Hopes and Fears Part 62

Honor leant back with folded hands and closed eyes, so that Phoebe almost felt as if she had killed her. 'I suppose Robert was right to fetch him,' she said; 'but their telling you!'

'Owen told me he fancied Robert had done so,' said Phoebe, 'and called out to me something about family claims, and a married man.'

'Married!' cried Honora, starting forward. 'You are sure!'

'Quite sure,' repeated Phoebe; 'he desired me to tell you I was to say he knew he was unpardonable, but he had suffered a great deal, and he was grieved at the sorrow you would feel.'

Having faithfully discharged her message, Phoebe could not help being vexed at the relenting 'Poor fellow!'

Honor was no longer confounded, as at the first sentences, and though still cast down, was more relieved than her young friend could understand, asking all that had pa.s.sed between the young men, and when all had been told, leaning back in silence until, when almost at home, she laid her hand on Phoebe's arm, and said, 'My child, never think yourself safe from idols.'

She then sought her own room, and Phoebe feared that her presence was intrusive, for she saw her hostess no more till teatime, when the wan face and placid smile almost made her weep at first, then wonder at the calm unconstrained manner in which her amus.e.m.e.nt was provided for, and feel ready to beg not to be treated like a child or a stranger. When parting for the night, however, Honor tenderly said, 'Thanks, my dear, for giving up the evening to me.'

'I have only been an oppression to you.'

'You did me the greatest good. I did not want discussion; I only wanted kindness. I wish I had you always, but it is better not. Their uncle was right. I spoil every one.'

'Pray do not say so. You have been our great blessing. If you knew how we wish to comfort you.'

'You do comfort me. I can watch Robert realizing my visions for others, and you, my twilight moon, my autumn flower. But I must not love you too much, Phoebe. They all suffer for my inordinate affection. But it is too late to talk. Good night, sweet one.'

'Shall you sleep?' said Phoebe, wistfully lingering.

'Yes; I don't enter into it enough to be haunted. Ah! you have never learnt what it is to feel heavy with trouble. I believe I shall not dwell on it till I know more. There may be much excuse; she may have been artful, and at least Owen dealt fairly by her in one respect. I can better suppose her unworthy than him cruelly neglectful.'

In that hope Honor slept, and was not more depressed than Phoebe had seen her under Lucilla's desertion. She put off herjudgment till she should hear more, went about her usual occupations, and sent Phoebe home till letters should come, when they would meet again.

Both heard from Robert by the next post, and his letter to Miss Charlecote related all that he had been able to collect from Mrs.

Murrell, or from Owen himself. The narrative is here given more fully than he was able to make it. Edna Murrell, born with the susceptible organization of a musical temperament, had in her earliest childhood been so treated as to foster refined tastes and aspirations, such as disgusted her with the respectable vulgarity of her home. The pet of the nursery and school-room looked down on the lodge kitchen and parlour, and her discontent was a matter of vanity with her parents, as a sign of her superiority, while plausibility and caution were continually enjoined on her rather by example than by precept, and she was often aware of her mother's indulgence of erratic propensities in religion, unknown either to her father or his employers.

Unexceptionable as had been her training-school education, the high cultivation and soundness of doctrine had so acted on her as to keep her farther aloof from her mother, whose far more heartfelt religion appeared to her both distasteful and contemptible, and whose advice was thus cast aside as prejudiced and sectarian.

Such was the preparation for the unprotected life of a schoolmistress in a house by herself. Servants and small tradesfolk were no companions to her, and were offended by her ladylike demeanour; and her refuge was in books that served but to increase the perils of sham romance, and in enthusiastic adoration of the young lady, whose manners apparently placed her on an equality, although her beauty and musical talents were in truth only serving as a toy.

Her face and voice had already been thrust on Owen's notice before the adventure with the bargeman had const.i.tuted the young gentleman the hero of her grateful imagination, and commenced an intercourse for which his sister's inconsiderate patronage gave ample opportunities. His head was full of the theory of fusion of cla.s.ses, and of the innate refinement, freshness of intellect, and vigour of perception of the unsophisticated, at least so he thought, and when he lent her books, commenting on favourite pa.s.sages, and talked poetry or popular science to her, he imagined himself walking in the steps of those who were a.s.serting the claims of intelligence to cultivation, and sowing broadcast the seeds of art, literature, and emanc.i.p.ation. Perhaps he knew not how often he was betrayed into tokens of admiration, sufficient to inflame such a disposition as he had to deal with, and if he were aware of his influence, and her adoration, it idly flattered and amused him, without thought of the consequences.

On the night when she had fainted at the sight of his attention to Phoebe, she was left on his hands in a state when all caution and reserve gave way, and her violent agitation fully awakened him to the perception of the expectations he had caused, the force of the feelings he had aroused. A mixture of pity, vanity, and affection towards the beautiful creature before him had led to a response such as did not disappoint her, and there matters might have rested for the present, but that their interview had been observed. Edna, terror-stricken, believing herself irretrievably disgraced, had thrown herself on his mercy in a frantic condition, such as made him dread exposure for himself, as well as suspense for her tempestuous nature.

With all his faults, the pure atmosphere in which he had grown up, together with the tone of his a.s.sociates, comparatively free from the grosser and more hard-hearted forms of vice, had concurred with poor Edna's real modesty and principle in obtaining the sanction of marriage, for her flight with him from the censure of Wrapworth, and the rebukes of her mother. Throughout, his feeling had been chiefly stirred up by the actual sight of her beauty, and excited by her fervent pa.s.sion. When absent from her, there had been always regrets and hesitations, such as would have prevailed, save for his compa.s.sion, and dread of the effects of her desperation, both for her and for himself. The unpardonable manner in which he knew himself to have acted, made it needful to plunge deeper for the very sake of concealment.

Yet, once married, he would have been far safer if he had confessed the fact to his only true friend, since it must surely come to light some time or other, but he had bred himself up in the habit of schoolboy shuffling, hiding everything to the last moment, and he could not bear to be cast off by the Charterises, be pitied and laughed at by his Oxford friends, nor to risk Honor Charlecote's favour, perhaps her inheritance.

Return to Oxford the victim of an attachment to a village schoolmistress!

Better never return thither at all, as would be but too probably the case! No! the secret must be kept till his first start in life should be secure; and he talked to Edna of his future curacy, while she fed her fancy with visions of lovely parsonages and 'clergymen's ladies' in a world of pensive bliss, and after the honeymoon in Ireland, promised to wait patiently, provided her mother might know all.

Owen had not realized the home to which he was obliged to resign his wife, nor his mother-in-law's powers of tongue. There were real difficulties in the way of his visiting her. It was the one neighbourhood in London where his person might be known, and if he avoided daylight, he became the object of espial to the disappointed lodgers, who would have been delighted to identify the 'Mr. Brook' who had monopolized the object of their admiration. These perils, the various disagreeables, and especially Mrs. Murrell's complaints and demands for money, had so much annoyed Owen, who felt himself the injured party in the connection, that he had not only avoided the place, but endeavoured to dismiss the whole humiliating affair from his mind, trying to hinder himself from being hara.s.sed by letters, and when forced to attend to the representations of the women, sending a few kind words and promises, with such money as he could spare, always backed, however, by threats of the consequences of a disclosure, which he vaguely intimated would ruin his prospects for life.

Little did the thoughtless boy comprehend the cruelty of his neglect. In the underground rooms of the City lodging-house, the voluntary prison of the shame-faced, half-owned wife, the overwrought headache, incidental to her former profession, made her its prey; nervous fever came on as the suspense became more trying, and morbid excitement alternated with torpor and depression. Medical advice was long deferred, and that which was at last sought was not equal to her needs. It remained for the physician, summoned by Robert, in his horror at her delirium, to discover that her brain had long been in a state of irritation, which had become aggravated to such a degree that death was even to be desired. Could she yet survive, it could hardly be to the use of her intellect.

Robert described poor Owen's impetuous misery, and the cares which he lavished on the unconscious sufferer, mentioning him with warmth and tenderness that amazed Honor, from one so stern of judgment. Nay, Robert was more alive to the palliations of Owen's conduct than she was herself.

She grieved over the complicated deceit, and resented the cruelty to the wife with the keen severity of secluded womanhood, unable to realize the temptations of young-manhood.

'Why could he not have told me?' she said. 'I could so easily have forgiven him for generous love, if I alone had been offended, and there had been no falsehood; but after the way he has used us all, and chiefly that poor young thing, I can never feel that he is the same.'

And, though the heart that knew no guile had been saved from suffering, the thought of the intimacy that she had encouraged, and the wishes she had entertained for Phoebe, filled her with such dismay, that it required the sight of the innocent, serene face, and the sound of the happy, unembarra.s.sed voice, to rea.s.sure her that her darling's peace had not been wrecked. For, though Owen had never overpa.s.sed the bounds of the familiar intercourse of childhood, there had been an implication of preference in his look and tone; nor had there been error in the intuition of poor Edna's jealous pa.s.sion. Something there was of involuntary reverence that had never been commanded by the far more beautiful and gifted girl who had taken him captive.

So great was the shock that Honora moved about mechanically, hardly able to think. She knew that in time she should pardon her boy; but she could not yearn to do so till she had seen him repent. He had sinned too deeply against others to be taken home at once to her heart, even though she grieved over him with deep, loving pity, and sought to find the original germs of error rather in herself than in him.

Had she encouraged deceit by credulous trust? Alas! alas! that should but have taught him generosity. It was the old story. Fond affection had led her to put herself into a position to which Providence did not call her, and to which she was, therefore, unequal. Fond affection had blinded her eyes, and fostered in its object the very faults most hateful to her. She could only humble herself before her Maker for the recurring sin, and entreat for her own pardon, and for that of the offender with whose sins she charged herself.

And to man she humbled herself by her confession to Captain Charteris, and by throwing herself unreservedly on the advice of Mr. Saville and Sir John Raymond, for her future conduct towards the culprit. If he were suffering now for her rejection of the counsel of manhood and experience, it was right that they should deal with him now, and she would try to bear it. And she also tried as much as possible to soften the blow to Lucilla, who was still abroad with her cousins.

CHAPTER XII

A little grain of conscience made him sour.

TENNYSON

'A penny for your thoughts, Cilly,' said Horatia, sliding in on the slippery boards of a great bare room of a lodging-house at the celebrated Spa of Spitzwa.s.serfitzung.

'My thoughts? I was trying to recollect the third line of

"Sated at home, of wife and children tired, Sated abroad, all seen and naught admired."'

'Bless me, how grand! Worth twopence. So good how Shakspeare, as the Princess Ottilie would say!'

'Twopence for its sincerity! It is not for your sake that I am not in Old England.'

'Nor for that of the three flaxen-haired princesses, with religious opinions to be accommodated to those of the crowned heads they may marry?'

'I'm sick of the three, and their raptures. I wish I was as ignorant as you, and that Shakspeare had never been read at the Holt.'

'This is a sudden change. I thought Spitzwa.s.serfitzung and its princesses had brought halcyon days.'

'Halcyon days will never come till we get home.'

'Which Lolly will never do. She pa.s.ses for somebody here, and will never endure Castle Blanch again.'

'I'll make Owen come and take me home.'

'No,' said Rashe, seriously, 'don't bring Owen here. If Lolly likes to keep Charles where gaming is man's sole resource, don't run Owen into that sc.r.a.pe.'

'What a despicable set you are!' sighed Lucilla. 'I wonder why I stay with you.'

'You might almost as well be gone,' said Ratia. 'You aren't half so useful in keeping things going as you were once; and you won't be ornamental long, if you let your spirits be so uncertain.'