it was to put on an air of gloomy satisfaction, as though another weight even in the most undesirable scale were preferable to any remnant of balancing, and compunction for possible injustice were removed.

Could Lucilla but have seen that face, she would have doubted of her means of reducing him to obedience.

The course he had adopted might indeed be the more excellent way in the end, but at present even his self-devotion was not in such a spirit as to afford much consolation to Honor. If good were to arise out of sorrow, the painful seed-time was not yet over. His looks were stern even to harshness, and his unhappiness seemed disposed to vent itself in doing his work after his own fashion, brooking no interference.

He had taken a lodging over a baker's shop at Turnagain Corner. Honor thought it fair for the locality, and knew something of the people, but to Phoebe it was horror and dismay. The two small rooms, the painted cupboard, the cut paper in the grate, the pictures in yellow gauze, with the flies walking about on them, the round mirror, the pattern of the carpet, and the close, narrow street, struck her as absolutely shocking, and she came to Miss Charlecote with tears in her eyes, to entreat her to remonstrate, and tell Robin it was his duty to live like a gentleman.

'My dear,' said Honor, rather shocked at a speech so like the ordinary Fulmort mind, 'I have no fears of Robert not living like a gentleman.'

'I know--not in the real sense,' said Phoebe, blushing; 'but surely he ought not to live in this dismal poky place, with such mean furniture, when he can afford better.'

'I am afraid the parish affords few better lodgings, Phoebe, and it is his duty to live where his work lies. You appreciated his self-denial, I thought? Do you not like him to make a sacrifice?'

'I ought,' said Phoebe, her mind taking little pleasure in those acts of self-devotion that were the delight of her friend. 'If it be his duty, it cannot be helped, but I cannot be happy at leaving him to be uncomfortable--perhaps ill.'

Coming down from the romance of martyrdom which had made her expect Phoebe to be as willing to see her brother bear hardships in the London streets, as she had herself been to dismiss Owen the first to his wigwam, Honor took the more homely view of arguing on the health and quietness of Turnagain Corner, the excellence of the landlady, and the fact that her own c.o.c.kney eyes had far less unreasonable expectations than those trained to the luxuries of Beauchamp. But by far the most efficient solace was an expedition for the purchase of various amenities of life, on which Phoebe expended the last of her father's gift. The next morning was spent in great secrecy at the lodgings, where Phoebe was so notable and joyous in her labours, that Honor drew the conclusion that housewifery was her true element; and science, art, and literature only acquired, because they had been made her duties, reckoning all the more on the charming order that would rule in Owen Sandbrook's parsonage.