When Phœbe heard those stricken tones striving to be cheerful, she could not find pardon for the wrong that had not been done to herself. She dreaded telling Robert that no one was coming whom he need avoid, though without dwelling on the tone of the refusal. To her surprise, he heard her short, matter-of-fact communication without any token of anger or of grief, made no remark, and if he changed countenance at all, it was to put on an air of gloomy satisfaction, as though another weight even in the most undesirable scale were preferable to any remnant of balancing, and compunction for possible injustice were removed.
Could Lucilla but have seen that face, she would have doubted of her means of reducing him to obedience.
The course he had adopted might indeed be the more excellent way in the end, but at present even his self-devotion was not in such a spirit as to afford much consolation to Honor. If good were to arise out of sorrow, the painful seed-time was not yet over. His looks were stern even to harshness, and his unhappiness seemed disposed to vent itself in doing his work after his own fashion, brooking no interference.
He had taken a lodging over a baker’s shop at Turnagain Corner. Honor thought it fair for the locality, and knew something of the people, but to Phœbe it was horror and dismay. The two small rooms, the painted cupboard, the cut paper in the grate, the pictures in yellow gauze, with the flies walking about on them, the round mirror, the pattern of the carpet, and the close, narrow street, struck her as absolutely shocking, and she came to Miss Charlecote with tears in her eyes, to entreat her to remonstrate, and tell Robin it was his duty to live like a gentleman.
‘My dear,’ said Honor, rather shocked at a speech so like the ordinary Fulmort mind, ‘I have no fears of Robert not living like a gentleman.’
‘I know—not in the real sense,’ said Phœbe, blushing; ‘but surely he ought not to live in this dismal poky place, with such mean furniture, when he can afford better.’
‘I am afraid the parish affords few better lodgings, Phœbe,
and it is his duty to live where his work lies. You appreciated his self-denial, I thought? Do you not like him to make a sacrifice?’
‘I ought,’ said Phœbe, her mind taking little pleasure in those acts of self-devotion that were the delight of her friend. ‘If it be his duty, it cannot be helped, but I cannot be happy at leaving him to be uncomfortable—perhaps ill.’
Coming down from the romance of martyrdom which had made her expect Phœbe to be as willing to see her brother bear hardships in the London streets, as she had herself been to dismiss Owen the first to his wigwam, Honor took the more homely view of arguing on the health and quietness of Turnagain Corner, the excellence of the landlady, and the fact that her own cockney eyes had far less unreasonable expectations than those trained to the luxuries of Beauchamp. But by far the most efficient solace was an expedition for the purchase of various amenities of life, on which Phœbe expended the last of her father’s gift. The next morning was spent in great secrecy at the lodgings, where Phœbe was so notable and joyous in her labours, that Honor drew the conclusion that housewifery was her true element; and science, art, and literature only acquired, because they had been made her duties, reckoning all the more on the charming order that would rule in Owen Sandbrook’s parsonage.