Volume 3 — CHAPTER XXIII. HONOR RECEIVES A LETTER.

In the mean while Honor, unconscious of the events that had occurred, and the calamities which had befallen those in whom she was so deeply interested, had supported for another weary night and day the suspense which she found hourly more difficult of endurance. Then the courage that had hitherto supported her began to flag, and she half resolved—wholly objectionable as was the plan, and revolting to every feeling of womanly modesty—to endeavour by inquiry at Arthur’s house to obtain some information concerning him. That some evil, some sudden accident or grievous sickness, had overtaken her only friend, Honor could not but believe; and it was this belief, joined to a certain pride which lingered in her still (for, after all, Arthur might be simply false), that prevented her from having recourse to her former plan—namely, that of writing to Arthur at his house or at his club. To sally forth after dark; to call a cab, and to be driven to within a few yards of Mr. Duberly’s house; and when there to make a few insignificant inquiries of the servant which might lead to something like elucidation of her doubts and fears, seemed a plan not very difficult of execution; and Honor was still pondering on its expediency when to her surprise (for she had ceased to expect such consolations) a letter was put into her hand by Mrs. Casey—a letter, too, which she perceived at once was from Arthur Vavasour.

Hurrying with her treasure into the inner room, which was her bedchamber, and utterly regardless of Mrs. Casey’s feelings as a friend and would-be confidante, Honor tore open the envelope, when the first writing that met her eye was her own! Casting the note directed by herself impatiently on one side, she opened another inclosure—one of deeply-bordered mourning-paper, and read as follows:

“My dear Honor,—For for the last time I may venture to call you so; I write you this letter to bid you a last farewell. A heavy blow has fallen on us all. My poor wife—I did love her, Honor, more than I ever thought—is dead. It was very sudden. She overheard words—I trust you may never know from whom—which must have made her think that I was false to her, for she fell down as one dead, poor girl, and never spoke again. All this grief and wretchedness, and the sight of poor Mr. Duberly’s misery, and knowing he must hate me soon, is more than I can bear, so I have resolved that after the funeral is over I will have an explanation—I mean, that I will confess everything—about the horse and my debts, and all my horrible deceptions to the poor old man; and after that, it is my intention to go abroad, to America or some distant country; and my best hope is that nobody will ever hear of me again. Writing, as I am, with the poor thing that I have killed so near me, there are but few words, Honor, that I can dare to say to you. One wish, one prayer, however, I may breathe, and that prayer is, that you will go home to John. It is with the hope that you will do so, that I send you back your own innocent, simple notes, the only ones you ever wrote to me, and which, but for the help that they may be to you, I would never, never have parted with. Send them to your husband, dear Honor. They will convince him, if he is ever so positive, that I was not a liar when I swore that you were pure as the angels of Heaven from the guilt of which he dared suspect you. And now, dear Honor, fare you well, and if in the days to come, when you are happy, as I pray you may be, you should ever think of these past wretched times again, let there be forgiveness in your heart for one whose crime towards you has been followed by a punishment almost too heavy to be borne.”

Twice did Honor Beacham, with eyes blinded by tears, read over this miserable letter, before the whole and entire sense of it came home to her understanding. The shock of hearing of the death, under such pitiful circumstances, of Arthur’s wife, was very great, and the mournful tragedy stood out in terrible and bold relief from amongst the mist and confusion which at first (for Honor’s intellects were then not in the clearest possible condition) seemed to envelope the other portions of Arthur’s letter. But very soon—too soon for the unhappy woman to whom the clearing up of the mystery seemed almost the signal for despair—light dawned upon her bewildered mind, and with a cry of agony, she accused herself aloud as the wretched cause of the young mother’s untimely end. At that moment, in the first keen torture of her self-reproach, she would have hailed as an act of mercy from on high the relief which death, her own death, would have brought to her. Flinging herself on her knees beside the bed, and burying her face in its covering, she strove, but strove in vain, to stifle the violent hysterical sobs that would, in spite of all her efforts, force themselves from her ice-cold lips. Ah, Heaven! so the poor tortured creature asked herself, how could she bear the life that was before her—the life burdened with such a dreadful, dreadful weight of guilt? Verily, to use the concluding words of Arthur’s letter, her punishment seemed greater than she could bear—greater by far, in one respect, than that which had overtaken him; for while her fellow-culprit could take comfort from the thought that he might have (yet had not) sinned more heavily, she in her despairing humility exaggerated her guilt, and sorrowed as one that had no hope.

Life, as has been said a thousand times, is made up of contrasts—healthy, invigorating contrasts sometimes—contrasts which, while they often jar upon the feelings, and even sometimes tinge with a faint and humiliating colouring of ridicule the “situations” which they mar, are, nevertheless, as I said before, highly useful in their way, acting as a mental douche, the benefit of which may be as lasting as it is immediate. It was such a shock as this, a trifling one in appearance, yet not altogether without its use, that roused Honor from the kind of trance of despair into which she had fallen. The sound of Mrs. Casey’s voice, and the commonplace inquiry of “Please, miss, is there anything partiklar that you’d like for dinner?” smote upon Honor’s ear like a summons from a world that she had left, and in the interests of which she had ceased to have a share. But although this was the case, and albeit her grief and repentance were as deep and scarcely less agonising than they had been at first, the necessity of rising from her knees, of hiding the traces of her agitation, and, more than all, the obligation under which she lay, both of replying to Mrs. Casey’s well-meant inquiries, and of baffling as best she might that investigating person’s very natural curiosity, all these things were, to a certain extent, good for Honor. That they were beneficial was evidenced by the fact that, after Mrs. Casey had, with a very dissatisfied look, which increased the always somewhat repulsive expression of her face, left her lodger to herself, that, to the landlady’s thinking, very mysterious and unsatisfactory young person felt far more equal than she had done ten minutes before to the task of thinking, with some degree of calmness and common sense, not only on the difficulties and necessities of her present position, but on what manner it had become her duty at this crisis of her affairs to act.

Perhaps the strongest feeling (next to her own bitter self-reproach) which she was conscious of entertaining was one of deep compassion for, and sympathy with poor John’s wholly undeserved sorrows. All that had passed, and the deeds which had led with such fearful rapidity to fatal and irretrievable results, appeared in all their miserable distinctness to Honor’s mind. She could understand now that John, in his eagerness to discover her whereabouts, had found his way to the house where Arthur lived; and that, then and there, worked up to unjust suspicion by his mother’s hints and accusations, he had with the vehemence of unbridled passion uttered the words which, overheard by Arthur’s wife, had proved a death-blow to that ill-fated woman. How deeply and how lastingly the remorse of such a deed (all-unintentional though it was) would crush down the spirit of one of whose tenderness of heart Honor had had abundant proofs, she did not need in that unhappy hour to be reminded; while to act to the best of her ability the part of comforter, to strive with all the means in her power to obtain her pardon, and to induce her husband to believe her, and to forget the past, were now the dearest wishes of her heart. But would he—ah! there lay the one terrible and ever-recurring thought—would he, even after he had read the letters which “poor” Arthur, with what Honor was still weak enough to style his “unselfish kindness”—had returned to her—credit the truth that her worst faults were those of folly, of vanity; her most unpardonable errors those arising from a quick and rebellious temper? If she could but see him, Honor sometimes told herself, it would not be very difficult—in defiance of his mother—to make John judge her rightfully; but though in her more sanguine moments this was the poor girl’s persuasion, there were other, and far more frequent occasions when she despaired of forgiveness, and when a dread of even a chance meeting with her husband made her heart sink within her for fear.

In this miserable fashion, alternating between hope and depression, haunted by night as well as by day with the memory of the dead, and with her heart made every hour sorer by thinking on the living, four more painful days and nights sped by.

She had been more than a week an inmate of Mrs. Casey’s house, when that thrifty personage—who had not yet, as she elegantly termed it, “seen the colour of Miss Blake’s money”—made her usual afternoon entrée into her lodger’s sitting-room, with an ominous long-shaped piece of bluish-white paper in her hand. Mrs. Casey—whose wits were, like those of many others of her class and kind sharpened by the instincts of self-preservation necessary for her calling—was surprised on her entrance by a change in her lodger’s countenance and manner, for which, seeing that Miss Blake had to the best of her belief, received neither visitor nor letter, the worthy landlady could by no means account. There was a feverish flush; a light which, though it was scarcely joy, was wonderfully revivifying in that beautiful face; and Mrs. Casey, who had entered the room with one of the least tender of human purposes, felt even her prosaic fancy warm beneath its softening influence. Nor was the woman’s surprise concerning her mysterious tenant lessened when the latter said with a faint blush, and hurriedly:

“Mrs. Casey, I was going to ask for you; ah, that is your bill; and,” glancing at it slightly, “perhaps you will help me to pack up my few things, for I am going home!”

She said the words, there was no mistaking that, exultingly; and Mrs. Casey (wondering greatly, for had not this to the end mysterious young person told her that she had no home?) uttered what was intended to be a civil congratulation on this apparently altered condition in her affairs. But Honor heard her not. With a nervous eagerness which permitted of no pause either for thought or speech, she continued the few and simple preparations for her departure. Drawing forth her purse, she paid, with an absence of all prudence, and a degree of submission to exorbitant charges which caused Mrs. Casey bitterly to regret her own moderation, the “little account” which that lady obsequiously handed to her, and, when all was ready, she shook hands nervously with the woman with whom one of the thousand chances of life had made her acquainted, and whom she was never likely, on this side the grave, to meet again.

“I wish you good-day, miss, and a pleasant journey,” Mrs. Casey said, taking her last inquisitorial survey of her late lodger through the open window of the cab which had been summoned to convey “Miss Blake” to the station—“and if you should know any friends, gentlemen preferred, who want a quiet lodging, good attendance, and everything found, perhaps you’d be good enough to think of No. 29.”

“Indeed I will,” said Honor, answering the request, as such questions usually are answered, at random; and in another moment the owner of the dirty net-cap and incipient moustache returned, the impersonation of baffled curiosity, into the underground precincts of the “quiet lodging,” while Honor, Hope having at last come out conqueror over Fear, pursued her way—a thousand conflicting feelings surging in her breast—towards home! Home at last, home again, for all that in her husband’s house Honor expected still to find the unloving woman who had once made that home so hard to bear. Home again, though John’s anger might still be hot against her, and though she had her pardon yet to seek. Home once more; for on that never-to-be-forgotten day Honor had discovered that which changed for her, in some mysterious way, the entire aspect of her life, had made sure of that which she fondly hoped would not only make her peace with John, but would perhaps even soften his mother’s stony heart towards her.

“They can never, never be hard upon me now,” she kept repeating to herself as visions of a great joy yet to come, a joy that would gild over the dark and mournful outlines of the past, rose up before her. Visions they were of a fair child—the peacemaker—a child with tender limbs, rounded and soft, whose little cheek was pressed to hers, John all the while looking at them both, the child and her, in wonder and in love.

But, unfortunately for the sustainment of poor Honor’s courage, other and less agreeable thoughts and anticipations took their place as she drew nearer and more near to the home that she was gilding with her own fancy’s rays. At a distance, and buoyed up by the inward consciousness that, in her humble way, she was blessed among women, it had seemed no such hard matter to fall at honest John’s feet and cry, “Husband, I have sinned before thee, and am no more worthy—inasmuch as I have been proud, passionate, and ungrateful—to be called thy wife:” but as the moment for confession approached, stern reality usurped the place of fancy, and the task grew to her thinking very hard indeed to perform. Nor was it rendered easier by the reception—real or imaginary—which awaited her at Switcham—Switcham, where, a twelvemonth before, at that self-same hour, she had returned from her bridal tour in happiness and half in triumph, to her home, and where, now a disgraced and lonely wanderer, she had to endure as best she might cold looks and disrespectful stares, from the sight of which she escaped with eager haste into the first closed carriage that she found in waiting.

It was then that in dread and trembling she began to repent of the impetuous haste with which she had acted—then that she regretted her folly in not having prepared the way for her return by writing all she had to say to John; for of course, so she whispered sadly to herself, she was despised and utterly condemned. Public opinion, she could not doubt, was against her, for John was beloved and respected by all; while she—well, what, she asked herself, had she done to deserve one single emotion of affection or esteem? Nothing—to her awakened conscience told her—absolutely nothing. She had held herself aloof from her neighbours with a pride which she now knew was both mean and wicked; and she had crowned all by bringing disgrace and sorrow on the man who, from his youth upwards, had lived as a friend amongst his neighbours, gaining by his good deeds, his honesty and kindliness, the hearts of all who knew and understood his worth.

The short half-hour requisite to traverse the up-hill road that lay between Switcham and Pear-tree House sped away with cruel rapidity for Honor, who would gladly—to postpone the now dreaded moment of arrival—have deserted the lumbering “fly,” which that well-known old gray mare dragged on so wearily, and, resting by the wayside, have striven better to prepare herself for the coming trial.

A cowardly wish it was, and senseless as it was cowardly, for what change, what power to endure, what gift of boldness, would time or thought bestow on one who for so many days and nights of solitary thought had been picturing to herself the meeting that was now so near at hand—the meeting which only the courage lent her by her newly-born hopes could, she now felt, enable her to support?

As each well-remembered object, while drifting with terrible rapidity towards the home she had so recklessly abandoned, met her eyes, the nervous tremor which had begun, from the moment when she neared the Switcham station, to oppress her, became gradually more difficult of control. The hour, the season, the soft evening air, the bright green of the opening leaves, the thousand tokens of the blithesome spring, all these, instead of cheering and supporting Honor’s sinking spirits, lessened through the touching of some tender chord of memory, some link connected with the happy Past, her feeble powers of self-control.

When the carriage from the Dragon drew up before the woodbine-covered porch, Honor’s agitation had arrived at its highest pitch, and when, at the sound of wheels upon the gravel, Hannah made her appearance at the door, and uttered, at the unexpected sight of the “young missus,” a half-suppressed exclamation of astonishment, there came no sound from Honor’s lips, while her feet, so incapable was she of movement, seemed glued to the time-worn sheepskin on which they rested.

With noiseless fingers—Hannah was usually a bustling servant, and the strange quiet of her movements, together with a peculiar and unwonted stillness that reigned through the house, filled Honor’s mind with a great, but undefined, uneasiness—with noiseless fingers then the old servant opened the door of the vehicle, and in a low, boding whisper, her face close to Honor’s ear, said pityingly:

“Keep a good heart, dear; he ain’t worse, thank God; and the doctors, they do say—”

But Honor waited to hear no more. The force of reality, the call for immediate action, suddenly loosened her tongue and rendered her limbs pliant. In a moment she was by Hannah’s side, and saying in tones, unconsciously imitative of those which had been so full of startling meaning:

“O, Hannah! what is it? O, Heaven! he is not ill! Tell me he is not ill!” and she strove to steady herself by clinging convulsively to the old servant’s arm.

“Hush, my dear, hush! You mustn’t take on so. I thought you’d a’ known that master was lying in the fever, or you wouldn’t, maybe, be here. But come in, there’s a dear. This is the fifth day, and Doctor Kempshall says there’ll be a chrisus, I think he calls it, soon, but whether for life or death, the God that rules us only knows.”

Hannah, who was a pious woman, and one who held to the belief that no misfortunes happen to us by the power that is lightly called chance, spoke the last words with almost devotional earnestness, adding thereby to the wild alarm that Honor was beginning to entertain.

“In danger!” she cried, “and I never knew it! O, John, dear John!” and she was hurrying to the stairs, when another step treading still more softly, and a voice more whisperingly low than even Hannah’s, checked her progress.

“You musn’t go, my dear,” said Mrs. Beacham, for she it was who, looking like the ghost of her former self, pressed Honor’s white cheek to hers. “You must not see John now. The fever may, the doctors say, be infectious, and if it please God to spare his life, why—” with a very sad smile, but one that was meant to be reassuring—“we may want you yet.”

This reception, and the unlooked-for kindness of the broken-down old woman, was too much for Honor. Falling on her knees, and with a feeble cry of, “Forgive me! O forgive me!” she buried her face in her mother-in-law’s gown, and sobbed as if her heart would break.