Hopes and Fears or, scenes from the life of a spinster

She bowed her head—the tears were dropping very fast.

‘Thank God!’ he said, as again he leant back in his chair; and when she raised her eyes again, he sat with his hands clasped, and a look of heavenly felicity on his face, raised upwards.

‘Oh! Humfrey! how thoughtlessly I have trifled away all that might have been the happiness of your life!’

‘You never trifled with me,’ he said; ‘you have always dealt honestly and straightforwardly, and it is best as it is.  Had we been together all this time, the parting might have been much harder.  I am glad there are so few near ties to break.’

‘Don’t say so! you, loved by every one, the tower of strength to all that is good!’

‘Hush, hush! nonsense, Honor!’ said he, kindly.  ‘I think I have tried,’ he went on, gravely, ‘not to fall behind the duties of my station; but that would be a bad dependence, were there not something else to look to.  As to missing me, the world did very well without me before I was born; it will do as well when I am gone; and as to you, my poor Honor, we have been very little together of late.’

‘I had you to lean on.’

‘Lean on something stronger,’ he said; and as she could not govern her bitter weeping, he went on—‘Ah! I am the selfish one now, to be glad of what must make it the worse for you; but if one thing were wanting to make me happy, it was to know that at last you cared for me.’

‘I should be a wretch not to do so.  So many years of patience and forbearance!—Nobody could be like you.’

‘I don’t see that,’ said Humfrey, simply.  ‘While you continued the same, I could not well turn my mind to any one else, and I always knew I was much too loutish for you.’

‘Now, Humfrey!—’

‘Yes, there is no use in dwelling on this,’ he said, quietly.  ‘The reason I asked you to be kind enough to come here, is that I do not think it well to be far from home under the circumstances.  There, don’t look frightened—they say it may very possibly not come for several months or a year.  I hope to have time to put things a little in order for you, and that is one reason I wished to see you; I thought I could make the beginning easier to you.’

But Honora was far too much shaken for such a turn to the conversation; she would not mortify him, but she could neither listen nor understand.  He, who was so full of stalwart force, a doomed man, yet calm and happy under his sentence; he, only discovered to be so fondly loved in time to give poignancy to the parting, and yet rejoicing himself in the poor, tardy affection that had answered his manly constancy too late!  His very calmness and stillness cut her to the heart, and after some ineffectual attempts to recover herself, she was forced to take refuge in her own room.  Weeping, praying, walking restlessly about, she remained there till luncheon time, when Humfrey himself came up to knock at her door.

‘Honor dear!’ he said, ‘come down—try to throw it off—Saville does not wish his wife to be made aware of it while she is here, lest she should be nervous.  You must not betray me—and indeed there is no reason for being overcome.  Nothing vexes me but seeing you so.  Let us enjoy your visit, pray.’

To be commanded to bear up by a strong, manly character so much loved and trusted was perhaps the chief support she could receive; she felt that she must act composure, and coming down in obedience to her cousin, she found the power of doing so.  Nay, as she saw him so completely the bright, hospitable host, talking to Mrs. Saville about her poultry, and carrying on quiet jokes with Mr. Saville, she found herself drawn away from the morning’s conversation, or remembering it like a dream that had passed away.

Then all went out together, and he was apparently as much interested in his young wheat as ever, and even more anxious to make her look at and appreciate crops and cattle, speaking about them in his hearty, simple way, as if his pleasure in them was not flagging, perhaps because it had never been excessive.  He had always sat loose to them, and thus they could please and occupy him even when the touch of the iron hand had made itself felt.

And again she saw him engrossed in arranging some petty matter of business for one of the poor people; and when they had wandered down to the gate, pelting the turn-out of the boys’ school with a pocket full of apples that he said he had taken up while in conference with the housekeeper, laughing and speaking merrily as the varlets touched their caps to him, and always turning to her for sympathy in his pleasures of success or of good nature, as though her visit were thorough enjoyment to him.  And so it almost was to her.  The influence of the dear old scenes was something, and his cheeriness was a great deal more; the peaceful present was not harassed or disturbed, and the foreboding, on which she might not dwell, made it the more precious.  That slow wandering about the farm and village, and the desultory remarks, the old pleasant reminiscences, the inquiries and replies about the villagers and neighbours had a quiet charm about them, as free and happy as when, youth and child, they had frisked through the same paths; nay, the old scenes so brought back the old habits that she found herself discoursing to him in her former eager fashion upon the last historical character who had bitten her fancy.

‘My old way,’ she said, catching herself up; ‘dinning all this into your ears as usual, when you don’t care.’

‘Don’t I?’ said Humfrey, with his sincere face turned on her in all its sweetness.  ‘Perhaps I never showed you how much, Honor; and I beg your pardon, but I would not have been without it!’

The Savilles came up, while Honor’s heart was brimful at this compliment, and then it was all commonplace again, except for that sunset light, that rich radiance of the declining day, that seemed unconsciously to pervade all Humfrey’s cheerfulness, and to give his mirth and playfulness a solid happiness.

Some mutual friends of long standing came to dinner, and the evening was not unlike the last, quite as free from gloom, and Mr. Charlecote as bright as ever, evidently taking his full share in county business, and giving his mind to it.  Only Honor noted that he quietly avoided an invitation to a very gay party which was proposed; and his great ally, Sir John Raymond, seemed rather vexed with him for not taking part in some new and expensive experiment in farming, and asked incredulously whether it were true that he wished to let a farm that he had kept for several years in his own hands.  Humfrey agreed that it was so, and said something farther of wishing to come to terms quickly.  She guessed that this was for her sake, when she thought all this over in her bedroom.

Such was the effect of his calmness that it had not been a day of agitation.  There was more peace than tumult in her mind as she lay down to rest, sad, but not analyzing her sadness, and lulled by the present into putting aside the future.  So she slept quietly, and awoke with a weight at her heart, but softened and sustained by reverent awe and obedience towards her cousin.

When they met, he scanned her looks with a bright, tender glance, and smiled commendation when he detected no air of sleeplessness.  He talked and moved as though his secret were one of untold bliss, and this was not far from the truth; for when, after breakfast, he asked her for another interview in the study, they were no sooner alone than he rubbed his hands together with satisfaction, saying—‘So, Honor, you could have had me after all!’ looking at her with a broad, undisguised, exulting smile.

‘Oh! Humfrey!’

‘Don’t say it if you don’t like it; but you can’t guess the pleasure it gives me.  I could hardly tell at first what was making me so happy when I awoke this morning.’

‘I can’t see how it should,’ said Honor, her eyes swimming with tears, ‘never to have met with any gratitude for—I have used you too ill—never valued, scarcely even believed in what you lavished on poor silly me—and now, when all is too late, you are glad—’

‘Glad! of course I am,’ returned Humfrey; ‘I never wished to obtrude my feelings on you after I knew how it stood with you.  It would have been a shame.  Your choice went far above me.  For the rest, if to find you disposed towards me at the last makes me so happy,’ and he looked at her again with beaming affection, ‘how could I have borne to leave you if all had been as I wished?  No, no, it is best as it is.  You lose nothing in position, and you are free to begin the world again, not knocked down or crushed.’

‘Don’t talk so, Humfrey!  It is breaking my heart to think that I might have been making you happy all this time.’

‘Heaven did not will it so,’ said Humfrey, reverently, ‘and it might not have proved what we fancy.  You might not have found such a clodhopper all you wanted, and my stupidity might have vexed you, though now you fancy otherwise.  And I have had a very happy life—indeed I have, Honor; I never knew the time when I could not say with all my heart, “The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground, yea, I have a goodly heritage.”  Everybody and everything, you and all the rest, have been very kind and friendly, and I have never wanted for happiness.  It has been all right.  You could fulfil your duty as a daughter undividedly, and now I trust those children will be your object and comfort—only, Honor, not your idols.  Perhaps it was jealousy, but I have sometimes fancied that your tendency with their father—’

‘Oh! how often I must have given you pain.’

‘I did not mean that, but, as I say, perhaps I was no fair judge.  One thing is well, the relations will be much less likely to take them from you when you are living here.’

She held up her hands in deprecation.

‘Honor dear,’ he said pleadingly, yet with authority, ‘pray let me talk to you.  There are things which I wish very much to say; indeed, without which I could hardly have asked for this indulgence.  It is for your own sake, and that of the place and people.’

‘Poor place, poor people.’

He sighed, but then turned his smiling countenance towards her again.  ‘No one else can care for it or them as you do, Honor.  Our “goodly heritage”—it was so when I had it from my father, and I don’t think it has got worse under my charge, and I want you to do your duty by it, Honor, and hand it on the same, whoever may come after.’

‘For your sake, Humfrey—even if I did not love it.  But—’

‘Yes, it is a duty,’ proceeded Humfrey, gravely.  ‘It may seem but a bit of earth after all, but the owner of a property has a duty to let it do its share in producing food, or maybe in not lessening the number of pleasant things here below.  I mean it is as much my office to keep my trees and woods fair to look at, as it is not to let my land lie waste.’

She had recovered a good deal while he was moralizing, and became interested.  ‘I did not suspect you of the poetical view, Humfrey,’ she said.

‘It is plain sense, I think,’ he said, ‘that to grub up a fine tree, or a pretty bit of copse without fair reason, only out of eagerness for gain, is a bit of selfishness.  But mind, Honor, you must not go and be romantic.  You must have the timber marked when the trees are injuring each other.’

‘Ah! I’ve often done it with you.’

‘I wish you would come out with me to-day.  I’m going to the out-wood, I could show you.’

She agreed readily, almost forgetting the wherefore.

‘And above all, Honor, you must not be romantic about wages!  It is not right by other proprietors, nor by the people themselves.  No one is ever the better for a fancy price for his labour.’

She could almost have smiled; he was at once so well pleased that she and his ‘goodly heritage’ should belong to each other, so confident in her love and good intentions towards it, and so doubtful of her discretion and management.  She promised with all her heart to do her utmost to fulfil his wishes.

‘After all,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘the best thing for the place—ay, and for you and every one, would be for you to marry; but there’s little chance of that, I suppose, and it is of no use to distress you by mentioning it.  I’ve been trying to put out of my hands things that I don’t think you will be able to manage, but I should like you to keep up the home farm, and you may pretty well trust to Brooks.  I dare say he will take his own way, but if you keep a reasonable check on him, he will do very well by you.  He is as honest as the day, and very intelligent.  I don’t know that any one could do better for you.’

‘Oh, yes; I will mind all he tells me.’

‘Don’t show that you mind him.  That is the way to spoil him.  Poor fellow, he has been a good servant to me, and so have they all.  It is a thing to be very thankful for to have had such a set of good servants.’

Honora thought, but did not say, that they could not help being good with such a master.

He went on to tell her that he had made Mr. Saville his executor.  Mr. Saville had been for many years before leaving Oxford bursar of his college, and was a thorough man of business whom Humfrey had fixed upon as the person best qualified to be an adviser and assistant to Honora, and he only wished to know whether she wished for any other selection, but this was nearly overpowering her again, for since her father’s death she had leant on no one but Humfrey himself.

One thing more he had to say.  ‘You know, Honor, this place will be entirely your own.  You and I seem to be the last of the Charlecotes, and even if we were not, there is no entail.  You may found orphan asylums with it, or leave it to poor Sandbrook’s children, just as you please.’