Hopes and Fears

gelebet was the farewell laid on Bertha's table. What a Thekla and what a Max! O profanation! But Honor felt Bertha a charge of her own, and her aid was the more thankfully accepted that the patient was quite beyond Phoebe. She had too long rebelled against her sister to find rest in her guardianship. Phoebe's voice disposed her to resistance, her advice to wrangling, and Miss Fennimore alone had power to enforce what was needful; and so devoted was she, that Honor could scarcely persuade her to lie down to rest for a few hours.

Honor was dismayed at the change from the childish espiegle roundness of feature to a withered, scathed countenance, singularly old, and mournfully contrasting with the mischievous-looking waves and rings of curly hair upon the brow. Premature playing at passion had been sport with edged tools. Sleeping, the talk was less, however, of the supposed love, than of science and metaphysics; waking, there was silence between weakness and sullenness.

Thus passed day after day, always in the same feverish lethargic oppression which baffled medical skill, and kept the sick mind beyond the reach of human aid; and so uniform were the days, that her illness seemed to last for months instead of weeks.

Miss Fennimore insisted on the night-watching for her share. Phoebe divided with her and Lieschen the morning cares; and Miss Charlecote came in the forenoon and stayed till night, but slept at home, whither Maria was kindly invited; but Phoebe did not like to send her away without herself or Lieschen, and Robert undertook for her being inoffensive to Mervyn. In fact, she was obliging and unobtrusive, only speaking when addressed, and a willing messenger. Mervyn first forgot her presence, then tolerated her saucer eyes, then found her capable of running his errands, and lastly began to care to please her. Honora had devised employment for her, by putting a drawer of patchwork at her disposal, and suggesting that she should make a workbag for each of Robert's 139 school girls; and the occupation this afforded her was such a public benefit, that Robert was content to pay the tax of telling her the destination of each individual bag, and being always corrected if he twice mentioned the same name. When Mervyn dozed in his chair, she would require from Robert 'stories' of his scholars; and it even came to pass that Mervyn would recur to what had then passed, as though he had not been wholly asleep.

Mervyn was chiefly dependent on his brother for conversation, entertainment, and assistance in his affairs; and though not a word passed upon their differences and no professions were made, the common anxiety, and Mervyn's great need of help, had swept away all traces of unfriendliness. Not even when children in the nursery had they been so free from variance or bitterness as while waiting the issue of their sister's illness; both humbled, both feeling themselves in part the cause, each anxious to cheer and console the other-one, weak, subdued, dependent- the other, considerate, helpful, and eager to atone for past harshness. Strange for brothers to wait till the ages of twenty-nine and twenty-seven to find out that they really did prefer each other to every one else, in spite of the immense differences between their characters and habits!

'I say,' asked Mervyn, one day, when resting after having brought on giddiness and confusion by directing Robert how to answer a letter from the office, 'what would you do with this bore of a business, if it came to you?'

'Get rid of it,' said Robert, surveying him with startled eyes.

'Aye-sell it, and get the devilry, as you call it, multiplied to all infinity.'

'Close it.'

'Boil soup in the coppers; bake loaves in the furnaces? It makes you look at me perilously-and a perilous game you would find it, most likely to swallow this place and all the rest. Why, you, who had the making of a man of business in you, might reflect that you can't annihilate property without damage to other folks.'

'I did not reflect,' said Robert, gravely; 'the matter never occurred to me.'

'What is the result of your reflection now?'

'Nothing at all,' was the somewhat impatient reply. 'I trust never to have to consider. Get it out of my hands at any sacrifice, so as it may do the least harm to others. Had I no other objection to that business, I should have no choice.'

'Your cloth? Well, that's a pity, for I see how it could be mitigated, so as to satisfy your scruples;' and Mervyn, whose head could work when it was not necessary, detailed a scheme for gradually contracting the most objectionable traffic, and adopting another branch of the trade.

'Excellent,' said Robert, assenting with delight at each pause. 'You will carry it out.'

'I? I'm only a reprobate distiller.'

There it ended, and Robert must have patience.

The guardian, Mr. Crabbe, came as soon as his gout would permit, and hemmed and grunted in reply to the strange narrative into which he had come to inquire. Acting was as yet impossible; Mervyn was forbidden to transact business, and Bertha was far too ill for the removal of the young ladies to be attempted. Miss Fennimore did indeed formally give in her resignation of her situation, but she was too necessary as a nurse for the time of her departure to be fixed, and Mr. Crabbe was unable to settle anything definitively. He found Robert-who previously had spurred him to strong measures-bent on persuading him to lenity, and especially on keeping Phoebe with Mervyn; and after a day and night of perplexity, the old gentleman took his leave, promising to come again on Bertha's recovery, and to pacify the two elder sisters by representing the condition of Beauchamp, and that for the present the Incumbent of St. Matthew's and Miss Charlecote might be considered as sufficient guardians for the inmates. 'Or if their Ladyships thought otherwise,' he said, with a twinkle in his eye, 'why did they not come down themselves?'

Mervyn made a gesture of horror, but all knew that there was little danger. Augusta was always 'so low' at the sight of illness, and unless Phoebe had been the patient out of sight, Juliana would not have brought her husband; obvious as would have been the coming of an elder sister when the sickness of the younger dragged on so slowly and wearily.

No one went through so much as Miss Fennimore. Each hour of her attendance on Bertha stamped the sense of her own failure, and of the fallacies to which her life had been dedicated. The sincerity, honour, and modesty that she had inculcated, had been founded on self-esteem alone; and when they had proved inadequate to prevent their breach, their outraged relics had prompted the victim to despair and die. Intellectual development and reasoning powers had not availed one moment against inclination and self-will, and only survived in the involuntary murmurs of a disordered nervous system. All this had utterly overthrown that satisfaction in herself and her own moral qualities in which Miss Fennimore had always lived; she had become sensible of the deep flaws in all that she had admired in her own conduct; and her reason being already prepared by her long and earnest study to accept the faith in its fulness, she had begun to crave after the Atoning Mercy of which she sorely felt the need. But if it be hard for one who has never questioned to take home individually the efficacy of the great Sacrifice, how much harder for one taught to deny the Godhead which rendered the Victim worthy to satisfy Eternal Justice? She accepted the truth, but the gracious words would not reach her spirit; they were to her as a feast in a hungry man's dream. Robert alone was aware of the struggles through which she was passing, and he could do little in direct aid of her; the books-even the passages of Scripture that he found for her-seemed to fall short; it was as though the sufferer in the wilderness lay in sight of the brazen serpent, but his eyes were holden that he could not see it.

Only the governess's strong and untaxed health could have carried her through her distress and fatigue, for she continued to engross the most trying share of the nursing, anxious to shield Phoebe from even the knowledge of all the miseries of Bertha's nights, when the poor child would start on her pillow with a shriek, gaze wildly round, trembling in every limb, the dew starting on her brow, face well-nigh convulsed, teeth chattering, and strange, incoherent words-

'A dream, only a dream!' she murmured, recovering consciousness.

'What was only a dream?' asked Miss Fennimore, one night.

'Oh, nothing!' but she still shivered; then striving to catch hold of the broken threads of her philosophy, 'How one's imagination is a prey to-to-what is it? To-to old impressions-when one is weak.'

'What kind of impressions?' asked Miss Fennimore, resolved to probe the matter.

Bertha, whose defect of speech was greatly increased by weakness, was long in making her answer comprehensible; but Miss Fennimore gathered it at last, and it made her spirit quake, for it referred to the terrors beyond the grave. Yet she firmly answered-

'Such impressions may not always result from weakness.'

'I thought,' cried Bertha, rising on her elbow, 'I thought that an advanced state of civilization dispenses with sectarian-I mean superstitious-literal threats.'

'No civilization can change those decrees, nor make them unmerited,' said Miss Fennimore, sadly.