Matilda Charlotte Houston

“ 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. ”

“ John Beacham laughed. “There’d be plenty,” he rejoined, “if they were only bold enough, that you’d hear say that same, mother; for Honor is far and away too good for a man of my age, who has got somehow into bachelor ways, and who’s a rough out-of-doors kind of man compared to her. Yes, she’s far and away too good, and so you’ll think, mother, when you come to know her better. She’s as gentle as a lamb, and as playful, pretty creature! as a kitten, and not a bit vain nor stuck up, for all that she must know how beautiful she is. ”

“ Even after they had left the house, she would have given much, as she sat by his side in the trap, to have been able to say to him that she was sorry to leave the Paddocks. Had she seen a token of softness on his countenance, she would have opened out her heart to her true friend. But there was no such sign. Stolidly, and with his eyes never turned for a single moment on the sweet face beside him, John drove along the well-known road. He little dreamt of the softened thoughts, the half-formed wishes, that were welling up in Honor’s heart. ”

“ And she—that other wife, who still, strange as it may seem, and eke impossible to many, kept a large corner in her heart for home and duty, and the rough, tender-hearted man she called her husband—what were her thoughts, her feelings, as the tempter, with his bold beseeching eyes fixed on her blushing face, told her, in looks more dangerous still than words, the bewildering, but as yet only half-welcome truth that she was all the world to him, and that, to gain her love, he would cast to the four winds of heaven every tie on earth, as well as every hope of heaven? ”

“ O, if it be indeed true that justice is so little tempered with mercy, that for every idle and involuntary thought, as well as for every evil deed, we are to be held alike accountable; if to covet be as punishable as to steal; if to look with eyes of convoitise at our neighbour’s giddy wife is tantamount to the breaking of the seventh commandment; and if to hate our brother is to be a murderer, why then I greatly fear that erring John Beacham sinned on that bright April morning one of the sins that are “to death.” ”

“ Well did the Lady Millicent know—for her girlhood had not all been spent in the seclusion of Gillingham, and at London balls and routs and dinner-parties she had learned something of the level of gold—well did the heiress know that, were she willing to barter her rent-roll for rank, the negotiation would have been only too easily effected. But, all things considered, this young woman was not so willing. Any superiority enjoyed by a husband, any benefit conferred upon her through him, would—so singularly was she constituted—have been as gall and wormwood to her taste. ”

“ Never again would Honor be the bright, light-hearted girl who had first won John’s love when she played with the merry children in the woods, laughing and shouting in their joyous mirth. Never again would he, secure in his home happiness, and with a conscience not only void of offence towards God and towards man, but with a heart unburdened by a sense of wrong done to any soul that lived, wear upon his kindly face the genial smile which gladdened his many acquaintances, men as well as women, young as well as old, when he waved them a cordial greeting on his onward way. ”

“ I would rather, a thousand times, go home; I want to begin my life—our life together—at the Paddocks. And there’s your mother too—your mother must be so lost without you. She said to me the very last thing: ‘Don’t keep John too long away; nothing goes on well without the master’s eye, and time lost isn’t so easy found again.’”
John Beacham laughed. There was his mother all over in those trite sentences. It was so like her, too, to mix up business with the fade sentimentality (as the old woman, had she known the words, would have termed it) of the wedding-day. ”

“ Don’t laugh, Arthur; I know he does not look much like them, with his round face and dear bald head; but I think, I do indeed, that they, when they fought for their ladies, must have felt something like my poor father. He places woman so high. I can remember how courteous and tender—though I daresay Lady Millicent thinks him vulgar—he always was to poor mamma. He has a horror of fast girls; they are the only creatures in the shape of women that I ever hear him severe upon; but he would love Rhoda dearly. O Arthur, how nice it would be if we could see a good deal of her! ”

“ And Arthur—who really was goodnatured, and who, but for the anxieties and annoyances which were oppressing him, would probably have been almost as contented and joyous as herself—did his best to seem interested in the small atom of humanity which he could hardly bring himself to believe he had the right to call his son; but smile and flatter tenderly as he might, Sophy, with the intuitive perception that love alone can give, heard a something in his voice which told her that all was not as it should be with the father of her child. ”

“ Well did poor John Beacham know that, should Honor’s father die of that foul blow that he had dealt him, the memory of that day’s work would haunt his spirit, both in his waking and his sleeping moments, both in his goings out and his comings in, whilst life should last; while as for her—as for the woman in whom his all of happiness here below was centred—if she should turn her bright face from him; if she, looking upon him as her father’s murderer, should no more be the light and blessing of his home; if—But the unhappy man could pursue the terrible picture no farther. ”

“ I declare that if our home had been the least like that—if our mother resembled in anything that jolly old boy at Thanes Court—I, at the unripe age of—under twenty-one—should probably not be about to tie myself for life—a thing to which, at present, I feel not the least inclination—to a young woman for whom at present—well, there is no use in being over-confidential—if Sophy were as lovely as the Calipegean Venus, or even as attractive and charming as John Beacham’s Irish bride, I shall probably not look much at her face when she has been my wife a year. ”

“ Duberly never for a moment suspected; but in spite of this trust, and gladly as he would have entirely confided in his daughter’s husband, there lingered, almost unknown to himself, a grain—the very shadow of a shade it was—of doubt; a doubt born of the former visits of Arthur Vavasour to the Paddocks, where lived the most beautiful woman that Mr. Duberly had ever seen, and where the “tempting” yearlings put on strength and muscle for the arduous work that lay before them. That such a doubt did linger in the old man’s mind was a fact of which he himself was almost ignorant. ”

“ I am afraid that poor dear Rhoda— (I may talk without scruple of her, because, as you know, I admire her so much, and have such a real affection for her) —I am sadly afraid that Rhoda, with all her beauty, will be what my boys call nowhere. She has not an idea, poor child, no, not the very slightest, de se faire valoir. Girls with less than half her good looks would make their way twice as well from the mere fact that Rhoda is simply good and shy and unaffected, and knows no more than my toy-terrier does how to make the most of herself. ”

“ Will any of my readers, when I inform them that this was the climax of poor little Honor’s woe, and that at the sight of John’s slumbering form tears welled from her eyelids, be disposed utterly to despise my heroine, and condemn her as one unworthy the interest and sympathy of sensible people? If there be any such—and I am quite prepared to believe in their existence—all I can say is, that their knowledge of female nature is as limited as their charity for human weakness is small and inefficient. ”

“ Would he believe in Arthur’s assurances, on his oath, that John Beacham’s visit had been the act of a madman, an act unjustified by any conduct, any intentions on Arthur’s part to injure or to wrong him? That the old man, sorrowing with a grief which would not be comforted, and lamenting over his lost treasure with “groanings that could not be uttered,” would not so believe, Arthur more than suspected. Well did he remember the jealous watchfulness, the unceasing solicitude, with which this doting father had striven to guard his child from even a transient sorrow ”

“ Lying there at her feet wan and senseless, the peculiar elegance of his form and figure made conspicuous by the unconscious grace of the attitude into which he had fallen, every trace of ignoble passion removed from the face, which in its calm immobility looked so very like to death, what wonder was it that Honor’s heart should have swelled with emotions of tenderness and pity towards the parent so lately found, and found, perhaps, only that she might, under circumstances peculiarly painful, mourn his, to her, irreparable loss? ”

“ To anyone accustomed to look inquiringly into human motives, and to those who have gained knowledge of mankind by enlarged association with their fellows, the fact that Cecil Vavasour, with all his excellence, his gentleness and his hospitality, was not generally a favourite, will excite but little surprise. As a rule, the silent and apparently self-conceited man rarely meets with favour, for silence is too often taken for a diagnostic of pride, and pride is of all human qualities the one which both men and women find the most difficult to pardon. ”

“ But if, in his yearning for self-comfort, and in the natural longing of cowardly mortals to escape from the sharp stings of conscience, Arthur Vavasour could find consolation in the reflection that he had escaped actual guilt, there was one who, from the hour when he was first prostrated to the earth by the intelligence of poor Sophy’s death to the day when his own sorrows were buried in the grave, could never bring himself to see any mitigation of Arthur Vavasour’s offence, or any plea for mercy on the ground that he had not been, in fact, faithless to his marriage-vows. ”

“ Beacham was, au fond, generous and kind-hearted, as the manner in which, on the grand occasion of Christmas-time, she fulfilled her welcome duties could fully testify.
“L’année est morte, vive l’année!” The old cry has been cried, and the old song sung, till some of us are weary of the semi-joyous and all solemn sound; but the good Samaritan at the Paddocks addressed herself, even as she had done for fifty years, to the congenial task before her; and, as I said before, the old kitchen of the farm-house reeked with preparations for the coming festival. ”

“ It would be a sad thing, indeed, if mischief came of this grand marriage of hers. I should be sorry for John Beacham if it was to,” mumbled the widow Thwaytes, whose mouth was fuller than was altogether becoming of well-salted buttered toast. “I should be sorry as sorry could be for John if trouble was to come upon him that way. Ah well! if the Squire had only lived! Such a gentleman as he was for advising and keeping things straight! There isn’t a day nor yet an hour that the parish doesn’t feel the want of him. ”

“ He stopped abruptly; for there were circumstances connected with the possible victim of Colonel Norcott’s rascality that would effectually check any feelings of pity which John might be inclined to entertain for him. Could the mother who bore him have looked into the heart of her only child that day, she would bitterly have repented the stirring-up of the smouldering fire within which her words—uttered, as so many dangerous words are uttered, without much thought of future consequences—had effected. It is easy, terribly easy, to raise the demon of suspicion and jealousy in the human breast. ”

“ Only be your own dear, merry, unaffected self, only show that you, tremendous heiress that you are (and which I never can get you to remember) , are not to be put down and tyrannised over and browbeaten, and, believe me, Lady Millicent, like all bullies, will draw in her horns, and treat you with the respect that is your due.”
“I don’t want respect,” sighed Sophy; “all I long for is affection. I should so like your mother to love me, Arthur. ”

“ Poor Honor! In her eagerness on the subject, and her intense love of the animal whose varied charms and excellences were to be seen in such perfection in her husband’s home, she had been inadvertently “talking shop” for the amusement of the spurious fine ladies, whose supercilious glances at each other were not, even by such a novice as Honor Beacham, to be mistaken. In a moment—for the poison of such glances is as rapid as it is insidious—two evil spirits, the spirits of anger and of a keen desire to be avenged, took possession of our heroine. ”

“ John was Honor’s first lover—the first that she had ever thought or read of. Marriage—an affair to which she, like every girl of sense, of course looked forward to—seemed a pleasant, an exciting, and an important event in life. ”

“ There are seasons when there is a positive craving after conversation on self—a craving which is in itself a token of an unhealthy and morbid condition of mind; and Honor Beacham, seated dejectedly at her work during those long summer evenings—evenings whose silence oppressed her like the lowering of a heavy thunder-cloud—would have been thankful for any discussion that might break the dull monotony of that weary time. ”

“ The great day of the sporting year, the “maddest,” if not exactly the “merriest” day, was close at hand; and the world, both high and low, rich and poor, one against another, were on the qui-vive of excitement and the very tip-toe of expectation. Among these variously interested beings, one of those who had in reality most at stake, was Arthur Vavasour. Fortune, honour, credit, all were involved, and that to no limited extent, in the winning of the Derby race by that big-boned, coarse-made, but wonderfully staying horse, Rough Diamond. ”

“ Though slight in appearance, he possessed considerable muscular power, and, like many of his sex, the sense of being endowed with personal vigour above the average lent the impulse to revenge himself for personal indignity with a blow. Already his hand, clenched and rigid, was raised to strike the man of low degree, who had so insolently abused and braved him, when John Beacham, whose blood was at boiling-point, seeing the action, quicker than thought intercepted the blow, and with his thick ash-stick hit his adversary a blow upon the head that would have felled an ox. ”

“ Thwaytes listened and sighed. The subject on which her ally had touched was not one that could be pursued without due thought and deliberation. As yet, though well aware that a mean maternal jealousy had begot something very like hatred to Honor in Mrs. Beacham’s breast, the widow did not feel by any means thoroughly assured that she could safely touch upon the impropriety of Mr. Vavasour’s intimacy with John’s young wife. The old lady had not, in that quiet busy home of hers, marched even ever so laggingly with the times. In a groove, her mind was that of the right woman in the right place. ”

“ When youth has passed, we forget not only the feelings that dwelt within us in the days of the long-ago past, but the excuses for our sins and follies, which then seemed to us as sands by the sea-shore in number. We forget the craving after the storms of life, the desire to be “for ever climbing after the climbing wave,” together with the loathing of sad satiety, the satiety which a quiet and unbroken existence awakens in the breast of those who are yet idle and untried enough to talk of indulging in grief, and who have still to learn the bitter truth that to endure is hard enough. ”

“ As it was, however, the senseless idea that she was a lady, and the memories of those superior refinements in habits, manners, and entourage which (in connection with her father and his belongings) clung around her, were fatal to Honor’s happiness and peace of mind. If she only, in those miserable days, when everyone—when even John himself—seemed estranged from her, could have been blessed with that chiefest of blessings, the blessing of hope—hope in the shape of a tenderly longed-for maternity—all might, in spite of the past, have been well with poor little Honor Beacham ”

“ It was late in the afternoon before Arthur Vavasour, seizing the opportunity of a sound sleep into which the invalid had fallen, stole from the pretty morning-room adjoining that where his wife lay, stepping softly; for old Duberly—who dearly loved, after the fashion of the aged, to talk—might, had he heard his step upon the stairs, have intercepted his departure, and, slipping his bald head out of the half-opened study-door, have chained him—an unwilling listener—for an hour at least, in the close and stuffy atmosphere of his private sanctum. ”

“ But although the eloquent blood that rose to neck and brow had not its source in the inner, and to Arthur the undiscovered, depths of her affection, although the visible palpitations of her heart could not with truth be traced to the consciousness of harbouring one unholy or forbidden thought, still Arthur’s words and sighs and glances produced upon this child of nature effects precisely analogous to those which might have been displayed had the love which he professed and felt been returned tenfold into his bosom. ”

“ If Lady Millicent could be said to feel interest in, and affection for, any human being save herself, that human being was her unselfish, yielding, and not over-brilliant elder daughter. It would have been hard indeed for anyone living habitually with Rhoda Vavasour not to appreciate the gentleness of her disposition, and not to admire the unassuming rectitude of purpose which was one of her most striking characteristics ”

“ Honor still found herself, when the good spirit within was drawing her to an entire oblivion of her wrongs—to a perfect pardon of the past, and to a self-effacing sense of her own unworthiness—she still, I say, in spite of her sometimes conviction that she ought, in deep humility, to entreat forgiveness of her aged persecutor, shrunk with very natural repugnance from such an act of self-abasement. The provocations she had received would rise up in her memory, like evil ghosts that refused to be laid to rest ”

“ UNSTABLE AS WATER. Time was speeding away in the fair grounds of Danescourt; the trotting-match had been trotted, and the rat-tailed horse had won the race. Colonel Norcott was triumphant; and the déjeuner à la fourchette had put everyone—men, women, and children—more or less, into still higher spirits than before. As yet, Honor, not at all, as we know, to her surprise, had seen nothing of Arthur Vavasour. ”

“ It was fortunate for Honor that no such ideas as these entered at that moment the mind of the man who was gradually coming near enough to be—there is no medium course, let women believe in its existence if they will—either accepted or denied. It was well, too, that Arthur, roused by his own movement from the dream of passion in which he had been indulging, once more began to have some thought and memory for outward things, and especially for the lapse of time since he had left his home. ”

“ Had Honor either been a few years older, less constitutionally light of heart, or more experienced in sorrow, she would never have been able so entirely—as was the case with this giddy young woman—to cast off the sense and memory of her woes. A reprieve after all is but a reprieve; and the consciousness that each moment, however blissful, serves only to bring us nearer to its termination, ought to and does fill the minds of the thoughtful with very sobering reflections. ”

“ As she dwelt—with the pleasure which under twenty is so often felt in the indulgence of a mournful self-pity—on her unmitigated woes, the idea, once before entertained, and never wholly forgotten, of finding a home for herself—of working for her bread—of escaping from the tyranny, the evil-speaking, the taunts and evil suspicions of her mother-in-law, flashed through her mind. ”

“ Had Fred Norcott chanced at that moment to present himself within his reach, there is no saying to what lengths the passion of the younger man might have led him. But happily the Colonel—his faithful wife by his side, his ill-gotten gains in his pocket, and his unrepented sins upon his head—was far away by that time—far away to the land where roguery is at a premium, and cheating is dignified by the agreeable name of “smartness”—to the land where to be a villain is no disgrace, and where every sin save that of failure is condoned and pardoned. ”

“ The soft spring evening was beginning to draw in, and the scent of the honeysuckle was filling the air, when the old lady, catching the sound of horse’s hoofs (Tom Simmons’s thoughtful care for the master whom he loved had prompted him to have Black Jenny in waiting at Switcham for the chance of John’s return) , laid down the knitting which was her unfailing occupation after dark, and stood beneath the blossoming woodbine that Honor loved, waiting to greet her son. ”

“ It is often a misfortune to all parties concerned that the same symptoms are indicative of various and opposite complaints. A blush is as often a sign of innocence as of guilt; and a beating heart beneath a visibly agitated bosom may be a token of other emotions besides the tender one of love.
When Arthur felt the throbbing pulse bounding beneath the pressure of his hand, he never doubted that, had he been tête-à-tête with that most peerless creature, she would have gladly sighed her love out on his breast, listening in tender ecstasy to his vows of eternal constancy. ”

“ The suspicion, that was destined gradually to become a settled belief in Arthur’s mind, that the man in whose power he knew himself to be was a villain of the least creditable die, was anything but agreeable. Pondering on this certainty, he, as he sauntered with lingering steps towards the splendid home which, in right of his wife, he called his own, felt about as unhappy a young aristocrat as ever trod the broad flagstones of the Tyburnian pavement. ”

“ It was the consciousness that she had so lied and deceived, together with a certain amount of uninvestigated self-reproach as regarded the delight which Arthur Vavasour’s society had afforded her, that caused Honor to shrink with nervous trepidation not only from her husband’s questionings, but from the very sight of the keen-witted and sharp-tongued old woman who already, as Honor had every reason to believe, looked on her with no favourable eyes. ”

“ To rush into the fresh air—to throw himself into a passing hansom—to be carried as fast as wheels could bear him to the first emporium of sporting news where he was likely to obtain authentic intelligence regarding the respective fates of Rough Diamond and the Colonel—were the ends that Arthur Vavasour had in view while stepping on tiptoe down the broad stone staircase, with a flushed face, and a heart that beat fast with long-controlled emotion. ”

“ MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY. On his return home, two hours later, and after gleaning all the slender information in his power regarding the proceedings of his enemy, Arthur—his pocket full of certain ugly-looking letters which he had found to his address at the Travellers’—was in anything but a quietly-domestic frame of mind. With the exception of Honor—whose lovely eyes, as he had last seen them, tearful and full of piteous pleading—the idea of contact with no single human creature with whom he was connected afforded him the slightest pleasure. ”