Hopes and Fears Part 85

The schoolroom had been left undisturbed, for the sisters were otherwise occupied. By Mr. Fulmort's will, the jewels, excepting certain Mervyn heirlooms, were to be divided between the daughters, and their two ladyships thought this the best time for their choice, though as yet they could not take possession. Phoebe would have given the world that the sets had been appropriated, so that Mervyn and Mr. Crabbe should not have had to make her miserable by fighting her battles, insisting on her choosing, and then overruling her choice as not of sufficiently valuable articles, while Bertha profited by the lesson in harpy-hood, and regarded all claimed by the others as so much taken from herself; and poor Maria clasped on every bracelet one by one, threaded every ring on her fingers, and caught the same l.u.s.tre on every diamond, delighting in the grand exhibition, and in her own share, which by general consent included all that was clumsy and ill-set. No one had the heart to disturb her, but Phoebe felt that the poor thing was an eyesore to them all, and was hardly able to endure Augusta's compliment, 'After all, Phoebe, she is not so bad; you may make her tolerably presentable for the country.'

Lady Acton patronized Bertha, in opposition to Phoebe; and Sir Bevil was glad to have one sister to whom he could be good-natured without molestation. The young lady, heartily weary of the monotony of home, was much disappointed at the present arrangement; Phoebe had become the envied elder sister instead of the companion in misfortune, and Juliana was looked on as the sympathizing friend who would fain have opened the prison doors that Phoebe closed against her by making all that disturbance about Maria.

'It is all humbug about Maria,' said Juliana. 'Much Phoebe will let her stand in her way when she wants to come to London for the season--but I'll not take her out, I promise her.'

'But you will take me,' cried Bertha. 'You'll not leave me in this dismal hole always.'

'Never fear, Bertha. This plan won't last six months. Mervyn and Phoebe will get sick of one another, and Augusta will be ready to take her in--she is pining for an errand girl.'

'I'll not go there to read cookery books and meet old fogies. You will have me, Juliana, and we will have such fun together.'

'When you are come out, perhaps--and you must cure that stammer.'

'I shall die of dulness before then! If I could only go to school!'

'I wouldn't be you with Maria for your most lively companion.'

'It is much worse than when we used to go down into the drawing-room.

Now we never see any one but Miss Charlecote, and Phoebe is getting exactly like her!'

'What, all her sanctimonious ways? I thought so.'

'And to make it more aggravating, Miss Fennimore is going to get religious too. She made me read all Butler's _a.n.a.logy_, and wants to put me into _Paley_, and she is always running after Robert.'

'Middle-aged governesses always do run after young clergymen--especially the most _outre's_.'

'And now she snaps me up if I say anything the least comprehensive or speculative, or if I laugh at the conventionalities Phoebe learns at the Holt. Yesterday I said that the progress of common sense would soon make people cease to connect dulness with mortality, or to think a serious mistiness the sole evidence of respect, and I was caught up as if it were high treason.'

'You must not get out of bounds in your talk, Bertha, or sound unfeeling.'

'I can't help being original,' said Bertha. 'I must evolve my ideas out of my individual consciousness, and a.s.sert my independence of thought.'

Juliana laughed, not quite following her sister's metaphysical tone, but satisfied that it was anti-Phoebe, she answered by observing, 'An intolerable fuss they do make about that girl!'

'And she is not a bit clever,' continued Bertha. 'I can do a translation in half the time she takes, and have got far beyond her in all kinds of natural philosophy!'

'She flatters Mervyn, that's the thing; but she will soon have enough of that. I hope he won't get her into some dreadful sc.r.a.pe, that's all!'

'What sort of sc.r.a.pe?' asked Bertha, gathering from the smack of the hope that it was something exciting.

'Oh, you are too much of a chit to know--but I say, Bertha, write to me, and let me know whom Mervyn brings to the house.'

With somewhat the like injunction, only directed to a different quarter, Robert likewise left Beauchamp.

As he well knew would be the case, nothing in his own circ.u.mstances was changed by his mother's death, save that he no longer could call her inheritance his home. She had made no will, and her entire estate pa.s.sed to her eldest son, from whom Robert parted on terms of defiance, rather understood than expressed. He took leave of his birthplace as one never expecting to return thither, and going for his last hour at Hiltonbury to Miss Charlecote, poured out to her as many of his troubles as he could bear to utter. 'And,' said he, 'I have given my approval to the two schemes that I most disapproved beforehand--to Mervyn's giving my sisters a home, and to Miss Fennimore's continuing their governess! What will come of it?'

'Do not repent, Robert,' was the answer. 'Depend upon it, the great danger is in rashly meddling with existing arrangements, especially by a strain of influence. It is what the young are slow to learn, but experience brings it home.'

'With you to watch them, I will fear the less.'

Miss Charlecote wondered whether any disappointment of his own added to his depression, and if he thought of Lucilla.

CHAPTER XVIII

My sister is not so defenceless left As you imagine. She has a hidden strength Which you remember not.--_Comus_

Phoebe was left to the vacancy of the orphaned house, to a blank where her presence had been gladness, and to relief more sad than pain, in parting with her favourite brother, and seeing him out of danger of provoking or being provoked.

To have been the cause of strife and object of envy weighed like guilt on her heart, and the tempest that had tossed her when most needing peace and soothing, left her sore and suffering. She did not nurse her grief, and was content that her mother should be freed from the burthen of existence that had of late been so heavy; but the missing the cherished recipient of her care was inevitable, and she was not of a nature to shake off dejection readily, nor to throw sorrow aside in excitement.

Mervyn felt as though he had caught a lark, and found it droop instead of singing. He was very kind, almost oppressively so; he rode or drove with her to every ruin or view esteemed worth seeing, ordered books for her, and consulted her on improvements that pained her by the very fact of change. She gave her attention sweetly and gratefully, was always at his call, and amused his evenings with cards or music, but she felt herself dull and sad, and saw him disappointed in her.

Then she tried bringing in Bertha as entertainment for both, but it was a downright failure. Bertha was far too sharp and pert for an elder brother devoid both of wit and temper, and the only consequence was that she fathomed his shallow acquirements in literature and the natural sciences, and he p.r.o.nounced her to be eaten up with conceit, and the most intolerable child he ever saw--an irremediable insult to a young woman of fifteen; nor could Bertha be brought forward without disappointing Maria, whose presence Mervyn would not endure, and thus Phoebe was forced to yield the point, and keep in the background the appendages only tolerated for her sake.

Greatly commiserating Bertha's weariness of the schoolroom, she tried to gratify the governess and please her sisters by resuming her studies; but the motive of duty and obedience being gone, these were irksome to a mind naturally meditative and practical, and she found herself triumphed over by Bertha for forgetting whether Lucca were Guelf or Ghibelline, putting oolite below red sandstone, or confusing the definition of ozone. She liked Bertha to surpa.s.s her; but inattention she regarded as wrong in itself, as well as a bad example, and her apologies were so hearty as quite to affect Miss Fennimore.

Mervyn's attentions wore off with the days of seclusion. By the third week he was dining out, by the fourth he was starting for Goodwood, half inviting Phoebe to come with him, and a.s.suring her that it was just what she wanted to put her into spirits again. Poor Phoebe--when Mr.

Henderson talking to Miss Fennimore, and Bertha at the same time insisting on Decandolle's system to Miss Charlecote, had seemed to create a distressing whirl and confusion!

Miss Fennimore smiled, both with pleasure and amus.e.m.e.nt, as Phoebe asked her permission to walk to the Holt, and be fetched home by the carriage at night.

'Don't laugh at me,' said Phoebe. 'I am so glad to have some one's leave to ask.'

'I will not laugh, my dear, but I will not help you to reverse our positions. It is better we should both be accustomed to them.'

'It seems selfish to take the carriage for myself,' said Phoebe; 'but I think I have rather neglected Miss Charlecote for Mervyn, and I believe she would like to have me alone.'

The solitude of the walk was a great boon, and there was healing in the power of silence--the repose of not being forced to be lively. Summer flowers had pa.s.sed, but bryony mantled the bushes in luxuriant beauty, and kingly teazles raised their diademed heads, and exultingly stretched forth their sceptred arms. Purple heather mixed with fragrant thyme, blue harebells and pale bents of quiver-gra.s.s edged the path, and thistledown, drifting from the chalk uplands, lay like snow in the hollows, or danced like living things on the path before her. A brood of goldfinches, with merry twitter and flashing wings, flitted round a tall milk thistle with variegated leaves and a little farther on, just at the opening of a glade from the path, she beheld a huge dragon-fly, banded with green, black, and gold, poised on wings invisible in their rapid motion, and hawking for insects. She stood to watch, collecting materials to please Miss Charlecote, and make a story for Maria.

'Stand still. He is upon you.'

She saw Miss Charlecote a few yards off, nearly on all-fours in the thymy gra.s.s.

'Only a gra.s.shopper. I've only once seen such a fellow. He makes portentous leaps. There! on your flounce!'

'I have him! No! He went right over you!'

'I've got him under my handkerchief. Put your hand in my pocket--take out a little wide-mouthed bottle. That's it. Get in, sir, it is of no use to bite. There's an air-hole in the cork. Isn't he a beauty?'

'O, the lovely green! What saws he wears on his thighs! See the delicate pink lining! What horns! and a quaint face, like a horse's.'

'"The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses." Not that this is a locust, only a _gryllus_, happily for us.'

'What is the difference?'