

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.

                         [Picture: Frontispiece]





HOPES AND FEARS


                                    OR
                    SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF A SPINSTER
                                    BY
                            CHARLOTTE M. YONGE

                         [Picture: Title picture]

                      _ILLUSTRATED BY HERBERT GANDY_

                                  London
                        MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
                     NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
                                   1899

                          _All rights reserved_




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

"She felt, rather than saw him watching her all             _Frontispiece_
the way from the garden-gate to the wood."

"I find I can't spare you, Honora; you had better                _Page_ 11
stay at the Holt for good."

"He drew the paper before him.  Lucilla started                 _Page_ 296
to her feet."

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- 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 versa_, 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  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 <DW72> 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
use