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

‘Shall we come here in the early morning, and set it to rights?’

‘I forgot it was Sunday,’ said Owen, hastily throwing down the weed he had plucked up.

‘You were doing no harm, my dear; but we will not leave it in this state.  Will you come with us, Lucy?’

Lucilla had escaped, and was standing aloof at the end of the path, and when her brother went towards her, she turned away.

‘Come, Lucy,’ he entreated, ‘come into the garden with us.  We want you to tell us the old places.’

‘I’m not coming,’ was all her answer, and she ran back to the party who stood by the church door, and began to chatter to Mr. Prendergast, over whom she had domineered even before she could speak plain.  A silent, shy man, wrapped up in his duties, he was mortally afraid of the Castle Blanch young ladies, and stood ill at ease, talked down by Miss Horatia Charteris, but his eye lighted into a smile as the fairy plaything of past years danced up to him, and began her merry chatter, asking after every one in the parish, and showing a perfect memory of names and faces such as amazed him, in a child so young as she had been at the time when she had left the parish.  Honora and Owen meantime were retracing recollections in the rectory garden, eking out the boy’s four years old memories with imaginations and moralizings, pondering over the border whence Owen declared he had gathered snowdrops for his mother’s coffin; and the noble plane tree by the water-side, sacred to the memory of Bible stories told by his father in the summer evenings—

‘That tree!’ laughed Lucilla, when he told her that night as they walked up-stairs to bed.  ‘Nobody could sit there because of the mosquitoes.  And I should like to see the snowdrops you found in November!’

‘I know there were some white flowers.  Were they lilies of the valley for little Mary?’

‘It will do just as well,’ said Lucilla.  She knew that she could bring either scene before her mind with vivid distinctness, but shrinking from the pain almost with horror, she only said, ‘It’s a pity you aren’t a Roman Catholic, Owen; you would soon find a hole in a rock, and say it was where a saint, with his head under his arm, had made a footmark.’

‘You are very irreverent, Lucy, and very cross besides.  If you would not come and tell us, what could we do?’

‘Let it alone.’

‘If you don’t care for dear papa and mamma, I do,’ said Owen, the tears coming into his eyes.

‘I’m not going to rake it up to please Honora,’ returned his sister.  ‘If you like to go and poke with her over places where things never happened, you may, but she shan’t meddle with my real things.’

‘You are very unkind,’ was the next accusation from Owen, much grieved and distressed, ‘when she is so good and dear, and was so fond of our dear father.’

‘I know,’ said Lucilla, in a tone he did not understand; then, with an air of eldership, ill assorting with their respective sizes, ‘You are a mere child.  It is all very well for you, and you are very welcome to your Sweet Honey.’

Owen insisted on hearing her meaning, and on her refusal to explain, used his superior strength to put her to sufficient torture to elicit an answer.  ‘Don’t, Owen!  Let go!  There, then!  Why, she was in love with our father, and nearly died of it when he married; and Rashe says of course she bullies me for being like my mother.’

‘She never bullies you,’ cried Owen, indignantly; ‘she’s much kinder to you than you deserve, and I hate Ratia for putting it into your head, and teaching you such nasty man’s words about my own Honor.’

‘Ah! you’ll never be a man while you are under her.  She only wants to keep us a couple of babies for ever—sending us to bed, and making such a figure of me;’ and Lucy relieved her feelings by five perpendicular leaps into the air, like an India-rubber ball, her hair flying out, and her eyes flashing.

Owen was not much astonished, for Lucy’s furies often worked off in this fashion; but he was very angry on Honor’s account, loving her thoroughly, and perceiving no offence in her affection for his father; and the conversation assumed a highly quarrelsome character.  It was much to the credit of masculine discretion that he refrained from reporting it when he joined Honora in the morning’s walk to Wrapworth churchyard.  Behold! some one was beforehand with them—even Lucilla and the curate!

The wearisome visit was drawing to a close when Captain Charteris began—‘Well, Miss Charlecote, have you thought over my proposal?’

‘To take Owen to sea?  Indeed, I hoped you were convinced that it would never answer.’

‘So far from being so, that I see it is his best chance.  He will do no good till the priggishness is knocked out of him.’

Honor would not trust herself to answer.  Any accusation but this might have been borne.

‘Well, well,’ said the captain, in a tone still more provoking, it was so like hushing a petulant child, ‘we know how kind you were, and that you meant everything good; but it is not in the nature of things that a lad alone with women should not be cock of the walk, and nothing cures that like a month on board.’

‘He will go to school,’ said Honor, convinced all this was prejudice.

‘Ay, and come home in the holidays, lording it as if he were master and more, like the son and heir.’

‘Indeed, Captain Charteris, you are quite mistaken; I have never allowed Owen to think himself in that position.  He knows perfectly well that there are nearer claims upon me, and that Hiltonbury can never belong to him.  I have always rejoiced that it should be so.  I should not like to have the least suspicion that there could be self-interest in his affection for me in the time to come; and I think it presumptuous to interfere with the course of Providence in the matter of inheritances.’

‘My good Miss Charlecote,’ said the captain, who had looked at her with somewhat of a pitying smile, instead of attending to her last words, ‘do you imagine that you know that boy?’

‘I do not know who else should,’ she answered, quivering between a disposition to tears at the harshness, and to laughter at the assumption of the stranger uncle to see farther than herself into her darling.

‘Ha!’ quoth the sailor, ‘slippery—slippery fellows.’

‘I do not understand you.  You do not mean to imply that I have not his perfect confidence, or do you think I have managed him wrongly?  If you do, pray tell me at once.  I dare say I have.’

‘I couldn’t say so,’ said Captain Charteris.  ‘You are an excellent good woman, Miss Charlecote, and the best friend the poor things have had in the world; and you have taught them more good than I could, I’m sure; but I never yet saw a woman who could be up to a boy, any more than she could sail a ship.’

‘Very likely not,’ said Honor, with a lame attempt at a good-humoured laugh; ‘but I should be very glad to know whether you are speaking from general experience of woman and boy, or from individual observation of the case in point.’

The captain made a very odd, incomprehensible little bow; and after a moment’s thought, said, ‘Plainly speaking, then, I don’t think you do get to the bottom of that lad; but there’s no telling, and I never had any turn for those smooth chaps.  If a fellow begins by being over-precise in what is of no consequence, ten to one but he ends by being reckless in all the rest.’

This last speech entirely reassured Honor, by proving to her that the captain was entirely actuated by prejudice against his nephew’s gentle and courteous manners and her own religious views.  He did not believe in the possibility of the success of such an education, and therefore was of course insensible to Owen’s manifold excellences.

Thenceforth she indignantly avoided the subject, and made no attempt to discover whether the captain’s eye, practised in midshipmen, had made any positive observations on which to found his dissatisfaction.  Wounded by his want of gratitude, and still more hurt by his unkind judgment of her beloved pupil, she transferred her consultations to the more deferential uncle, who was entirely contented with his nephew, transported with admiration of her management, and ready to make her a present of him with all his heart.  So readily did he accede to all that she said of schools, that the choice was virtually left to her.  Eton was rejected as a fitter preparation for the squirearchy than the ministry; Winchester on account of the distaste between Owen and young Fulmort; and her decision was fixed in favour of Westminster, partly for his father’s sake, partly on account of the proximity of St. Wulstan’s—such an infinite advantage, as Mr. Charteris observed.

The sailor declared that he knew nothing of schools, and would take no part in the discussion.  There had, in truth, been high words between the brothers, each accusing the other of going the way to ruin their nephew, ending by the captain’s’ exclaiming, ‘Well, I wash my hands of it!  I can’t flatter a foolish woman into spoiling poor Lucilla’s son.  If I am not to do what I think right by him, I shall get out of sight of it all.’

‘His prospects, Kit; how often I have told you it is our duty to consider his prospects.’

‘Hang his prospects!  A handsome heiress under forty!  How can you be such an ass, Charles?  He ought to be able to make an independent fortune before he could stand in her shoes, if he were ever to do so, which she declares he never will.  Yes, you may look knowing if you will, but she is no such fool in some things; and depend upon it she will make a principle of leaving her property in the right channel; and be that as it may, I warn you that you can’t do this lad a worse mischief than by putting any such notion into his head, if it be not there already.  There’s not a more deplorable condition in the world than to be always dangling after an estate, never knowing if it is to be your own or not, and most likely to be disappointed at last; and, to do Miss Charlecote justice, she is perfectly aware of that; and it will not be her fault if he have any false expectations!  So, if you feed him with them, it will all be your fault; and that’s the last I mean to say about him.’

Captain Charteris was not aware of a colloquy in which Owen had a share.

‘This lucky fellow,’ said the young Life-guardsman, ‘he is as good as an eldest son—famous shooting county—capital, well-timbered estate.’

‘No, Charles,’ said Owen, ‘my cousin Honor always says I am nothing like an eldest son, for there are nearer relations.’

‘Oh ha!’ said Charles, with a wink of superior wisdom, ‘we understand that.  She knows how to keep you on your good behaviour.  Why, but for cutting you out, I would even make up to her myself—fine-looking, comely woman, and well-preserved—and only the women quarrel with that splendid hair.  Never mind, my boy, I don’t mean it.  I wouldn’t stand in your light.’

‘As if Honor would have you!’ cried Owen, in fierce scorn.  Charles Charteris and his companions, with loud laughter, insisted on the reasons.

‘Because,’ cried the boy, with flashing looks, ‘she would not be ridiculous; and you are—’  He paused, but they held him fast, and insisted on hearing what Charles was.

‘Not a good Churchman,’ he finally pronounced.  ‘Yes, you may laugh at me, but Honor shan’t be laughed at.’

Possibly Owen’s views at present were that ‘not to be a good Churchman’ was synonymous with all imaginable evil, and that he had put it in a delicate manner.  Whether he heard the last of it for the rest of his visit may be imagined.  And, poor boy, though he was strong and spirited enough with his own contemporaries, there was no dealing with the full-fledged soldier.  Nor, when conversation turned to what ‘we’ did at Hiltonbury, was it possible always to disclaim standing in the same relation to the Holt as did Charles to Castle Blanch; nay, a certain importance seemed to attach to such an assumption of dignity, of which Owen was not loth to avail himself in his disregarded condition.

PART II

CHAPTER I

We hold our greyhound in our hand,
Our falcon on our glove;