Volume 3 — CHAPTER XVIII. JOHN DISCOVERS HIS LOSS.

Four o’clock had long ago struck,—for those were busy times for John, and people who could not be put off came to him at all hours on matters connected with his industrie,—four o’clock had long ago struck before John’s hearty voice—it was the kind of voice that sent a feeling of serenity through the whole house in which it had a right to resound—made itself heard in the hall and passages of Pear-tree House.

“Mother! Hallo! O, there you are.” And then it was, “Where’s Honor, mother? Upstairs, eh?”

Mrs. Beacham both looked and felt uncomfortable. It was now many hours since she had seen the daughter-in-law whose feelings she was well aware she had galled and wounded to the utmost. Where those hours had been spent by Honor—whether in the solitude of her own room, or wandering out into the fields—whether in paying a visit to her friends the Clays (at which news Mrs. Beacham would have secretly greatly rejoiced), the latter knew not. All of which she felt quite certain was, that John would demand a strict account of his wife’s proceedings, whether those proceedings were voluntary or otherwise; and if Honor had in very truth been some seven or eight hours alone and without food, the old lady did not doubt that he would be very seriously displeased. John was not habitually an observant man; but there was that in his mother’s face which made him suspect that something was wrong. That she had been, during his absence, harsh with, if not, indeed, positively unkind to, his young wife, was, however, the worst of John Beacham’s fears; but these were disagreeable and annoying enough; and it was with the evident irritation of a hasty-tempered man that he repeated the words:

“Where is Honor? She isn’t ill, mother, is she? Or” (more nervously still) “is anything the matter?”

“Nothing, that I know of,” replied Mrs. Beacham ceremoniously. It always provoked her to see John “fussing,” as she called it, over his wife. “Honor is in her own room, I suppose, looking over her finery, as usual. If you want her, you had better call her down.”

John waited not to hear this piece of advice. A strange but faint presentiment of evil—not the evil that had overtaken him, that was too terrible to have entered even the outside confines of his imagination, but a sense that some annoyance was preparing—oppressed and worried him. Mounting the stairs with hasty footsteps, and calling his wife’s name the while, he was very speedily at the chamber-door, where he tapped—as was his wont—very softly for admittance,—softly at first; and then, receiving no reply, he repeated the summons more noisily; but still without the desired effect. Then, and not till then, he entered, and was surprised—though not yet roused to a state of alarm—by the condition in which he found the usually neat and well-ordered sleeping-room. On the bed, which, tossed and tumbled, bore marks of having been pressed by the weight of a reclining and very restless figure, lay near the pillow a handkerchief still wet with abundant tears; while open drawers, a small, very small, jewel-casket standing—not its usual place—conspicuously upon the toilet-table, and a certain general disarray suggestive of departure, made, for a single moment, John’s heart to stand still within him for fear.

“Mother!” he cried, calling loudly from the top of the stairs, “for the love of God come here, and, if you can, tell me,” he went on excitedly, and laying his hand heavily on the bannisters to steady himself (the old lady, after making what haste she could, stood beside him on the landing)—“tell me, if you can, what has become of Honor.”

“What has become of her? Why, what makes you think that anything has become of her?” retorted his mother, endeavouring to hide her own alarm by ill-acted bluster. “Nothing ever becomes of anybody that I know of. What in goodness’ name do you mean?”

But in spite of her attempts to carry off matters with a high hand, Mrs. Beacham’s courage did begin to fail her at sight of the evidences of a sudden and desperate resolution with which, to her thinking, the room abounded. John, watching her countenance narrowly, drew his own auguries from what he read there.

“Mother,” he said sternly, “may God forgive me if I am wrong, but I fear—I cannot help fearing—that you have something to do with—with what Honor—with what my poor wife may have done.”

“I? What should I have to do with it?” she asked; but her voice trembled as she spoke, and sitting down hastily on the nearest chair, she waited in silence for what was to follow.

“I don’t know—I can’t tell; my head seems in a whirl; but tell me—that at any rate you can do, mother—when did you see Honor last?”

“At about ten o’clock, or thereabouts. You had been gone about half an hour when she went upstairs.”

“And have none of the servants seen her since?”

“I don’t know; you had better ask. I daresay it will turn out that she is somewhere close by—or gone to the Clays perhaps,—and that you have been making a great deal of fuss about nothing.”

On this hint John at once acted. The idea that Honor might be paying a visit to her old friends was a possible, though scarcely a probable, solution of his difficulty; and he caught at it with eager hope. From the servants, when questioned, he could learn but little. Hannah had seen her young mistress with her hat on walking across the garden towards the village. She had not noticed whether Mrs. John had anything in her hand or not. She might have, sure-ly, for anything that Hannah knew. She didn’t take much heed, not she, being busy at the time, and thinking the missus was only going for a walk like.

“Which I daresay she was,” John said more hopefully; “and, mother, if you’ll go to your dinner—I am very sorry I kept you so long waiting—I’ll look about a bit for Honor; and if it happens that I don’t find her, why I’ll ride over to the Clays and bring her back.”

Acting on this resolution,—for it was a matter of necessity to search actively for Honor, since sitting down quietly under his suspense would drive him mad he thought,—John hurried away down the sweet-brier hedge that ran at right-angles with the porch—hurried away so quickly that his mother had no time to reiterate her urgent entreaty that he would have something to eat before he went.

“Just a mouthful, John!” she screamed at the very top of her voice, as she caught a last glimpse of his tall figure turning an angle in the path.

But her anxiety was entirely thrown away. A shake of the head was all the answer that John vouchsafed; for the miserably anxious man, whose appetite for his dinner was usually of the healthiest and keenest, felt at that moment that he should not care either to eat or sleep again till he had found the wife that he had lost.