Volume 3 — CHAPTER III. WHAT WAS HONOR DOING?

It was Sunday at the Paddocks,—Sunday afternoon,—rather a ponderous season in the old silent house; and John was, sooth to say, a trifle tired of his own thoughts, to say nothing of the sight of his respectable parent poring, spectacles on nose, over the heavy sermon (a Sabbath duty with her, and a habit which she was far too old to break), that kept her in a blissful doze through two hours at least of that long afternoon of rest.

The early dinner was over; and the house being very quiet—no sound more startling than the buzz of the flies upon the window-pane breaking the stillness of the restful time—John Beacham, who had ensconced himself in his big arm-chair, feeling dull enough, poor fellow, without Honor, began to experience not only the influence of the heat but of the Sabbath beef and pudding; and his eyelids, “drawing straws,” as the saying is, closed gradually over the tranquil scenes before him, and the deserted husband found himself in the land of dreams.

How long he had slept he knew not, when he was roused by a man’s step in the entrance-hall near him, and by a voice which in the first bewilderment of waking he failed to recognise as that of Jack Winthrop, the owner of the wicked chestnut, and a distant neighbour, whose visits, few and far between, were usually paid on that dies non to a business man, a Sunday afternoon.

“Hallo, old fellow! taking a snooze, eh?” was Jack’s jovial greeting; and then the two men shook hands, while Mrs. Beacham, adjusting her spectacles, and with rather a scared look in her sharp old eyes, endeavoured, under the appearance of being still more wideawake than usual, to hide the fact that she had been asleep.

Jack was not much—as he often remarked himself—of a ladies’ man. He was far more at home in the stable than the drawing-room. Nevertheless, and especially when he had on his go-to-meeting coat and hat, he could shuffle through the usual forms of social good breeding with tolerable success. Of these forms, a short dissertation on the weather, past, present, and to come, together with a few polite inquiries regarding the health and whereabouts of the members of their respective families, stood first in importance. It was to the last of these conversational duties that Mrs. Beacham was indebted for some valuable information regarding the proceedings of the erratic young woman whose continued absence was to the old lady a perpetual source of mingled anger and satisfaction.

“Well, and how do you get along without the missus; eh, John?” asked the visitor. And then, with a rather meaning wink and a jerk of his smoothly-brushed yellow head, “I expect I’ve seen Mrs. John since you have; caught sight of her yesterday morning as I was tooling through the Park. She was a-horseback, looking like paint,—so she was, with such a colour,—and the young Squire along with her. There was a servant behind ’em on a screwed bay horse; and I didn’t think much of the one the missus rode either—a leggy brute! She wouldn’t think much of him, I fancy, after Lady Meg. But you’ll have her—the missus, I mean—back again soon, I doubt.” And the worthy, stupid fellow—stupid, that is, in everything but what regarded horse-flesh—pulled up at last, entirely unconscious that he had applied the match to a train, and that a “blowing-up” of some kind or other would be the inevitable consequence of his thoughtlessly-spoken words.

It was not till some hours later, and when Jack—who had been walked over every acre of the Paddocks, and been encouraged to linger longer than visitor had ever lingered before in each loose box and stall—that John Beacham and his mother, each in their several elbow-chairs, consumed their meal of herbs—id est, their tea and bread-and-butter—in silence and in gloom. John had delayed, with a cowardice very unusual to his open, natural, fearless character, the moment, dreaded beyond any previous moment of his life,—that, namely, when Honor’s conduct, her duplicity, her shamelessness, and worst of all, her dislike to him and to her home, would infallibly come under discussion between himself and his mother. To describe John’s sensations during the revelations of Mr. Winthrop would be impossible. To hear that his Honor,—the fair young wife whom he had pictured to himself living a secluded life in her father’s dull and poverty-stricken home,—to hear, I say, from authority undeniable, that she was recreating herself with horse exercise in the Lady’s Mile with a young gentleman,—the young gentleman of whose designs, or rather the report of whose designs, upon his wife’s affections, Mrs. Beacham had already more than once irritated him by hinting at,—was to receive a stab sharp and cruel, as it was wholly unexpected, in the warm honest heart that still contained within it such a wealth of love for the backsliding absent one. He had made no sign—it was his way (a misfortune in some cases) to make no sign till such time as the gathering stream of passion, defying all control, burst through its bonds, and spent itself in outward fury—he made no sign of what he was enduring whilst Honor’s sin of suppressio veri (to use the mildest term) was shown up in glaring colours by his officious visitor. From his manner—but then Jack was not an observant character,—that sporting individual would never have imagined that his old friend was undergoing torture very difficult to endure with outward composure; and that John Beacham did so endure it was partly owing to his dread that the old lady, who was not famous for concealing what she called her “feelings,” might, by an outburst of indignation, betray the mortifying fact that his young wife was wronging and deceiving him. That such a manifestation was to the last degree unadvisable was so clearly and intentionally demonstrated by John’s demeanour, that Mrs. Beacham, though sorely against her will, limited the expression of her wrath to an “Ah, well!” followed by the compressed lips which so often betray that wrath “to be kept warm” is being nursed within the breast.

It was with curiously different feelings that the mother and son awaited the time when Honor’s conduct, as revealed by Jack Winthrop, should be in solemn conclave sat in judgment on, and, as a matter of course, condemned. For that time—for the auspicious moment when John should have returned from that interminable walk, when his Brother farmer, “drat him” (I am afraid that, Sunday though it was, the worthy old lady did indulge in a mild imprecation or two on the head of her unconscious visitor), should have taken his departure, and when they two should be sitting comfortably (?) over their tea, Mrs. Beacham longed with a feverish and impatient craving. It was so hard, so very hard upon her, that she was perforce obliged to keep this weighty discovery within the limits of her own breast. A secret, like a very young man’s forbidden love affair, is worth nothing unless you can divulge it to the one friend who promises with such solemn vows to keep it closely (as closely, poor confiding one, as you have done yourself); and had the widow Thwaytes chanced to “drop in” that Sunday afternoon—a step which that scandal-lover would infallibly have taken could the remotest surmise of the delightful existing field for gossip have reached her ears—the delinquencies of the absent Honor would very soon have become public property at Switcham. Such luck, however, as a visit from her congenial humble friend was not, on that day at least, in store for the busy irate old woman, who, strong in the strength of her Sabbath silk gown and great in her conscious dignity of mistress regent at the Paddocks, sat prepared to make—certainly not the best of her young daughter-in-law’s shortcomings.

“Well, John, what do you think of this?” was her startling exordium when Hannah had left the room, and John—poor John—had no escape, and no longer even a reprieve from listening to abuse—abuse, it was to be feared, only too well merited—of his beloved one. “Well, John, this looks nice, doesn’t it? So milady stays in Lunnon, not to nurse her father, as she’d have us believe, but to go tearing about Hyde Park with Mr. Vavasour! Pretty doings, upon my word! I declare to goodness, if you take no notice of this, I shall think you’re just gone clean out of your mind, and are only fit for an asylum, so you are.”

She stopped, more from lack of breath to proceed than from any immediate prospect that appeared of John’s responding to her attack. He felt called upon, however, to make some reply to what sounded like an implied accusation of lukewarmness, and of a disposition to “take things” far more easily than he was in the humour to do. His mother’s abrupt onslaught had, however, already produced an effect directly contrary to what the indignant old lady had intended. She had either forgotten or ignored the sensible proverb which saith “Scald not thy lips in another man’s porridge,” and had aroused in her son that fraction of masculine dignity which causes its possessor to resist interference in the management of his house and harem. Besides, John’s love for the beautiful object of Mrs. Beacham’s jealousy was still far too strong for him to endure patiently the hearing his wife found fault with by any other than himself; and this being the case, his reply did not greatly tend to Mrs. Beacham’s satisfaction.

“Jack Winthrop is a chattering fool. I daresay he mistook Honor for someone else, for one of young Vavasour’s sisters probably; and even if she was riding in the Park, where’s the mighty harm? It was but yesterday he saw her—says he saw her, at least—and it’s quite time enough to pull her up if she says nothing of it herself next time she writes, which will be to-morrow if I’m not mistaken.” And John, having so said, pushed back his chair with the evident intention of closing the conference. His mother, however, was not to be thus cheated of her treat. She had not been waiting for six mortal hours to be put off with such a stupid shuffle as that! No! For once in his life John should hear reason, let what would come of it, and if there was no one else to tell him the truth, his mother would do her duty, and point out to the infatuated man what, in this crisis of his fate, was his!

“John, John!” she said, lifting up a stubborn finger warningly; “if I hadn’t heerd and seen this myself, I never could—and that’s the truth—have believed it. To think that you, a man grown and with a man’s blood in your veins, should let a woman lead you by the nose like this!”

“Nonsense, mother!” with an unsuccessful effort to laugh the matter off. “No one is leading me, or thinking of leading me, by the nose, as you call it. Honor is a silly girl, I don’t say she isn’t, and she’s fond of a horse; and if her father—gad! how I hate to speak of the fellow!—if her father put it into her foolish head to ride, why ride she would, nor I don’t blame her neither. So, mother, let you and I hear the rights of it before we blame her; and what’s more—you’ll forgive my speaking”—approaching nearer, and his breath coming shorter as he spoke—“but if you would remember, mother dear, not to speak to anyone in the village about this—story—of Honor and the—the Park, I should esteem it very kind, and—”

“Oh, my dear, you may make yourself quite easy,” snorted the old lady. “I’m not the bird to defile my own nest. It won’t be through me if disgrace comes upon the family, and if you like to encourage your wife in her goings on with gentlemen—”

“Come, come, mother,” broke in her son; “I must not have my wife spoken of, before she deserves it, as if she was a—a gay woman. I beg your pardon, but you make me more angry than I ought to be; and it isn’t right, mother, God’s book says it ain’t. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ we are told, and grievous words only stir up anger, they do; so let’s keep from ’em while we can. I’m expecting to hear from Honor to-morrow, and if she says she’s coming home and writes about this foolish ride of hers, why we shall be sorry then, poor pretty creature, that we said a word against her.” And John, perfectly unconscious of the strangely mixed feelings, the half fear—a dread unadmitted even to his own breast—that Honor both deserved and would be visited with punishment, wished his mother “good-night,” and left her to her reflections.