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

‘Glad! of course I am,’ returned Humfrey; ‘I never wished to obtrude my feelings on you after I knew how it stood with you. It would have been a shame. Your choice went far above me. For the rest, if to find you disposed towards me at the last makes me so happy,’ and he looked at her again with beaming affection, ‘how could I have borne to leave you if all had been as I wished? No, no, it is best as it is. You lose nothing in position, and you are free to begin the world again, not knocked down or crushed.’

‘Don’t talk so, Humfrey! It is breaking my heart to think that I might have been making you happy all this time.’

‘Heaven did not will it so,’ said Humfrey, reverently, ‘and it might not have proved what we fancy. You might not have found such a clodhopper all you wanted, and my stupidity might have vexed you, though now you fancy otherwise. And I have had a very happy life—indeed I have, Honor; I never knew the time when I could not say with all my heart, “The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground, yea, I have a goodly heritage.” Everybody and everything, you and all the rest, have been very kind and friendly, and I have never wanted for happiness. It has been all right. You could fulfil your duty as a daughter undividedly, and now I trust those children will be your object and comfort—only, Honor, not your idols. Perhaps it was jealousy, but I have sometimes fancied that your tendency with their father—’

‘Oh! how often I must have given you pain.’

‘I did not mean that , but, as I say, perhaps I was no fair judge. One thing is well, the relations will be much less likely to take them from you when you are living here.’

She held up her hands in deprecation.

‘Honor dear,’ he said pleadingly, yet with authority, ‘pray let me talk to you. There are things which I wish very much to say; indeed, without which I could hardly have asked for this indulgence. It is for your own sake, and that of the place and people.’

‘Poor place, poor people.’

He sighed, but then turned his smiling countenance towards her again. ‘No one else can care for it or them as you do, Honor. Our “goodly heritage”—it was so when I had it from my father, and I don’t think it has got worse under my charge, and I want you to do your duty by it, Honor, and hand it on the same, whoever may come after.’

‘For your sake, Humfrey—even if I did not love it. But—’

‘Yes, it is a duty,’ proceeded Humfrey, gravely. ‘It may seem but a bit of earth after all, but the owner of a property has a duty to let it do its share in producing food, or maybe in not lessening the number of pleasant things here below. I mean it is as much my office to keep my trees and woods fair to look at, as it is not to let my land lie waste.’

She had recovered a good deal while he was moralizing, and became interested. ‘I did not suspect you of the poetical view, Humfrey,’ she said.

‘It is plain sense, I think,’ he said, ‘that to grub up a fine tree, or a pretty bit of copse without fair reason, only out of eagerness for gain, is a bit of selfishness. But mind, Honor, you must not go and be romantic. You must have the timber marked when the trees are injuring each other.’

‘Ah! I’ve often done it with you.’

‘I wish you would come out with me to-day. I’m going to the out-wood, I could show you.’

She agreed readily, almost forgetting the wherefore.

‘And above all, Honor, you must not be romantic about wages! It is not right by other proprietors, nor by the people themselves. No one is ever the better for a fancy price for his labour.’

She could almost have smiled; he was at once so well pleased that she and his ‘goodly heritage’ should belong to each other, so confident in her love and good intentions towards it, and so doubtful of her discretion and management. She promised with all her heart to do her utmost to fulfil his wishes.

‘After all,’ he said, thoughtfully, ‘the best thing for the place—ay, and for you and every one, would be for you to marry; but there’s little chance of that, I suppose, and it is of no use to distress you by mentioning it. I’ve been trying to put out of my hands things that I don’t think you will be able to manage, but I should like you to keep up the home farm, and you may pretty well trust to Brooks. I dare say he will take his own way, but if you keep a reasonable check on him, he will do very well by you. He is as honest as the day, and very intelligent. I don’t know that any one could do better for you.’

‘Oh, yes; I will mind all he tells me.’

‘Don’t show that you mind him. That is the way to spoil him. Poor fellow, he has been a good servant to me, and so have they all. It is a thing to be very thankful for to have had such a set of good servants.’

Honora thought, but did not say, that they could not help being good with such a master.

He went on to tell her that he had made Mr. Saville his executor. Mr. Saville had been for many years before leaving Oxford bursar of his college, and was a thorough man of business whom Humfrey had fixed upon as the person best qualified to be an adviser and assistant to Honora, and he only wished to know whether she wished for any other selection, but this was nearly overpowering her again, for since her father’s death she had leant on no one but Humfrey himself.

One thing more he had to say. ‘You know, Honor, this place will be entirely your own. You and I seem to be the last of the Charlecotes, and even if we were not, there is no entail. You may found orphan asylums with it, or leave it to poor Sandbrook’s children, just as you please.’

‘Oh, I could not do that,’ cried Honor, with a sudden revulsion. Love them as she might, Owen Sandbrook’s children must not step into Humfrey Charlecote’s place. ‘And, besides,’ she added, ‘I want my little Owen to be a clergyman; I think he can be what his father missed.’

‘Well, you can do exactly as you think fit. Only what I wanted to tell you is, that there may be another branch, elder than our own. Not that this need make the least difference, for the Holt is legally ours. It seems that our great grandfather had an elder son—a wild sort of fellow—the old people used to tell stories of him. He went on, in short, till he was disinherited, and went off to America. What became of him afterwards I never could make out; but I have sometimes questioned how I should receive any of his heirs if they should turn up some day. Mind you, you need not have the slightest scruple in holding your own. It was made over to my grandfather by will, as I have made it sure for you; but I do think that when you come to think how to dispose of it, the possibility of the existence of these Charlecotes might be taken into consideration.’

‘Yankee Charlecotes!’ she said.

‘Never mind; most likely nothing of the kind will ever come in your way, and they have not the slightest claim on you. I only threw it out, because I thought it right just to speak of it.’

After this commencement, Humfrey, on this and the ensuing days, made it his business to make his cousin acquainted with the details of the management of the estate. He took such pleasure in doing so, and was so anxious she should comprehend, that she was forced to give her whole attention; and, putting all else aside, was tranquilly happy in thus gratifying him. Those orderly ranges of conscientious accounts were no small testimony to the steady, earnest manner in which Humfrey had set himself to his duty from his early youth, and to a degree they were his honest pride too—he liked to show how good years had made up for bad years, and there was a tenderness in the way he patted their red leather backs to make them even on their shelves, as if they had been good friends to him. No, they must not run into confusion.