Hopes and Fears Part 92

'Report,' said Mervyn; 'I know it as well as I know myself!' then recollecting himself, 'but she does not understand, it is of no use to talk to children. Take her away, Phoebe, and keep her in the nursery till Mr. Crabbe comes to settle what is to be done with her.'

'I insist on having my letter,' said Bertha, with womanly grandeur.

'Let her have it. It is not worth bothering about a mere joke,' said Mervyn, leaning back, wearied of the struggle, in which, provoking as he was, he had received some home thrusts.

Phoebe felt bewildered, and as if she had a perfect stranger on her hands, though Bertha's high tone was, after all, chiefly from her extremity, and by way of reply to her brother's scornful incredulity of her exalted position. She was the first to speak on leaving the library.

'Pray, Phoebe, how came you to tamper with people's letters?'

Phoebe explained.

'From Mervyn and his spy one could expect no delicacy,' said Bertha, 'but in you it was treachery.'

'No, Bertha,' said Phoebe, 'I was grieved to expose you, but it was my duty to clear the innocent by examining the letter, and Mervyn had a right to know what concerned you when you were under his charge. It is our business to save you, and a letter sent in this way does not stand on the same ground as one coming openly under your own name. But I did not read it to him, Bertha--not all.'

'If you had,' said Bertha, more piqued than obliged by this reserve, 'he would have known it was in earnest and not childish nonsense. You saw that it was earnest, Phoebe?' and her defiant voice betrayed a semi-distrust.

'I am afraid it looked very much so,' said Phoebe; 'but, Bertha, that would be saddest of all. I am afraid he might be wicked enough to be trying to get your fortune, for indeed--don't be very much vexed, dearest, I am only saying it for your good--you are not old enough, nor formed, nor pretty enough, really to please a man that has seen so much of the world.'

'He never met so fresh, or original, or so highly cultivated a mind,'

said Bertha; 'besides, as to features, there may be different opinions!'

'But, Bertha, how could you ever see him or speak to him?'

'Hearts can find more ways than you dream of,' said Bertha, with a touch of sentiment; 'we had only to meet for the magnetism of mind to be felt!'

Argument was heartless work. Flattery and the glory of her conquest had entirely filled the child's mind, and she despised Mervyn and Phoebe far too much for the representations of the one or the persuasions of the other to have the smallest weight with her. Evidently, weariness of her studies, and impatience of discipline had led her to lend a willing ear to any distraction, and to give in to the intercourse that both gratified and amused herself and outwitted her governess, and thence the belief in the power of her own charms, and preference for their admirer, were steps easier than appeared credible to Phoebe. From listening in helpless amaze to a miserable round of pertness and philosophy, Phoebe was called down-stairs to hear that Mervyn had been examining Jane Hart, and had elicited from her that after having once surprised Mr. Hastings and Miss Bertha in conversation, she had several times conveyed notes between them, and since he had left Beauchamp, she had posted two letters to him from the young lady, but this was the first answer received, directed to herself, to be left at the post-office to be called for.

'Earnest enough on his part,' said Mervyn; 'a regular speculation to patch up his fortunes. Well, I knew enough of him, as I told you, but I was fool enough to pity him!'

He became silent, and so did Phoebe. She had been too much overset to look the subject fairly in the face, and his very calmness of voice and the absence of abusive epithets were a token that he was perfectly appalled at what he had brought on his sisters. They both sat still some minutes, when she saw him lean back with his hand to his head, and his eyes closed. 'There's a steeple chase!' he said, as Phoebe laid her cool hand on his burning brow, and felt the throbbing of the swollen veins of his temples. Both knew that this meant cupping, and they sent in haste for the Hiltonbury doctor, but he was out for the day, and would not return till evening. Phoebe felt dull and stunned, as if her decision had caused all the mischief, and more and more were following on, and her spirit almost died within her at Mervyn's interjection of rage and suffering.

'Though they curse, yet bless thou,' had of necessity been her rule while clinging to this brother; a mental e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n had become habitual, and this time it brought reaction from her forlorn despondency. She could do something. Twice she had a.s.sisted in cupping, and she believed she could perform the operation. No failure could be as hurtful as delay, and she offered to make the attempt. Mervyn growled at her folly, yawned, groaned, looked at his watch, counted the heavy hours, and supposed she must do as she chose.

Her heart rivalled his temples in palpitation, but happily without affecting eye, voice, or hand, and with Lieschen's help the deed was successfully done, almost with equal benefit to the operator and the patient.

Success had put new life into her; the troubles had been forgotten for the moment, and recurred not as a shameful burthen, caused by her own imprudence, but as a possible turning-point, a subject for action, not for despair, and Phoebe was herself again.

'What's that you are writing?' asked Mervyn, starting from a doze on the sofa.

'A letter to Robert,' she answered reluctantly.

'I suppose you will put it in the _Times_. No woman can keep a thing to herself.'

'I would tell no one else, but I wanted his advice.'

'Oh, I dare say.'

Phoebe saw that to persist in her letter would utterly destroy the repose that was essential in Mervyn's state, and she laid aside her pen.

'Going to do it out of sight?' he petulantly said.

'No; but at any rate I will wait till Miss Fennimore has talked to Bertha. She will be more willing to listen to her.'

'Because this is the result of her emanc.i.p.ating education. Ha!'

'No; but Bertha will attend to her, and cannot say her notions are servile and contracted.'

'If you say any more, I shall get up and flog them both.'

'Miss Fennimore is very wise,' said Phoebe.

'Why, what has she taught you but the ologies and the Rights of Women?'

'The chief thing she teaches,' said Phoebe, 'is to attend to what we are doing.'

Mervyn laughed, but did not perceive how those words were the key of Phoebe's character.

'Sir John and Lady Raymond and Miss Raymond in the drawing-room.'

Unappreciating the benefit of changing the current of thought, Phoebe lamented their admission, and moved reluctantly to the great rooms, where the guests looked as if they belonged to a more easy and friendly region than to that world of mirrors, damask, and gilding.

Sir John shook hands like an old friend, but his wife was one of those homely ladies who never appear to advantage in strange houses, and Phoebe had not learnt the art of 'lady of the house' talk, besides feeling a certain chilliness towards Mervyn's detractors, which rendered her stiff and formal. To her amaze, however, the languishing talk was interrupted by his entrance; he who regarded Sir John as the cause of his disappointment; he who had last met Susan Raymond at the time of his rejection; he whom she had left prostrate among the sofa cushions; he had absolutely exerted himself to brush his hair and put on coat and boots, yet how horribly ill and nervous he looked, totally devoid of his usual cool a.s.surance, uncertain whether to shake hands with the two ladies, and showing a strange restless eagerness as though entirely shaken off his balance.

Matters were mended by his entrance. Phoebe liked Lady Raymond from the moment she detected a sign to the vehement Sir John not to keep his host standing during the discussion of the robbery, and she ventured on expressing her grat.i.tude for his escort on the day of the hunt. Then arose an entreaty to view the scene of the midnight adventure, and the guests were conducted to the gallery, shown where each party had stood, the gas-pipe, the mark of the pistol-shot, and the door was opened to display the cabinet, and the window of the escape. To the intense surprise of her brother and sister, Bertha was examining her emeralds.

She came forward quite at her ease, and if she had been ten years a woman could not more naturally have a.s.sumed the entertainment of Lady Raymond, talking so readily that Phoebe would have believed the morning's transactions a delusion, but for Mervyn's telegraph of astonishment.

The visitors had been at the Holt, and obtained a promise from Miss Charlecote to spend the ensuing Sat.u.r.day week at Moorcroft. They begged the sisters to accompany her. Phoebe drew back, though Mervyn hurried out declarations of his not wanting her, and the others never going out, till she hardly knew how it had been decided; but as the guests departed she heard Mervyn severely observing to Bertha--'no, certainly I should not send you to keep company with any well-behaved young ladies.'

'Thank you, I have no desire to a.s.sociate with commonplace girls,' said Bertha, marching off to the west wing.

'You will go, Phoebe,' said Mervyn.

'Indeed, if I did it would be partly for the sake of giving change to Bertha, and letting her see what nice people really are.'

'Are you crazy, Phoebe? I would not have Bertha with her impudence and her pedantry go among the Raymonds--no, not for the Bank of England.'

Those words darted into Phoebe's mind the perception why Mervyn was, in his strange way, promoting her intercourse with Moorcroft, not only as stamping her conduct with approval of people of their worth and weight, but as affording him some slight glimmering of hope. She could not but recollect that the extra recklessness of language which had pained her, ever since his rejection had diminished ever since her report of Sir John's notice of her at the justice room. Sister-like, she pitied and hoped; but the more immediate care extinguished all the rest, and she was longing for Miss Fennimore's sympathy, though grieving at the pain the disclosure must inflict. It could not be made till the girls were gone to bed, and at half-past nine, Phoebe sought the schoolroom, and told her tale. There was no answer, but an almost convulsive shudder; her hand was seized, and her finger guided to the line which Miss Fennimore had been reading in the Greek Testament--'By their fruits ye shall know them.'

Rallying before Phoebe could trace what was pa.s.sing in her mind, she shut the book, turned her chair to the fire, invited Phoebe to another, and was at once the clear-headed, metaphysical governess, ready to discuss this grievous marvel. She was too generous by nature not to have treated her pupils with implicit trust, and this trust had been abused. Looking back, she and Phoebe could recollect moments when Bertha had been unaccounted for, and must have held interviews with Mr. Hastings. She had professed a turn for twilight walks in the garden, and remained out of doors when the autumn evenings had sent the others in, and on the Sunday afternoons, when Phoebe and Maria had been at church, Miss Fennimore reproached herself exceedingly with having been too much absorbed in her own readings to concern herself about the proceedings of a pupil, whose time on that day was at her own disposal. She also thought that there had been communications by look and sign across the pew at church; and she had remarked, though Phoebe had been too much occupied with her brother to perceive the restlessness that had settled on Bertha from the time of the departure of Mervyn's guests, and had once reproved her for lingering, as she thought, to gossip with Jane Hart in her bedroom. 'And now,' said Miss Fennimore, 'she should have a thorough change. Send her to school, calling it punishment, if you please, but chiefly for the sake of placing her among laughing girlish girls of the same age, and, above all, under a thoroughly religious mistress of wide intelligence, and who has never doubted.'

'But we were all to keep together, dear Miss Fennimore--you--'

'One whose mind has always been balancing between aspects of truth may instruct, but cannot educate. Few minds can embrace the moral virtues unless they are based on an undoubted foundation, connected with present devotional warmth, and future hopes and fears. I see this now; I once thought excellence would approve itself, for its own sake, to others, as it did to myself. I regarded Bertha as a fair subject for a full experiment of my system, with good disposition, good abilities, and few counter influences. I meant to cultivate self-relying, unprejudiced, effective good sense, and see--with prejudices have been rooted up restraints!'

'Education seems to me to have little to do with what people turn out,'

said Phoebe. 'Look at poor Miss Charlecote and the Sandbrooks.'

'Depend upon it, Phoebe, that whatever harm may have ensued from her errors in detail, those young people will yet bless her for the principle she worked on. You can none of you bless me, for having guided the hands of the watch, and having left the mainspring untouched.'