Hopes and Fears Part 82

'Will He give me His own goodness?' said Mrs. Fulmort, wistfully. 'I never did know how to think about Him--I wish I had cared more. What do you think, Phoebe?'

'I cannot tell how to answer fully, dear mamma,' said Phoebe; 'but indeed it is safe to think of His great loving-kindness and mercy. Robert will be here to-morrow. He will tell you better.'

'He will give me the Holy Sacrament,' said Mrs. Fulmort, 'and then I shall go--'

Presently she moved uneasily. 'Oh, Phoebe, I am so tired. Nothing rests me.'

'There remaineth a rest,' gently whispered Phoebe--and Miss Fennimore thought the young face had something of the angel in it--'no more weariness there.'

'They won't think what a poor dull thing I am there,' added her mother.

'I wish I could take poor Maria with me. They don't like her here, and she will be teased and put about.'

'No, mother, never while I can take care of her!'

'I know you will, Phoebe, if you say so. Phoebe, love, when I see G.o.d, I shall thank Him for having made you so good and dear, and letting me have some comfort in one of my children.'

Phoebe tried to make her think of Robert, but she was exhausted, dozed, and was never able to speak so much again.

Miss Fennimore thought instead of reading. Was it the mere effect on her sympathies that bore in on her mind that Truth existed, and was grasped by the mother and daughter? What was there in those faltering accents that impressed her with reality? Why, of all her many instructors, had none touched her like poor, ignorant, feeble-minded Mrs. Fulmort?

Robert arrived the next day. His mother knew him and was roused sufficiently to accept his offices as a clergyman. Then, as if she thought it was expected of her, she asked for her younger daughters, but when they came, she looked distressed and perplexed.

'Bless them, mother,' said Robert, bending over her, and she evidently accepted this as what she wanted; but 'How--what?' she added; and taking the uncertain hand, he guided it to the head of each of his three sisters, and prompted the words of blessing from the failing tongue.

Then as Bertha rose, he sank on his knees in her place, 'Bless me, bless me, too, mother; bless me, and pardon my many acts of self-will.'

'You are good--you--you are a clergyman,' she hesitated, bewildered.

'The more reason, mamma; it will comfort him.' And it was Phoebe who won for her brother the blessing needed as balm to a bleeding heart.

'The others are away,' said the dying woman; 'maybe, if I had made them good when they were little, they would not have left me now.'

While striving to join in prayer for them, she slumbered, and in the course of the night she slept herself tranquilly away from the world where even prosperity had been but a troubled maze to her.

Augusta arrived, weeping profusely, but with all her wits about her, so as to a.s.sume the command, and to provide for her own, and her Admiral's comfort. Phoebe was left to the mournful repose of having no one to whom to attend, since Miss Fennimore provided for the younger ones; and in the la.s.situde of bodily fatigue and sorrow, she shrank from Maria's babyish questions and Bertha's levity and curiosity, spending her time chiefly alone. Even Robert could not often be with her, since Mervyn's absence and silence threw much on him and Mr. Crabbe, the executor and guardian; and the Bannermans were both exacting and self-important. The Actons, having been pursued by their letters from place to place in the Highlands, at length arrived, and Mervyn last of all, only just in time for the funeral.

Phoebe did not see him till the evening after it, when, having spent the day nearly alone, she descended to the late dinner, and after the quietness in which she had lately lived, and with all the tenderness from fresh suffering, it seemed to her that she was entering on a distracting turmoil of voices. Mervyn, however, came forward at once to meet her, threw his arm round her, and kissed her rather demonstratively, saying, 'My little Phoebe, I wondered where you were;' then putting her into a chair, and bending over her, 'We are in for the funeral games. Stand up for yourself!'

She did not know in the least what he could mean, but she was too sick at heart to ask; she only thought he looked unwell, jaded, and f.a.gged, and with a heated complexion.

He handed Lady Acton into the dining-room; Augusta, following with Sir Bevil, was going to the head of the table, when he called out, 'That's Phoebe's place!'

'Not before my elders,' Phoebe answered, trying to seat herself at the side.

'The sister at home is mistress of the house,' he sternly answered.

'Take your proper place, Phoebe.'

In much discomfort she obeyed, and tried to attend civilly to Sir Nicholas's observations on the viands, hoping to intercept a few, as she perceived how they chafed her eldest brother.

At last, on Mervyn himself roundly abusing the flavour of the ice-pudding, Augusta not only defended it, but confessed to having herself directed Mrs. Brisbane to the concoction that morning.

'Mrs. Brisbane shall take orders from no lady but Miss Fulmort, while she is in my house,' thundered Mervyn.

Phoebe, in agony, began to say she knew not what to Sir Bevil, and he seconded her with equal vehemence and incoherency, till by the time they knew what they were talking of, they were with much interest discussing his little daughter, scarcely turning their heads from one another, till, in the midst of dessert, the voice of Juliana was heard,--'Sir Bevil, Sir Bevil, if you can spare me any attention--What was the name of that person at Hampstead that your sister told me of?'

'That person! What, where poor Anne Acton was boarded? Dr. Graham, he called himself, but I don't believe he was a physician. Horrid vulgar fellow!'

'Excellent for the purpose, though,' continued Lady Acton, addressing herself as before to Mr. Crabbe; 'advertises for nervous or deficient ladies, and boards them on very fair terms: would take her quite off our hands.'

Phoebe turned a wild look of imploring interrogation on Sir Bevil, but a certain family telegraph had electrified him, and his eyes were on the grapes that he was eating with nervous haste. Her blood boiling at what she apprehended, Phoebe could endure her present post no longer, and starting up, made the signal for leaving the dinner-table so suddenly that Augusta choked upon her gla.s.s of wine, and carried off her last macaroon in her hand. Before she had recovered breath to rebuke her sister's precipitation, Phoebe, with boldness and spirit quite new to the sisters, was confronting Juliana, and demanding what she had been saying about Hampstead.

'Only,' said Juliana, coolly, 'that I have found a capital place there for Maria--a Dr. Graham, who boards and lodges such unfortunates. Sir Bevil had an idiot cousin there who died. I shall write to-morrow.'

'I promised that Maria should not be separated from me,' said Phoebe.

'Nonsense, my dear,' said Augusta; 'we could not receive her; she can never be made presentable.'

'You?' said Phoebe.

'Yes, my dear; did you not know? You go home with us the day after to-morrow; and next spring I mean to bring you out, and take you everywhere. The Admiral is so generous!'

'But the others?' said Phoebe.

'I don't mind undertaking Bertha,' said Lady Acton. 'I know of a good school for her, and I shall deposit Maria at Dr. Graham's as soon as I can get an answer.'

'Really,' continued Augusta, 'Phoebe will look very creditable by and by, when she has more colour and not all this c.r.a.pe. Perhaps I shall get her married by the end of the season; only you must learn better manners first, Phoebe--not to rush out of the dining-room in this way. I don't know what I shall do without my other gla.s.s of wine--when I am so low, too!'

'A fine mistress of the house, indeed,' said Lady Acton. 'It is well Mervyn's absurd notion is impossible.'

'What was that? To keep us all?' asked Phoebe, catching at the hope.

'Not Maria nor the governess. You need not flatter yourself,' said Juliana; 'he said he wouldn't have them at any price; and as to keeping house alone with a man of his character, even you may have sense to see it couldn't be for a moment.'

'Did Robert consent to Maria's going to Hampstead?' asked Phoebe.

'Robert--what has he to do with it? He has no voice.'

'He said something about getting the three boarded with some clergyman's widow,' said Augusta; 'buried in some hole, I suppose, to make them like himself--go to church every day, and eat cold dinners on Sunday.'

'I should like to see Bertha doing that,' said Juliana, laughing.

But the agony of helplessness that had oppressed Phoebe was relieved.

She saw an outlet, and could form a resolution. Home might have to be given up, but there was a means of fulfilling her mother's charge, and saving Maria from the private idiot asylum; and for that object Phoebe was ready to embrace perpetual seclusion with the dullest of widows. She found her sisters discussing their favourite subject--Mervyn's misconduct and extravagance--and she was able to sit apart, working, and thinking of her line of action. Only two days! She must be prompt, and not wait for privacy or for counsel. So when the gentlemen came in, and Mr. Crabbe came towards her, she took him into the window, and asked him if any choice were permitted her as to her residence.

'Certainly; so nearly of age as you are. But I naturally considered that you would wish to be with Lady Bannerman, with all the advantages of London society.'

'But she will not receive Maria. I promised that Maria should be my charge. You have not consented to this Hampstead scheme?'

'Her ladys.h.i.+p is precipitate,' half whispered the lawyer. 'I certainly would not, till I had seen the establishment, and judged for myself.'