Hopes and Fears Part 42

'Cilla,' said Mr. Prendergast, at the window, 'can I have a word with you?'

'At your service,' she answered, as she came out to him, and saw that Robert had left him. 'Only be quick; they want to photograph me in my ball-dress.'

'You won't let them do it, though,' said the curate.

'White comes out hideous,' said Lucilla; 'I suppose you would not have a copy, if I took one off for you?'

'No; I don't like those visitors of yours well enough to see you turned into a merry-andrew to please them.'

'So that's what Robert Fulmort told you I did last night,' said Lucilla, blus.h.i.+ng at last, and thoroughly.

'No, indeed; you didn't?' he said, regarding her with an astonished glance.

'I _did_ wear a dress trimmed with salmon-flies, because of a bet with Lord William,' said Lucilla, the suffusion deepening on brow, cheek, and throat, as the confiding esteem of her fatherly friend effected what nothing else could accomplish. She would have given the world to have justified his opinion of his late rector's little daughter, and her spirits seemed gone, though the worst he did was to shake his head at her.

'If you did not know it, why did you call me _that_?' she asked.

'A merry-andrew?' he answered; 'I never meant that you had been one. No; only an old friend like me doesn't like the notion of your going and dressing up in the morning to amuse a lot of scamps.'

'I won't,' said Lucilla, very low.

'Well, then,' began Mr. Prendergast, as in haste to proceed to his own subject; but she cut him short.

'It is not about Ireland?'

'No; I know nothing about young ladies; and if Mr. Charteris and your excellent friend there have nothing to say against it, I can't.'

'My excellent friend had so much to say against it, that I was pestered into vowing I would go! Tell me not, Mr. Prendergast,--I should not mind giving up to you;' and she looked full of hope.

'That would be beginning at the wrong end, Cilla; you are not my charge.'

'You are my clergyman,' she said, pettishly.

'You are not my paris.h.i.+oner,' he answered.

'Pis.h.!.+' she said; 'when you know I want you to tell me.'

'Why, you say you have made the engagement.'

'So what I said when she fretted me past endurance must bind me!'

Be it observed that, like all who only knew Hiltonbury through Lucilla, Mr. Prendergast attributed any blemishes which he might detect in her to the injudicious training of an old maid; so he sympathized. 'Ah! ladies of a certain age never get on with young ones! But I thought it was all settled before with Miss Charteris.'

'I never quite said I would go, only we got ready for the sake of the fun of talking of it, and now Rashe has grown horridly eager about it. She did not care at first--only to please me.'

'Then wouldn't it be using her ill to disappoint her now? You couldn't do it, Cilla. Why, you have given your word, and she is quite old enough for anything. Wouldn't Miss Charlecote see it so?'

To regard Ratia as a mature personage robbed the project of romance, and to find herself bound in honour by her inconsiderate rattle was one of the rude shocks which often occur to the indiscriminate of tongue; but the curate had too much on his mind to dwell on what concerned him more remotely, and proceeded, 'I came to see whether you could help me about poor Miss Murrell. You made no arrangement for her getting home last night?'

'No!'

'Ah, you young people! But it is my fault; I should have recollected young heads. Then I am afraid it must have been--'

'What?'

'She was seen on the river very late last night with a stranger. He went up to the school with her, remained about a quarter of an hour, and then rowed up the river again. I am afraid it is not the first time she has been seen with him.'

'But, Mr. Prendergast, she was here till at least ten! She fainted away just as she was to have sung, and we carried her out into the cloister.

When she recovered she went away to the housekeeper's room--' (a bold a.s.sertion, built on Owen's partially heard reply to Phoebe). 'I'll ask the maids.'

'It is of no use, Cilla; she allows it herself.'

'And pray,' cried Lucilla, rallying her sauciness, 'how do you propose ever to have banns to publish, if young men and maidens are never to meet by water nor by land?'

'Then you do know something?'

'No; only that such matters are not commonly blazoned in the commencement.'

'I don't wish her to blazon it, but if she would only act openly by me,'

said the distressed curate. 'I wish nothing more than that she was safe married; and then if you ladies appoint another beauty, I'll give up the place, and live at --- college.'

'We'll advertise for the female Chimpanzee, and depend upon it she will marry at the end of six weeks. So you have attacked her in person. What did she say?'

'Nothing that she could help. She stood with those great eyes cast down, looking like a statue, and sometimes vouchsafing "yes, sir," or "no, sir." It was "no, sir," when I asked if her mother knew. I am afraid it must be something very unsatisfactory, Cilla; but she might say more to you if you were not going away.'

'Oh! Mr. Prendergast, why did you not come sooner?'

'I did come an hour ago, but you were not come down.'

'I'll walk on at once; the carriage can pick me up. I'll fetch my hat.

Poor Edna! I'll soon make her satisfy your mind. Has any one surmised who it can be?'

'The notion is that it is one of your musicians--very dangerous, I am afraid; and I say, Cilla, did you ever do such a thing--you couldn't, I suppose--as lend her Sh.e.l.ley's poems?'

'I? No; certainly not.'

'There was a copy lying on the table in her little parlour, as if she had been writing something out from it. It is very odd, but it was in that peculiar olive-green morocco that some of the books in your father's library were bound in.'

'Not mine, certainly,' said Lucilla. 'Good Honor Charlecote would have run crazy if she thought I had touched a Sh.e.l.ley; a very odd study for Edna. But as to the olive-green, of course it was bound under the same star as ours.'

'Cilly, Cilly, now or never! photograph or not?' screamed Rashe, from behind her three-legged camera.

'Not!' was Lucilla's cavalier answer. 'Pack up; have done with it, Rashe. Pick me up at the school.'

Away she flew headlong, the patient and disconcerted Horatia following her to her room to extract hurried explanations, and worse than no answers as to the sundries to be packed at the last moment, while she hastily put on hat and mantle, and was flying down again, when her brother, with outspread arms, nearly caught her in her spring. 'Hollo!

what's up?'

'Don't stop me, Owen! I'm going to walk on with Mr. Prendergast and be picked up. I must speak to Edna Murrell.'