After the breakfast, where the elder sisters were cold and distant, and Sir Bevil as friendly as he durst, Mervyn’s first move was to go, in conjunction with Mr. Crabbe, to explain the arrangement to Miss Fennimore, and request her to continue her services. They came away surprised and angry: Miss Fennimore would ‘consider of it.’ Even when Mervyn, to spare himself from ‘some stranger who might prove a greater nuisance,’ had offered a hundred in addition to her present exorbitant salary, she courteously declined, and repeated that her reply should be given in the evening.
Mervyn’s wrath would have been doubled had he known the cause of her delay. She sent Maria to beg Robert to spare her half an hour, and on his entrance, dismissing her pupils, she said, ‘Mr. Fulmort, I should be glad if you would candidly tell me your opinion of the proposed arrangement. I mean,’ seeing his hesitation, ‘of that part which relates to myself.’
‘I do not quite understand you,’ he said.
‘I mean, whether, as the person whose decision has the most worth in this family, you are satisfied to leave your sisters under my charge? If not, whatever it may cost me to part with that sweet and admirable Phœbe,’ and her voice showed unwonted emotion, ‘I would not think of remaining with them.’
‘You put me in a very strange position, Miss Fennimore; I
have no authority to decide. They could have no friend more sincerely anxious for their welfare or so welcome to Phœbe’s present wishes.’
‘Perhaps not; but the question is not of my feelings nor theirs, but whether you consider my influence pernicious to their religious principles. If so, I decline their guardian’s terms at once.’ After a pause, she added, pleased at his deliberation, ‘It may assist you if I lay before you the state of my own mind.’
She proceeded to explain that her parents had been professed Unitarians, her mother, loving and devout to the hereditary faith, beyond which she had never looked—‘Mr. Fulmort,’ she said, ‘nothing will approve itself to me that condemns my mother!’
He began to say that often where there was no wilful rejection of truth, saving grace and faith might be vouchsafed.
‘You are charitable,’ she answered, in a tone like sarcasm, and went on. Her father, a literary man of high ability, set aside from work by ill-health, thought himself above creeds. He had given his daughter a man’s education, had read many argumentative books with her, and died, leaving her liberally and devoutly inclined in the spirit of Pope’s universal prayer—‘Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.’ It was all aspiration to the Lord of nature, the forms, adaptations to humanity, kaleidoscope shapes of half-comprehended fragments, each with its own beauty, and only becoming worthy of reprobation where they permitted moral vices, among which she counted intolerance.