John Beacham

“ Men of John Beacham’s stamp are poor dissemblers. He was ill at ease, provoked both with himself and her, and in some way or other needs must that the discontent caused by this weight of care cropped out, and that Honor, ignorant of the cause of his maussaderie, attributed it to any other than the right one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of what should, or indeed could, such a man talk, John Beacham said to himself, but of things of which a pure-minded young woman had best know nothing about? What are people the better, he went on to ask himself, for hearing what fashionable people are about in London or in foreign parts? He was no Methodist, not he, and was all for a little pleasure at odd times for everybody; but if Honor were to grow discontented because she couldn’t go about like a lady, and have a lodging up in town sometimes, like Mrs. ”

“ But though a sensible man, and a cheerfully disposed, the shadow of a coming change was cast before his path; and John Beacham, leaning his head upon his hand, gazed vacantly into the inn-yard, where busy ostlers and ubiquitous stablemen were fulfilling the noisy, swearing, slopping ends of their several beings, and thought, more gloomily than in his life he had ever done before, upon the future. What, he asked himself, if his mother’s boding prophecy should come true? What if Frederick Norcott were indeed to die, and the blood of the man whom he had slain should be required at his hands? ”

“ 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. ”

“ John would prove worthy of her mission upon earth—namely, that of being a true and obedient wife, and a devoted mother to the children with whom Providence might deign to bless her union.
“A very neat and appropriate speech,” laughed Horace, as the two young men sauntered out of the churchyard. “I should have liked to put in something poetical and complimentary about the ‘bridal of the earth and sky,’ for, by Jove! she looks a good deal too delicate and ethereal to be John Beacham’s wife.”
“She is very beautiful, certainly,” Arthur re{103}sponded. ”

“ I say, John, did you ever see such a colour as Honor’s got all of a sudden?”
John Beacham looked at his wife admiringly, and the flush, as he did so, deepened on her face.
“I don’t see much difference,” he said with a laugh. “Honor’s always like the pretty rose that has grown ever since I can remember next the big lavender-bush in the kitchen-garden—they call it the ‘maiden blush,’ I think; not but what you’re something redder now, Pet? It’s the{254} being looked at, I suppose. Why, who knows? I might begin blushing myself, if anybody took the trouble to notice my looks. But they don’t ”

“ Youth’s a complaint that’s pretty soon got the better of with all of us, and Honor—Heaven bless her!—has got more sense and judgment, child as she is, than many an older woman. God grant I may make her life a happy one!” he added, raising his hat reverently. “If it depends on me to do it, I’m not afraid but what she’ll find all go smoothly at the Paddocks.”
There was a pause after this rather suggestive speech, a pause which Mrs. Beacham filled up by mentally asking herself what John could mean. ”

“ An old body like me, do what she will, is sure to find herself in the way; and I have found myself in the way, I don’t deny it, John, though it ain’t a pleasant thing to say, least of all to you, my{286} dear.” And Mrs. Beacham, after this pleasant exordium, donned her tortoiseshell spectacles, and commenced what seemed likely to prove no easy task, namely, the deciphering of Honor’s flowing but not over-legible caligraphy. ”

“ The neighbours (for a single young man in John’s position is, to a certain extent, public property) began at length to grow alarmed at the apparently phlegmatic character of Mr. Beacham’s idiosyncrasy. It seemed to them so terribly likely that he would live and die a bachelor; and then what a throwing away of advantages, what a loss to some young woman or other of the many who would have said “yes” to John of such a house and home as would be provided for her at the Paddocks! ”

“ Beacham brought her work (it was her first time of doing so) and established herself alarmingly near to the broad old-fashioned window-seat, Honor’s favorite and accustomed working-place. Dragging after her the big sheet on which she was about to perform the housewifely operation of “turning,” her tortoiseshell spectacles fixed on her keen hawklike nose, John’s mother did indeed appear in the light of a terrible object to her timid and easily-subdued daughter-in-law. Honor did not possess (and well she knew her weakness) the courage requisite for self-defence ”

“ Beacham, who was looking, in her company silk and Sunday bonnet, very unlike her normal self, sighed heavily at this new evidence of her son’s intemperate spirit.
“Well, well, John,” she said, “what’s done can’t be undone. It’s a bad business altogether; a terrible business, I call it—bad blood o’ both sides, according to you; but we must hope the best. ”

“ She was naturally, as John used to say in the days of his courtship, when Honor was far too intent upon her paid-for duties to walk with or talk to him—she was naturally a “busy little thing,” and her time, now that she was a lady at large, often hung with perilous heaviness upon her hands. That old Mrs. Beacham was the last woman in the world to understand such a character as that of the young girl whom her son had sworn at the altar to love, honour, and cherish, has been made more than sufficiently evident ”

“ Nor for honest John himself had the sure{156} work of time and change been done less effectually than it had been accomplished for his wife. Not that any alteration was observable in his outward habits, for in truth he was busier and more active than ever, more engrossed with business cares, and, in Honor’s opinion, redder in the face, and in the evening time still more given than of yore, to silence and to slumber. His deep love for his young wife had not diminished; but busy men cannot afford, as Mrs. Beacham had been heard say, to “make a noodle of a woman.” ”

“ A good headpiece of her own, and not above making herself useful; and add to that that John’s getting on for forty, and is particular in his ways—so he is. He means honourable, does Mr. Beacham, and stands high with rich and poor, and what’s more, he can take his wife to as good a home as any in the country. ”

“ Beacham, though, as might have been supposed, rather too old to learn, had yet, during the anxious days and nights when John lay between life and death, laid her shortcomings to heart, and, making some allowance for a stiff-neckedness, which had become a chronic evil of her idiosyncrasy, had reviewed the past without a certain proper sense of her own sins regarding her daughter-in-law. ”

“ John had good-naturedly offered to take the affair upon himself, but Mrs. Beacham had at once vetoed the idea.
“Such stuff and nonsense!” she said; “as if making tea had ever been known in this world to{95} do anybody harm! And a man, too, to set about doing such things! No, no. Take my word for it,” the energetic old woman went on to say, “there’s nothing like having something to do for keeping the spirits up, and you’ll see, John, if you don’t make a noodle of Honor, she’ll be herself again in half the time.” ”

“ Guilty consciences never do. And another time, my dear, I hope{47} you’ll attend to your mother, old as she is, and act accordingly.”
John made no reply to this aggravating little speech. Fortunately for him, the day was not one of rest, neither was the hour meal-time; so that the unhappy husband could escape from the irritating attacks of Mrs. Beacham’s “deadly weapon.” ”

“ For three days—three miserable days—during which John, engrossed by business cares, and hoping, as sanguine men in spite of appearances will, that all would come right at last, appeared to take no notice of the silence only broken by sarcastic speeches, and by the “talking at” (which to some women is a positive accomplishment) on his mother’s part, which reigned between her and Honor—during those three miserable days, the seeds destined to produce very bitter fruit were being sown with terrible certainty in Honor Beacham’s breast. ”

“ Beacham, who chanced to be in rather an irritating mood, taxed her daughter indirectly with the terrible crime, in the old lady’s sight, of fine-ladyism.
“Ha, ha, ha! I beg your pardon, though, Mrs. John, for laughing, but it is a good joke to hear you asking us busy folk if we’ve been amusing ourselves with looking at the sun! The sun indeed! My patience! To hear a woman grown like you talking such nonsense!{160}”
“I don’t think,” said Honor, flushing up, “that it can quite be called nonsense looking at the beautiful things that God has given us to enjoy. ”

“ These lamentations and prognostics, when they reached the ears of Mrs. Beacham, were met not only with ridicule, but with an indignant protest. “What could they, a set of ignorant busybodies, know of what was passing in the{51} mind of a sensible man like John? She had no patience, not she, with that everlasting talk about getting married, putting thoughts into young men’s heads that wouldn’t be there without, and interfering in a way that no decent person ought to do with other people’s sons. If John meant to marry he would, and if he didn’t why he wouldn’t, and that was all about it ”

“ Beacham{172} arrived at the conclusion that she was fully justified in speaking as she had done to the erring Honor. Judging that strong-minded woman according to the average truthfulness of her sex, John’s respected parent could not, on the whole, be accused, while quoting John’s indignant words, of the sin of mendacity. ”

“ Beacham is not, in my presence, to be spoken about by strangers. I have no wish to be rude, none in the least—but—but as neither my wife nor I desire your acquaintance, you will allow me,” raising his low-crowned wide-awake about an inch from his head, “to wish you a good-evening.”
The answer to this broad hint that the interview might be considered at an end was a low laugh, which, to John’s exasperated ears, sounded very like an insult.
“One lives and learns,” he said provokingly ”

“ Beacham. “Honor has been better amused, John, by a good deal than in looking after Colonel Norcott.”
“Looking after” and “better amused”—what did it all mean? John was not the most perspicacious of mortals, yet even he could perceive the something in his mother’s speech which meant more than met the ear. After all, what is easier than to stir into a blaze an already well-laid fire?{54} while to “hint a fault, and hesitate dislike,” are means well suited to raise a storm ”

“ There was the trousseau of the bride, the number and beauty of her presents, and—still more immediately interesting to the young of all degrees in that division of Sandyshire—there were the anticipated festivities at Danescourt, in honour, as was almost openly declared by the popular Countess of Guernsey, of Arthur Vavasour’s “coming of age.”
Honor Beacham’s little head had at that time fully enough (like those of her neighbours) to occupy it. ”

“ There John Audley’s twenty thousand pounds opened a wide door. He would build, drain, manure, make roads, re-stock. He would make all things new. From him as from a centre comfort should flow. He saw himself growing old in the middle of his people, a lonely, but not an unhappy man.
As he passed the bridge at Riddsley he thought of the Boshams, and weary as he was, he drew rein at their door. Ben Bosham came out, bare-headed; a short, elderly man with a bald forehead and a dirty complexion, a man who looked like a cobbler rather than the cow-keeper he was. ”

“ Captain Hayward," cried Isabella, "I declare your figures of speech are too horrible; we will have no more of such sad conversation; can we not talk of something more pleasant as we go back?"
"I don't know," said Ned Hayward, "I am in a moralising mood this morning."
And as Isabella and Mr. Beauchamp walked on a little in advance to pass the narrow path, which only admitted two abreast, he continued in a somewhat lower tone, saying to Mary Clifford,
"I cannot get my spirits up this morning. The dangerous circumstances of my good old friend, Sir John, vex me much. ”

“ Every football player, great though he himself was in his prime, has his gridiron idol. The man, usually some years his elder, whose exploits as a boy he has followed. Joe Beacham's paragon was and is Frank Hinkey and the depth of esteem in which the former Cornell star held Hinkey is well exemplified in the following incident, which occurred on the Black Diamond Express, Eastbound, as it was passing through Tonawanda, New York. ”

“ Wittingham.
Ned Hayward however, somewhat to Beauchamp's surprise, seemed determined to encourage their host in his light and rattling talk, and taking the latter up where Sir John had left it, he said, "Oh dear yes, I dare say we shall have capital sport down here. The old work of the 51st, Sir John; clearing all the fences, galloping over all the turnips, riding down the young wheat, forgetting the limits of the manor, letting the beasts out of the pound, making a collection of knockers and bell-pulls, fighting the young men, and making love to the young women--Mr. ”