Matilda Charlotte Houston

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ To be alone—to work for her bread—to suffer hardship in every miserable and even degrading fashion—all this appeared to Honor (she being at the age and of the nature to jump at conclusions, and to imagine no evil equal to the present ones) infinitely, ay,{60} a thousand thousand times, preferable to putting her pretty neck again under the yoke of angry Mrs. Beacham’s thrall, and to the endurance, from morning’s dawn to evening’s light, of that unpleasant old lady’s disagreeable form of being good and useful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) ”