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

Charlotte M. Yonge

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

PART I

CHAPTER I

Who ought to go then and who ought to stay!Where do you draw an obvious border line?Cecil and Mary

Among the numerous steeples counted from the waters of the Thames, in the heart of the City, and grudged by modern economy as cumberers of the soil of Mammon, may be remarked an abortive little dingy cupola, surmounting two large round eyes which have evidently stared over the adjacent roofs ever since the Fire that began at Pie-corner and ended in Pudding-lane.

Strange that the like should have been esteemed the highest walk of architecture, and yet Honora Charlecote well remembered the days when St. Wulstan’s was her boast, so large, so clean, so light, so Grecian, so far surpassing damp old Hiltonbury Church.  That was at an age when her enthusiasm found indiscriminate food in whatever had a hold upon her affections, the nearer her heart being of course the more admirable in itself, and it would be difficult to say which she loved the most ardently, her city home in Woolstone-lane, or Hiltonbury Holt, the old family seat, where her father was a welcome guest whenever his constitution required relaxation from the severe toils of a London rector.

Woolstone-lane was a locality that sorely tried the coachmen of Mrs. Charlecote’s West End connections, situate as it was on the very banks of the Thames, and containing little save offices and warehouses, in the midst of which stood Honora’s home.  It was not the rectory, but had been inherited from City relations, and it antedated the Fire, so that it was one of the most perfect remnants of the glories of the merchant princes of ancient London.  It had a court to itself, shut in by high walls, and paved with round-headed stones, with gangways of flags in mercy to the feet; the front was faced with hewn squares after the pattern of Somerset House, with the like ponderous sashes, and on a smaller scale, the Louis XIV. pediment, apparently designed for the nesting-place of swallows and sparrows.  Within was a hall, panelled with fragrant softly-tinted cedar wood, festooned with exquisite garlands of fruit and flowers, carved by Gibbons himself, with all his peculiarities of rounded form and delicate edge.  The staircase and floor were of white stone, tinted on sunny days with reflections from the windows’ three medallions of yellow and white glass, where Solomon, in golden mantle and crowned turban, commanded the division of a stout lusty child hanging by one leg; superintended the erection of a Temple worthy of Haarlem; or graciously welcomed a recoiling stumpy Vrow of a Queen of Sheba, with golden hair all down her back.

The river aspect of the house had come to perfection at the Elizabethan period, and was sculptured in every available nook with the chevron and three arrows of the Fletchers’ Company, and a merchant’s mark, like a figure of four with a curly tail.  Here were the oriel windows of the best rooms, looking out on a grassplat, small enough in country eyes, but most extensive for the situation, with straight gravelled walks, and low lilac and laburnum trees, that came into profuse blossom long before their country cousins, but which, like the crocuses and snowdrops of the flower borders, had better be looked at than touched by such as dreaded sooty fingers.  These shrubs veiled the garden from the great river thoroughfare, to which it sloped down, still showing traces of the handsome stone steps and balustrade that once had formed the access of the gold-chained alderman to his sumptuous barge.

Along those paths paced, book in hand, a tall, well-grown maiden, of good straight features, and clear, pale skin, with eyes and rich luxuriant hair of the same colour, a peculiarly bright shade of auburn, such as painters of old had loved, and Owen Sandbrook called golden, while Humfrey Charlecote would declare he was always glad to see Honor’s carrots.

More than thirty years ago, personal teaching at a London parish school or personal visiting of the poor was less common than at present, but Honora had been bred up to be helpful, and she had newly come in from a diligent afternoon of looking at the needlework, and hearing Crossman’s Catechism and Sellon’s Abridgment from a demurely dressed race of little girls in tall white caps, bibs and tuckers, and very stout indigo-blue frocks.  She had been working hard at the endeavour to make the little Cockneys, who had never seen a single ear of wheat, enter into Joseph’s dreams, and was rather weary of their town sharpness coupled with their indifference and want of imagination, where any nature, save human nature, was concerned.  ‘I will bring an ear of Hiltonbury wheat home with me—some of the best girls shall see me sow it, and I will take them to watch it growing up—the blade, the ear, the full corn in the ear—poor dears, if they only had a Hiltonbury to give them some tastes that are not all for this hot, busy, eager world!  If I could only see one with her lap full of bluebells; but though in this land of Cockaigne of ours, one does not actually pick up gold and silver, I am afraid they are our flowers, and the only ones we esteem worth the picking; and like old Mr. Sandbrook, we neither understand nor esteem those whose aims are otherwise!  Oh! Owen, Owen, may you only not be withheld from your glorious career!  May you show this hard, money-getting world that you do really, as well as only in word, esteem one soul to be reclaimed above all the wealth that can be laid at your feet!  The nephew and heir of the great Firm voluntarily surrendering consideration, ease, riches, unbounded luxury for the sake of the heathen—choosing a wigwam instead of a West End palace; parched maize rather than the banquet; the backwoods instead of the luxurious park; the Red Indian rather than the club and the theatre; to be a despised minister rather than a magnate of this great city; nay, or to take his place among the influential men of the land.  What has this worn, weary old civilization to offer like the joy of sitting beneath one of the glorious aspiring pines of America, gazing out on the blue waters of her limpid inland seas, in her fresh pure air, with the simple children of the forest round him, their princely forms in attitudes of attention, their dark soft liquid eyes fixed upon him, as he tells them “Your Great Spirit, Him whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you,” and then, some glorious old chief bows his stately head, and throws aside his marks of superstition.  “I believe,” he says, and the hearts of all bend with him; and Owen leads them to the lake, and baptizes them, and it is another St. Sacrament!  Oh! that is what it is to have nobleness enough truly to overcome the world, truly to turn one’s back upon pleasures and honours—what are they to such as this?’

So mused Honora Charlecote, and then ran indoors, with bounding step, to her Schiller, and her hero-worship of Max Piccolomini, to write notes for her mother, and practise for her father the song that was to refresh him for the evening.

Nothing remarkable!  No; there was nothing remarkable in Honor, she was neither more nor less than an average woman of the higher type.  Refinement and gentleness, a strong appreciation of excellence, and a love of duty, had all been brought out by an admirable education, and by a home devoted to unselfish exertion, varied by intellectual pleasures.  Other influences—decidedly traceable in her musings—had shaped her principles and enthusiasms on those of an ardent Oxonian of the early years of William IV.; and so bred up, so led by circumstances, Honora, with her abilities, high cultivation, and tolerable sense, was a fair specimen of what any young lady might be, appearing perhaps somewhat in advance of her contemporaries, but rather from her training than from intrinsic force of character.  The qualities of womanhood well developed, were so entirely the staple of her composition, that there is little to describe in her.  Was not she one made to learn; to lean; to admire; to support; to enhance every joy; to soften every sorrow of the object of her devotion?

* * * * *

Another picture from Honora Charlecote’s life.  It is about half after six, on a bright autumnal morning; and, rising nearly due east, out of a dark pine-crowned hill, the sun casts his slanting beams over an undulating country, clothed in gray mist of tints differing with the distance, the farther hills confounded with the sky, the nearer dimly traced in purple, and the valleys between indicated by the whiter, woollier vapours that rise from their streams, a goodly land of fertile field and rich wood, cradled on the bosoms of those soft hills.

Nestled among the woods, clothing its hollows on almost every side, rises a low hill, with a species of table land on the top, scattered over with large thorns and scraggy oaks that cast their shadows over the pale buff bents of the short soft grass of the gravelly soil.  Looking southward is a low, irregular, old-fashioned house, with two tall gable ends like eyebrows, and the lesser gable of a porch between them, all covered with large chequers of black timber, filled up with cream-coloured cement.  A straight path leads from the porch between beds of scarlet geraniums, their luxuriant horse-shoe leaves weighed down with wet, and china asters, a drop in every quilling, to an old-fashioned sun-dial, and beside that dial stands Honora Charlecote, gazing joyously out on the bright morning, and trying for the hundredth time to make the shadow of that green old finger point to the same figure as the hand of her watch.

‘Oh! down, down, there’s a good dog, Fly; you’ll knock me down!  Vixen, poor little doggie, pray!  Look at your paws,’ as a blue greyhound and rough black terrier came springing joyously upon her, brushing away the silver dew from the shaven lawn.

‘Down, down, lie down, dogs!’ and with an obstreperous bound, Fly flew to the new-comer, a young man in the robust strength of eight-and-twenty, of stalwart frame, very broad in the chest and shoulders, careless, homely, though perfectly gentleman-like bearing, and hale, hearty, sunburnt face.  It was such a look and such an arm as would win the most timid to his side in certainty of tenderness and protection, and the fond voice gave the same sense of power and of kindness, as he called out, ‘Holloa, Honor, there you are!  Not given up the old fashion?’

‘Not till you give me up, Humfrey,’ she said, as she eagerly laid her neatly gloved fingers in the grasp of the great, broad, horny palm, ‘or at least till you take your gun.’

‘So you are not grown wiser?’

‘Nor ever will be.’

‘Every woman ought to learn to saddle a horse and fire off a gun.’

‘Yes, against the civil war squires are always expecting.  You shall teach me when the time comes.’

‘You’ll never see that time, nor any other, if you go out in those thin boots.  I’ll fetch Sarah’s clogs; I suppose you have not a reasonable pair in the world.’

‘My boots are quite thick, thank you.’

‘Brown paper!’  And indeed they were a contrast to his mighty nailed soles, and long, untanned buskins, nor did they greatly resemble the heavy, country-made galoshes which, with an elder brother’s authority, he forced her to put on, observing that nothing so completely evinced the Londoner as her obstinacy in never having a pair of shoes that could keep anything out.

‘And where are you going?’

‘To Hayward’s farm.  Is that too far for you?  He wants an abatement of his rent for some improvements, and I want to judge what they may be worth.’

‘Hayward’s—oh, not a bit too far!’ and holding up her skirts, she picked her way as daintily as her weighty chaussure would permit, along the narrow green footway that crossed the expanse of dewy turf in which the dogs careered, getting their noses covered with flakes of thick gossamer, cemented together by dew.  Fly scraped it off with a delicate forepaw, Vixen rolled over, and doubly entangled it in her rugged coat.  Humfrey Charlecote strode on before his companion with his hands in his pockets, and beginning to whistle, but pausing to observe, over his shoulder, ‘A sweet day for getting up the roots!  You’re not getting wet, I hope?’

‘I couldn’t through this rhinoceros hide, thank you.  How exquisitely the mist is curling up, and showing the church-spire in the valley.’

‘And I suppose you have been reading all manner of books?’

‘I think the best was a great history of France.’

‘France!’ he repeated in a contemptuous John Bull tone.

‘Ay, don’t be disdainful; France was the centre of chivalry in the old time.’

‘Better have been the centre of honesty.’

‘And so it was in the time of St. Louis and his crusade.  Do you know it, Humfrey?’

‘Eh?’

That was full permission.  Ever since Honora had been able to combine a narration, Humfrey had been the recipient, though she seldom knew whether he attended, and from her babyhood upwards had been quite contented with trotting in the wake of his long strides, pouring out her ardent fancies, now and then getting an answer, but more often going on like a little singing bird, through the midst of his avocations, and quite complacent under his interruptions of calls to his dogs, directions to his labourers, and warnings to her to mind her feet and not her chatter.  In the full stream of crusaders, he led her down one of the multitude of by-paths cleared out in the hazel coppice for sporting; here leading up a rising ground whence the tops of the trees might be overlooked, some flecked with gold, some blushing into crimson, and beyond them the needle point of the village spire, the vane flashing back the sun; there bending into a ravine, marshy at the bottom, and nourishing the lady fern, then again crossing glades, where the rabbits darted across the path, and the battle of Damietta was broken into by stern orders to Fly to come to heel, and the eating of the nuts which Humfrey pulled down from the branches, and held up to his cousin with superior good nature.

‘A Mameluke rushed in with a scimitar streaming with blood, and—’

‘Take care; do you want help over this fence?’

‘Not I, thank you—And said he had just murdered the king—’

‘Vic! ah! take your nose out of that.  Here was a crop, Nora.’

‘What was it?’

‘You don’t mean that you don’t know wheat stubble?’

‘I remember it was to be wheat.’

‘Red wheat, the finest we ever had in this land; not a bit beaten down, and the colour perfectly beautiful before harvest; it used to put me in mind of your hair.  A load to the acre; a fair specimen of the effect of drainage.  Do you remember what a swamp it was?’

‘I remember the beautiful loose-strifes that used to grow in that corner.’

‘Ah! we have made an end of that trumpery.’

‘You savage old Humfrey—beauties that they were.’

‘What had they to do with my cornfields?  A place for everything and everything in its place—French kings and all.  What was this one doing wool-gathering in Egypt?’

‘Don’t you understand, it had become the point for the blow at the Saracen power.  Where was I?  Oh, the Mameluke justified the murder, and wanted St. Louis to be king, but—’

‘Ha! a fine covey, I only miss two out of them.  These carrots, how their leaves are turned—that ought not to be.’

Honora could not believe that anything ought not to be that was as beautiful as the varied rosy tints of the hectic beauty of the exquisitely shaped and delicately pinked foliage of the field carrots, and with her cousin’s assistance she soon had a large bouquet where no two leaves were alike, their hues ranging from the deepest purple or crimson to the palest yellow, or clear scarlet, like seaweed, through every intermediate variety of purple edged with green, green picked out with red or yellow, or vice versâ, in never-ending brilliancy, such as Humfrey almost seemed to appreciate, as he said, ‘Well, you have something as pretty as your weeds, eh, Honor?’

‘I can’t quite give up mourning for my dear long purples.’

‘All very well by the river, but there’s no beauty in things out of place, like your Louis in Egypt—well, what was the end of this predicament?’

So Humfrey had really heard and been interested!  With such encouragement, Honora proceeded swimmingly, and had nearly arrived at her hero’s ransom, through nearly a mile of field paths, only occasionally interrupted by grunts from her auditor at farming not like his own, when crossing a narrow foot-bridge across a clear stream, they stood before a farmhouse, timbered and chimneyed much like the Holt, but with new sashes displacing the old lattice.

‘Oh! Humfrey, how could you bring me to see such havoc?  I never suspected you would allow it.’

‘It was without asking leave; an attention to his bride; and now they want an abatement for improvements!  Whew!’

‘You should fine him for the damage he has done!’

‘I can’t be hard on him, he is more or less of an ass, and a good sort of fellow, very good to his labourers; he drove Jem Hurd to the infirmary himself when he broke his arm.  No, he is not a man to be hard upon.’

‘You can’t be hard on any one.  Now that window really irritates my mind.’

‘Now Sarah walked down to call on the bride, and came home full of admiration at the place being so lightsome and cheerful.  Which of you two ladies am I to believe?’

‘You ought to make it a duty to improve the general taste!  Why don’t you build a model farm-house, and let me make the design?’

‘Ay, when I want one that nobody can live in.  Come, it will be breakfast time.’

‘Are not you going to have an interview?’

‘No, I only wanted to take a survey of the alterations; two windows, smart door, iron fence, pulled down old barn, talks of another.  Hm!’

‘So he will get his reduction?’

‘If he builds the barn.  I shall try to see his wife; she has not been brought up to farming, and whether they get on or not, all depends on the way she may take it up.  What are you looking at?’

‘That lovely wreath of Traveller’s Joy.’

‘Do you want it?’

‘No, thank you, it is too beautiful where it is.’

‘There is a piece, going from tree to tree, by the Hiltonbury Gate, as thick as my arm; I just saved it when West was going to cut it down with the copsewood.’

‘Well, you really are improving at last!’

‘I thought you would never let me hear the last of it; besides, there was a thrush’s nest in it.’

By and by the cousins arrived at a field where Humfrey’s portly shorthorns were coming forth after their milking, under the pilotage of an old white-headed man, bent nearly double, uncovering his head as the squire touched his hat in response, and shouted, ‘Good morning.’

‘If you please, sir,’ said the old man, trying to erect himself, ‘I wanted to speak to you.’

‘Well.’

‘If you please, sir, chimney smokes so as a body can scarce bide in the house, and the blacks come down terrible.’

‘Wants sweeping,’ roared Humfrey, into his deaf ears.

‘Have swep it, sir; old woman’s been up with her broom.’

‘Old woman hasn’t been high enough.  Send Jack up outside with a rope and a bunch o’ furze, and let her stand at bottom.’

‘That’s it, sir!’ cried the old man, with a triumphant snap of the fingers over his shoulder.  ‘Thank ye!’

‘Here’s Miss Honor, John;’ and Honora came forward, her gravity somewhat shaken by the domestic offices of the old woman.

‘I’m glad to see you still able to bring out the cows, John.  Here’s my favourite Daisy as tame as ever.’

‘Ay! ay!’ and he looked at his master for explanation from the stronger and more familiar voice.  ‘I be deaf, you see, ma’am.’

‘Miss Honor is glad to see Daisy as tame as ever,’ shouted Humfrey.

‘Ay! ay!’ maundered on the old man; ‘she ain’t done no good of late, and Mr. West and I—us wanted to have fatted her this winter, but the squire, he wouldn’t hear on it, because Miss Honor was such a terrible one for her.  Says I, when I hears ’em say so, we shall have another dinner on the la-an, and the last was when the old squire was married, thirty-five years ago come Michaelmas.’

Honora was much disposed to laugh at this freak of the old man’s fancy, but to her surprise Humfrey coloured up, and looked so much out of countenance that a question darted through her mind whether he could have any such step in contemplation, and she began to review the young ladies of the neighbourhood, and to decide on each in turn that it would be intolerable to see her as Humfrey’s wife; more at home at the Holt than herself.  She had ample time for contemplation, for he had become very silent, and once or twice the presumptuous idea crossed her that he might be actually about to make her some confidence, but when he at length spoke, very near the house, it was only to say, ‘Honor, I wanted to ask you if you think your father would wish me to ask young Sandbrook here?’

‘Oh! thank you, I am sure he would be glad.  You know poor Owen has nowhere to go, since his uncle has behaved so shamefully.’

‘It must have been a great mortification—’

‘To Owen?  Of course it was, to be so cast off for his noble purpose.’

‘I was thinking of old Mr. Sandbrook—’

‘Old wretch!  I’ve no patience with him!’

‘Just as he has brought this nephew up and hopes to make him useful and rest some of his cares upon him in his old age, to find him flying off upon this fresh course, and disappointing all his hopes.’

‘But it is such a high and grand course, he ought to have rejoiced in it, and Owen is not his son.’

‘A man of his age, brought up as he has been, can hardly be expected to enter into Owen’s views.’

‘Of course not.  It is all sordid and mean, he cannot even understand the missionary spirit of resigning all.  As Owen says, half the Scripture must be hyperbole to him, and so he is beginning Owen’s persecution already.’

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.’