Volume 2 — CHAPTER XX. SILENT SORROW.

A good deal to her surprise, as well as not a little to her relief, Honor was informed by the parlour-maid—who struck her, even at a cursory glance, to be rather pert and forward—that neither Colonel Norcott nor his wife were at home. Mrs. Norcott was “gone for a walk,” Miss Lydia said (she was only Polly to the gentleman lodger). Mrs. Beacham had not been expected by such an early train, and she (Lydia) knowed—at least, so she had heard the Colonel say—that he was obliged to go out on business.

Greatly reassured by this information on the score of her father’s health, Honor, who did not feel much inclined to encourage the young person’s familiarity by questioning her on the subject, entered the drawing-room, and seating herself on the comfortless-looking little sofa, covered with cheap highly glazed chintz, and stuffed with some material very antagonistic to repose, betook herself to not-over-cheerful reflections. For the first few minutes, grief—positive and unmistakeable, at being separated from her husband—filled not only Honor’s heart, but the blue eyes that looked vacantly through the confusing mist at the cheap toys and worthless ornaments with which Mrs. Norcott’s work-table was crowded. Only a few short hours before, how Honor would have ridiculed the supposition that her first act under her father’s roof would be—to cry! In the distance, the coming change had seemed to her a roseate opening between two parted clouds. To escape, though only for a season, from Mrs. Beacham’s despotic rule—to leave behind her the monotony and the dulness, the daily routine of uninteresting duties, and the hourly remindings that her married life had been a blunder—had all in their turn been subjects of rejoicing to Honor. But above all, far and away above all, there was the near prospect that the dream of her life would be at last realised, and that she would take her rightful place amongst the ladies of the land!

It is just possible that her introduction to that delusion-expelling front drawing-room in Stanwick-street, was not without its effect in causing a reaction in this aspiring young woman’s mind. Widely different, certainly, from anything that she had previously imagined, was that small, cheaply-furnished chamber! The faded carpet, in the centre of which was spread a brown-holland abomination, called—I have reason to believe—a crumb-cloth; frail painted chairs, whose appearance alone was a wholesome warning to the unwary, that a seat à la Turk upon the floor would be safer than trusting to their frail support; and above all, the cottage piano, with its once rose-coloured silk front discoloured by time and exposure to the blacks and flies of a London lodging-house, formed a tout ensemble widely different from any which Honor’s discursive imagination had hitherto called up.

For the moment the unpleasant reality produced on her mind a sobering effect, and with the natural lessening of her former desire to pay a lengthened visit in Stanwick-street, there came an increase of regret that she had allowed her husband to part from her in coldness and estrangement. It was partly—partly, indeed! why it was more than half—John’s fault that there was disunion between them; his fault and his mother’s; for who could—Honor asked herself, as she had done a hundred times before—who could, unless she were an angel born and bred, put up with the daily aggravations of Mrs. Beacham’s temper?

The young wife’s heart, as she sat alone upon the hard sofa, pondering, amongst other things, on the unreliableness of the father who had, to all appearance, inveigled her to his house on false pretences, softened greatly towards her straightforward and true-hearted husband; and could she have known him better, could she have looked into the manly honest breast, and read in it all that there was of pain, remorse, and wounded pride, she must—the woman within her being, though vain and foolish, not ignobly constituted—have humbled herself before his better, higher nature, and, owning her many faults, she would have meekly prayed for leave to share his sorrows, as she had once gladly shared his joys. Such a diminishing, however, of John Beacham’s vexations it would not have been easy in this case to have allowed himself. The injury that he had inflicted on Colonel Norcott had, as we are already aware, ever since its perpetration, hung very heavily on his mind; and vile as he justly judged the victim of his ungovernable passion to be, he was none the less the father of his wife; and the conviction that he was bound to make all the reparation in his power for the offence that he had committed did not tend to make John Beacham’s life a happier one.

Of all things calculated to injure the temper and depress the cheerful spirit on which the comfort of daily life depends, there is nothing more certain to produce this deplorable result than the retention within the breast of a deep-seated and a painful secret. John Beacham was not the kind of man to talk even to his wife of the inner feelings which he was not sufficiently of a physiologist to understand. His life was one of action—a simple, above-board existence; and till that fatal blow (a blow fatal, that is, to his own peace) was struck, there had been no hidden spot, no closet within closed doors, the chance opening of which caused the man’s heart within him to beat with quickened pulse, or kept him sleepless through the watches of the night. But now, alas! there did exist for his misfortune, in his hidden life, a secret—a secret the preservation of which was not precisely necessary to his reputation, and certainly not expedient for his safety; and yet John Beacham (why, for he was no casuist, he could not have explained) would not, for six at least of the best yearlings gaining bone and muscle in his paddocks, have had it known in Sandyshire that it was by a blow from his right-arm that Colonel Norcott had been so nearly sent to his last dread account; and this act of concealment—concealment, too, carried on for months—was revolting to his inborn sense of honour, and jarred against every habit of his previous life.

How far these, perhaps morbid, feelings reacted on those which he was beginning to entertain for his young wife, it would be hard to say; that they rendered him outwardly cold, and even irritable towards the woman whom he loved with such a devoted and unselfish love, was unfortunately but too true. Men of John Beacham’s stamp are poor dissemblers. He was ill at ease, provoked both with himself and her, and in some way or other needs must that the discontent caused by this weight of care cropped out, and that Honor, ignorant of the cause of his maussaderie, attributed it to any other than the right one. Very frigid indeed and stern he often seemed, when a word or a smile from her might have dispelled the gathering clouds—might, perhaps, have caused him to forget the mortifying truth that it was her father who shared his mortifying secret—her father, who, though base and unprincipled, was, compared to him, a high-born gentleman, and whose well-bred air, together with the potent charm of manner (a charm which, without comprehending, John was still capable of appreciating) had descended with added grace to his neglected child.

I have dwelt perhaps too long, and returned with perhaps too much pertinacity to the causes of an estrangement which may appear to some (who are not in the habit of considering the vast power of apparently trifling causes) as, under the circumstances, to be unnatural, if not indeed impossible. But I have wished in some decree to extenuate the faults and mistakes of my poor heroine. I have done so from a conviction that in judging others we not only see but often suspect little of the latent causes of the sins which seem to us, and which in truth are, so flagrant and so disastrous. Blessed be He who seeth into the darkest places of the hearts of his failing creatures, and who, being himself perfect, can yet find pardon and mercy for those whom erring man forgiveth not!