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

‘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.