Volume 3 — CHAPTER IX. JOHN PROVES HIS RIGHT.

As he opened the box-door, a ray of reason—there is often on such occasions something sobering in the mere presence of strangers—threw a composing light over John Beacham’s troubled brain. He was not, as we already know, a man who loved excitement and “went in” for sensation; on the contrary, his country habits and his rather matter-of-fact nature unfitted him for taking part in any emotional scene, of what kind soever it might be.

Entering the box, he took off his hat with instinctive politeness; but that duty performed, he laid his hand—it was as we know an honest one, but heavy enough withal—on Honor’s snowy shoulder. What followed was the work almost of moments; but rapid though it was, the scene remained engraved on Honor’s memory for ever. As the iron fingers pressed into the delicate flesh—he could not guess, poor man, that her first feeling when he entered had been one of gladness—she uttered a sharp cry of pain, and cast an appealing glance—for John’s wild looks and violent action frightened her—at Arthur.

Was it in mortal man, or rather was it in the man who loved her, and who almost believed his love returned, to remain neuter, absolutely neuter, in such a case as this? It was true, quite true, that the husband was dans son droit, and had a right to resent as an insult the interference in his wife’s behalf of any man that lived. Of this important truth, however, Arthur remembered nothing. Blinded by passion, disturbed at a moment when, forgetful of all the world beside, he was distilling what he believed to be successful poison into the ear of the woman he adored, this spoilt child of sin, who had never denied himself a pleasure, or made during his whole stormy manhood a single sacrifice either to others or to duty, resented the entrance of Honor’s unconventional husband into his private box, as if that husband were in fact the encroacher, and he the lawful possessor of the prize.

White, ay, almost livid with rage, he wrenched away the hand that held the woman whom he delighted to protect, and would have spoken words of violence suited to the intemperate action, had not John Beacham, subdued for the moment by the sight of passions even stronger than his own, commanded him in a tone of startling energy to be silent.

“For your father’s sake, young man,” he said, laying his broad hand for an instant on Arthur’s thin white lips—“for your dead father’s sake, make no ugly scandal here. If I believed you worse than foolish, I would kill you as you stand there! but I do not believe such evil of your father’s son. Go, sir, to your young wife; go and repent you of your sins; and when we meet again, God grant that I may have a better opinion than I hold now of the boy that Cecil Vavasour loved in his life so well!”

Startled, overcome, and terribly confused, Arthur stood as if transfixed; while John, after hastily wrapping the trembling Honor in her opera-cloak, led her, without another word spoken, from the box.

In perfect silence—a silence only broken by the woman’s violent trembling as she hung helplessly on her husband’s arm—the re-united pair left the crowded theatre together. Honor moved along as if mechanically, dreading the moment when she would be alone with the man of whose violence she had just experienced such unpleasant proof, and feeling already, with terrible force, the bitter contrast between her lot as it had lately been, and her fate as it loomed darkly, wearily before her. Resigned she did not feel. The contrast was too great, too sudden; and, to speak the truth, the aspect of John in his rough overcoat, his driving-gloves, and country-made hat, did not exactly tend either to put Honor in good humour with her husband, or to reconcile her to the loss of half her evening’s amusement.

Had there been in the woman’s conscience the load of even the smallest secret guilt, fear would have usurped the place of anger, and all idea of rebellion would have banished from her mind. But Honor’s fit of trembling arose from no such hidden cause. No “sin,” even of thought, hitherto “unwhipt of justice,” caused her cheek to pale and her limbs to quake with fear. She was simply over-wrought, over-excited; and more than all, she was indignant. A woman—a beautiful one, that is to say—does not always calmly submit, even from a husband, to rudeness, when she has been accustomed to adulation; or to coercion, when she has been placed upon a throne, and learned to think herself a “queen for life.”

She was the first to speak—the woman usually is in embarrassing cases such as that I am describing. The man, who is as a rule less nervous and excitable, and who generally speaking has his senses more under his own command, is apt to hold his tongue, and rather dread the breaking of the ice—the prelude to the startling and unpleasant plunge from which he greatly doubts that any good can possibly result.

“O, John!” Honor said, “where are you taking me to? You might have waited till to-morrow, and—and—I see you are so angry.” And bursting into tears, she leant her shapely little head against the side of the cab in which John had placed himself and her, and sobbed with almost hysterical violence.

“Angry? I should think so,” was his reply, as he endeavoured to harden his heart against the wilful girl whom yet (he was terribly ashamed of the uxorious weakness) he ardently longed to take to his heart and whisper the fond assurance that she was forgiven. “I should think I was angry—ay, and precious angry too. Why, now, I should like to know how you came to act underhand in the way you have done, and that, too, from first to last? Why didn’t you write that you were riding about and amusing yourself? Why did you allow us—my mother and I—to think that your father was in difficulties, while all the time he could afford to keep horses, and give you all sorts of amusements? By George!”—and he gave a blow on the floor of the cab with his stout stick which must have sorely tested the strength of both—“by George! if anyone—if the best friends I have on earth—if the mother that bore me had said a month ago that she had seen what I have seen this night, I would not have believed her; and now—”

“And now,” interrupted Honor, her tears checked as if by magic, and turning her large indignant eyes full upon her husband, “and now, what, pray, have you seen? You talk to me as if I had done something wicked, something disgraceful; whereas the worst crime of which I can excuse myself is a dread, a horror—I had better say the truth at last—of living with, and being tormented by, your mother. It is more than I can bear to live with her. I would rather beg my bread, rather be a servant a hundred thousand times, than go back to Mrs. Beacham and be treated as she has treated me. But,” suddenly letting down the window of the cab, and looking out into the street, “you are not really taking me back to Updown? John,” clasping her hands in wild entreaty, “I implore you not to let me live again at Pear-tree House. I don’t know why it is—I can’t account for it—but besides my being frightened at your mother, I have a fear upon me, a great dread, of that old house. Something, I am certain of it, as certain of it as that I am praying to you for kindness now, will happen if you take me home to Updown. I—”

“You are a goose, my dear, and don’t know when you are well off. There, there, don’t cry any more. We are close upon the station now, and people will think I have been beating you.”

The cab drew up to the entrance of the South-Western terminus as he spoke, and Honor, feeling that remonstrance was useless, allowed her arm to be passed through that of her legitimate guardian, and herself to be seated, with a very unwilling mind, in the carriage that was to convey her, luggageless and nervous, to the country home which she had learnt to loathe.