Matilda Charlotte Houston

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Bainbridge had shed some very bitter tears when she looked her last on that dreary spot, and invoked, we grieve to say, the vengeance of Him who is as mighty to punish as to save upon the head of the absent profligate; but Time, as I was about to say, had produced its normal and blessed effect of softening the angry feelings, and making the rough places in human memories smooth. It is not often, I think, except in tales of fiction, that a wrong is treasured up through years upon years, in spite of change and absence, gathering intensity from the fermentation of the added heap. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ But husbands are such fools! The reason why I looked at Mrs. Beacham—but first let me ask you one question: do you know anything of your wife’s family, of her connections? or did you take—I beg your pardon—a pig in a poke, and trust to thingummy—Providence, I mean—that everything was right?”
John hesitated ere he replied to these home questions. They had diverted the channel of his wrath, and had aroused the dormant spirit of curiosity within his breast. Here, perhaps, was the once earnestly wished-for opportunity of learning something concerning his dearly-loved Honor’s birth and belongings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Rhoda interrupted her by a laugh. “You might exchange bad for worse,” she said sapiently. “All husbands are not like Lord Guernsey, and I suspect that very few homes are so happy as Sophy’s was. I daresay, if we could look into the insides of many people’s houses, we should see plenty of girls a good deal more to be pitied than we are. And, Katie dear, whether that be so or not, one thing is certain, namely, that it is wrong—wicked even, I think—to be discontented, and to abuse mamma. Whatever she does or says, we have no right to sit in judgment on, or to find fault with. ”

“ I little thought that Honor—but I am a fool, a downright idiot, to go on in this way! I couldn’t be worse if I was a lad of twenty, with nothing to think of in life but girls and their foolishness!” and John, who during the utterance of these self-condemning sentences had been pacing with hurried and heavy footsteps to and fro in the room, suddenly took himself off to his out-of-door business, letting—contrary to his wont, for he was rarely deficient in respect to his mother—the door of the little parlour close with a bang behind his retreating footsteps. ”

“ Norcott is the type are, as a rule, a cowardly class; and, moreover, they are women who, taking perhaps too lowly an estimate of themselves, and certainly too high a one of their partners, are ready to buy the rare smiles, and equally rare meed of approbation which falls to their lot, by a mean and truculent subserviency, which in reality gains for them neither affection nor esteem. As is usual, however, with persons who are destitute of moral courage, Mrs. Norcott would have gladly compromised with her conscience, and changed the whole lie for a half one. ”

“ To John Beacham—a man tender-hearted in{72} his softer moments as a woman—to one who, like the good-natured, simple-hearted farmer, had gone through life at peace with all men, and with a conscience void of offence towards God and towards his neighbour, it was no light thing the sight of that apparently lifeless form lying prone upon the greensward, stretched there—killed, perhaps—by his impetuous hand! ”

“ At last—the way seemed a long one, and the pony, always slow and measured in his movements, appeared more than usually addicted to his besetting sin of taking his own time upon the road—at last the houses of Gawthorpe came in sight, the High-street was gained, and the Bell Inn, a flat-faced red-bricked building of imposing dimensions, rose up before the elderly pair of anxious and troubled visitors, in all the busy dulness of a county town’s best inn. ”

“ Men who, like Arthur Vavasour, live only (as they estimate living) in the light of women’s smiles—men who dearly delight in discovering proofs of their own power to please—will always see in a pretty woman’s heightened colour a tribute to their sure fascinations. Instinct—the instinct of self-preservation, bestowed for the protection of the weak—warned Honor, as it has warned other women before her, of the existence of this very popular delusion ”

“ It may seem strange to those who have not made human nature their study, that Mrs. Beacham—dearly loving her son—should have seemed to take positive delight in certain hints and allusions which, as she well knew, could not fail both to give him pain and to intensify the coldness which too evidently was beginning to exist between himself and his wife. ”

“ There, on the short well-kept turf, was the miniature croquet-ground where the little Clays, with Honor Beacham as mistress of the revels, and a few other children, the belongings of some of the more important tenantry, were making the most of their holiday, and shouting gleefully to one another in their uproarious play.
Such a “good time,” as the Yankees say, they had of it! ”

“ The West-end shop-keepers had a right, honest tradesmen that they were, to expect that a sixth part at least of Lady Millicent’s income—an income of say 60,000l. per annum—should find its way to their pockets. To say nothing of example—so spoke the public voice—why, what a sin and a shame it was for a lady possessed of such countless thousands, and that didn’t know how either to use or abuse them, to be set in high places, only to bring disgrace upon her order, and to encourage others, who might be of similar mind, in the degrading vice of avarice. ”

“ But if Arthur Vavasour thought a good deal during those swiftly passing hours of Honor Beacham, that rather insouciante young woman did not (a fact which, had he known it, would not have greatly improved the temper of her admirer) trouble her pretty little head much about him. That she should not so have done (albeit Mr. Vavasour stood foremost in her mind as the finished type of all that was handsome, agreeable, and accomplished) is very easily to be accounted for. The scene to Honor was so deliciously new, and so untiringly interesting. ”

“ HONOR FEELS LIKE A “LADY.” Of all the many changes that had taken place amongst the characters in my story, none was more thorough, even though its features might be less boldly marked, than that which had gradually crept over the household of excellent John Beacham. From the moment when he dealt the blow that levelled his wife’s worthless parent to the ground, John had never been exactly the same man. ”

“ Baker, notwithstanding her many trials, was still for her age, which was under seventy, an active and a healthy woman. Habit had likewise, to a certain{109} degree, hardened her to suffering; and moreover, that unlucky Fred—who, as a pretty blue-eyed boy, used to keep “her heart in her mouth,” to use a simple mother’s phrase, with his daring tricks and perilous escapades—was probably not quite so dear to her, when a hardened, battered roué of forty-five, as he had been in his days of comparative, but still highly troublesome, innocence. ”

“ Beacham’s consent to his wife’s visit, to mount the beautiful girl (for girl in appearance and manner Honor still was) in the Park, and among the crowds whom her unprincipled father nothing doubted would do due homage to her loveliness.
“It is all nonsense about her being uncomfortable,” he said decidedly. “What does a fine, handsome, healthy girl care about discomfort? Honor will like to see a little of life: why, she has never—you would hardly believe in such absurdity—seen a play or an opera in her life! ”

“ Sin, the very wickedness that is destined to be our ruin and shame, assumes at the beginning such very fair and false proportions. In early sunlight the shadows are so short, the path before so bright, the glare so dazzling and the day so long. ”

“ It is seldom that those possessed of rank and riches hear either the truths or falsehoods that are reported and spread abroad concerning themselves. As Kate once pertly remarked to her brother Horace, “Who could venture to lecture Lady Millicent upon her faults?” Poor little ill-used, thoughtless, quick-witted Kate! there were the makings of a good and useful woman in her busy brain and ardent temperament ”

“ Beacham in a pet. “Now, John, don’t you be foolish. There’s nothing the matter with Honor except airs and foolishness. You just let her alone—there’s nothing like that for bringing girls to their senses. Make a fuss with ’em, and they’ll worry your life out with their nonsense.”
John Beacham and his mother were sitting together in the gloaming in one of the small dingy sitting-rooms appertaining to not the most cheerful side of that excellent hostelry known from time immemorial as the Bell Inn, Gawthorpe. Neither mother nor son were in the best possible temper of either mind or spirits. ”

“ It is never pleasant to be forsaken—never consoling to be abandoned to the society of a dull, unappreciating husband, or, greater evil still, to the company of a woman’s own thoughts, the more especially when that woman has allowed herself to listen to the voice of the charmer, and has grown accustomed to the flattering attentions of an ever awake and devoted soupirant. ”