Volume 3 — CHAPTER XVII. HONOR MAKES A NEW ACQUAINTANCE.

“Contentment,” to quote the words of the wisest of mankind, “is great gain;” and true enough also is often the converse of the assertion—namely, that in “discontent there is exceeding loss.” In Lady Millicent Vavasour’s case, however, there seemed every chance that an exception to both rules would be found; for the desire and determination to reverse a decree which angered her, and which had for years been the mainspring and motive of one of the most unwomanly of actions, seemed likely to be crowned with success. Very wonderful, as well as praiseworthy (had her motive been a nobler one), were the exertions which, quite sub rosa, and working like a mole beneath the soil, she had made to effect that always extremely difficult result—namely, the setting aside of an obnoxious will. The money she had spent—the fees she had paid—the consultations with eminent lawyers that she had undergone—the perseverance and clear-sightedness of which she had given proofs, were worthy, one and all, of a better cause. At last—whether it was that by her continual coming she wearied them—or whether the great law lords did really—partly incited thereto, perhaps, by the prestige enjoyed by the wealth and “standing” of the grandiose Lady Millicent—consider that she had right and justice on her side, certain it is that opinions favourable to her cause were placing Arthur Vavasour’s position as heir-apparent of Gillingham in rather a precarious and unsatisfactory point of view. Between himself and his mother there had never, as we well know, existed, either on this or any other subject, any great amount either of confidence or affection; nor was it probable that the small degree of both, that it was only fair to suppose might be lying latent in those two antagonistic breasts, would be much increased and strengthened by the approaching triumph (for such all visible tokens announced it to be) of the already vain-glorious Lady Millicent.

That triumph—for such news ever travels quickly—began speedily to be noised abroad, to the annoyance of Arthur, whose creditors grew once more on the alert, and to the extreme displeasure of Mr. Duberly, whose usually placid temper would, but for his ever-increasing delight in his new toy, i.e. his grandson, have betrayed outward signs of discomposure and annoyance.

“I guessed how it would be, boy, all along,” he said to Arthur, on the third morning after the one which had first thrown light upon the baby’s tiny face; “I knew how it would be. Milady would never rest, not she, till she made her father out to be non compos, or some such devilment. Well, I thank my stars that we old-fashioned folks that you grandees call snobs, would be long enough before they tried-on such a thing as that comes to;” and the old man, so saying, looked as savage as it was possible for a round-faced, kindly, elderly gentleman, who was in reality brimming over with the milk of human kindness, to do.

A little to his surprise, and also, if the truth must be owned, to his disappointment, Arthur appeared not nearly so interested in this all-important matter as might have been reasonably expected. Neither while his father-in-law was giving utterance to the above very decided opinion, nor when the old gentleman, laying down the fork on which he had fixed a tempting morsel of toasted breakfast-bacon, clearly awaited a reply, did Arthur think proper to evince any tokens of a congenial spirit. The fact was (and surely the cause will be considered a sufficient one) he had that moment received the second and promised note from Honor, informing him of her address, and asking him very humbly, and with none of the old playfulness and evident sense of something like equality between them which had characterised her former proceedings, whether he could in any way assist her to gain her livelihood. “For I feel very forlorn and helpless,” the poor girl wrote, “and almost think that I had better have borne with Mrs. Beacham’s temper. But it is too late now; and if you can in any way help me, I shall be very, very grateful for your aid.”

It was with this short missive, touching in its tone of lowliness and impuissance, safe in his waistcoat-pocket, that Arthur, with an absent and preoccupied air, listened to the old man’s words. That the sound of them, however, lingered in his ear, and in some sort made their way through it to his understanding, was evidenced by his saying in answer to Mr. Duberly’s lengthened stare of surprise:

“I beg your pardon, sir; I was thinking of something else. I ought”—and his colour rose as he told the falsehood which Honor’s letter demanded of him—“I have, that is to say, to go out this morning on business connected with this horrid law-affair. There is a proposal from my man to settle it amicably, and—”

“Amicably be hanged!” cried Mr. Duberly, rising from the table in a pet. “If I was you, I wouldn’t hear of being amicable; and I wonder those rascally lawyers have the face to propose such a thing.”

“O, they have face enough for anything!” said Arthur, who was anxiously humouring the old gentleman, to keep him in a tolerably acquiescing mood. “There is nothing, sooner or later, that any one of them, if it suited his book, wouldn’t propose. One has to look deuced sharp after them, I can tell you, sir; so I am off directly after breakfast to Lincoln’s Inn. Any commands?” pausing at the door, which, in his anxiety to escape, he had already reached. “I shall just take a look at Sophy and the brat, and then I’m off.”

“Good young fellow,” Mr. Duberly muttered to himself as the sound of Arthur’s footsteps died away on the marble pavement of the inner hall; and Arthur, who was well aware of the admirable impression that his last words had made, felt no shadow of remorse for the deception of which he had been guilty. Nor did his cheek tingle with tardy shame when pretty Sophy (for she did look really pretty in the delicate paleness of invalidism) called him her darling Arthur, and whispered half fearfully (she did not wish, poor child, to be troublesome) that she would not be quite happy till she saw his face again.

Glad to be released, and eager to commence with the least possible delay his new office of protector and sole friend of his beautiful Honor, Arthur, who had waited since the previous night in sleepless eagerness for his summons, bade his wife good-bye with ill-dissembled haste, and was speedily on his way to the obscure street, somewhere in the direction of the Strand, where Honor had found a temporary home. It was a narrow and certainly not an inviting-looking place that to which she in her ignorance had betaken herself. She had passed it in a four-wheeled cab on her way from the Waterloo station to—she knew not where; and reading on a bill in the front window of what looked to her inexperienced eye a respectable house, that there were lodgings to let, she desired the driver to stop, and forthwith commenced inquiries regarding the apartments in question.

The mistress of the house, a rather forbidding-looking person in a tumbled black-net cap, and just the soupçon of a moustache on her lip, looked slightly surprised at Honor’s appearance; and at her demand whether she would receive her as an inmate, Mrs. Casey (for so was the woman called) promptly replied in the affirmative, adding irrelevantly, as Honor thought, that though her name was Irish, she was English born and bred.

“And I am Irish too,” Honor said eagerly, “and my name is Blake. I am just come from the country” (there was little necessity for telling Mrs. Casey that), “and I know nobody—except one person,” she added with a pretty blush, the suddenness of which was not lost upon her quick-sighted interlocutor—“one person who will get me a situation,” she went on hurriedly—“a situation as nursery governess. I was that before; and till I get a place, I should like very much” (Honor already began to dislike the idea of wandering far afield in search of a domicile) “to stay with you.”

To this request, after a slight demur on the part of the owner, or rather lessee of No. 29 Sussex-street—a demur occasioned by her unwillingness to appear over-anxious to possess her new acquaintance as a tenant—Mrs. Casey graciously acceded. The terms were not moderate—a pound per week for two very small rooms on the second story; but Honor made no objection. She was too glad to get over as well as she had done the awkward question of a reference, for any idea of bargaining to obtrude itself on her mind; and thus, in the space of little more time than it has required to scribble down this page, the bargain was concluded, and Honor Beacham, feeling very strange, and not a little lonesome, took quiet possession of her apartments.

By this time it was nearly two o’clock, and Honor, in a solitude only broken by the ceaseless roll of wheels, and by all the multifarious uproar of a crowded London thoroughfare, began, against her will, to think over what was going on at Peartree House. It was just possible, seeing that she and the old lady had parted on such extremely bad terms, that the latter, deeming it more dignified to leave her adversary to herself, had never even made any inquiries concerning her; and even had she done so, Honor felt no fear that any inquiries of the enemy would lead either to curiosity or discovery. There was nothing contrary to her habits in taking an ante-meridian walk, whether to the village for a skein of wool or other such trifling errand, or simply for the sake of a stroll to the garden or in the meadows, where the foals were playing by their mothers’ feet. Honor felt persuaded, therefore, that unless any chance observer, any officious gossip, after tracing her to the station, returned to spread through the village the intelligence of her flight, that all-important event would not, in all probability for several hours after, be discovered. The return of John Beacham to his dinner, which he was in the habit of doing, unless detained on business, punctually at four, would of course be the signal for a search after the missing woman; and Honor, as the hours wore on (and they passed very slowly after the inditing and taking to the nearest post of her second note to Arthur Vavasour), could scarcely keep her mind for many minutes together from wandering back again to home, and to the imagined scene of grief and consternation which the certainty of her flight would cause. She found herself for the first time in her life alone; alone, and left solely to her own resources, not only for the support of existence (that was to be an after and less important consideration), but left to provide her own thoughts, to steady her own nerves—the nerves on which a few short hours of loneliness were beginning to tell; left, in short, to what is so unnatural a condition for the young and feeble—left to be mistress of herself.

Two circumstances alone enabled Honor in that dreary upper chamber, smelling of the stale tobacco used by a very inferior class of “gentlemen lodgers,” and displaying in its dingy furniture and generally shabby gentility unfailing evidences of wear and tear as well as of slovenly and uncleanly habits—two circumstances alone enabled Honor to bear with tolerable patience the situation in which she had voluntarily plunged herself. In the first place, so prone are we to judge and draw our decisions from effects without seeking after causes, Honor still took a curious kind of comfort from the conviction that she was, in her humble way, a martyr and a victim. This belief, which she hugged perseveringly to her heart, was for a time a decided but gradually lessening set-off against the ennui which, creeping gradually over her spirits, caused her to long exceedingly for the second and more tangible form of consolation—namely, the advent of the only friend that in that vast metropolis she could boast of possessing. The ideas of this young woman from the country regarding the time requisite to convey a letter from one district to another were somewhat vague and methodless; and therefore it was that, long before the dainty little epistle, which she trusted would bring Arthur to her side, had (in all probability) been taken from the pillar-box into which she had thrown it, Honor had begun to hope that her friend would ere long be by her side. In thus hoping it never occurred to her that she was acting wickedly. It was true that Arthur had, at the commencement of their friendship, uttered foolish words that had startled, if not angered her; but she had given him to understand plainly, though kindly, that such words were an offence and an annoyance, and since that he had never—no, never, Honor repeated to herself as the recollection of certain meaning glances and too tender pressings of her yielded hand crowded thick upon her, and gave the lie (deny the impeachment though she might) to her assertion—he had never once appeared to view her in any other light than as a valued friend. Of the birth of Arthur’s little son, and of the semi-imprisonment to the house to which Mr. Vavasour had in consequence been condemned, Honor knew nothing. To her the fact of his being a father, one with such a title to respect and consideration as that name bestowed, would, had she been aware of the event that had occurred in Hyde-park-gardens, have probably checked her eagerness to make known her whereabouts to Arthur. She was one of those women by whom the possession of a child is looked upon as a very sacred thing—one of the many of her sex was she who are not and cannot be wholly and completely women till the ineffable joys, the pains, and pleasures of maternity, have set their stamp upon the youthful brow, and called forth the slumbering but best and deepest feelings of their nature.

Strange as it may seem, Honor’s liking—friendship, call it what you will—was but another phase and form of mother’s love. Arthur was, or at least he said he was, unhappy; he was in debt and difficulty—possibly, too, in disgrace; surely these were reasons for the granting him the tender pity that is akin to love—the pity that every true and devoted mother feels for the helpless children of her affection.

Thinking of Arthur Vavasour—thinking of him alternately with her gradually-increasing sorrow for the husband she had deserted—Honor passed the hours wearily enough away, and it was something of a relief when, about five o’clock, Mrs. Casey, slightly improved in appearance by the afternoon’s “cleaning,” knocked at the door, and a good deal more familiarly than was altogether agreeable to Honor, inquired of that mysterious young person whether she didn’t feel inclined to take anything.

“Only some tea,” Honor said, “and soon, please.”

She was beginning to feel rather faint from fasting, and the thought of tea and bread-and-butter, albeit the cates to be provided by Mrs. Casey were little likely to be tempting, was rather agreeable to her imagination.

“Directly,” was the prompt reply of the woman whom Honor, though she could not have told the reason why, liked less well every time she saw her. And Mrs. Casey was as good, and indeed, to Honor’s annoyance, even better than her word; for with “the tea,” which made its appearance in the form of battered Britannia metal, cracked and cemented crockery, damp bread, and sky-blue milk, came in due form, and with a manner that was decidedly patronising, the landlady herself. Seating herself on the comfortless little sofa by Honor’s side, the Widow Casey (Honor might, if she had cared to listen, have speedily known a good deal concerning that respectable person’s antecedents) commenced a series of what she imagined to be highly ingenious and diplomatic queries regarding her lodger’s birth and parentage, her education and her antecedents. To the best of her ability, Honor warded off the danger of making any direct reply to these troublesome investigations. She had taken the precaution to remove her wedding-ring, and could therefore pass herself off as Miss Blake, an orphan whose friends were tired of supporting her, and who was therefore desirous of finding her own living in the best way she could. The person she was expecting was a married gentleman. Honor laid especial stress on that fact, though it was quite evident that Mrs. Casey’s “O, indeed!” did not proclaim any very satisfactory effect produced upon her mind by the knowledge of Mr. Vavasour’s connubial condition. After that trifling episode, the self-invited visitor remained for a good hour, as if glued to the piece of furniture of which she had taken uninvited possession; and it was owing to no absence of loquacity on her part if, before that hour was over, Honor was not well aware of certain interesting portions of her landlady’s family history—namely, that she too had the bad luck to be an “orphan;” that Casey, poor fellow, loved his drop, which was often a loss and a hindrance to her well-doing; that her favourite son had been drowned at sea, and her daughter had just five months before married a gentleman in the surveying line, who had his horse and shay, and could keep her, bless you! like a lady.