'Dear Phoebe,' cried Cecily, 'I am so thankful that she is spared a long attachment. It was telling on her already!'
'Oh, we should have put a stop to the affair if he had gone out to Canada,' roundly asserted Mervyn; 'but of course he knew better-'
'Not at all-this was quite a surprise.'
Mervyn recollected in time that it was best that Miss Charlecote should so imagine, and reserved for his wife's private ear his conviction that the young fellow had had this hope in his eye when refusing the partnership. Such smartness and foresight commanded his respect as a man of the world, though maybe the women would not understand it. For Phoebe's interest, he must encourage the lady in her excellent intentions.
'It is very handsome in you, Miss Charlecote-very handsome-and I am perfectly unprejudiced in assuring you that you have done the very best thing for yourself. Phoebe is a good girl, and devoted to you already.'
'Indeed she is,' said Cecily. 'She looks up to you so much!'
Somehow Honor did not want Mrs. Fulmort to assure her of this.
'And as to the place,' continued Mervyn, 'you could not put it into better hands to get your people out of their Old World ways. A young man like that, used to farming, and with steam and mechanics at his fingers' ends, will make us all look about us.'
'Perhaps,' murmured poor Honor, with quailing heart.
'John Raymond and I were looking about the Holt the other day,' said Mervyn, 'and agreeing how much more could be made of it. Clear away some of those hedgerows-grub up a bit of copse or two-try chemical manures-drain that terrible old marsh beyond the plantation-and have up a good engine-house where you have those old ramshackle buildings at the Home Farm! Why, the place will bring in as much again, and you've hit on the very man to carry it out. He shall try all the experiments before I adopt them.'
Honora felt as if she must flee! If she were to hear any more she should be ready to banish young Randolf to Canada, were he ten times her heir. Had she lived to hear Humfrey's new barn, with the verge boards conceded to her taste, called ramshackle? And she had given her word!
As she left Beauchamp, and looked at her scraggy pine-trees cresting the hill, she felt as though they were her own no longer, and as if she had given them up to an enemy. She assured herself that nothing could be done without her free-will, and considered of the limitations that must be imposed on this frightful reformer, but her heart grew sick at the conviction that either she would have to yield, or be regarded as a mere incubus and obstruction.
With almost a passionate sense of defence of Humfrey's trees, and Humfrey's barns, she undid the gate of the fir plantations-his special favourites. The bright April sun shed clear gleams athwart the russet boles of the trees, candied by their white gum, the shadows were sharply defined, and darkened by the dense silvered green canopy, relieved by fresh light young shoots, culminating in white powdery clusters, or little soft crimson conelets, all redolent of fresh resinous fragrance. The wind whispered like the sound of ocean in the summit of the trees, and a nightingale was singing gloriously in the distance. All recalled Humfrey, and the day, thirty years back, when she had given him such sore pain, in those very woods, grasping the shadow instead of the substance, and taking the sunshine out of his life as well as from her own. Never had she felt such a pang in thinking of that day, or in the vain imagination of how it might have been!
'Yet I believe I am doing right,' she thought. 'Humfrey himself might say that old things must pass away, and the past give place to the present! Let me stand once more under the tree where I gave him that answer! Shall I feel as if he would laugh at me for my shrinking, or approve me for my resolution?'
The tree was a pinaster, of lengthy foliage and ponderous cones, standing in a little shooting-path, leading from the main walk. She turned towards it and stood breathless for a moment.
There stood the familiar figure-youthful, well-knit, firm, with the open, steadfast, kindly face, but with the look of crowned exultant love that she had only once beheld, and that when his feet were already within the waters of the dark river. It was his very voice that exclaimed, 'Here she is!' Had her imagination indeed called up Humfrey before her, or was he come to upbraid her with her surrender of his charge to modern innovation! But the spell was broken, for a woodland nymph in soft gray, edged with green, was instantly beside him, and that calmly-glad face was no reflection of what Honora's had ever been.
'Dear, dear Miss Charlecote,' cried Phoebe, springing to her; 'we thought you would come home this way, so we came to meet you, and were watching both the paths.'
'Thank you, my dear,' said Honor. Could that man, who looked so like Humfrey, be thinking how those firs would cut up into sleepers?
'Do you know,' said Phoebe, eagerly, 'he says this wood is a little likeness of his favourite place in his old home.'
'I am afraid,' he added, as if apologizing, 'I shall always feel most at home in the smell of pine-trees.'
Mervyn's predictions began to lose their force, and Honor smiled.
'But,' said Phoebe, turning to her, 'I was longing to beg your pardon. I did not like to have any secret from you.'
'Ah! you cunning children,' said Honor, finding surface work easiest; 'you stole a march upon us all.'
'I could not help it,' said Phoebe.
They both laughed, and turning to him, she said, 'Now, could I? When you spoke to me, I could only tell the truth.'
'And I suppose he could not help it,' said Honor.
'Of course not, if there was no reason for helping it,' he said. There could be no dwelling on the horrible things that he would perpetrate, while he looked so like the rightful squire, and while both were so fair a sight in their glad gratitude; and she found herself saying, 'You will bear our name.'
There might be a pang in setting aside that of his father, but he looked at the glowing cheeks and glistening eyes beside him, and said, 'Answer for me.'
'It is what I should like best of all,' Phoebe said, fervently.
'If we can deserve to bear it,' he gravely added.
And something in his tone made Honora feel confident that, even if he should set up an engine-house, it would be only if Humfrey would have done so in his place.
'It will be belonging to you all the more,' said Phoebe. 'It is one great pleasure that now I shall have a right to you!'
'Yes, Phoebe, the old woman will depend on you, her "Eastern moon brightening as day's wild lights decline." But she will trouble you no longer. Finish your walk with Humfrey.' It was the first time she had called him by that name.
'No,' they said, with one voice, 'we were waiting to walk home with you, if we may.'
There was something in that walk, in the tender, respectful kindness with which she was treated, in the intelligent interest that Humfrey showed in the estate, his clear-headed truthfulness on the need of change, and his delicate deference in proposing alteration, that set her heart at rest, made her feel that the 'goodly heritage' was in safe hands, and that she had a staff in her hands for the first time since that Sunday in harvest.
* * * * *
Before the next harvest, Hiltonbury bells rang out, and the church was crowded with glad faces; but there was none more deeply joyful than that of the lonely woman with silvery hair, who quietly knelt beside the gray slab, lettered H. C., 1840, convinced that the home and people of him who lay there would be in trusty hands, when she should join him in his true inheritance. Her idols set aside, she could with clearer eyes look to that hope, though in no weariness of earth, no haste to depart, but still in full strength, ready to work for man's good and God's glory.
Beside her, as usual, was Owen, leaning on his crutch, but eminent in face and figure as the handsomest man present, and full of animation, betraying neither pain or regret, but throughout the wedding festivities showing himself the foremost in mirth, and spurring Hiltonbury on to rejoicings that made the villagers almost oblivious of the Forest Show.