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

It was one of Humfrey’s provoking qualities that no amount of eloquence would ever draw a word of condemnation from him; he would praise readily enough, but censure was very rare with him, and extenuation was always his first impulse, so the more Honora railed at Mr. Sandbrook’s interference with his nephew’s plans, the less satisfaction she received from him.  She seemed to think that in order to admire Owen as he deserved, his uncle must be proportionably reviled, and though Humfrey did not imply a word save in commendation of the young missionary’s devotion, she went indoors feeling almost injured at his not understanding it; but Honora’s petulance was a very bright, sunny piquancy, and she only appeared the more glowing and animated for it when she presented herself at the breakfast-table, with a preposterous country appetite.

Afterwards she filled a vase very tastefully with her varieties of leaves, and enjoyed taking in her cousin Sarah, who admired the leaves greatly while she thought they came from Mrs. Mervyn’s hothouse; but when she found they were the product of her own furrows, voted them coarse, ugly, withered things, such as only the simplicity of a Londoner could bring into civilized society.  So Honora stood over her gorgeous feathery bouquet, not knowing whether to laugh or to be scornful, till Humfrey, taking up the vase, inquired, ‘May I have it for my study?’

‘Oh! yes, and welcome,’ said Honora, laughing, and shaking her glowing tresses at him; ‘I am thankful to any one who stands up for carrots.’

Good-natured Humfrey, thought she, it is all that I may not be mortified; but after all it is not those very good-natured people who best appreciate lofty actions.  He is inviting Owen Sandbrook more because he thinks it would please papa, and because he compassionates him in his solitary lodgings, than because he feels the force of his glorious self-sacrifice.

* * * * *

The northern slope of the Holt was clothed with fir plantations, intersected with narrow paths, which gave admission to the depths of their lonely woodland palace, supported on rudely straight columns, dark save for the snowy exuding gum, roofed in by aspiring beam-like arms, bearing aloft their long tufts of dark blue green foliage, floored by the smooth, slippery, russet needle leaves as they fell, and perfumed by the peculiar fresh smell of turpentine.  It was a still and lonely place, the very sounds making the silence more audible (if such an expression may be used), the wind whispering like the rippling waves of the sea in the tops of the pines, here and there the cry of a bird, or far, far away, the tinkle of the sheep-bell, or the tone of the church clock; and of movement there was almost as little, only the huge horse ants soberly wending along their highway to their tall hillock thatched with pine leaves, or the squirrel in the ruddy, russet livery of the scene, racing from tree to tree, or sitting up with his feathery tail erect to extract with his delicate paws the seed from the base of the fir-cone scale.  Squirrels there lived to a good old age, till their plumy tails had turned white, for the squire’s one fault in the eyes of keepers and gardeners was that he was soft-hearted towards ‘the varmint.’

A Canadian forest on a small scale, an extremely miniature scale indeed, but still Canadian forests are of pine, and the Holt plantation was fir, and firs were pines, and it was a lonely musing place, and so on one of the stillest, clearest days of ‘St. Luke’s little summer,’ the last afternoon of her visit at the Holt, there stood Honora, leaning against a tree stem, deep, very deep in a vision of the primeval woodlands of the West, their red inhabitants, and the white man who should carry the true, glad tidings westward, westward, ever from east to west.  Did she know how completely her whole spirit and soul were surrendered to the worship of that devotion?  Worship?  Yes, the word is advisedly used; Honora had once given her spirit in homage to Schiller’s self-sacrificing Max; the same heart-whole veneration was now rendered to the young missionary, multiplied tenfold by the hero being in a tangible, visible shape, and not by any means inclined to thwart or disdain the allegiance of the golden-haired girl.  Nay, as family connections frequently meeting, they had acted upon each other’s minds more than either knew, even when the hour of parting had come, and words had been spoken which gave Honora something more to cherish in the image of Owen Sandbrook than even the hero and saint.  There then she stood and dreamt, pensive and saddened indeed, but with a melancholy trenching very nearly on happiness in the intensity of its admiration, and the vague ennobling future of devoted usefulness in which her heart already claimed to share, as her person might in some far away period on which she could not dwell.

A sound approached, a firm footstep, falling with strong elasticity and such regular cadences, that it seemed to chime in with the pine-tree music, and did not startle her till it came so near that there was distinctive character to be discerned in the tread, and then with a strange, new shyness, she would have slipped away, but she had been seen, and Humfrey, with his timber race in his hand, appeared on the path, exclaiming, ‘Ah, Honor, is it you come out to meet me, like old times?  You have been so much taken up with your friend Master Owen that I have scarcely seen you of late.’

Honor did not move away, but she blushed deeply as she said, ‘I am afraid I did not come to meet you, Humfrey.’

‘No?  What, you came for the sake of a brown study?  I wish I had known you were not busy, for I have been round all the woods marking timber.’

‘Ah!’ said she, rousing herself with some effort, ‘I wonder how many trees I should have saved from the slaughter.  Did you go and condemn any of my pets?’

‘Not that I know of,’ said Humfrey.  ‘I have touched nothing near the house.’

‘Not even the old beech that was scathed with lightning?  You know papa says that is the touchstone of influence; Sarah and Mr. West both against me,’ laughed Honora, quite restored to her natural manner and confiding ease.

‘The beech is likely to stand as long as you wish it,’ said Humfrey, with an unaccustomed sort of matter-of-fact gravity, which surprised and startled her, so as to make her bethink herself whether she could have behaved ill about it, been saucy to Sarah, or the like.

‘Thank you,’ she said; ‘have I made a fuss—?’

‘No, Honor,’ he said, with deliberate kindness, shutting up his knife, and putting it into his pocket; ‘only I believe it is time we should come to an understanding.’

More than ever did she expect one of his kind remonstrances, and she looked up at him in expectation, and ready for defence, but his broad, sunburnt countenance looked marvellously heated, and he paused ere he spoke.

‘I find I can’t spare you, Honora; you had better stay at the Holt for good.’  Her cheeks flamed, and her heart galloped, but she could not let herself understand.

‘Honor, you are old enough now, and I do not think you need fear.  It is almost your home already, and I believe I can make you happy, with the blessing of God—’  He paused, but as she could not frame an answer in her consternation, continued, ‘Perhaps I should not have spoken so suddenly, but I thought you would not mind me; I should like to have had one word from my little Honor before I go to your father, but don’t if you had rather not.’

‘Oh, don’t go to papa, please don’t,’ she cried, ‘it would only make him sorry.’

Humfrey stood as if under an unexpected shock.

‘Oh! how came you to think of it?’ she said in her distress; ‘I never did, and it can never be—I am so sorry!’

‘Very well, my dear, do not grieve about it,’ said Humfrey, only bent on soothing her; ‘I dare say you are quite right, you are used to people in London much more suitable to you than a stupid homely fellow like me, and it was a foolish fancy to think it might be otherwise.  Don’t cry, Honor dear, I can’t bear that!’

‘Oh, Humfrey, only understand, please!  You are the very dearest person in the world to me after papa and mamma; and as to fine London people, oh no, indeed!  But—’

‘It is Owen Sandbrook; I understand,’ said Humfrey, gravely.

She made no denial.

‘But, Honor,’ he anxiously exclaimed, ‘you are not going out in this wild way among the backwoods, it would break your mother’s heart; and he is not fit to take care of you.  I mean he cannot think of it now.’

‘O no, no, I could not leave papa and mamma; but some time or other—’

‘Is this arranged?  Does your father know it?’

‘Oh, Humfrey, of course!’

‘Then it is an engagement?’

‘No,’ said Honora, sadly; ‘papa said I was too young, and he wished I had heard nothing about it.  We are to go on as if nothing had happened, and I know they think we shall forget all about it!  As if we could!  Not that I wish it to be different.  I know it would be wicked to desert papa and mamma while she is so unwell.  The truth is, Humfrey,’ and her voice sank, ‘that it cannot be while they live.’

‘My poor little Honor!’ he said, in a tone of the most unselfish compassion.

She had entirely forgotten his novel aspect, and only thought of him as the kindest friend to whom she could open her heart.

‘Don’t pity me,’ she said in exultation; ‘think what it is to be his choice.  Would I have him give up his aims, and settle down in the loveliest village in England?  No, indeed, for then it would not be Owen!  I am happier in the thought of him than I could be with everything present to enjoy.’

‘I hope you will continue to find it so,’ he said, repressing a sigh.

‘I should be ashamed of myself if I did not,’ she continued with glistening eyes.  ‘Should not I have patience to wait while he is at his real glorious labour?  And as to home, that’s not altered, only better and brighter for the definite hope and aim that will go through everything, and make me feel all I do a preparation.’

‘Yes, you know him well,’ said Humfrey; ‘you saw him constantly when he was at Westminster.’

‘O yes, and always!  Why, Humfrey, it is my great glory and pleasure to feel that he formed me!  When he went to Oxford, he brought me home all the thoughts that have been my better life.  All my dearest books we read together, and what used to look dry and cold, gained light and life after he touched it.’

‘Yes, I see.’

His tone reminded her of what had passed, and she said, timidly, ‘I forgot!  I ought not!  I have vexed you, Humfrey.’

‘No,’ he said, in his full tender voice; ‘I see that it was vain to think of competing with one of so much higher claims.  If he goes on in the course he has chosen, yours will have been a noble choice, Honor; and I believe,’ he added, with a sweetness of smile that almost made her forgive the if, ‘that you are one to be better pleased so than with more ordinary happiness.  I have no doubt it is all right.’

‘Dear Humfrey, you are so good!’ she said, struck with his kind resignation, and utter absence of acerbity in his disappointment.

‘Forget this, Honora,’ he said, as they were coming to the end of the pine wood; ‘let us be as we were before.’

Honora gladly promised, and excepting for her wonder at such a step on the part of the cousin whose plaything and pet she had hitherto been, she had no temptation to change her manner.  She loved him as much as ever, but only as a kind elder brother, and she was glad that he was wise enough to see his immeasurable inferiority to the young missionary.  It was a wonderful thing, and she was sorry for his disappointment; but after all, he took it so quietly that she did not think it could have hurt him much.  It was only that he wanted to keep his pet in the country.  He was not capable of love like Owen Sandbrook’s.

* * * * *

Years passed on.  Rumour had bestowed Mr. Charlecote of Hiltonbury on every lady within twenty miles, but still in vain.  His mother was dead, his sister married to an old college fellow, who had waited half a lifetime for a living, but still he kept house alone.

And open house it was, with a dinner-table ever expanding for chance guests, strawberry or syllabub feasts half the summer, and Christmas feasts extending wide on either side of the twelve days.  Every one who wanted a holiday was free of the Holt; young sportsmen tried their inexperienced guns under the squire’s patient eye; and mammas disposed of their children for weeks together, to enjoy the run of the house and garden, and rides according to age, on pony, donkey, or Mr. Charlecote.  No festivity in the neighbourhood was complete without his sunshiny presence; he was wanted wherever there was any family event; and was godfather, guardian, friend, and adviser of all.  Every one looked on him as a sort of exclusive property, yet he had room in his heart for all.  As a magistrate, he was equally indispensable in county government, and a charity must be undeserving indeed that had not Humfrey Charlecote, Esq., on the committee.  In his own parish he was a beneficent monarch; on his own estate a mighty farmer, owning that his relaxation and delight were his turnips, his bullocks, and machines; and so content with them, and with his guests, that Honora never recollected that walk in the pine woods without deciding that to have monopolized him would have been an injury to the public, and perhaps less for his happiness than this free, open-hearted bachelor life.  Seldom did she recall that scene to mind, for she had never been by it rendered less able to trust to him as her friend and protector, and she stood in need of his services and his comfort, when her father’s death had left him the nearest relative who could advise or transact business for her and her mother.  Then, indeed, she leant on him as on the kindest and most helpful of brothers.

Mrs. Charlecote was too much acclimatized to the city to be willing to give up her old residence, and Honor not only loved it fondly, but could not bear to withdraw from the local charities where her tasks had hitherto lain; and Woolstone-lane, therefore, continued their home, though the summer and autumn usually took them out of London.

Such was the change in Honora’s outward life.  How was it with that inmost shrine where dwelt her heart and soul?  A copious letter writer, Owen Sandbrook’s correspondence never failed to find its way to her, though they did not stand on such terms as to write to one another; and in those letters she lived, doing her day’s work with cheerful brightness, and seldom seeming preoccupied, but imagination, heart, and soul were with his mission.