“Oh yes!” said Fanny; “I know it very well.”
“Then play it, my good child. This too we have taken as spoil from the enemy, and instead of profane Italian words, you will here find in your own language thoughts that may be spoken without fear.”
Fanny instantly complied; and though her power of singing was greatly inferior to that of Rosalind, the performance, aided by the fine bass voice of Mr. Cartwright, and an accompaniment very correctly played, was very agreeable. Fanny herself thought she had never sung so well before, and required only to be told by the vicar what she was to do next, to prolong the performance till considerably past Mr. Cartwright’s usual hour of retiring.
About an hour after the singing began, Henrietta approached Miss Torrington, and said in a whisper too low to be heard at the instrument, “My head aches dreadfully. Can you spare me?”
As she had not spoken a single syllable since the trio entered the drawing-room after dinner, Rosalind could not wholly refrain from a smile as she replied “Why, yes; I think I can.”
“I am not jesting; I am suffering, Rosalind. You will not leave that girl alone with him?”
“Dear Henrietta!” cried Rosalind, taking her hand with ready sympathy, “I will not, should they sing together till morning. But is there nothing I can do for you — nothing I can give you that may relieve your head?”
“Nothing, nothing! Good night!” and she glided out of the room unseen by Fanny and unregarded by her father.
It more than once occurred to Miss Torrington during the two tedious hours that followed her departure, that Mr. Cartwright, who from time to time stole a glance at her, prolonged his canticles for the purpose of making her sit to hear them; a species of penance for her last night’s offence by no means ill imagined.
At length, however, he departed; and after exchanging a formal “Good night,” the young ladies retired to their separate apartments.
Rosalind rose with a heavy heart the following morning, hardly knowing whether to wish for a letter from Charles Mowbray, which it was just possible the post might bring her, or not. If a letter arrived, there would certainly be no hope of seeing him; but if it did not, she should fancy every sound she heard foretold his approach, and she almost dreaded the having to answer all the questions he would come prepared to ask.
This state of suspense, however, did not last long; for, at least one hour before it was possible that a letter could arrive, Charles Mowbray in a chaise with four foaming post-horses rattled up to the door.
Rosalind descried him from her window before he reached the house; and her first feeling was certainly one of embarrassment, as she remembered that it was her summons which had brought him there. But a moment’s reflection not only recalled her motives, but the additional reasons she now had for believing she had acted wisely; so, arming herself with the consciousness of being right, she hastened down stairs to meet him, in preference to receiving a message through a servant, requesting to see her.
She found him, as she expected, in a state of considerable agitation and alarm; and feeling most truly anxious to remove whatever portion of this was unnecessary, she greeted him with the most cheerful aspect she could assume, saying, “I fear my letter has terrified you, Mr. Mowbray, more than I wished it to do. But be quite sure that now you are here every thing will go on as it ought to do; and of course, when your mother returns, we can neither of us have any farther cause of anxiety about Fanny.”
“And what is your cause of anxiety about her at present, Miss Torrington? For Heaven’s sake explain yourself fully; you know not how I have been tormenting myself by fearing I know not what.”
“I am bound to explain myself fully,” said Rosalind gravely; “but it is not easy, I assure you.”
“Only tell me at once what it is you fear. Do you imagine Mr. Cartwright hopes to persuade Fanny to marry him?”
“I certainly did think so,” said Rosalind; “but I believe now that I was mistaken.”
“Thank Heaven!” cried the young man fervently. “This is a great relief, Rosalind, I assure you. I believe now I can pretty well guess what it is you do fear; and though it is provoking enough, it cannot greatly signify. We shall soon cure her of any fit of evangelicalism with which the vicar is likely to infect her.”
“Heaven grant it!” exclaimed Rosalind, uttering a fervent ejaculation in her turn.
“Never doubt it, Miss Torrington. I have heard a great deal about this Cartwright at Oxford. He is a Cambridge man, by the way, and there are lots of men there who think him quite an apostle. But the thing does not take at Oxford, and I assure you he is famously quizzed. But the best of the joke is, that his son was within an ace of being expelled for performing more outrageous feats in the larking line than any man in the university; and in fact he must have been rusticated, had not his pious father taken him home before the business got wind, to prepare him privately for his degree. They say he is the greatest Pickle in Oxford; and that, spite of the new light, his father is such an ass as to believe that all this is ordained only to make his election more glorious.”
“For his election, Mr. Mowbray, I certainly do not care much; but for your sister — though I am aware that at her age there may be very reasonable hope that the pernicious opinions she is now imbibing may be hereafter removed, yet I am very strongly persuaded that if you were quite aware of the sort of influence used to convert her to Mr. Cartwright’s Calvinistic tenets, you would not only disapprove it, but use very effectual measures to put her quite out of his way.”
“Indeed! — I confess this appears to me very unnecessary. Surely the best mode of working upon so pure a mind as Fanny’s is to reason with her, and to show her that by listening to those pernicious rhapsodies she is in fact withdrawing herself from the church of her fathers; but I think this may be done without sending her out of Mr. Cartwright’s way.”
“Well,” replied Rosalind very meekly, “now you are here, I am quite sure that you will do every thing that is right and proper. Mrs. Mowbray cannot be much longer absent; and when she returns, you will perhaps have some conversation with her upon the subject.”
“Certainly. — And so Sir Gilbert has absolutely refused to act as executor?”
“He has indeed, and spite of the most earnest entreaties from Helen. Whatever mischief happens, I shall always think he is answerable for it; for his refusal to act threw your mother at once upon seeking counsel from Mr. Cartwright, as to what it was necessary for her to do; and from that hour the house has never been free from him for a single day.”
“Provoking obstinacy!” replied Mowbray: “yet after all, Rosalind, the worst mischief, as you call it, that can happen, is our not being on such pleasant terms with them as we used to be. And the colonel is at home too; I must and will see him, let the old man be as cross as he will. — But where is your little saint? you don’t keep her locked up, I hope, Rosalind? And where is this Miss of the new birth that you told me of?”
Young Mowbray threw a melancholy glance round the empty room as he spoke, and the kind-hearted Rosalind understood his feelings and truly pitied him. How different was this return home from any other he had ever made!
“The room looks desolate — does it not, Mr. Mowbray? — Even I feel it so. I will go and let Fanny know you are here; but what reason shall I assign for your return?”
“None at all, Miss Torrington. The whim took me, and I am here. Things are so much better than I expected, that I shall probably be back again in a day or two; but I must contrive to see young Harrington.”
Rosalind left the room, heartily glad that Fanny’s brother was near her, but not without some feeling of mortification at the little importance he appeared to attach to the information she had given him.
A few short weeks before, Rosalind would have entered Fanny’s room with as much freedom as her own; but the schism which has unhappily entered so many English houses under the semblance of superior piety was rapidly doing its work at Mowbray Park; and the true
friend, the familiar companion, the faithful counsellor, stood upon the threshold, and ventured not to enter till she had announced her approach by a knock at the dressing-room door.
“Come in,” was uttered in a gentle and almost plaintive voice by Fanny.
Miss Torrington entered, and, to her great astonishment, saw Mr. Cartwright seated beside Fanny, a large Bible lying open on the table before them.
She looked at them for one moment without speaking. The vicar spread his open hand upon the volume, as if to point out the cause of his being there; and as his other hand covered the lower part of his face the expression of his countenance was concealed.
Fanny coloured violently, — and the more so, perhaps, because she was conscious that her appearance was considerably changed since she met Miss Torrington at breakfast. All her beautiful curls had been carefully straightened by the application of a wet sponge; and her hair was now entirely removed from her forehead, and plastered down behind her poor little distorted ears as closely as possible.
Never was metamorphosis more complete. Beautiful as her features were, the lovely picture which Fanny’s face used to present to the eye required her bright waving locks to complete its charm; and without them she looked more like a Chinese beauty on a japan skreen, than like herself.
Something approaching to a smile passed over Rosalind’s features, which the more readily found place there, perhaps, from the belief that Charles’s arrival would soon set her ringlets curling again.
“Fanny, your brother is come,” said she, “and he is waiting for you in the drawing-room.”
“Charles?” cried Fanny, forgetting for a moment her new character; and hastily rising she had almost quitted the room, when she recollected herself, and turning back, said,
“You will come too, to see Charles, Mr. Cartwright?”
“I will come, as usual, this evening, my dear child,” said he, with the appearance of great composure; “but I will not break in upon him now. Was his return expected?” he added carelessly, as he took up his hat; and as he spoke Rosalind thought that his eye glanced towards her.
“No indeed!” replied Fanny: “I never was more surprised. Did he say, Rosalind, what it was brought him home?”
“I asked him to state his reason for it,” replied Miss Torrington, “and he told me he could assign nothing but whim.”
Rosalind looked in the face of the vicar as she said this, and she perceived a slight, but to her perfectly perceptible, change in its expression. He was evidently relieved from some uneasy feeling or suspicion by what she had said.
“Go to your brother, my dear child; let me not detain you from so happy a meeting for a moment.”
Fanny again prepared to leave the room; but as she did so, her eye chanced to rest upon her own figure reflected from a mirror above the chimney-piece. She raised her hand almost involuntarily to her hair.
“Will not Charles think me looking very strangely?” said she, turning towards Mr. Cartwright with a blushing cheek and very bashful eye.
He whispered something in her ear in reply, which heightened her blush, and induced her to answer with great earnestness, “Oh no!” and, without farther doubt or delay, she ran down stairs. Miss Torrington followed her, not thinking it necessary to take any leave of the vicar, who gently found his way down stairs, and out of the house, as he had found his way into it, without troubling any servant whatever.
CHAPTER II.
CHARLES’S AMUSEMENT AT HIS SISTER’S APPEARANCE. — HE DISCUSSES HER CASE WITH ROSALIND.
Rosalind and Fanny entered the drawing-room together; and young Mowbray, at the sound of their approach, sprang forward to meet them; but the moment he threw his eyes on his sister he burst forth into a fit of uncontrollable laughter; and though he kissed her again and again, still, between every embrace, he broke out anew, with every demonstration of vehement mirth.
“I am very glad to see you, Charles,” said Fanny, with a little sanctified air that certainly was very amusing; “but I should like it better if you did not laugh at me.”
“But, my dear, dear, dearest child! how can I help it?” replied her brother, again bursting into renewed laughter. “Oh, Fanny, if you could but see yourself just as you look at this moment! Oh! you hideous little quiz! I would not have believed it possible that any plastering or shearing in the world could have made you look so very ugly. Is it not wonderful, Miss Torrington?”
“It certainly alters the expression of her countenance in a very remarkable manner,” replied Rosalind.
“The expression of a countenance may be changed by an alteration from within, as well as from without,” said Fanny, taking courage, and not without some little feeling of that complacency which the persuasion of superior sanctity is generally observed to bestow upon its possessors.
“Why, you most ugly little beauty!” cried Charles, again giving way to merriment; “you don’t mean to tell me that the impayable absurdity of that poor little face is owing to any thing but your having just washed your hair?”
“It is owing to conviction, Charles,” replied Fanny with great solemnity.
“Owing to conviction? — To conviction of what, my poor little girl?”
“To conviction that it is right, brother.”
“Right, child, to make that object of yourself? What in the world can you mean, Fanny?”
“I mean, brother, that I have an inward conviction of the sin and folly of dressing our mortal clay to attract the eyes and the admiration of the worldly.”
“By worldly, do you mean of all the world?” said Rosalind.
“No, Miss Torrington. By worldly, I mean those whose thoughts and wishes are fixed on the things of the earth.”
“And it is the admiration of such only that you wish to avoid?” rejoined Rosalind.
“Certainly it is. Spiritual-minded persons see all things in the spirit — do all things in the spirit: of such there is nothing to fear.”
Young Mowbray meanwhile stood looking at his sister, and listening to her words with the most earnest attention.
At length he said, more seriously than he had yet spoken, “To tell you the truth, little puritan, I do not like you at all in your new masquerading suit: though it must be confessed that you play your part well. I don’t want to begin lecturing you, Fanny, the moment I come home; but I do hope you will soon get tired of this foolery, and let me see my poor father’s daughter look and behave as a Christian young woman ought to do. Rosalind, will you take a walk with me? I want to have a look at my old pony.”
Miss Torrington nodded her assent, and they both left the room together, leaving Fanny more triumphant than mortified.
“He said that my persecutions would begin as soon as my election was made sure! Oh! why is he not here to sustain and comfort me! But I will not fall away in the hour of trial!”
The poor girl turned her eyes from the window whence she saw her brother and Rosalind walking gaily and happily, as she thought, in search of the old pony, and hastened to take refuge in her dressing-room, now rendered almost sacred in her eyes by the pastoral visit she had that morning received there.
The following hour or two gave Fanny her first taste of martyrdom. She was, or at least had been, devotedly attached to her brother, and the knowing him to be so near, yet so distant from her, was terrible. Yet was she not altogether without consolation. She opened the volume, that volume that he had so lately interpreted to her (fearful profanation!) in such a manner as best to suit his own views, and by means of using the process he had taught her, though unconsciously perhaps, she contrived to find a multitude of texts, all proving that she and the vicar were quite right, and all the countless myriads who thought differently, quite wrong. Then followed a thanksgiving which might have been fairly expressed in such words as “I thank thee, I am not like other men!” and then, as the sweet summer air waved the acacias to and fro before her windows, and her young spirit, panting for lawns and groves, sunshine and shade, suggested the idea of he
r brother and Rosalind enjoying it all without her, her poetical vein came to her relief, and she sat down to compose a hymn, in which, after rehearsing prettily enough all the delights of summer rambles through verdant fields, for four stanzas, she completed the composition by a fifth, of which “sin,” “begin,” and “within,” formed the rhymes.
This having recourse to “song divine” was a happy thought for her, inasmuch as it not only occupied time which must otherwise have hung with overwhelming weight upon her hands, but the employment soon conjured up, as she proceeded, the image of Mr. Cartwright, and the pious smile with which he would receive it from her hands, and the soft approval spoken more by the eyes than the lips, and the holy caress — such, according to his authority, as that with which angel meets angel in the courts of heaven.
All this was very pleasant and consoling to her feelings; and when her hymn was finished she determined to go down stairs, in order to sing it to some (hitherto) profane air, which she might select from among the songs of her sinful youth.
As she passed the mirror she again glanced at her disfigured little head; but at that moment she was so strong in “conviction,” that, far from wishing to accommodate her new birth of coiffure to worldly eyes, she employed a minute or two in sedulously smoothing and controlling her rebellious tresses, and even held her head in stiff equilibrium to prevent their escape from behind her ears.
“Good and holy man!” she exclaimed aloud, as she gave a parting glance at the result of all these little pious coquetries. “How well I know what his kind words would be if he could see me now! Such” she added with a gentle sigh, “will I strive to be, though all the world should join together to persecute me for it.”
While Mr. Cartwright’s prettiest convert was thus employed, Miss Torrington and Charles Mowbray, far from being engaged in chasing a pony, or even in looking at the summer luxury of bloom which breathed around them as they pursued their way through the pleasure-grounds, were very gravely discussing the symptoms of her case.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 70