Kitabı oku: «Hopes and Fears or, scenes from the life of a spinster», sayfa 6
The farms and the cottages—the friendly terms of his intercourse, and his large-handed but well-judging almsgiving—all revealed to her more of his solid worth; and the simplicity that regarded all as the merest duty touched her more than all. Many a time did she think of the royal Norwegian brothers, one of whom went to tie a knot in the willows on the banks of the Jordan, while the other remained at home to be the blessing of his people, and from her broken idol wanderer she turned to worship her steadfast worker at home, as far as his humility and homeliness made it possible, and valued each hour with him as if each moment were of diamond price. And he was so calmly happy, that there was no grieving in his presence. It had been a serene life of simple fulfilment of duty, going ever higher, and branching wider, as a good man’s standard gradually rises the longer he lives; the one great disappointment had been borne without sourness or repining, and the affections, deprived of the home channel, had spread in a beneficent flood, and blessed all around. So, though, like every sinful son of man, sensible of many an error, many an infirmity, still the open loving spirit was childlike enough for that blessed sense; for that feeling which St. John expresses as ‘if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God;’ confidence in the infinite Merits that atone for the errors of weakness, and occasional wanderings of will; confidence that made the hope a sure and steadfast one, and these sentenced weeks a land of Beulah, where Honora’s tardy response to his constant love could be greeted and valued as the precious fulfilment of long-cherished wishes, not dashed aside as giving bitterness to his departure.
The parting was broken by a promise that Honora should again meet the Savilles at the Holt in the autumn. She assured herself that there was no danger before that time, and Humfrey spoke cheerfully of looking forward to it, and seemed to have so much to do, and to be so well equal to doing it, that he would not let them be concerned at leaving him alone.
To worship Humfrey was an easier thing at a distance than when beside him. Honora came back to Sandbeach thoroughly restless and wretched, reproaching herself with having wasted such constant, priceless affection, haunted by the constant dread of each morning’s post, and longing fervently to be on the spot. She had self-command enough not to visit her dejection on the children, but they missed both her spirits and her vigilance, and were more left to their nurse; and her chief solace was in long solitary walks, or in evening talks with Miss Wells. Kind Miss Wells perhaps guessed how matters stood between the two last Charlecotes, but she hinted not her suspicions, and was the unwearied recipient of all Honora’s histories, of his symptoms, of his cheerfulness, and his solicitude for her. Those talks did her good, they set the real Humfrey before her, and braced her to strive against weakness and despondence.
And then the thought grew on her, why, since they were so thoroughly each other’s, why should they not marry, and be together to the last? Why should he be left to his solitude for this final year? why should their meetings be so prudentially chaperoned? Suppose the disease should be lingering, how hard it was that she should be absent, and he left to servants! She could well imagine why he had not proposed it; he was too unselfish to think of exposing her to the shock, or making her a widow, but how came she never to have thought of it? She stood beyond all ordinary rules—she had nothing worldly to gain nor to lose by being his wife for these few remaining months—it surely was her part, after the way she had treated him, to meet him more than half way—she alone could make the proposal—she would—she must. And oh! if the doctors should be mistaken! So spoke the midnight dream—oh! how many times. But what said cool morning? Propriety had risen up, grave decorum objecting to what would shock Humfrey, ay, and was making Honor’s cheeks tingle. Yes, and there came the question whether he would not be more distressed than gratified—he who wished to detach himself from all earthly ties—whether he might not be pained and displeased at her thus clinging to him—nay, were he even gratified, might not emotion and agitation be fatal?
Many, many times was all this tossed over in Honor’s mind. Often the desperate resolution was definitely taken, and she had seen herself quietly meeting him at dear old Hiltonbury Church, with his grave sweet eyes resting satisfied upon her as his darling. As often had the fear of offending him, and the instinct of woman’s dignity turned her away when her heart was beating high. That autumn visit—then she would decide. One look as if he wished to retain her, the least air of feebleness or depression, and she would be determined, even if she had to waive all feminine reserves, and set the matter in hand herself. She thought Mr. Saville would highly approve and assist; and having settled into this period for her project, she set herself in some degree at rest, and moved and spoke with so much more of her natural ease, that Miss Wells was consoled about her, and knew not how entirely heart and soul were at Hiltonbury, with such devotion as had never even gone to the backwoods.
To meet the Savilles at Hiltonbury in the autumn! Yes—Honor met Mr. Saville, but not as she had intended. By that time the stroke had fallen, just as she had become habituated to the expectation, just as her promised visit had assumed a degree of proximity, and her heart was beating at the prospect of the results.
Humfrey had been scarcely ailing all the summer, he had gone about his occupations with his usual cheerfulness, and had taken part in all the village festivals as genially as ever. Only close observers could have noticed a slackness towards new undertakings, a gradual putting off of old ones, a training of those, dependent on his counsel, to go alone, a preference for being alone in the evening, a greater habit of stillness and contemplation.
September had come, and he had merrily sent off two happy boy-sportsmen with the keeper, seeing them over the first field himself, and leaning against the gate, as he sent them away in convulsions of laughing at his droll auguries. The second was a Sunday, a lovely day of clear deep blue sky, and rich sunshine laughing upon the full wealth of harvest fields—part fallen before the hand of the reaper, part waving in their ripe glowing beauty, to which he loved to liken Honora’s hair—part in noble redundant shocks of corn in full season. Brooks used afterwards to tell how he overtook the squire slowly strolling to church on that beauteous autumnal morning, and how he paused to remark on the glory of the harvest, and to add, ‘Keep the big barn clear, Brooks—let us have all the women and children in for the supper this time—and I say—send the spotted heifer down to-morrow to old Boycotts, instead of his cow that died. With such a crop as this, one can stand something. And,’ said Brooks, ‘Thank God for it! was as plain written on his face as ever I saw!’
It was the first Sunday in the month, and there was full service. Hiltonbury Church had one of those old-fashioned altar-rails which form three sides of a square, and where it was the custom that at the words ‘Draw near with faith,’ the earliest communicants should advance to the rail and remain till their place was wanted by others, and that the last should not return to their seats till the service was concluded. Mr. Charlecote had for many years been always the first parishioner to walk slowly up the matted aisle, and kneel beside the wall, under the cumbrous old tables of Commandments. There, on this day, he knelt as usual, and harvest labours tending to thin the number of communicants, the same who came up first remained to the end, joined their voices in the Eucharistic Lord’s Prayer and Angelic Hymn, and bowed their heads at the blessing of the peace that passeth all understanding.
It was not till the rest were moving away, that the vicar and his clerk remarked that the squire had not risen. Another look, and it was plain that he had sunk somewhat forward on his folded arms, and was only supported by the rail and the wall. The vicar hastily summoned the village doctor, who had not yet left the church. They lifted him, and laid him along on the cushioned step where he had been kneeling, but motion and breath were gone, the strong arms were helpless, and the colour had left the open face. Taken at once from the heavenly Feast on earth to the glory above, could this be called sudden death?
There he lay on the altar step, with hands crossed on his breast, and perfectly blessed repose on his manly countenance, sweetened and ennobled in its stillness, and in every lineament bearing the impress of that Holy Spirit of love who had made it a meet temple.
What an unpremeditated lying in state was that! as by ones and twos, beneath the clergyman’s eye, the villagers stole in with slowly, heavily falling tread to gaze in silent awe on their best friend, some sobbing and weeping beyond control, others with grave, almost stolid tranquillity, or the murmured ‘He was a gentleman,’ which, in a poor man’s mouth, means ‘he was a just man and patient, the friend of the weak and poor.’ His farmers and his own labourers put their shoulders to bear him once more to his own house, through his half-gathered crops—
The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.
No, bewail him not. It was glory, indeed, but the glory of early autumn, the garnering of the shock of corn in full season. It was well done of the vicar that a few long, full-grained ears of wheat were all that was laid upon his breast in his coffin.
There Honora saw them. The vicar, Mr. Henderson, had written to her at once, as Humfrey had long ago charged him to do, enclosing a letter that he had left with him for the purpose, a tender, soothing farewell, and an avowal such as he could never have spoken of the blessing that his attachment to her had been, in drawing his mind from the narrowness to which he might have been liable, and in elevating the tone of his views and opinions.
She knew what he meant—it was what he had caught from her youthful enthusiasm, second-hand from Owen Sandbrook. Oh! what vivid, vigorous truth not to have been weakened in the transit through two such natures, but to have done its work in the strong, practical mind able and candid enough to adopt it even thus filtered!
There were a few words of affectionate commendation of his people and his land into her keeping, and a parting blessing, and, lastly, written as a postscript—with a blot as if it had been written with hesitation—‘Little children, keep yourselves from idols!’
It was not bitter weeping. It was rather the sense of utter vacancy and hopelessness, with but one fixed purpose—that she would see his face again, and be the nearest to him when he was laid in the grave. She hastily wrote to the housekeeper and to the clergyman that she was coming, and Miss Wells’s kind opposition only gave her just wilfulness and determination enough to keep her spirit from sinking.
So she travelled alone, and came to Hiltonbury in the sunset, as the ‘last long wains’ were slowly bearing their loads of wheat into the farmyard, the waggoners walking dejectedly beside them. Mr. Saville had come before her, and was at the door to receive her. She could not very well bear the presence of any one, nor the talk of cold-blooded arrangements. It seemed to keep away the dreamy living with Humfrey, and was far more dreary than the feeling of desolateness, and when they treated her as mistress of the house that was too intolerable. And yet it was worth something, too, to be the one to authorize that harvest supper in the big barn, in the confidence that it would be anything but revelry. Every one felt that the day was indeed a Harvest Home.
The funeral, according to his expressed wishes, was like those of the farmers of the parish; the coffin borne by his own labourers in their white round frocks; and the labourers were the expected guests for whom provision was made; but far and wide from all the country round, though harvest was at the height, came farmers and squires, poor men and rich, from the peer and county member down to the poor travelling hawker—all had met the sunny sympathy of that smile, all had been aided and befriended, all felt as if a prop, a castle of strength were gone.
Charlecotes innumerable rested in the chancel, and the last heir of the line was laid beneath the same flag where he had been placed on that last Sunday, the spot where Honor might kneel for many more, meeting him in spirit at the feast, and looking to the time when the cry should be, ‘Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is come.’
But ere she could look in thorough hope for that time, another page of Honor’s life must be turned, and an alloy, as yet unknown to herself, must be purged from her heart. The last gleam of her youthful sunshine had faded with Humfrey; but youth is but a fraction of human existence, and there were further phases to be gone through and lessons to be learnt; although she was feeling as if all were over with her in this world, and neither hope, love, nor protection were left her, nor any interest save cherishing Humfrey Charlecote’s memory, as she sat designing the brass tablet which was to record his name and age in old English illuminated letters, surrounded by a border of ears of corn and grapes.
CHAPTER IV
The glittering grass, with dewstars bright,
Is all astir with twinkling light;
What pity that such fair array
In one brief hour should melt away.
—Rev. T. Whytehead
‘This is a stroke of good luck!’ said Mr. Charteris. ‘We must not, on any account, remove the Sandbrook children from Miss Charlecote; she has no relations, and will certainly make the boy her heir.’
‘She will marry!’ said his wife. ‘Some fashionable preacher will swallow her red hair. She is just at the age for it!’
‘Less likely when she has the children to occupy her.’
‘Well, you’ll have them thrown on your hands yet!’
‘The chance is worth trying for, though! I would not interfere with her on any account.’
‘Oh, no, nor I! but I pity the children.’
* * * * *
‘There, Master Owen, be a good boy, and don’t worry. Don’t you see, I’m putting up your things to go home.’
‘Home!’ the light glittered in Lucilla’s eyes. ‘Is it Wrapworth, nursey?’
‘Dear me, miss, not Wrapworth. That’s given away, you know; but it’s to Hiltonbury you are going—such a grand place, which if Master Owen is only a dear good boy, will all belong to him one of these days.’
‘Will there be a pony to ride on?’ asked Owen.
‘Oh, yes—if you’ll only let those stockings alone—there’ll be ponies, and carriages, and horses, and everything a gentleman can have, and all for my own dear little Master Owen!’
‘I don’t want to go to Hiltonbury,’ said Lucilla; ‘I want to go home to the river and the boat, and see Mr. Prendergast and the black cow.’
‘I’ll give you a black cow, Cilly,’ said Owen, strutting about. ‘Is Hiltonbury bigger than the castle?’
‘Oh, ever so big, Master Owen; such acres of wood, Mr. Jones says, and all your dear cousin’s, and sure to be your own in time. What a great gentleman you will be, to be sure, dining thirty gentlefolks twice a week, as they say poor Mr. Charlecote did, and driving four fine horses to your carriage like a gentleman. And then you won’t forget poor old nursey-pursey.’
‘Oh, no, nurse; I’ll give you a ride in my carriage!’
Honora in her listless state had let Mr. Saville think for her, and passively obeyed him when he sent her back to Sandbeach to wind up her affairs there, while he finished off the valuations and other painful business at the Holt, in which she could be of little use, since all she desired was to keep everything as it was. She was anxious to return as soon as possible, so as to take up the reins before there had been time for the relaxation to be felt, the only chance she felt of her being able to fulfil his charge. The removal, the bustle, the talking things over with Miss Wells, and the sight of the children did much to restore her, and her old friend rejoiced to see that necessary occupation was tending to make her time pass more cheerfully than she perhaps knew.
As to the dear old City dwelling, it might have fetched an immense price, but only to become a warehouse, a measure that would have seemed to Honor little short of sacrilege. To let it, in such a locality, was impossible, so it must remain unavailable capital, and Honora decided on leaving her old housekeeper therein, with a respectable married niece, who would inhabit the lower regions, and keep the other rooms in order, for an occasional stay in London. She would have been sorry to cut herself off from a month of London in the spring, and the house might farther be useful to friends who did not object to the situation; or could be lent now and then to a curate; and she could well afford to keep it up, so she thought herself justified in following her inclination, and went up for three mournful days of settling matters there, and packing books and ornaments till the rooms looked so dismantled that she could not think how to face them again.
It was the beginning of October when she met Miss Wells, children, and luggage at the station, and fairly was on her way to her home. She tried to call it so, as a duty to Humfrey, but it gave her a pang every time, and in effect she felt far less at home than when he and Sarah had stood in the doorway to greet the arrivals. She had purposely fixed an hour when it would be dark, so that she might receive no painful welcome; she wished no one to greet her, she had rather they were mourning for their master. She had more than once shocked Miss Wells by declaring heiresses to be a mistake; and yet, as she always owned, she could not have borne for any one else to have had the Holt.
Fortunately for her, the children were sleepy, and were rather in a mazy state when lifted out and set on their legs in the wainscoted hall, and she sent them at once with nurse to the cheerful room that Humfrey’s little visitors had saved from becoming disused. Miss Wells’s fond vigilance was a little oppressive, but she gently freed herself from it, and opened the study door. She had begged that as little change as possible might be made; and there stood, as she had last seen them, the large leathern chair, the little table, the big Bible, and in it the little faded marker she had herself constructed for his twenty-first birthday, when her powers of making presents had not equalled her will. Yet what costly gift could have fulfilled its mission like that one? She opened the heavy book at the place. It was at the first lesson for the last day of his life, the end of the prophet Hosea, and the first words her eyes fell upon were the glorious prophecy—‘I will redeem them from death, I will ransom them from the power of the grave.’ Her heart beat high, and she stood half musing, half reading: ‘They that dwell under His shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the vine.’ How gentle and refreshing the cadence! A longing rose up in her to apply those latter words more closely, by placing them on his tablet; she did not think they would shock his humility, a consideration which had withheld her from choosing other passages of which she always thought in connection with him. Another verse, and she read: ‘Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?’
It brought back the postscript. Kind Humfrey must have seen strong cause before he gave any reproof, least of all to her, and she could take his word that the fault had been there. She felt certain of it when she thought of her early devotion to Owen Sandbrook, and the utter blank caused by his defection. Nay, she believed she had begun to idolize Humfrey himself, but now, at her age, chastened, desponding, with nothing before her save the lonely life of an heiress old maid, counting no tie of blood with any being, what had she to engross her affections from the true Object? Alas! Honora’s heart was not feeling that Object sufficient! Conscientious, earnest, truly loving goodness, and all connected with it; striving as a faithful, dutiful woman to walk rightly, still the personal love and trust were not yet come. Spent as they had been upon props of earth, when these were taken away the tendrils hung down drearily, unemployed, not fastening on the true support.
Not that she did not kneel beside that little table, as in a shrine, and entreat earnestly for strength and judgment to do her duty faithfully in her new station, so that Humfrey’s charge might be fulfilled, and his people might not suffer; and this done, and her homage paid to his empty throne, she was better able to satisfy her motherly friend by her deportment for the remainder of the evening, and to reply to the welcome of the weeping Mrs. Stubbs. By one of Humfrey’s wise acts of foresight, his faithful servant, Reeves, had been provided for as the master of the Union, whither it was certain he would carry the same milk of human kindness as had been so plentiful at Hiltonbury, and the Holt was thus left free for Honora’s Mr. Jones, without fear of clashing, though he was divided between pride in his young lady’s ownership of a ‘landed estate,’ and his own dislike to a country residence.
Honora did not sleep soundly. The place was too new, and yet too familiar, and the rattling of the windows, the roaring of the wind in the chimney, and the creaking of the vane, without absolutely wakening her, kept her hearing alive continually, weaving the noises into some harassing dream that Humfrey’s voice was calling to her, and hindrances always keeping her from him; and then of Lucilla and Owen in some imminent peril, whence she shrieked to him to save them, and then remembered he would stretch out his hand no more.
Sounder sleep came at last, towards morning, and far later than her usual hour she was wakened by a drumming upon her door, and the boy and girl dashed in, radiant with excitement at the novelty of the place. ‘Sweet Honey! Sweet Honey dear, do get up and see. There’s a rocking-horse at the end of the passage.’ ‘And there’s a real pony out in the field.’ ‘There are cows.’ ‘There’s a goat and a little kid, and I want to play with it, and I may, for it is all mine and yours.’
‘All yours! Owen, boy,’ repeated Honora, sitting up in surprise.
‘Nursey said it was all to be Owen’s,’ said Lucilla.
‘And she said I should be as grand a gentleman as poor Mr. Charlecote or Uncle Charteris,’ proceeded Owen, ‘and that I should go out hunting in a red coat, on a beautiful horse; but I want to have the kid now, please, Sweet Honey.’
‘Nurse does not know anything about it,’ said Honora, much annoyed that such an idea should have been suggested in such a manner. ‘I thought my little Owen wished for better things—I thought he was to be like his papa, and try to be a good shepherd, praising God and helping people to do right.’
‘But can’t I wear a red coat too?’ said Owen, wistfully.
‘No, my dear; clergymen don’t go out hunting; or how could they teach the poor little children?’
‘Then I won’t be a clergyman.’
This was an inconvenient and most undesirable turn; but Honor’s first object must be to put the right of heirship out of the little head, and she at once began—‘Nurse must have made a mistake, my dear; this place is your home, and will be always so, I hope, while it is mine, but it must not be your own, and you must not think it will. My little boy must work for himself and other people, and that’s better than having houses and lands given to him.’
Those words touched the pride in Lucilla’s composition, and she exclaimed—‘I’ll work too;’ but the self-consequence of proprietorship had affected her brother more strongly, and he repeated, meditatively, ‘Jones said, not mine while she was alive. Jones was cross.’
There might not be much in the words, child as he was, but there was something in his manner of eyeing her which gave her acute unbearable pain—a look as if she stood in his way and crossed his importance. It was but a baby fit of temper, but she was in no frame to regard it calmly, and with an alteration of countenance that went to his heart, she exclaimed—‘Can that be my little Owen, talking as if he wanted his Cousin Honor dead and out of the way? We had better never have come here if you are to leave off loving me.’
Quick to be infected by emotion, the child’s arms were at once round her neck, and he was sobbing out that he loved his Sweet Honey better than anything; nurse was naughty; Jones was naughty; he wouldn’t hunt, he wouldn’t wear a red coat, he would teach little children just like lambs, he would be like dear papa; anything the poor little fellow could think of he poured out with kisses and entreaties to know if he were naughty still; while his sister, after her usual fashion on such occasions, began to race up and down the room with paroxysms, sometimes of stamping, sometimes of something like laughter.
Some minutes passed before Honora could compose herself, or soothe the boy, by her assurances that he was not to blame, only those who put things in his head that he could not understand; and it was not till after much tender fondling that she had calmed him enough for his morning devotions. No sooner were these over than he looked up and said, while the tears still glazed his cheeks, ‘Sweet Honey, I’ll tell nurse and Mr. Jones that I’m on pilgrimage to the Eastern land, and I’ll not turn into by-ways after red coats and little kids to vex you.’
Whether Owen quite separated fact from allegory might have been doubtful to a more prosaic mind than Honora’s, but he had brought this dreamy strain with him from his father, and she thought it one of his great charms. She had been obliged to leave him to himself much more than usual of late, and she fervently resolved to devote herself with double energy to watching over him, and eradicating any weeds that might have been sown during her temporary inattention. He clung so fast to her hand, and was so much delighted to have her with him again, so often repeating that she must not go away again, that the genuineness of his affection could not be doubted, and probably he would only retain an impression of having been led to say something very shocking, and the alarm to his sensitive conscience would hinder him from ever even trying to remember what it was.
She spoke, however, to nurse, telling her that the subject must never be mentioned to the children, since it was by no means desirable for them, and besides, she had no intention of the kind. She wished it to be distinctly understood that Master Owen was not to be looked upon as her heir.
‘Very true, ma’am, it is too soon to be talking of such things yet, and I must say, I was as sorry as possible to find that the child had had it named to him. People will talk, you see, Miss Charlecote, though I am sure so young a lady as you are . . . ’
‘That has nothing to do with it,’ said Honora; ‘I consider nothing so bad for a child as to be brought up to expectations to which he has no right, when he is sure to have to provide for himself. I beg that if you hear the subject entered on again, in the children’s presence, you will put a stop to it.’
‘Certainly, ma’am; their poor dear papa never would have wished them to be occupied with earthly things of that sort. As I often said, there never was such an unworldly gentleman; he never would have known if there were a sixpence in the house, nor a joint in the larder, if there had not been cook and me to care for him. I often said to cook—“Well for him that he has honest people about him.”’
Honora likewise spoke to Jones, her private retainer. He smiled scorn of the accusation, and answered her as the child he had known in frocks. ‘Yes, ma’am, I did tell the young gentleman to hold his tongue, for it never would be his in your lifetime, nor after, in my judgment.’
‘Why, certainly, it does seem early days to speak of such a matter,’ said Honora, sadly.
‘It is unaccountable what people will not put in children’s heads,’ said Jones, sagely; ‘not but what he is a nice quiet young gentleman, and gives very little trouble, but they might let that alone. Miss Honora, when will it be convenient to you to take my account of the plate?’
She felt pretty well convinced that Jones had only resented the whole on her account, and that it was not he who had put the notion into the boy’s head. As to nurse, she was far from equally clear. Doubts of nurse’s sincerity had long been growing upon her, and she was in the uncomfortable position of being able to bear neither to think of the children’s intercourse with any one tainted with falsehood, nor to dismiss a person implicitly trusted by their father. She could only decide that the first detected act of untruth should be the turning-point.
Meantime, painful as was many an association, Honor did not find her position so dreary or so oppressive as she had anticipated. She had a great deal to do, and the tracks had been duly made out for her by her cousin. Mr. Saville, or Humfrey’s old friend, Sir John Raymond, were always ready to help her in great matters, and Brooks was an excellent dictatorial deputy in small ones. Her real love for country life, for live animals, and, above all, the power of doing good, all found scope. Humfrey’s charge gave her a sense of a fulfilled duty; and mournful and broken-spirited as she believed herself, if Humfrey could have looked at her as she scrupulously made entries in his book, rode out with the children to try to look knowing at the crops, or sat by the fire in the evening with his dogs at her feet, telling stories to the children, he would not have feared too much for his Honor. Living or dead, the love of Humfrey could hardly help being a spring of peace and happiness; and the consciousness of it had been too brief, and the tie never close enough, to lead to a state of crushed spirits. The many little tender observances that she paid to him were a source of mournful sweetness rather than of heart-rending.
