Volume 3 — CHAPTER XI. FROM LIVELY TO SEVERE.

On the whole it was a relief to Arthur that les convenances, according to old Dub’s view of the matter, stood in the way of his being an eyewitness of Rough Diamond’s capabilities on the Derby-day. His first feeling on hearing that Sophy’s trial was over, and that he had a paternal interest in the small pink-faced fraction of humanity which the nurse introduced to him as his son, had been one of unmixed satisfaction. As he silently kissed the pale but wondrously contented face of the young mother lying so still and motionless on the pillow, Arthur’s heart was full for the moment of the purest happiness that it had ever known; but the past—the inexorable and ever-pursuing past—treading on the heels of the present, embittered his transient joy, and destroyed, or at least darkened, all his prospects for the future. Almost before he had left the bedside of his trusting and silently rejoicing wife, the thought of the evil which a few short hours might bring about struck through him with an icy chill, while conscience with her probing pricks told him that he was unworthy of life’s choicest blessings. For even then—even at the instant when his mind and heart should have been wholly occupied with the fair young mother of his child—a vision of his Irish love—of Honor’s sweet caressing smile, and the exquisitely-moulded shoulders that had been, but one short hour before, so dangerously near to his caressing hand—rose up before him, and caused the bonds which united both him and her to objects unbeloved to be hateful in his sight. On the following morning old Mr. Duberly, in radiant spirits, and rejoicing over his grandson with a delight which struck Arthur as almost puerile in its character, gave his son-in-law plainly to understand that his place, for that day at least, was one within call of his marital duties. To watch by Sophy, to be ready if she should perchance express a wish to press his hand, or gaze lovingly on his face, were privileges which the affectionate old man would have found it hard to believe that Arthur might prize less highly than he did himself. The circumstance of that especial Wednesday being the Derby-day escaped his recollection altogether. Being himself totally uninterested in sporting matters, the idea that Arthur would by any possibility place the result of the great race side by side as an affair of note with the all-important event of the previous day, namely, the birth of his son and heir, would have struck “old Dub” as simply ridiculous, and he was therefore quite prepared for Arthur’s ready acquiescence in his views. The real truth was, as we already know, that Vavasour’s interests were far indeed from being centred on Epsom Downs. To gain the race by means of his own good horse, Rough Diamond, was certainly to him an affair of vital importance; but, unaware of the fact that Honor had been taken from Colonel Norcott’s house, and was already safe under her husband’s protection, the desire to see her once again, by stealth or otherwise, was stronger than any other feeling, and to remain in the neighbourhood of the woman he adored was the dearest wish of his unregenerate heart.

Meanwhile, what was the reality regarding Honor Beacham’s whereabouts, what her feelings, and how had her husband’s sudden exertion of marital power affected her conduct?

The night-train by which she and John travelled homewards was due about midnight at Leigh, at which town it stopped for a few hurried minutes only, and then proceeded at express speed on its course south-westward. Happily for Honor, they were not tête-à-tête in their compartment. Childlike, she caught at any delay, any postponement of the explanation which was the inevitable consequence of her folly and—in some sort—her falsehood. To keep back the truth—not to tell that “whole,” when on that “whole” depends the spirit of the facts left half undisclosed and to be guessed at—is, disguise it, mystify ourselves with what sophistry we may, to lie unto our neighbour, and to deceive the one who trusts us. It was the consciousness that she had so lied and deceived, together with a certain amount of uninvestigated self-reproach as regarded the delight which Arthur Vavasour’s society had afforded her, that caused Honor to shrink with nervous trepidation not only from her husband’s questionings, but from the very sight of the keen-witted and sharp-tongued old woman who already, as Honor had every reason to believe, looked on her with no favourable eyes. Under these circumstances, the presence in the carriage which they occupied of a sleepy old gentleman and a wideawake young girl, who was in all probability his daughter, was a relief not only to Honor but to John; for he too, with all an honest, strong-nerved Englishman’s dislike to tears and domestic tragedies, recoiled from the duty of saying harsh words to the young wife, whose worst offence he felt inclined to believe had been a love of hitherto undreamt-of gaieties, the consequence of which very natural tastes was the sin—one of omission rather than commission—of giving a false colouring to the state of affairs in Stanwick-street.

Already, so kindly was the man’s nature, and so strong was his dislike to being what he called “ill friends” with those about him,—already had his displeasure begun to subside, and already had he begun to accuse himself of harshness in thus summarily dealing out hard measures against his wife. As she sat there silently by his side, the outline of her perfect profile just visible under the scarlet hood of her opera-cloak, and her pale lips quivering with the effort to conceal her emotion and check the tears that from moment to moment were on the point of escaping from their “briny bed,” it would have required but little to persuade the strong man near her that in his dealings with that frail but fairest flower he had been little better than a brute.

They were within a mile or two only of Leigh before the silence that reigned between them was broken, and then it was John’s clear and rather loud voice that awoke the elderly sleeper, and startled Honor from a very perplexing and wretched train of thought.

“Twelve o’clock, all but two minutes,” Mr. Beacham said, replacing a solid silver watch in his waistcoat-pocket. “We shall be at Leigh directly, and if there doesn’t happen to be a fly there,” he added, addressing himself more particularly to his wife, “we shall have to put up at the Dragon. The old lady expects me, and Simmons will be there, of course, with the trap; but you’d catch your death o’ cold without wraps, and—”

“O, I don’t mind! What does it signify?” Honor said impatiently, and even, as it seemed to John, a trifle crossly: whereas the hasty-sounding words were simply the result of the broken reverie, the seriousness of which made the question of a covering more or less upon her shoulders appear in the light of a very trivial affair indeed. Before, however, he could make any rejoinder to her impetuously-spoken reply the speed began to slacken, and a loud deafening “whistle” proclaimed the fact that their journey’s end was reached, and that unless something like a miracle were wrought in her favour, a very short period of time must in the common course of things elapse before poor Honor would find herself once more in the dreaded presence of her exacting and unloving mother-in-law.

“Now, then, my dear,” John said kindly, as Honor thought and hoped, when he returned to the train after a rapid investigation of the waiting carriages; “now, then, come along! look sharp; there is a fly—the one from the Dragon—so bundle in. It wouldn’t have done,” he went on, after they were seated, and the windows closed to shut out the night air, “to have kept mother up while I sent for this old rattletrap from the inn. Mother’s put out enough as it is, and I don’t know—upon my soul, I don’t—how she’ll take our coming in upon her like this. I tell you what it is, Honor, my dear, you must try—indeed you must—to pull better with the old lady. I thought you would at first; but somehow everything seems to have gone wrong; and then this business—this staying in London—and—”

He stopped abruptly at this crisis in his discourse,—stopped because, his momentary passion being over, the old feeling of inferiority to his wife, the undefinable consciousness of her refinement, her delicacy, her “good blood,” her ladyhood, as opposed to his roughness and plebeian birth, gained ground again, and checked the well-deserved reproaches that were hovering on his lips. Had Honor been at that moment clad in her customary dress of neatly-made linsey, had there been no blue flowers in her rippling hair, and had there been no “jewelled cross” glittering on her “snow-white breast,” John would have been twice the man he was—twice the man, that is, in his power to speak out to his young giddy wife the truth which it was good for her to know. But this simple-minded rustic felt, as we all of us more or less have probably done, the influence of show, of adornment, of superior dress, above all of a soft, gentle retenue of manner which puts to shame and utterly condemns the violence of the more impulsive and the outspoken. Angry, justly angry as he had so lately felt with Honor, John’s courage failed him when he commenced to reason with her on her shortcomings, and he paused, not knowing how to pursue a subject which could not fail to be displeasing to the youthful beauty whom he had so lately seen the admired of all beholders in the London playhouse. John little guessed—well would it have been for all parties had it been otherwise—what a very coward was at that moment the woman who, all unconsciously to herself, was making a poltroon of him. Trembling, shivering inwardly at the thought of the dreaded interview with her stern and relentless judge, Honor would have given much at that moment to have been certain of a friend and ally in her husband. It was her ignorance on this point, and not, as John suspected, the increased “fine-ladyism” which, unknown to herself, was evident in her air and tone, that kept her silent, even from mild words of apology and self-justification. Ashamed, frightened, and thoroughly detesting the companionship to which her husband was about to condemn her, it was little to be wondered at that John Beacham, believing her to have taken refuge in a “fit of the sulks,” relapsed into a silence which lasted till the wheels of the lumbering, misnamed vehicle, after grating for a few seconds along the well-known gravel, came to a stand before the ivy-covered porch of Pear-tree House.

If Hannah had seen that often-talked-of object of her awe and curiosity, an actual ghost, she could hardly have been frightened into a more violent start than that which jerked her stoutly-built person at the sight of her young mistress.

“My good gracious me! Who ever would have thought it?” she exclaimed, as she followed Honor’s lagging footsteps into the little parlour. “Why missus never expected you, mum, not for a moment—and everything going on so quiet! Dear, dear! it was only this very day as missus was a saying—”

“O, I don’t want to know, Hannah,” said Honor wearily, as she threw herself on a sofa, a degree harder (if possible) and more comfortless than the one appertaining to the first-floor front in deeply-regretted Stanwick-street. “Please not to tell me what Mrs. Beacham said. And make me a cup of tea, will you? I am very tired, and I shiver so!”

She shuddered as she spoke, but that she did so was more from inward cold than from the effects of the outer atmosphere. There was certainly something terribly chilling to this young and impressionable creature in the dingy, half-lighted room, with its dusky curtains, its faded carpet, and, above all, the work-a-day table covered, as was its wont, with evidences of the old lady’s unflagging industry—with piles of house-linen, placed there in readiness for the morrow’s inspection, for darning, marking, or the like; and with batches of John’s strong gray socks—articles of toilet far more useful than ornamental. On these uninteresting evidences of an active as well as a frugal mind a solitary tallow-candle shed its feeble light; and Honor, from whose vivid imagination the picture of the brilliant theatre with its dazzling footlights and bright array of meretricious beauty had not altogether faded away, gazed around with feelings nearly akin to loathing and disgust.

A momentary gaze almost it was, for before she had time quite to realise the melancholy truth that she was at home, John had settled accounts with the Leigh charioteer, and was once more by her side, and speaking in subdued tones to Hannah, who, after the manner of her kind, was bustling about, and making as much noise in the doing so as possible.

“Don’t make more row than you can help, there’s a good woman,” John whispered anxiously; “there’s no use in waking up the missus. Bring a cup of tea, hot and strong, as quick as you can, and then take yourself off to bed.”

Hannah made no reply to this exhortation, save by throwing a knowing glance at Honor, which that bewildered young person did not even attempt to comprehend. The mystery, however, did not take long to solve, for ere another minute had elapsed there was the sound of a creaking step upon the stairs, and Mrs. Beacham’s chronic cough (a cough which the doctors said she would never lose but in her grave) heralded the approach of Honor’s enemy.

Instinctively the young wife, as the gaunt figure of the old woman, clad in the sternest of nightcaps and the most uncompromising of flannel gowns, made its appearance in the doorway, turned an appealing face to her husband, thus mutely claiming his protection and support. Unfortunately, however, for this weak vessel, whose conscience was assisting to render her a coward, the language of looks was an unknown one to single-eyed John Beacham. In addition also to this ignorance, it would have been hard to make him understand that it was against his own mother that Honor, in that piteous glance of hers, entreated that he would array himself. He was experiencing at that moment one of the effects of a long habit of filial obedience and respect, and that effect was a real regret that his aged parent should have her rest disturbed, and her mind harassed by his wife’s—to say the least of it—thoughtless conduct. John’s affection for his mother was too deeply rooted to be easily shaken; and though he had, for a passing moment, been softened, quelled, subdued by his tenderness for his wife—though he had for a short while forgotten that Honor had, in more ways than one, braved, disobeyed, and utterly deceived him—yet, with the presence of the respectable and unimpeachably virtuous woman who had first opened his unwilling eyes to the culprit’s errors, the remembrance of those errors crowded once more thick and fast upon him; so thick and fast that his very face grew darker and more serious, whilst Mrs. Beacham, happily unconscious that her appearance was not precisely a dignified one, advanced slowly, candle in hand, into the room.