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

‘I cannot think how he is ever to bear living with Mrs. Murrell.’

‘She is a good deal broken and subdued, and is more easily repressed than one imagines at her first onset.  Besides, she is very proud, and rather afraid, of him, and will not molest him much.  Indeed, it is a good arrangement for him; he ought to have care above that of the average landlady.’

‘Will he get it?’

‘I trust so.  She has the ways of a respectable servant; and her religious principle is real, though we do not much admire its manifestation.  She will be honest and careful of his wants, and look after his child, and nurse him tenderly if he require it!’

‘As if any one but myself would do that!  But it is right, and he will be all the better and happier for accepting his duty to her while she lives, if he can bear it.’

‘As he says, it is his only expiation.’

‘Well! I should not wonder if you saw more of me here than hitherto.  A born Cockney like me gets inclined to the haunts of men as she grows old, and if your sisters and Charlecote Raymond suffice for the parish, I shall be glad to be out of sight of the improvements he will make.’

‘Not without your consent?’

‘I shall have to consent in my conscience to what I hate in my heart.’

‘I am not the man to argue you away from here,’ said Robert, eagerly.  ‘If you would take up the Young Women’s Association, it would be the only thing to make up for the loss of Miss Fennimore.  Then the St. Wulstan’s Asylum wants a lady visitor.’

‘My father’s foundation, whence his successor ousted me, in a general sweep of troublesome ladies,’ said Honor.  ‘How sore I was, and how things come round.’

‘We’ll find work for you,’ cried Robert, highly exhilarated.  ‘I should like to make out that we can’t do without you.’

‘Why, Robin, you of all men taking to compliments!’

‘It is out of self-interest.  Nothing makes so much difference to me as having this house inhabited.’

‘Indeed,’ she said, highly gratified; ‘I thought you wanted nothing but St. Matthew’s.’

‘Nay,’ said Robert, as a bright colour came over his usually set and impassive countenance.  ‘You do not want me to say what you have always been to me, and how better things have been fostered by your presence, ever since the day you let me out of Hiltonbury Church.  I have often since thought it was no vain imagination that you were a good spirit sent to my rescue by Mr. Charlecote.’

‘Poor Robin,’ said Honor, her lip quivering; ‘it was less what I gave than what you gathered up.  I barely tolerated you.’

‘Which served me right,’ said Robert, ‘and made me respect you.  There are so few to blame me now that I need you all the more.  I can hardly cede to Owen the privilege of being your only son.’

‘You are my autumn-singing Robin,’ said Honor, too true to let him think that he could stand beside Owen in her affections, but with intense pleasure at such unwonted warmth from one so stern and reserved; it was as if he was investing her with some of the tenderness that the loss of Lucilla had left vacant, and bestowing on her the confidences to which new relations might render Phœbe less open.  It was no slight preferment to be Robert Fulmort’s motherly friend; and far beyond her as he had soared, she might still be the softening element in his life, as once she had been the ennobling one.  If she had formed Robert, or even given one impulse such as to lead to his becoming what he was, the old maid had not lived in vain.

She was not selfish enough to be grieved at Owen’s ecstasy in emancipation; and trusting to being near enough to watch over him without being in his way, she could enjoy his overflowing spirits, and detect almost a jocund sound in the thump of his crutch across the hall, as he hurried in, elated with hopes of the success of his invention, eager about the Canadian railway, delighted with the society of his congeners, and pouring out on her all sorts of information that she could not understand.  The certainty that her decision was for his happiness ought surely to reconcile her to carrying home his rival in his stead.

Going down by an early train, she resolved, by Robert’s advice, to visit Beauchamp at once, and give Mervyn a distinct explanation of her intentions.  He was tardy in taking them in, then exclaimed—‘Phœbe’s teetotaller!  Well, he is a sharp fellow!  The luck that some men have!’

‘Dear Phœbe,’ cried Cecily, ‘I am so thankful that she is spared a long attachment.  It was telling on her already!’

‘Oh, we should have put a stop to the affair if he had gone out to Canada,’ roundly asserted Mervyn; ‘but of course he knew better—’

‘Not at all—this was quite a surprise.’

Mervyn recollected in time that it was best that Miss Charlecote should so imagine, and reserved for his wife’s private ear his conviction that the young fellow had had this hope in his eye when refusing the partnership.  Such smartness and foresight commanded his respect as a man of the world, though maybe the women would not understand it.  For Phœbe’s interest, he must encourage the lady in her excellent intentions.

‘It is very handsome in you, Miss Charlecote—very handsome—and I am perfectly unprejudiced in assuring you that you have done the very best thing for yourself.  Phœbe is a good girl, and devoted to you already.’

‘Indeed she is,’ said Cecily.  ‘She looks up to you so much!’

Somehow Honor did not want Mrs. Fulmort to assure her of this.

‘And as to the place,’ continued Mervyn, ‘you could not put it into better hands to get your people out of their Old World ways.  A young man like that, used to farming, and with steam and mechanics at his fingers’ ends, will make us all look about us.’

‘Perhaps,’ murmured poor Honor, with quailing heart.

‘John Raymond and I were looking about the Holt the other day,’ said Mervyn, ‘and agreeing how much more could be made of it.  Clear away some of those hedgerows—grub up a bit of copse or two—try chemical manures—drain that terrible old marsh beyond the plantation—and have up a good engine-house where you have those old ramshackle buildings at the Home Farm!  Why, the place will bring in as much again, and you’ve hit on the very man to carry it out.  He shall try all the experiments before I adopt them.’

Honora felt as if she must flee!  If she were to hear any more she should be ready to banish young Randolf to Canada, were he ten times her heir.  Had she lived to hear Humfrey’s new barn, with the verge boards conceded to her taste, called ramshackle?  And she had given her word!

As she left Beauchamp, and looked at her scraggy pine-trees cresting the hill, she felt as though they were her own no longer, and as if she had given them up to an enemy.  She assured herself that nothing could be done without her free-will, and considered of the limitations that must be imposed on this frightful reformer, but her heart grew sick at the conviction that either she would have to yield, or be regarded as a mere incubus and obstruction.

With almost a passionate sense of defence of Humfrey’s trees, and Humfrey’s barns, she undid the gate of the fir plantations—his special favourites.  The bright April sun shed clear gleams athwart the russet boles of the trees, candied by their white gum, the shadows were sharply defined, and darkened by the dense silvered green canopy, relieved by fresh light young shoots, culminating in white powdery clusters, or little soft crimson conelets, all redolent of fresh resinous fragrance.  The wind whispered like the sound of ocean in the summit of the trees, and a nightingale was singing gloriously in the distance.  All recalled Humfrey, and the day, thirty years back, when she had given him such sore pain, in those very woods, grasping the shadow instead of the substance, and taking the sunshine out of his life as well as from her own.  Never had she felt such a pang in thinking of that day, or in the vain imagination of how it might have been!

‘Yet I believe I am doing right,’ she thought.  ‘Humfrey himself might say that old things must pass away, and the past give place to the present!  Let me stand once more under the tree where I gave him that answer!  Shall I feel as if he would laugh at me for my shrinking, or approve me for my resolution?’

The tree was a pinaster, of lengthy foliage and ponderous cones, standing in a little shooting-path, leading from the main walk.  She turned towards it and stood breathless for a moment.

There stood the familiar figure—youthful, well-knit, firm, with the open, steadfast, kindly face, but with the look of crowned exultant love that she had only once beheld, and that when his feet were already within the waters of the dark river.  It was his very voice that exclaimed, ‘Here she is!’  Had her imagination indeed called up Humfrey before her, or was he come to upbraid her with her surrender of his charge to modern innovation!  But the spell was broken, for a woodland nymph in soft gray, edged with green, was instantly beside him, and that calmly-glad face was no reflection of what Honora’s had ever been.

‘Dear, dear Miss Charlecote,’ cried Phœbe, springing to her; ‘we thought you would come home this way, so we came to meet you, and were watching both the paths.’

‘Thank you, my dear,’ said Honor.  Could that man, who looked so like Humfrey, be thinking how those firs would cut up into sleepers?

‘Do you know,’ said Phœbe, eagerly, ‘he says this wood is a little likeness of his favourite place in his old home.’

‘I am afraid,’ he added, as if apologizing, ‘I shall always feel most at home in the smell of pine-trees.’

Mervyn’s predictions began to lose their force, and Honor smiled.

‘But,’ said Phœbe, turning to her, ‘I was longing to beg your pardon.  I did not like to have any secret from you.’

‘Ah! you cunning children,’ said Honor, finding surface work easiest; ‘you stole a march upon us all.’

‘I could not help it,’ said Phœbe.

They both laughed, and turning to him, she said, ‘Now, could I?  When you spoke to me, I could only tell the truth.’

‘And I suppose he could not help it,’ said Honor.

‘Of course not, if there was no reason for helping it,’ he said.  There could be no dwelling on the horrible things that he would perpetrate, while he looked so like the rightful squire, and while both were so fair a sight in their glad gratitude; and she found herself saying, ‘You will bear our name.’

There might be a pang in setting aside that of his father, but he looked at the glowing cheeks and glistening eyes beside him, and said, ‘Answer for me.’

‘It is what I should like best of all,’ Phœbe said, fervently.