Hopes and Fears Part 121

'When may I come?'

'To-morrow, I suppose.'

She felt, rather than saw him watching her all the way from the garden-gate to the wood. That little colloquy was the sunshiny point in her day. Had the tidings been communicated in the full circle, it would have been as nothing compared with their reservation for her private ear, with the marked 'I wanted to tell _you_.' Then she came home, looked at Maria threading holly-berries, and her heart fainted within her. There were moments when poor Maria would rise before her as a hardship and an infliction, and then she became terrified, prayed against such feelings as a crime, and devoted herself to her sister with even more than her wonted patient tenderness.

The certainty that the visit would take place kept her from all flutterings and self-debate, and in due time Mr. Randolf arrived.

Anxiously did Phoebe watch for his look at Maria, for Bertha's look at him, and she was pleased with both. His manner to Maria was full of gentleness, and Bertha's quick eyes detected his intellect. He stood an excellent examination from her and Miss Fennimore upon the worn channel of Niagara, which had so often been used as a knockdown argument against Miss Charlecote's cosmogony; and his bright terse powers of description gave them, as they agreed, a better idea of his woods than any travels which they had read.

It was no less interesting to observe his impression of the English village-life at Hiltonbury. To him, the aspect of the country had an air of exquisite miniature finish, wanting indeed in breadth and freedom, but he had suffered too much from vain struggling single-handed with Nature in her might, not to value the bounds set upon her; and a man who knew by personal experience what it was to seek his whole live stock in an interminable forest, did not complain of the confinement of hedges and banks. Nay, the 'hedgerow elms and hillocks green' were to him as cla.s.sical as Whitehall; he treated Maria's tame robins with as much respect as if they had been Howards or Percies; holly and mistletoe were handled by him with reverential curiosity; and the church and home of his ancestors filled him with a sweet loyal enthusiasm, more eager than in those to whom these things were familiar.

Miss Charlecote herself came in for some of these feelings. He admired her greatly in her Christmas aspect of Lady Bountiful, in which she well fulfilled old visions of the mistress of an English home, but still more did he dwell upon her gentleness, and on that shadowy resemblance to his mother, which made him long for some of that tenderness which she lavished upon Owen. He looked for no more than her uniformly kind civility and hospitality, but he was always wishing to know her better; and any touch of warmth and affection in her manner towards him was so delightful that he could not help telling Phoebe of it, in their next brief _tete-a-tete_.

He was able to render a great service to Miss Charlecote. Mr. Brooks's understanding had not cleared with time, and the accounts that had been tangled in summer were by the end of the year in confusion worse confounded. He was a faithful servant, but his accounts had always been audited every month, and in his old age, his arithmetic would not carry him farther, so that his mistress's long absence abroad had occasioned such a hopeless chaos, that but for his long services, his honesty might have been in question. Honora put this idea away with angry horror. Not only did she love and trust the old man, but he was a legacy from Humfrey, and she would have torn the page from her receipts rather than rouse the least suspicion against him. Yet she could not bear to leave any flaw in Humfrey's farm books, and she toiled and perplexed herself in vain; till Owen, finding out what distressed her, and grieving at his own incapacity, begged that Randolf might help her; when behold! the confused accounts arranged themselves in comprehensible columns, and poor old Brooks was proved to have cheated himself so much more than his lady as to be entirely exonerated from all but puzzle-headedness. The young man's farmer life qualified him to be highly popular at the Holt. He was curious about English husbandry, talked to the labourers, and tried their tools with no unpractised hand, even the flail which Honor's hatred of steam still kept as the winter's employment in the barn; he appreciated the bullocks, criticized the sheep, and admired the pigs, till the farming men agreed 'there had not been such an one about the place since the Squire himself.'

Honora might be excused for not having detected a likeness between the two Humfreys. Scarcely a feature was in the same mould, the complexion was different, and the heavily-built, easy-going Squire, somewhat behind his own century, had apparently had nothing in common with the brisk modern colonial engineer; yet still there was something curiously recalling the expression of open honesty, and the whole cast of countenance, as well as the individuality of voice, air, and gestures, and the perception grew upon her so much in the haunts of her cousin, where she saw his att.i.tudes and habits unconsciously repeated, that she was almost ready to accept Bertha's explanation that it was owing to the influence of the Christian name that both shared. But as it had likewise been borne by the wicked disinherited son who ran away, the theory was somewhat halting.

Phoebe's intercourse with Humfrey the younger was much more fragmentary than in town, and therefore, perhaps, the more delicious. She saw him on most of the days of his fortnight's stay, either in the mutual calls of the two houses, in chance meetings in the village, or in walks to or from the holy-day services at the church, and these afforded many a moment in which she was let into the deeper feelings that his first English Christmas excited. It was not conventional Christmas weather, but warm and moist, thus rendering the contrast still stronger with the sleighing of his prosperous days, the snowshoe walk of his poorer ones. A frost hard enough for skating was the prime desire of Maria and Bertha, who both wanted to see the art practised by one to whom it was familiar. The frost came at last, and became reasonably hard in the first week of the new year, one day when Phoebe, to her regret, was forced to drive to Elverslope to fulfil some commissions for Mervyn and Cecily, who were expected at home on the 8th of January, after a Christmas at Sutton.

However, she had a reward. 'I do think,' said Miss Fennimore to her, as she entered the drawing-room, 'that Mr. Randolf is the most good-natured man in the world! For full three-quarters of an hour this afternoon did he hand Maria up and down a slide on the pond at the Holt!'

'You went up to see him skate?'

'Yes; he was to teach Bertha. We found him helping the little Sandbrook to slide, but when we came he sent him in with the little maid, and gave Bertha a lesson, which did not last long, for she grew nervous. Really her nerves will never be what they were! Then Maria begged for a slide, and you know what any sort of monotonous bodily motion is to her; there is no getting her to leave off, and I never saw anything like the spirit and good-nature with which he complied.'

'He is _very_ kind to Maria,' said Phoebe.

'He seems to have that sort of pitying respect which you first put into my mind towards her.'

'Oh, are you come home, Phoebe?' said Maria, running into the room. 'I did not hear you. I have been sliding on the ice all the afternoon with Mr. Randolf. It is so nice, and he says we will do it again to-morrow.'

'Ha, Phoebe!' said Bertha, meeting her on the stairs, 'do you know what you missed?'

'Three children sliding on the ice,' quoted Phoebe.

'Seeing how a man that is called Humfrey can bear with your two sisters making themselves ridiculous. Really I should set the backwoods down as the best school of courtesy, but that I believe some people have that school within themselves. Hollo!'

For Phoebe absolutely kissed Bertha as she went up-stairs.

'Ha?' said Bertha, interrogatively; then went into the drawing-room, and looked very grave, almost sad.

Phoebe could not but think it rather hard when, on the last afternoon of Humfrey Randolf's visit, there came a note from Mervyn ordering her up to Beauchamp to arrange some special contrivances of his for Cecily's morning-room--her mother's, which gave it an additional pang. It was a severe, threatening, bitterly cold day, not at all fit for sliding, even had not both the young ladies and Miss Fennimore picked up a suspicion of cold; but Phoebe had no doubt that there would be a farewell visit, and did not like to lose it.

'Take the pony carriage, and you will get home faster,' said Bertha, answering what was unspoken.

No; the groom sent in word that the ponies were gone to be rough-shod, and that one of them had a cold.

'Never mind,' said Phoebe, cheerfully; 'I shall be warmer walking.'

And she set off, with a lingering will, but a step brisk under her determination that her personal wishes should never make her neglect duty or kindness. She did not like to think that he would be disappointed, but she had a great trust in _his_ trust in herself, and a confidence, not to be fretted away, that some farewell would come to pa.s.s, and that she should know when to look for him again.

Scanty sleety flakes of snow were falling before her half-hour's walk was over, and she arrived at the house, where anxious maids were putting their last touches of preparation for the mistress. It was strange not to feel more strongly the pang of a lost home; and had not Phoebe been so much preoccupied, perhaps it would have affected her strongly, with all her real joy at Cecily's installation; but there were new things before her that filled her mind too full for regrets for the rooms where she had grown up. She only did her duty scrupulously by Cecily's writing-table, piano, and pictures, and then satisfied the housekeeper by a brief inspection of the rooms, more laudatory than particular. She rather pitied Cecily, after her comfortable parsonage, for coming to all those state drawing-rooms. If it had been the west wing, now!

By this time the snow was thicker, and the park beginning to whiten. The housekeeper begged her to wait and order out the carriage, but she disliked giving trouble, and thought that an unexpected summons might be tardy of fulfilment, so she insisted on confronting the elements, confident in her cloak and india-rubber boots, and secretly hoping that the visitor at the cottage might linger on into the twilight.

As she came beyond the pillars of the portico, such a whirl of snow met her that she almost questioned the prudence of her decision, when a voice said, 'It is only the drift round the corner of the house.'

'You here?'

'Your sister gave me leave to come and see you home through the snow-storm.'

'Oh, thank you! This is the first time you have been here,' she added, feeling as if her first words had been too eagerly glad.

'Yes, I have only seen the house from a distance before. I did not know how large it was. Which part did you inhabit?'

'There--the west wing--shut up now, poor thing!'

'And where was the window where you saw the horse and cart? Yes, you see I know that story; which was your window?'

'The nearest to the main body of the house. Ah! it is a dear old window.

I have seen many better things from it than that!'

'What kind of things?'

'Sunsets and moonsets, and the Holt firs best of all.'

'Yes, I know better now what you meant by owing all to Miss Charlecote,'

he said, smiling. 'I owe something to her, too.'

'Oh, is she going to help you on?' cried Phoebe.

'No, I do not need that. What I owe to her is--knowing you.'

It had come, then! The first moment of full a.s.surance of what had gleamed before; and yet the shock, sweet as it was, was almost pain, and Phoebe's heart beat fast, and her downcast look betrayed that the full force of his words--and still more, of his tone--had reached her.

'May I go on?' he said. 'May I dare to tell you what you are to me? I knew, from the moment we met, that you were what I had dreamt of--different, but better.'

'I am sure I knew that you were!' escaped from Phoebe, softly, but making her face burn, as at what she had not meant to say.

'Then you can bear with me? You do not forbid me to hope.'

'Oh! I am a great deal too happy!'

There came a great wailing, driving gust of storm at that moment, as if it wanted to sweep them off their feet, but it was a welcome blast, for it was the occasion of a strong arm being flung round Phoebe, to restrain that fluttering cloak. 'Storms shall only blow us nearer together, dearest,' he said, with recovered breath, as, with no unwilling hand, she clung to his arm for help.

'If it be G.o.d's will,' said Phoebe, earnestly.

'And indeed,' he said, fervently, 'I have thought and debated much whether it were His will; whether it could be right, that I, with my poverty and my burthens, should thrust myself into your wealthy and sheltered life. At first, when I thought you were a poor dependent, I admitted the hope. I saw you spirited, helpful, sensible, and I dared to think that you were of the stuff that would gladly be independent, and would struggle on and up with me, as I have known so many do in my own country.'