Hopes and Fears Part 129

'Yes. She promised her mother, on her death-bed, that Maria should be her charge, and no one could wish her to lay it aside.'

'And the family are aware of the attachment?'

'The brothers are, and have been kinder than I dared to expect. It was thought better to tell no one else until we could see our way; but you have a right to know now, and I have the more hope that you will find comfort in the arrangement, since I know how warmly and gratefully she feels towards you. I may tell her?' he added, with a good deal of affirmation in his question.

'What would you do if I told you not?' she asked, thawing for the first time out of her set speeches.

'I should feel very guilty and uncomfortable in writing.'

'Then come home with me to-morrow, and let us talk it over,' she said, acting on a mandate of Owen's which she had strenuously refused to promise to obey. 'You may leave your work in Owen's hands. He wants to stay a few days in town, to arrange his plans, and, I do believe, to have the pleasure of independence; but he will come back on Sat.u.r.day, and we will spend Easter together.'

'Miss Charlecote,' said Humfrey, suddenly, 'I have no right to ask, but I cannot but fear that my having turned up is an injury to Sandbrook.'

'I can only tell you that he has been exceedingly anxious for the recognition of your rights.'

'I understand now!' exclaimed Humfrey, turning towards her quickly; 'he betrayed it when his mind was astray. I am thrusting him out of what would have been his!'

'It cannot be helped,' began Honor; 'he never expected--'

'I can say nothing against it,' said the young man, with much emotion.

'It is too generous to be talked of, and these are not matters of choice, but duty; but is it not possible to make some compensation?'

'I have done my best to lay up for those children,' said Honor; 'but his sister will need her full half, and my City property has other claimants.

I own I should be glad to secure that, after me, he should not be entirely dependent upon health which, I fear, will never be sound again.'

'I know you would be happier in arranging it yourself, though he has every claim on my grat.i.tude. Could not the estate be charged with an annuity to him?'

'Thank you!' said Honor, warmly. 'Such a provision will suit him best.

I see that London is his element; indeed, he is so much incapacitated for a country life that the estate would have been a burthen to him, could he have rightly inherited it. He is bent on self-maintenance; and all I wish is, that when I am gone, he should have sonething to fall back upon.'

'I do not think that I can thank you more heartily for any of your benefits than for making me a party to this!' he warmly said. 'But there is no thanking you; I must try to do so by deeds.'

She was forced to allow that her Atheling was winning upon her!

'Two points I liked,' she said to Robert, who spent the evening with her, while Owen was dining with Mr. Currie--'one that he accepted the Holt as a charge, not a gift--the other that he never professed to be marrying for _my_ sake.'

'Yes, he is as true as Phoebe,' said Robert. 'Both have real power of truth from never deceiving themselves. They perfectly suit one another.'

'High praise from you, Robin. Yet how could you forgive his declaration from so unequal a position?'

'I thought it part of his consistently honest dealing. Had she been a mere child, knowing nothing of the world, and subject to parents, it might have been otherwise; but independent and formed as she is, it was but just to avow his sentiments, and give her the choice of waiting.'

'In spite of the obloquy of a poor man paying court to wealth?'

'I fancy he was too single-minded for that idea, and that it was not wealth which he courted was proved by his rejection of Mervyn's offer.

Do you know, I think his refusal will do Mervyn a great deal of good. He is very restless to find out the remaining objections to his management, and Randolf will have more influence with him than I ever could, while he considers parsons as a peculiar species.'

'If people would only believe the good of not compromising!'

'They must often wait a good while to see the good!'

'But, oh! the fruit is worth waiting for! Robin,' she added, after a pause, 'you have been in correspondence with my boy.'

'Yes,' said Robert; 'and there, indeed, you may be satisfied. The seed you sowed in the morning is bearing its increase!'

'_I_ sowed! Ah, Robert! what I sowed was a false crop, that had almost caused the good seed to be rooted up together with it!'

'Not altogether, said Robert. 'If you made any mistakes that led to a confusion of real and unreal in his mind, still, the real good you did to him is incalculable.'

'So he tells me, dear boy! But when I think what he was as a child, and what he has been as a youth, I cannot but charge it on myself.'

'Then think what he is, and will be, I trust, as a man,' said Robert.

'Even at the worst, the higher, purer standard that had been impressed on him saved him from lower depths; and when "he came to himself," it was not as if he had neither known his Father's house nor the way to it. Oh, Miss Charlecote! you must not come to me to a.s.sure you that your training of him was in vain! I, who am always feeling the difference between trying to pull him and poor Mervyn upwards! There may be more excuse for Mervyn, but Owen knows where he is going, and springs towards it; while Mervyn wonders at himself at every stage, and always fancies the next some delusion of my strait-laced imagination.'

'Ah! once I spurned, and afterwards grieved over, the saying that very religious little boys either die or belie their promise.'

'There is some truth in it,' said Robert. 'Precocious piety is so beautiful that it is apt to be fostered so as to make it insensibly imitative and unreal, or depend upon some individual personal influence; and there is a certain reaction at one stage of growth against what has been overworked.'

'Then what could you do with such a child as my Owen if it were all to come over again? His aspirations were often so beautiful that I could not but reverence them greatly; and I cannot now believe that they were prompted by aught but innocence and baptismal grace!'

'Looking back,' said Robert, 'I believe they were genuine, and came from his heart. No; such a devotional turn should be treated with deep reverence and tenderness; but the expression had better be almost repressed, and the test of conduct enforced, though without loading the conscience with details not of general application, and sometimes impracticable under other circ.u.mstances.'

'It is the practicalness of dear Owen's reformation that makes it so thoroughly satisfactory,' said Honora; 'though I must say that I dread the experiment. You will look after him, for this week, Robert; I fear he is overdoing himself in his delight at moving about and working again.'

'I will see how he gets on. It will be a good essay for the future.'

'I cannot think how he is ever to bear living with Mrs. Murrell.'

'She is a good deal broken and subdued, and is more easily repressed than one imagines at her first onset. Besides, she is very proud, and rather afraid, of him, and will not molest him much. Indeed, it is a good arrangement for him; he ought to have care above that of the average landlady.'

'Will he get it?'

'I trust so. She has the ways of a respectable servant; and her religious principle is real, though we do not much admire its manifestation. She will be honest and careful of his wants, and look after his child, and nurse him tenderly if he require it!'

'As if any one but myself would do that! But it is right, and he will be all the better and happier for accepting his duty to her while she lives, if he can bear it.'

'As he says, it is his only expiation.'

'Well! I should not wonder if you saw more of me here than hitherto. A born c.o.c.kney like me gets inclined to the haunts of men as she grows old, and if your sisters and Charlecote Raymond suffice for the parish, I shall be glad to be out of sight of the improvements _he_ will make.'

'Not without your consent?'

'I shall have to consent in my conscience to what I hate in my heart.'

'I am not the man to argue you away from here,' said Robert, eagerly.

'If you would take up the Young Women's a.s.sociation, it would be the only thing to make up for the loss of Miss Fennimore. Then the St. Wulstan's Asylum wants a lady visitor.'

'My father's foundation, whence his successor ousted me, in a general sweep of troublesome ladies,' said Honor. 'How sore I was, and how things come round.'