Volume 2 — CHAPTER V. “THAT WAS HONOR’S MOTHER?”

After Colonel Norcott’s short interview with Arthur, and the decision to which he had arrived regarding the extent of the latter’s insane passion for Honor Beacham, the astute and thoroughly unprincipled man to whom that unsuspecting young person owed her birth very soon made up his mind to impart, with certain reservations and under the seal of secrecy, the history of Honor’s birth to the husband who was so entirely ignorant of his young bride’s antecedents. For more reasons than one it was his object, and for his interest, to keep a hold, as he would have termed it, both on Arthur Vavasour and the quondam owner of the Derby favourite. To obtain such a hold, he had planned, and thought, and plotted; and now (it really did look as if Providence was about at last to favour him) there turned up, without an effort on his part, the very thing that was required to set the wheel of fortune briskly turning in his favour. But with all his effrontery, and in spite of his much-boasted savoir vivre, Colonel Norcott did not feel quite at his ease as he strode along the greensward with that honest John by his side. Now that he was on the verge of making his confession, it did not seem quite so easy as it had appeared at first to reveal to a moral and possibly—for he knew very little about John’s principles and professions—a religious man that little episode in his bygone life in which the horse-breeder was, although he remained in ignorance of the fact, so deeply interested.

He had made up his mind—solely from interested motives—to disclose to John Beacham the fact that he, Fred Norcott, was the father of his wife. He felt no shame (in the abstract) for having so long neglected the daughter who owed to him the very doubtful blessing of her birth. Had Honor been a plain girl, coarse-featured and large-footed, it would have been long enough before Fred Norcott would have taken the trouble to own his paternity; but being, as she was, beautiful exceedingly, and withal possessing that indescribable air of good breeding without which loveliness loses half its value, the man who knew so well how to turn “circumstances” to good account saw at once that advantage might accrue to himself through the agency of his neglected child. Had the man whom he was about to make his confidant been one of his own class and kind, Norcott would, instead of awkwardness, have experienced a comfortable feeling of satisfaction while revealing the history of the past, as that history was connected with the pretty Irish girl. It was not a new story, neither did its details differ greatly from the most ordinary and commonplace records of, alas, the commonest crime that is or is not made public, as the case may be, in the dismal registers of misery and vice. But, though neither new nor striking, Fred’s story was still one which, told in his lively fashion, would probably have been listened to greedily enough by the lovers of such piquant narratives. The dark shades—there generally are dark shades in that description of story—would have been softened down as a matter of course, but the facts, as the Colonel would have put them, contained enough to interest, without having recourse to the lachrymose. There was Winifred to describe—“such a glorious girl, by Jove!” And “then, you know, such a number of fellows had tried it on, and failed!” By the ruffian’s own account, too, how fond this woman, whom he had left to die a miserable death, had been of him!—“would have gone through fire and water for me, by George! That kind of girl, you know. But what is one to do?” appealing to his friend’s sympathy with a slightly injured air, as though aware that the aggressive nature of a woman’s fondness is a legitimate ground of complaint against that weak and troublesome sex. “What can one do in cases of that sort? Nothing, that I know of, but skedaddle; and that’s a bore sometimes, if one happens to be fond of the girl, which one isn’t, you know, nine cases out of ten.”

But though Colonel Norcott could have talked cheerily and by the hour together to his co-mates on this and similar themes of probably mutual interest, words did not come so readily to his tongue when his only auditor was a man who would probably see neither a pleasant jest nor a subject for self-glorification in the betrayal of a young and trusting girl. For a moment, so embarrassed did this free-and-easy-man of the world find himself, he more than half decided on seeking some other pretext than the real one for the interview he had sought for; time pressed, however, and no other suggestion offering itself, he was fain, nolens volens, to pursue his original intention, and make what is called a “clean breast” (though Heaven knows that his would be dirty enough after any amount of sweeping and garnishing) to straightforward, unsophisticated John Beacham.

“I want to speak to you, Mr. Beacham,” he said confidentially, “on a subject which—er—er—is one that you cannot fail to be—er—er—interested in; and, at the same time, that I—” he grew more fluent when it was a question of himself—“have very much at heart.”

He paused. It was a fairly-rounded period, and one of which he had no reason to be ashamed; but John, who did not seem greatly struck by the merits of this exordium, contented himself for all reply with making a stiff and decidedly uncompromising bow. There was something both of defiance and contempt in the action, and it roused Norcott to the immediate unfolding of his secret.

“You will be surprised at what I’m going to say,” he began, stroking his under-lip the while with the smooth gilt knob of his dandy bamboo walking-cane. “Decidedly surprised, I’ll go bail; and so was I myself two hours ago, when I heard what I’m going to tell you. Had no more idea of it, upon my soul and honour, than an infant.”

“I beg your pardon, Colonel Norcott,” said John hastily, for his impatience at the other’s delay was beginning to get the better of his politeness. “I should be obliged if you would say anything you have to say to me at once, for I—”

“O, nonsense! Stop a minute, man; why, one would think you had the devil and all of business on your hands, or else that you were in a hurry—by George,” he added playfully, “I believe it’s that!—to look after your wife.”

The colour deepened visibly on John Beacham’s always ruddy cheek at this coarse allusion to the delicate girl, whose beauty he was perhaps fully as capable of appreciating as if he had belonged to the Travellers’, and worn a coat manufactured by Poole.

“Sir,” he said, mastering his passion by an effort which nothing short of his fear of rendering his wife’s name a theme for public gossip would have rendered possible, “Mrs. Beacham is not, in my presence, to be spoken about by strangers. I have no wish to be rude, none in the least—but—but as neither my wife nor I desire your acquaintance, you will allow me,” raising his low-crowned wide-awake about an inch from his head, “to wish you a good-evening.”

The answer to this broad hint that the interview might be considered at an end was a low laugh, which, to John’s exasperated ears, sounded very like an insult.

“One lives and learns,” he said provokingly; “and some day, when you are as old I am—not that there’s so much difference between our ages—I say, if it’s not impertinent, how old, may I ask, are you?”

John could have “punched the fellow’s head,” as he said afterwards, at that moment with the greatest pleasure in life. He was the last man in the world to be sensitive on the score of his age. The whole universe might have known, for what he cared, that he was thirty-seven; but he did not choose to put up with impertinence on that or any other subject from Colonel Norcott. Before, however, he could make that resolution known in words, his free-and-easy interlocutor was off at another score.

“What was I saying? O, about finding out things; that, however, is neither here nor there, so we had better come to the point at once. What I propose asking you is, whether you did not notice my looking rather hard at your wife when I passed her an hour or two ago.”

At this apparently wanton insult John lost his temper altogether.

“Now, by G—!” he was beginning, while his clenched fist came very near in his strong excitement to Fred’s well-curled whiskers. But the latter did not give him time to proceed.

“Come, now,” he said, with a composure which was in striking contrast to the other’s look of concentrated passion, “keep yourself cool. It’s a bore when a man flies off in that kind of way. You can’t suppose I meant to insult your wife. Ridiculous! But husbands are such fools! The reason why I looked at Mrs. Beacham—but first let me ask you one question: do you know anything of your wife’s family, of her connections? or did you take—I beg your pardon—a pig in a poke, and trust to thingummy—Providence, I mean—that everything was right?”

John hesitated ere he replied to these home questions. They had diverted the channel of his wrath, and had aroused the dormant spirit of curiosity within his breast. Here, perhaps, was the once earnestly wished-for opportunity of learning something concerning his dearly-loved Honor’s birth and belongings. It was singular, certainly, and not wholly satisfactory, that the channel of information should be a person for whom he felt so much dislike and contempt as Colonel Norcott. But because he both detested and scorned the medium, it did not follow that he should reject the offered intelligence—intelligence, too, which he felt perfectly convinced, both from Colonel Norcott’s manner and the singular step he had taken, was not altogether a matter to despise. In many respects at least, so decided John Beacham, he would be happier for discovering some particulars of Honor’s parentage. He was aware that his mother did occasionally (John little guessed how often) flout his little wife contemptuously, and talk “at her” in the way that women have the skill to do when aggravation is their aim and object. The romance attendant on mystery goes for nothing with women of Mrs. Beacham’s age and stamp; whilst a something nearly akin to disgrace is inseparable in their minds from a birth which is neither recorded in the parish register nor made honourable mention of in the flyleaf of the family Bible. But gladly as John would have listened to any hints calculated to throw a light on his wife’s antecedents, John Beacham yet shrunk with very natural repugnance from betraying, in Colonel Norcott’s presence, any marked interest in the subject. To disguise that interest was, however, a task far beyond his very feeble powers of dissimulation; nevertheless, the would-be diplomatist considered himself not wholly devoid of what he, in his simplicity, would have called “gumption,” when he responded after the following fashion to the fast London gentleman who had volunteered to address him on the sacred subject of his wife:

“You’ve asked me questions, sir, which I consider that no man, unless under very particular circumstarnces, has a right to put to another. Whether there are or are not those circumstarnces remains to be shown; but if there are not, all I can say is that you had better by a good deal have kept your tongue quiet in your head, instead of speaking of what didn’t in any way concern you.”

The effect of this exordium was not precisely what John either expected or intended, for the Colonel, making a movement as though about to turn on his heel, said carelessly,

“O, if you take it in that way, I’ve no more to say. If you choose to answer my questions, I may, perhaps, be induced to do you a good turn. You are a man I should like to oblige, but you know as well as other people, Beacham, that one gets riled, disgusted in short, by being spoken to in that tone.”

John, who was good-nature itself, and very ready to believe himself in the wrong, was a little moved by Colonel Norcott’s half-reproachful tone. After all the man might mean well, improbable as it seemed; anyway, and for Honor’s sake, it might be as well to listen to what he had to say. He reopened negotiations, therefore, with an apology:

“I beg your pardon, Colonel Norcott,” he said; “it was not my intention to offend. As for my wife’s relations, she hasn’t many that I know of, any more than I have myself; but”—and here he remembered certain expressed longings on the part of Honor to learn something of her dead parents, which prompted him to add—“but I don’t say that I wouldn’t—more for her sake than my own—like to gather some particulars about her friends. She’s an orphan, that we know, but—”

“But supposing she wasn’t an orphan,” put in Norcott, looking his auditor fixedly in the face; “supposing she had a father alive; and supposing that her father was a gentleman—a man who—Well, come now, I’ll tell you the story in a few words, and you may make what you can of it. Some eighteen or nineteen years ago—gad, how time flies!—a young fellow with eyes in his head, and a heart, as the poets say, in his ‘buzzom,’ was quartered for his sins in a country town in that blessed country Ireland. There was nothing earthly for him to do; no society, or anything of the kind. As for hunting, that wasn’t to be had for love or money; and, to make matters worse, there was rain, rain—rain from morning till night. Now I leave it to you, as a sensible man, to say what, under heaven, in such a case was to be done, and whether it isn’t your opinion that, all things considered, it wasn’t a lucky thing for the poor young fellow when he contrived to fall in love?”

John Beacham, feeling called on to make some reply, muttered something to the effect that, being placed in so unfortunate a position, it was perhaps just as well that the gentleman in question should have lighted on his legs in so providential a manner. Whereupon Colonel Fred, apparently satisfied with the rejoinder, continued swimmingly the thread of his discourse:

“The girl he got spoony on was devilish handsome; fair, with large blue eyes; the kind of beauty you hear about a good deal oftener in an Irish ‘countryman’s’ house than you have the good fortune to see. She’d a grand figure too, and, if she had ever worn stays, which of course she hadn’t—they never do in those diggings—Miss Winifred Moriarty would have been something worth looking at, by Jove!”

“And that was Honor’s mother?” John said, very sadly, and as though talking to himself; for already over his young wife’s birth there seemed to fall the shadow of a great shame, and the proud lowly-born man—prouder than many of the exalted ones of the earth, who too often take such matters as affairs of course—shrunk away, as does a wounded man from the sharp touch of the surgeon’s probe.

“Yes, that was Honor’s mother, and—well, man, haven’t you begun to guess? I think you’re rather slow—the girl that Fred Norcott—meaning me,” he added airily—“was more awfully spoony on than he was on any woman in his life.”