And instead of 'dearest Miss,'
Jewel, honey, sweetheart, bliss,
And those forms of old admiring,
Call her cockatrice and siren.--C. LAMB
The ladies of the house were going to a ball, and were in full costume:
Eloisa a study for the Arabian Nights, and Lucilla in an azure
gossamer-like texture surrounding her like a cloud, turquoises on her
arms, and blue and silver ribbons mingled with her blonde tresses.
Very like the clergyman's wife!
O sage Honor, were you not provoked with yourself for being so old as to
regard that bewitching sprite, and marvel whence comes the cost of those
robes of the woof of Faerie?
Let Oberon pay Titania's bills.
That must depend on who Oberon is to be.
Phoebe, to whom a doubt on that score would have appeared high treason,
nevertheless hated the presence of Mr. Calthorp as much as she could hate
anything, and was in restless anxiety as to Titania's behaviour. She
herself had no cause to complain, for she was at once singled out and led
away from Miss Charlecote, to be shown some photographic performances, in
which Lucy and her cousin had been dabbling.
'There, that horrid monster is Owen--he never will come out respectable.
Mr. Prendergast, he is better, because you don't see his face. There's
our school, Edna Murrell and all; I flatter myself that _is_ a work of
art; only this little wretch fidgeted, and muddled himself.'
'Is that the mistress? She does not look like one.'
'Not like Sally Page? No; she would bewilder the Hiltonbury mind. I
mean you to see her; I would not miss the shock to Honor. No, don't show
it to her! I won't have any preparation.'
'Do you call that preparation?' said Owen, coming up, and taking up the
photograph indignantly. 'You should not do such things, Cilly!'
''Tisn't I that do them--it's Phoebe's brother--the one in the sky I
mean, Dan Phoebus, and if he won't flatter, I can't help it. No, no,
I'll not have it broken; it is an exact likeness of all the children's
spotted frocks, and if it be not of Edna, it ought to be.'
'Look, Robert,' said Phoebe, as she saw him standing shy, grave, and
monumental, with nervous hands clasped over the back of a chair, neither
advancing nor retreating, 'what a beautiful place this is!'
'Oh! that's from a print--Glendalough! I mean to bring you plenty of the
real place.'
'Kathleen's Cave,' said the unwelcome millionaire.
'Yes, with a comment on Kathleen's awkwardness! I should like to see the
hermit who could push me down.'
'You! You'll never tread in Kathleen's steps!'
'Because I shan't find a hermit in the cave.'
'Talk of skylarking on "the lake whose gloomy shore!"' They all laughed
except the two Fulmorts.
'There's a simpler reason,' said one of the Guardsmen, 'namely, that
neither party will be there at all.'
'No, not the saint--'
'Nor the lady. Miss Charteris tells me all the maiden aunts are come up
from the country.' (How angry Phoebe was!)
'Happily it is an article I don't possess.'
'Well, we will not differ about technicalities, as long as the fact is
the same. You'll remember my words when you are kept on a diet of Hannah
More and Miss Edgeworth till you shall have abjured hounds, balls, and
salmon-flies.'
'The woman lives not who has the power!'
'What bet will you take, Miss Sandbrook?'
'What bet will you take, Lord William, that, maiden aunts and all, I
appear on the 3rd, in a dress of salmon-flies?'
'A hat trimmed with goose feathers to a pocket-handkerchief, that by that
time you are in the family mansion, repenting of your sins.'
Phoebe looked on like one in a dream, while the terms of the wager were
arranged with playful precision. She did not know that dinner had been
announced, till she found people moving, and in spite of her antipathy to
Mr. Calthorp, she rejoiced to find him assigned to herself--dear, good
Lucy must have done it to keep Robin to herself, and dear, good Lucy she
shall be, in spite of the salmon, since in the progress down-stairs she
has cleared the cloud from his brow.
It was done by a confiding caressing clasp on his arm, and the few words,
'Now for old friends! How charming little Phoebe looks!'
How different were his massive brow and deep-set eyes without their usual
load, and how sweet his gratified smile!
'Where have you been, you Robin? If I had not passed you in the Park, I
should never have guessed there was such a bird in London. I began to
change my mind, like Christiana--"I thought Robins were harmless and
gentle birds, wont to hop about men's doors, and feed on crumbs, and
such-like harmless food."'
'And have you seen me eating worms?'
'I've not seen you at all.'
'I did not think you had leisure--I did not believe I should be welcome.'
'The cruellest cut of all! positive irony--'
'No, indeed! I am not so conceited as--'
'As what?'
'As to suppose you could want me.'
'And there was I longing to hear about Phoebe! If you had only come, I
could have contrived her going to the _Zauberflote_ with us last night,
but I didn't know the length of her tether.'
'I did not know you were so kind.'
'Be kinder yourself another time. Don't I know how I have been torn to
pieces at Hiltonbury, without a friend to say one word for the poor
little morsel!' she said, piteously.
He was impelled to an eager 'No, no!' but recalling facts, he modified
his reply into, 'Friends enough, but very anxious!'
'There, I knew none of you trusted me,' she said, pretending to pout.
'When play is so like earnest--'
'Slow people are taken in! That's the fun! I like to show that I can
walk alone sometimes, and not be snatched up the moment I pop my head
from under my leading-strings.'
Her pretty gay toss of the head prevented Robert from thinking whether
woman is meant to be without leading-strings.
'And it was to avoid countenancing my vagaries that you stayed away?' she
said, with a look of injured innocence.
'I was very much occupied,' answered Robert, feeling himself in the
wrong.
'That horrid office! You aren't thinking of becoming a Clarence, to
drown yourself in brandy--that would never do.'
'No, I have given up all thoughts of that!'
'You _thought_, you wretched Redbreast! I _thought_ you knew better.'
'So I ought,' said Robert, gravely, 'but my father wished me to make the
experiment, and I must own, that before I looked into the details, there
were considerations which--which--'
'Such considerations as pounds_ s. d._? For shame!'
'For shame, indeed,' said the happy Robert. 'Phoebe judged you truly. I
did not know what might be the effect of habit--' and he became
embarrassed, doubtful whether she would accept the assumption on which he
spoke; but she went beyond his hopes.
'The only place I ever cared for is a very small old parsonage,' she
said, with feeling in her tone.
'Wrapworth? that is near Castle Blanch.'
'Yes! I must show it you. You shall come with Honor and Phoebe on
Monday, and I will show you everything.'
'I should be delighted--but is it not arranged?'
'I'll take care of that. Mr. Prendergast shall take you in, as he would
a newly-arrived rhinoceros, if I told him. He was our curate, and used
to live in the house even in our time. Don't say a word, Robin; it is to
be. I must have you see my river, and the stile where my father used to
sit when he was tired. I've never told any one which that is.'
Ordinarily Lucilla never seemed to think of her father, never named him,
and her outpouring was doubly prized by Robert, whose listening face drew
her on.
'I was too much of a child to understand how fearfully weak he must have
been, for he could not come home from the castle without a rest on that
stile, and we used to play round him, and bring him flowers. My best
recollections are all of that last summer--it seems like my whole life at
home, and much longer than it could really have been. We were all in all
to one another. How different it would have been if he had lived! I
think no one has believed in me since.'
There was something ineffably soft and sad in the last words, as the
beautiful, petted, but still lonely orphan cast down her eyelids with a
low long sigh, as though owning her errors, but pleading this
extenuation. Robert, much moved, was murmuring something incoherent, but
she went on. 'Rashe does, perhaps. Can't you see how it is a part of
the general disbelief in me to suppose that I come here only for London
seasons, and such like? I must live where I have what the dear old soul
there has not got to give.'
'You cannot doubt of her affection. I am sure there is nothing she would
not do for you.'
'"Do!" that is not what I want. It can't be done, it must be _felt_, and
that it never will be. When there's a mutual antagonism, gratitude
becomes a fetter, intolerable when it is strained.'
'I cannot bear to hear you talk so; revering Miss Charlecote as I do, and
feeling that I owe everything to her notice.'
'Oh, I find no fault, I reverence her too! It was only the nature of
things, not her intentions, nor her kindness, that was to blame. She
meant to be justice and mercy combined towards us, but I had all the one,
and Owen all the other. Not that I am jealous! Oh, no! Not that she
could help it; but no woman can help being hard on her rival's daughter.'
Nothing but the sweet tone and sad arch smile could have made this speech
endurable to Robert, even though he remembered many times when the
trembling of the scale in Miss Charlecote's hands had filled him with
indignation. 'You allow that it was justice,' he said, smiling.
'No doubt of that,' she laughed. 'Poor Honor! I must have been a
grievous visitation, but I am very good now; I shall come and spend
Sunday as gravely as a judge, and when you come to Wrapworth, you shall
see how I can go to the school when it is not forced down my throat--no
merit either, for our mistress is perfectly charming, with _such_ a
voice! If I were Phoebe I would look out, for Owen is desperately
smitten.'
'Phoebe!' repeated Robert, with a startled look.
'Owen and Phoebe! I considered it _une affaire arrangee_ as much as--'
She had almost said you and me: Robert could supply the omission, but he
was only blind of _one_ eye, and gravely said, 'It is well there is
plenty of time before Owen to tame him down.'
'Oney,' laughed Lucilla; 'yes, he has a good deal to do in that line,
with his opinions in such a mess that I really don't know what he does
believe.'
Though the information was not new to Robert, her levity dismayed him,
and he gravely began, 'If you have such fears--' but she cut him off
short.
'Did you ever play at bagatelle?'
He stared in displeased surprise.
'Did you never see the ball go joggling about before it could settle into
its hole, and yet abiding there very steadily at last? Look on quietly,
and you will see the poor fellow as sober a parish priest as yourself.'
'You are a very philosophical spectator of the process,' Robert said,
still displeased.
'Just consider what a capacious swallow the poor boy had in his tender
infancy, and how hard it was crammed with legends, hymns, and allegories,
with so many scruples bound down on his poor little conscience, that no
wonder, when the time of expansion came, the whole concern should give
way with a jerk.'
'I thought Miss Charlecote's education had been most anxiously
admirable.'
'Precisely so! Don't you see? Why, how dull you are for a man who has
been to Oxford!'
'I should seriously be glad to hear your view, for Owen's course has
always been inexplicable to me.'
'To you, poor Robin, who lived gratefully on the crumbs of our
advantages! The point was that to you they were crumbs, while we had a
surfeit.'
'Owen never seemed overdone. I used rather to hate him for his
faultlessness, and his familiarity with what awed my ignorance.'
'The worse for him! He was too apt a scholar, and received all
unresisting, unsifting--Anglo-Catholicism, slightly touched with
sentiment, enthusiasm for the Crusades, passive obedience--acted
faithfully up to it; imagined that to be "not a good Churchman," as he
told Charles, expressed the seven deadly sins, and that reasoning was the
deadliest of all!'
'As far as I understand you, you mean that there was not sufficient
distinction between proven and non-proven--important and unimportant.'
'You begin to perceive. If Faith be overworked, Reason kicks; and, of
course, when Owen found the Holt was not the world; that thinking was not
the exclusive privilege of demons; that habits he considered as
imperative duties were inconvenient, not to say impracticable; that his
articles of faith included much of the apocryphal,--why, there was a
general downfall!'
'Poor Miss Charlecote,' sighed Robert, 'it is a disheartening effect of
so much care.'
'She should have let him alone, then, for Uncle Kit to make a sailor of.
Then he would have had something better to do than to _think_!'
'Then you are distressed about him?' said Robert, wistfully.
'Thank you,' said she, laughing; 'but you see I am too wise ever to think
or distress myself. He'll think himself straight in time, and begin a
reconstruction from his scattered materials, I suppose, and meantime he
is a very comfortable brother, as such things go; but it is one of the
grudges I can't help owing to Honora, that such a fine fellow as that is
not an independent sailor or soldier, able to have some fun, and not
looked on as a mere dangler after the Holt.'
'I thought the reverse was clearly understood?'
'She ought to have "acted as sich." How my relatives, and yours too,
would laugh if you told them so! Not that I think, like them, that it is
Elizabethan dislike to naming a successor, nor to keep him on his good
behaviour; she is far above that, but it is plain how it will he. The
only other relation she knows in the world is farther off than we
are--not a bit more of a Charlecote, and twice her age; and when she has
waited twenty or thirty years longer for the auburn-haired lady my father
saw in a chapel at Toronto, she will bethink herself that Owen, or Owen's
eldest son, had better have it than the Queen. That's the sense of it;
but I hate the hanger-on position it keeps him in.'
'It is a misfortune,' said Robert. 'People treat him as a man of
expectations, and at his age it would not be easy to disown them, even to
himself. He has an eldest son air about him, which makes people impose
on him the belief that he is one; and yet, who could have guarded against
the notion more carefully than Miss Charlecote?'
'I'm of Uncle Kit's mind,' said Lucilla, 'that children should be left to
their natural guardians. What! is Lolly really moving before I have
softened down the edge of my ingratitude?'
'So!' said Miss Charteris, as she brought up the rear of the procession
of ladies on the stairs.
Lucilla faced about on the step above, with a face where interrogation
was mingled with merry defiance.
'So that is why the Calthorp could not get a word all the livelong
dinner-time!'
'Ah! I used you ill; I promised you an opportunity of studying "Cock
Robin," but you see I could not help keeping him myself--I had not seen
him for so long.'
'You were very welcome! It is the very creature that baffles me. I can
talk to any animal in the world except an incipient parson.'
'Owen, for instance?'
'Oh! if people choose to put a force on nature, there can be no general
rules. But, Cilly, you know I've always said you should marry whoever
you liked; but I require another assurance--on your word and honour--that
you are not irrevocably Jenny Wren as yet!'
'Did you not see the currant wine?' said Cilly, pulling leaves off a
myrtle in a tub on the stairs, and scattering them over her cousin.
'Seriously, Cilly! Ah, I see now--your exclusive attention to him
entirely reassures me. You would never have served him so, if you had
meant it.'
'It was commonplace in me,' said Lucilla, gravely, 'but I could not help
it; he made me feel so good--or so bad--that I believe I shall--'
'Not give up the salmon,' cried Horatia. 'Cilly, you will drive me to
commit matrimony on the spot.'
'Do,' said Lucilla, running lightly up, and dancing into the
drawing-room, where the ladies were so much at their ease, on low couches
and ottomans, that Phoebe stood transfixed by the novelty of a
drawing-room treated with such freedom as was seldom permitted in even
the schoolroom at Beauchamp, when Miss Fennimore was in presence.
'Phoebe, bright Phoebe!' cried Lucilla, pouncing on both her hands, and
drawing her towards the other room, 'it is ten ages since I saw you, and
you must bring your taste to aid my choice of the fly costume. Did you
hear, Rashe? I've a bet with Lord William that I appear at the ball all
in flies. Isn't it fun?'
'Oh, jolly!' cried Horatia. 'Make yourself a pike-fly.'
'No, no; not a guy for any one. Only wear a trimming of salmon-flies,
which will be lovely.'
'You do not really mean it?' said Phoebe.
'Mean it? With all my heart, in spite of the tremendous sacrifice of
good flies. Where honour is concerned--'
'There, I knew you would not shirk.'
'Did I ever say so?'--in a whisper, not unheard by Phoebe, and affording
her so much satisfaction that she only said, in a grave, puzzled voice,
'The hooks?'
'Hooks and all,' was the answer. 'I do nothing by halves.'
'What a state of mind the fishermen will be in! proceeded Horatia.
'You'll have every one of them at your feet.'
'I shall tell them that two of a trade never agree. Come, and let us
choose.' And opening a drawer, Lucilla took out her long parchment book,
and was soon eloquent on the merits of the doctor, the butcher, the
duchess, and all her other radiant fabrications of gold pheasants'
feathers, parrot plumes, jays' wings, and the like. Phoebe could not
help admiring their beauty, though she was perplexed all the while,
uncomfortable on Robert's account, and yet not enough assured of the
usages of the London world to be certain whether this were unsuitable.
The Charteris family, though not of the most _elite_ circles of all, were
in one to which the Fulmorts had barely the _entree_, and the ease and
dash of the young ladies, Lucilla's superior age, and caressing
patronage, all made Phoebe in her own eyes too young and ignorant to pass
an opinion. She would have known more about the properties of a
rectangle or the dangers of a paper currency.
Longing to know what Miss Charlecote thought, she stood, answering as
little as possible, until Rashe had been summoned to the party in the
outer room, and Cilly said, laughing, 'Well, does she astonish your
infant mind?'
'I do not quite enter into her,' said Phoebe, doubtfully.
'The best-natured and most unappreciated girl in the world. Up to
anything, and only a victim to prejudice. You, who have a strong-minded
governess, ought to be superior to the delusion that it is interesting to
be stupid and helpless.'
'I never thought so,' said Phoebe, feeling for a moment in the wrong, as
Lucilla always managed to make her antagonists do.
'Yes, you do, or why look at me in that pleading, perplexed fashion, save
that you have become possessed with the general prejudice. Weigh it, by
the light of Whately's logic, and own candidly wherefore Rashe and I
should be more liable to come to grief, travelling alone, than two men of
the same ages.'
'I have not grounds enough to judge,' said Phoebe, beginning as though
Miss Fennimore were giving an exercise to her reasoning powers; then,
continuing with her girlish eagerness of entreaty, 'I only know that it
cannot be right, since it grieves Robin and Miss Charlecote so much.'
'And all that grieves Robin and Miss Charlecote must be shocking, eh?
Oh, Phoebe, what very women all the Miss Fennimores in the world leave
us, and how lucky it is!'
'But I don't think you are going to grieve them,' said Phoebe, earnestly.
'I hate the word!' said Lucilla. 'Plaguing is only fun, but grieving,
that is serious.'
'I do believe this is only plaguing!' cried Phoebe, 'and that this is
your way of disposing of all the flies. I shall tell Robin so!'
'To spoil all my fun,' exclaimed Lucilla. 'No, indeed!'
Phoebe only gave a nod and smile of supreme satisfaction.
'Ah! but, Phoebe, if I'm to grieve nobody, what's to become of poor
Rashe, you little selfish woman?'
'Selfish, no!' sturdily said Phoebe. 'If it be wrong for you, it must be
equally wrong for her; and perhaps' she added, slowly, 'you would both be
glad of some good reason for giving it up. Lucy, dear, do tell me
whether you really like it, for I cannot fancy you so.'
'Like it? Well, yes! I like the salmons, and I dote on the fun and the
fuss. I say, Phoebe, can you bear the burden of a secret? Well--only
mind, if you tell Robin or Honor, I shall certainly go; we never would
have taken it up in earnest if such a rout had not been made about it,
that we were driven to show we did not care, and could be trusted with
ourselves.'
'Then you don't mean it?'
'That's as people behave themselves. Hush! Here comes Honor. Look
here, Sweet Honey, I am in a process of selection. I am pledged to come
out at the ball in a unique trimming of salmon-flies.'
'My dear!' cried poor Honor, in consternation, 'you can't be so absurd.'
'It is so slow not to be absurd.'
'At fit times, yes; but to make yourself so conspicuous!'
'They say I can't help that,' returned Lucy, in a tone of comical
melancholy.
'Well, my dear, we will talk it over on Sunday, when I hope you may be in
a rational mood.'
'Don't say so,' implored Lucilla, 'or I shan't have the courage to come.
A rational mood! It is enough to frighten one away; and really I do want
very much to come. I've not heard a word yet about the Holt. How is the
old dame, this summer?'
And Lucy went on with unceasing interest about all Hiltonbury matters,
great and small, bewitching Honora more than would have seemed possible
under the circumstances. She was such a winning fairy that it was hardly
possible to treat her seriously, or to recollect causes of displeasure,
when under the spell of her caressing vivacity, and unruffled, audacious
fun.
So impregnable was her gracious good-humour, so untameable her high
spirits, that it was only by remembering the little spitfire of twelve or
fourteen years ago that it was credible that she had a temper at all; the
temper erst wont to exhale in chamois bounds and dervish pirouettes, had
apparently left not a trace behind, and the sullen ungraciousness to
those who offended her had become the sunniest sweetness, impossible to
disturb. Was it real improvement? Concealment it was not, for Lucilla
had always been transparently true. Was it not more probably connected
with that strange levity, almost insensibility, that had apparently
indurated feelings which in early childhood had seemed sensitive even to
the extent of violence? Was she only good-humoured because nothing
touched her? Had that agony of parting with her gentle father seared her
affections, till she had become like a polished gem, all bright glancing
beauty, but utterly unfeeling?