Volume 2 — CHAPTER XXII. THE TURNING OF THE HEAD.

“How pretty Rhoda is looking! Arthur, I am sure, in spite of what you say, that she will make a sensation in London. Her features are so regular, and her complexion, though she is pale, is so wonderfully clear and pure. Besides she looks so good, so—”

“She had better look bad,” growled old Mr. Duberly, in response to his daughter’s sisterly remarks on the personal recommendations of the debutante from Sandyshire. “She had far better look as wicked as the evil one himself if she wants to nobble the young Lunnon gents. A gell who ‘looks good’ has no more chance of what you call getting on there than my Soph,” and he winked at his daughter facetiously, “would have had, if she hadn’t happened to have a few thousand pounds in her pocket, poor gell! There’s that Lady Fy, as they call her, with her dead eyes and painted hair; I wonder where she would be if looking good was the order of the day, and if whalebone didn’t make the woman, and—”

“And want of it the stick,” laughed Arthur. “But you are quite right, sir, and Sophy is making a great mistake about Rhoda; she won’t have a chance in London. The ugliest girl going, if she were only chaffy and got herself up well, would cut her out at once, knock her into smithereens, if she set about having a try with poor Rhoda. And then the entourage, the home, I mean”—explaining the foreign word for the benefit of his father-in-law, who understood about as much of the French language as he did of that of the twelve tribes—“the home in which my unfortunate sisters live is the last one in the world to tempt a man to commit matrimony in their behalf. In my opinion there is nothing like a jolly, genial mamma—the kind of mamma exactly that milady is not—for getting girls well married. By the bye, Sophy, my child—now don’t agitate yourself, or we may have to send prematurely for Mrs. Gamp—Lady Mill intends doing you the honour of calling here, and—”

“O, Arthur, don’t say so! How horrid! I would so much rather go there. It is so much nicer to be able to go away when one has had enough—when one has nothing more to say, I mean, and—and I know I shall hate it so.”

Old Dub, who formed a component part, and a greatly valued one by his daughter, of Arthur Vavasour’s family, had left the room the moment that the conversation turned, which it often did, on Lady Millicent and her shortcomings. The good old man, conscious of harbouring (a very unwelcome guest) in his inner man a decidedly unchristian dislike to the lady in question, abstained, as far as lay in his power, from the gratification—for such it undoubtedly was—of hearing her abused and ridiculed. His sense of honour, too, which was singularly keen, revolted from any secret attacks, any stabs in the dark, any—even the most well deserved—accusations, when the individual so accused was, from absence or ignorance, deprived not only of the opportunity of self-justification, but of bringing en evidence the “other side of the question.”

“You’ll be so good, Master Arthur,” he had once remarked, and that in his most decided manner, to his thoughtless son-in-law, “as not to say anything in my presence about your mother which you wouldn’t say before her face. I don’t pretend to much liking for milady, nor do I suppose there’s much love lost between us. She thinks me an old snob (isn’t that your new word for fogeyism?) and I—well, it don’t much matter what I think. I’m an old fellow, and an old-fashioned fellow, and in my time—don’t laugh, you rogue—young men and women honoured their fathers and mothers in a way they don’t seem to do nowadays. You may say that the parents don’t always deserve to be respected; but that’s neither here nor there, and God A’mighty said nothing about that,” added the old man reverently, “when He gave the two tables of the law to Moses. One of these days, my boy,” and he laid his hand kindly upon Arthur’s shoulder, “you’ll be glad if your own sons have been brought up in my way of thinking. In the mean time, remember that it’s a bargain between us that you are to be mum in my presence about my Lady Mill.”

But we must return to Mrs. Arthur Vavasour, and to her anything but joyful anticipations as regarded the expected visit of her uncongenial mother-in-law.

“O Arthur, what shall I do? I could bear anything better than a formal call from Lady Millicent. What am I to say to her? She has such a dreadfully cold way of looking into and at one. She shows so plainly that she despises papa and me. I don’t mind it so much for myself, for of course I know that you might have married anybody; but it does vex me when she behaves so about poor papa. I know he feels it, though he says nothing. Papa is so odd, dear old man, about some things; he is so chivalrous, so innately courtly, like the old knights. Don’t laugh, Arthur; I know he does not look much like them, with his round face and dear bald head; but I think, I do indeed, that they, when they fought for their ladies, must have felt something like my poor father. He places woman so high. I can remember how courteous and tender—though I daresay Lady Millicent thinks him vulgar—he always was to poor mamma. He has a horror of fast girls; they are the only creatures in the shape of women that I ever hear him severe upon; but he would love Rhoda dearly. O Arthur, how nice it would be if we could see a good deal of her! But of course Lady Millicent would never allow that; she would think her daughter would be contaminated by living with such vulgarians as papa and me.”

Arthur during this plaintive speech had been standing with his back to the speaker, tapping impatiently on the plate-glass window-pane, having a view upon the now tolerably crowded park, for it was five o’clock, and Mr. Duberly’s grand town mansion was one of the finest in Hyde-park-gardens. He turned round hastily at the cessation of his wife’s voice, and said a little impatiently:

“How silly you are, dear, to vex yourself in this way! Because my mother happens to be a vulgar fine lady—and believe me, Sophy pet, that no genuine lady (the kind of lady that your friends the knights worshipped), is ever rude—because my mother happens not to know how to behave herself, it behoves you to give her a lesson.”

“Give her a lesson! Me!” exclaimed Sophy, in amazement.

“Yes, you! Why not? Only be your own dear, merry, unaffected self, only show that you, tremendous heiress that you are (and which I never can get you to remember), are not to be put down and tyrannised over and browbeaten, and, believe me, Lady Millicent, like all bullies, will draw in her horns, and treat you with the respect that is your due.”

“I don’t want respect,” sighed Sophy; “all I long for is affection. I should so like your mother to love me, Arthur. Just now, too,” and she blushed prettily, “I feel more than ever reminded that I have no mother of my own.”

“And no great loss, either, if all mothers are like the only one that I have any experience of,” said Arthur lightly, while endeavouring to divert his wife’s thoughts into a more lively channel. “But, Sophy darling, if it bores you too much, you sha’n’t see milady. There is no positive necessity for it. I can easily say that Williams has ordered you to be quiet, and” (as he settled the cushion behind her shoulders, for Sophy was delicate, and both liked and required attention) “if you like it, I will stay and protect you, read to you, do what you like, dear, as your cold is to keep you at home this disagreeable day.”

But to this sacrifice, for sacrifice she well knew it was, on her husband’s part, Sophy would not listen. He was the very best, the kindest, and the dearest, so, with grateful tears and smiles, she told him, of created beings. The idea of his giving up his ride for her! Who but himself would have dreamt of such an act of self-devotion? As regarded Lady Millicent’s visit, too, it was so very thoughtful, so nice of him to let her off. But Sophy could be self-sacrificing as well as he; so, though she felt weak and languid, she assured her hero that there was no necessity for either care or quiet, that she felt quite equal to the threatened visitation, and intended on that very day, provided that Lady Mill kept her promise of calling, to practise Arthur’s lesson on behaviour.

A bright happy smile lighted up her face as Arthur, kissing her forehead lightly, said a few farewell words. Nor did the look of placid contentment fade away even after the music of his foot upon the stair had ceased to echo in her ears; for the young wife was wonderfully happy—as happy, perhaps, as it is ever given to mortal woman here below to feel. Assured of her husband’s affection, and adoring him with all the force of her warm young heart; with not a wish ungratified, and endowed with health and spirits to enjoy the good gifts that were with such a lavish hand bestowed upon her; blest with a kind father’s doting tenderness, and dreaming as she lay on her luxuriant couch of the “prime of bliss” in a few weeks to be accorded to her prayers, who can wonder that Arthur Vavasour’s wife was one of the happiest of her sex?

And he, the man who was so seldom absent from her thoughts, the husband, to obey whose slightest wish was felt by the unselfish Sophy to be a blessed privilege which all must envy her, did he, as he strode forth hastily, for he had an appointment and was late, feel no remorseful pang for wandering thoughts, and dreams on joys forbidden? I fear that to this query I must answer in the negative. It is not in the earliest stages of our cherished sins that the avenging demon of unavailing regret rises up before us, and embitters joys that else were sweet. Sin, the very wickedness that is destined to be our ruin and shame, assumes at the beginning such very fair and false proportions. In early sunlight the shadows are so short, the path before so bright, the glare so dazzling and the day so long. It is when the shadows lengthen, and the night approaches, when the sin which in the distance looked so unlike crime stands revealed a hideous skeleton, bereft of all its false adornments, in our walk by day and in our couch by night, that we look back to the past with misery and vain remorse, asking ourselves the bitter, futile question whether the gain is worthy of the cost, while like withered leaves in the sad autumn time,

Arthur Vavasour, although he might not be exactly in that blissful condition which has been described as having “nothing on one’s mind,” was nevertheless quite sufficiently light-hearted as he wended his way that spring afternoon in the direction of Stanwick-street, to make all things around and about him seem wonderfully bright and hopeful. The “tropic time of youth,” the possession of life’s choicest gifts—health, wealth, and beauty—were enough in themselves to account for the “gleams elysian” that lighted up this young man’s path while, treading as though it were air the Tyburnian pavement, he wended his way to the presence of his peerless Honor. His!—for already he had begun to arrogate to himself the monopoly of his neighbour’s wife. The monopoly, that is to say, of her time, her thoughts, her liking. Already there could, it is to be feared, be little doubt of the melancholy fact, that the affection and fidelity of his own wife would, in comparison with that of honest John’s, have been but little prized. Of the one he was assured, while over the other hung just enough of the delightful veil woven of hope and imagination to lend enchantment to the prospect which his own unrestrained passions, aided by the machinations of one of the vilest of human beings, held up before him.

To the motives as well as to the plottings of Honor’s unprincipled father, the infatuated young man resolutely closed his eyes. He could scarcely fail to see that Colonel Norcott was ready to promote and encourage his intimacy with John Beacham’s wife, and under any other circumstances Arthur would have turned aside with disgust and horror from conduct so vile and so unprincipled. But we are very apt (and Vavasour was no exception to the rule) to condone the sin by which we hope to profit; and there were besides other reasons, although I must not anticipate, which would assist in accounting to the reader for the readiness with which the young heir of Gillingham fell into the plans and projects of the almost universally “held cheap” sporting-man.

On this occasion, the occasion of his ostensible visit to the master of the house, he found, as he expected, Honor Beacham alone. That she was agitated by his appearance both her words and the pretty confusion which she was far too untutored to disguise, betrayed; and that Arthur, forgetful of his young wife at home—forgetful of old ties of friendship, and utterly careless of consequences as regarded the guileless wife whose peace he was undermining—made the best of the passing hours allowed him by the prudential arrangements of the unprincipled Fred, who that knows anything of the worst side of human nature can doubt?

Before Arthur Vavasour took his leave he had thoroughly succeeded in awakening in Honor Beacham’s ambitious and pleasure-loving breast a keen desire to partake of such gaieties and amusements as he might be able to procure for her. On the following morning a riding-habit, borrowed from the wardrobe of the unsuspicious Sophy, was to be altered (if necessary) for Mrs. Beacham’s use; a box at the Opera was to be placed at her disposal, and everything worth either seeing or doing was to be seen and done by the pretty recluse of Updown Paddocks. Honor knew that it was all wrong; but her head was beginning to be turned, and that night as she laid it on her pillow she almost went the length of congratulating herself that she had kept the unsophisticated John in the dark regarding her father’s health. She had every chance of catching a glimpse of the ineffable delights of London in the season, as those delights were imagined in her foolish dreams, and coloured by the man whose words had from the first moment of her acquaintance with him possessed such a strange and unfortunate influence over her still childish mind.