Volume 2 — CHAPTER X. A GRANDMOTHER’S LOVE.

“Don’t be frightened, my dear; don’t tremble so. You are with a friend, remember that; and with a relation too. Why, child,” and the eyes of the still warm-hearted woman brimmed over with the gladdest tears that she had known for years, “you are my grandchild!—my own, my only granddaughter! God bless you, my poor child; and may you be the joy and pride, instead of the grief and shame, of those who love you!”

Honor was sitting by her newly-found relation (the relation in love though not in law, who had so generously opened to her her arms and heart) on an old black horse-hair sofa, in a little sitting-room adjoining the bed-chamber occupied by Colonel Norcott. The old lady—already predisposed to like and admire her—had been greatly struck, not only with the rare beauty, but with a certain shy and shrinking grace characteristic of her son’s child. The touch of Honor’s small trembling hand, and the kiss of her fresh girlish lips, had warmed Mrs. Baker’s heart to her at once. Yearningly, and for a long while prayerfully, had she longed for a child who would, all the days of her life, be unto her as a daughter. Her only child had never, from the days of his boyhood, been as a son to this poor loving mother, who, chancing to be one of the most weak and clinging of the daughters of Eve, could not be content with such poor sympathy as the eminently trustworthy but somewhat stern ex-lawyer was able to bestow.

“You will come and see my son, Honor? Honor! what a pretty name!” and she stroked fondly the delicate fingers that lay within her own dry and wrinkled palm. “He has had a bad night and is very feverish. Dr. Kempshall says that he must be allowed to have his way, and—”

“Did he tell you everything, ma’am?” interrupted Honor; “everything about—about—” and she hesitated painfully—“about my husband?”

Mrs. Baker both looked and felt distressed. John Beacham, whom she knew well by repute, and partly, indeed, personally, was the one stumbling-block, the single, but very discouraging hitch, in the new view of things which had been opened out to her sight. Not—let me be thoroughly understood—that this excellent matron looked with indulgent eyes upon her prodigal’s offence; but the deed being done and ineffaceable, she trusted, seeing that a tardy repentance had followed on the crime, that a merciful forgiveness might be awarded to the penitent, and that Honor would perhaps—But here the thought of John Beacham, his rights, and prejudices, and claims, obtruded themselves, and checked the hopeful projects that were rising up in her mind concerning her so-lately-discovered relative.

“Did he—did my father say anything about John?” Honor asked again imploringly. She had more than reciprocated Mrs. Baker’s sudden predilection, and the idea that more than probably, supposing that lady to be ignorant of Mr. Beacham’s intemperance, she would withdraw her countenance from herself, was terribly alarming. The pleasantest peculiarities which Honor had as yet discovered in her father’s mother lay in her extreme gentleness of manner, and the exceeding softness of her voice. There was a refinement, too, in her manner and actions, which was delightful to the foolish creature whose ambition not only to be that mystical thing we call a lady, but to be able to choose her associates from amongst the high-placed of the earth, had become, since her acquaintance with Arthur Vavasour, almost a mania. Noticing her anxiety, Mrs. Baker hastened, in the kindest imaginable fashion, to relieve it.

“My son,” she said with touching naïveté and simplicity, “has no secrets from his mother now. His confession, poor fellow, has been a painful one; but he has not now to learn that I—knowing myself to be a sinner, and being humbly conscious of having fallen far short of the mercy of God—do not dare to be severe and cruel upon those who have also need of pardon from on high. It is wrong, dear child, we must acknowledge that, to lift the hand in anger against our fellow-creatures; but”—smoothing Honor’s golden hair tenderly—“Frederick does not deny that he gave your husband provocation. It was a blow, too, of course—a heavy shock—to learn that his young wife, his—but we will not revert to the painful past, my love. If—if my poor son’s life is mercifully spared to us, we must try and make your excellent husband think better of us all; while as for you, my dear, it will not be hard, I hope, for you to give us a little of your love. You will be very dear to me, Honor—”

She was interrupted by the sweetest and most welcome answer that the girl for whose affection she was yearning could have made to her; for a pair of loving arms were suddenly thrown around her aged neck, and Honor, in a passion of grateful tears, exclaimed:

“How good you are to me! I shall love you very dearly—better than anybody; and if my father lives, I think I shall be happier, far happier, than I have ever been before.”

Mrs. Baker was too much engrossed with anxiety for her son’s health, and with the thought of his approaching interview with Honor, to take much notice of the latter’s slightly incongruous speech; incongruous, as proceeding from the lips of a bride little more than three months old, and whose apparent prospects in life were all that was bright and encouraging. If, however, the idea struck her that there was perchance a skeleton in the young wife’s closet, and that all things with her were not what they seemed, the prudent old lady forbore making any inquiry, direct or indirect, into the causes not only of Mrs. John Beacham’s burst of grateful sentiment, but of the implied doubt thrown by that impulsive effusion upon the happiness of her home. The time, too, which Mrs. Baker had allowed herself for this trying conversation had more than expired; so, after a long and silent embrace, the two women rose, and without further preparation on either side walked slowly together—arm linked in arm, and one, the younger, feeling very nervous, and not a little bewildered by her novel position—into Colonel Norcott’s room.

Honor was not much accustomed to the sight of serious illness, so that the first glimpse which she caught of her father’s face—disfigured as it was by the blotches of fever, and surmounted by a linen bandage—filled her with dismay. He was moaning wearily, and evidently wandering in his mind. No revelations of tangible meaning flowed, (and experience tells us that such secrets seldom are divulged by the delirious) from the parched lips of Frederick Norcott. He was (in spirit) miles upon miles, and years upon years, away from that silent bedroom where two women, one old and the other young, watched him with anxious care. Away to the haunts of his giddy desperate youth—away to the scenes in which his living had been devoured—away to the distant lands where, till the wheel of Fortune turned for him, he was well-nigh compelled to fill (figuratively speaking, of course) his belly with the husks which the swine did eat.

For two hours and upwards he lay there tossing restlessly from side to side, muttering incoherent sentences, and causing Honor more than once as she bathed his fevered forehead, or held the cooling medicine to his lips, to blush crimson for the only half-comprehended vileness of her perhaps dying parent. At the end of those two hours a message—very softly delivered—came to Honor, with a request from her husband to know what she was going to do. Would Mrs. John Beacham come out into the passage and speak to him? John asked; and thus entreated, Honor stole out on tiptoe to meet the kind-hearted man who had in his feverish anxiety almost counted the moments of her absence from his side.