If Honor laughed it was not that she did not think. As she crossed the park, she felt that each bud of spring beauty, each promised crop, each lamb, each village child, made the proposal the more unwelcome; yet that the sense of being rooted, and hating to move, ought to be combated. It might hardly be treating Humfrey’s ‘goodly heritage’ aright, to make it an excuse for abstaining from an act of love; and since Brooks attended to her so little when at home, he could very well go on without her. Not that she believed that she should be called on to decide. She did not think Mervyn in earnest, nor suppose that he would encumber himself with a companion who could not be set aside like a governess, and was of an age more ‘proper’ and efficient than agreeable. His unceremonious manner proved sufficiently that it was a mere joke, and he would
probably laugh his loud, scoffing laugh at the old maid taking him in earnest. Yet she could not rid herself of the thought of Phœbe’s difficulties, and in poor Bertha, she had the keen interest of nurse towards patient.
‘Once before,’ she thought, ‘have I gone out of the beaten track upon impulse. Cruel consequences! Yet do I repent? Not of the act, but of the error that ensued. Then I was eager, young, romantic. Now I would rather abstain: I am old and sluggish. If it is to be, it will be made plain. I do not distrust my feeling for Phœbe—it is not the jealous, hungering love of old; and I hope to be able to discern whether this be an act of charity! At least, I will not take the initiative. I did so last time.’
Honor’s thoughts and speculations were all at Beauchamp throughout the evening and the early morning, till her avocations drove it out of her mind. She was busy, trying hard to get her own way with her bailiff as to the crops, when she was interrupted by tidings that Mr. Fulmort was in the drawing-room; and concluding it to be Robert, she did not hurry her argument upon guano. On entering the room, however, she was amazed at beholding not Robert, but his brother, cast down in an armchair, and looking thoroughly tired out.
‘Mervyn! I did not expect to see you!’
‘Yes, I just walked over. I thought I would report progress. I had no notion it was so far.’
And in fact he had not been at the Holt since, as a pert boy, he had found it ‘slow.’ Honor was rather alarmed at his fatigue, and offered varieties of sustenance, which he declined, returning with eager nervousness to the subject in hand.
The Bannermans, he said, had offered to go with Bertha and Phœbe, but only on condition that Maria was left at a boarding-house, and a responsible governess taken for Bertha. Moreover, Augusta had told Bertha herself what was impending, and the poor child had laid a clinging, trembling grasp on his arm, and hoarsely whispered that if a stranger came to hear her story, she would die. Alas! it might be easier than before. He had promised never to consent. ‘But what can I do?’ he said, with a hand upon either temple; ‘they heed me no more than Maria!’
Robert had absolutely half consented to leave his cure in the charge of another, and conduct his brother and sisters, but this plan did not satisfy the guardian, who could not send out his wards without some reliable female.
He swung the tassel of the sofa-cushion violently as he spoke, and looked imploringly at Honora, but she, though much moved, felt obliged to keep her resolution of not beginning.