HONORIA.
She was sitting there rigid, cold as a statue, when the rescuers
brought them ashore and helped them up the slope. A small crowd
surrounded the carriage. In the rays of their moving lanterns her
face altered nothing to all their furtive glances of sympathy
opposing the same white mask. Some one said, “There’s only two,
then!” Another, with a nudge and a nod at the carriage, told him to
hold his peace. She heard. Her lips hardened.
Lizzie Pezzack had rushed down to the shore to meet the boat.
She was bringing her child along with a fond, wild babble of tender
names and sobs and cries of thankfulness. In pauses, choked and
overcome, she caught him to her, felt his limbs, pressed his wet face
against her neck and bosom. Taffy, supported by strong arms and
hurried in her wake, had a hideous sense of being paraded in her
triumph. The men around him who had raised a faint cheer sank their
voices as they neared the carriage; but the woman went forward,
jubilant and ruthless, flaunting her joy as it were a flag blown in
her eyes and blindfolding them to the grief she insulted.
“Stay!”
It was Honoria’s voice, cold, incisive, not to be disobeyed. He had
prayed in vain. The procession halted; Lizzie checked her babble and
stood staring, with an arm about Joey’s neck.
“Let me see the child.”
Lizzie stared, broke into a silly, triumphant laugh, and thrust the
child forward against the carriage step. The poor waif, drenched,
dazed, tottering without his crutch, caught at the plated handle for
support. Honoria gazed down on him with eyes which took slow and
pitiless account of the deformed little body, the shrunken, puny
limbs.
“Thank you. So--this--is what my husband died for. Drive on,
please.”
Her eyes, as she lifted them to give the order, rested for a moment
on Taffy--with how much scorn he cared not, could he have leapt and
intercepted Lizzie’s retort.
“And why not? A son’s a son--curse you!--though he was your man!”
It seemed she did not hear; or hearing, did not understand. Her eyes
hardened their fire on Taffy, and he, lapped in their scorn, thanked
God she had not understood.
“Drive on, please.”
The coachman lowered his whip. The horses moved forward at a slow
walk; the carriage rolled silently away into the darkness. She had
not understood. Taffy glanced at the faces about him.
“Ah, poor lady!” said someone. But no one had understood.
They found George’s body next morning on the sands a little below the
foot-bridge. He lay there in the morning sunshine as though asleep,
with an arm flung above his head and on his face the easy smile for
which men and women had liked him throughout his careless life.
The inquest was held next day, in the library at Carwithiel. Sir Harry
insisted on being present, and sat beside the coroner. During Taffy’s
examination his lips were pursed up as though whistling a silent tune.
Once or twice he nodded his head.
Taffy gave his evidence discreetly. The child had been lost; had been
found in a perilous position. He and deceased had gone together to the
rescue. On reaching the child, deceased--against advice--had attempted
to return across the sands and had fallen into difficulties. In these
his first thought had been for the child, whom he had passed to witness
to drag out of danger. When it came to deceased’s turn the crutch, on
which all depended, had parted in two, and he had been swept away by
the tide.
At the conclusion of the story Sir Harry took snuff and nodded twice.
Taffy wondered how much he knew. The jury, under the coroner’s
direction, brought in a verdict of “death by misadventure,” and added
a word or two in praise of the dead man’s gallantry. The coroner
complimented Taffy warmly and promised to refer the case to the Royal
Humane Society for public recognition. The jury nodded, and one or two
said “Hear, hear!” Taffy hoped fervently he would do nothing of the
sort.
The funeral took place on the fourth day, at nine o’clock in the
morning. Such--in the day I write of--was the custom of the country.
Friends who lived at a distance rose and shaved by candle-light, and
daybreak found them horsed and well on their way to the house of
mourning, their errand announced by the long black streamers tied about
their hats. The sad business over and done with, these guests returned
to the house, where until noon a mighty breakfast lasted and all were
welcome. Their black habiliments and lowered voices alone marked the
difference between it and a hunting-breakfast.
And indeed this morning Squire Willyams, who had taken over the hounds
after Squire Moyle’s death, had given secret orders to his huntsmen;
and the pack was waiting at Three-barrow Turnpike, a couple of miles
inland from Carwithiel. At half-past ten the mourners drained their
glasses, shook the crumbs off their riding-breeches, and took leave;
and after halting outside Carwithiel gates to unpin and pocket their
hat-bands, headed for the meet with one accord.
A few minutes before noon Squire Willyams, seated on his grey by the
edge of Three-barrow Brake, and listening to every sound within the
covert, happened to glance an eye across the valley, and let out a low
whistle.
“Well!” said one of a near group of horsemen catching sight of the
rider pricking toward them down the farther slope, “I knew en for
unbeliever; but this beats all!”
“And his awnly son not three hours under the mould! Brought up in
France as a youngster he was, and this I s’pose is what comes of
reading Voltaire. My lord for manners, and no more heart than a wormed
nut--that’s Sir Harry, and always was.”
Squire Willyams slewed himself round in his saddle. He spoke quietly at
fifteen yards’ distance, but each word reached the group of horsemen as
clear as a bell.
“Rablin,” he said, “as a damned fool oblige me during the next few
minutes by keeping your mouth shut.”
With this he resumed his old attitude and his business of watching the
covert side; removing his eyes for a moment to nod as Sir Harry rode up
and passed on to join the group behind him.
He had scarcely done so when deep in the undergrowth of blackthorn a
hound challenged.
“Spendigo for a fiver!--and well found, by the tune of it,” cried Sir
Harry. “See that patch of grey wall, Rablin--there, in a line beyond
the Master’s elbow? I lay you an even guinea that’s where my gentleman
comes over.”
But honest reprobation mottled the face of Mr. Rablin, squireen; and as
an honest man he spoke out. Let it go to his credit, because as a rule
he was a snob and inclined to cringe.
“I did not expect”--he cleared his throat--“to see you out to-day, Sir
Harry.”
Sir Harry winced, and turned on them all a grey, woeful face.
“That’s it,” he said. “I can’t bide home. I can’t bide home.”
Honoria bided home with her child and mourned for the dead. As a clever
woman--far cleverer than her husband--she had seen his faults while
he lived; yet had liked him enough to forgive without difficulty. But
now these faults faded, and by degrees memory reared an altar to him
as a man little short of divine. At the worst he had been amiable.
A kinder husband never lived. She reproached herself bitterly with
the half-heartedness of her response to his love; to his love while
it dwelt beside her, unvarying in cheerful kindness. For (it was the
truth, alas! and a worm that gnawed continually) passionate love she
had never rendered him. She had been content; but how poor a thing
was contentment! She had never divined his worth, had never given her
worship. And all the while he had been a hero, and in the end had died
as a hero. Ah, for one chance to redeem the wrong! for one moment to
bow herself at his feet and acknowledge her blindness! Her prayer was
ancient as widowhood, and Heaven, folding away the irreparable time,
returned its first and last and only solace--a dream for the groping
arms; waking and darkness, and an empty pillow for her tears.
From the first her child had been dear to her; dearer (so her memory
accused her now) than his father; more demonstratively beloved, at any
rate. But in those miserable months she grew to love him with a double
strength. He bore George’s name, and was (as Sir Harry proclaimed) a
very miniature of George; repeated his shapeliness of limb, his firm
shoulders, his long lean thighs--the thighs of a born horseman; learned
to walk, and lo! within a week walked with his father’s gait; had
smiles for the whole of his small world, and for his mother a memory in
each.
And yet--this was the strange part of it; a mystery she could not
explain because she dared not even acknowledge it--though she loved him
for being like his father, she regarded the likeness with a growing
dread; nay, caught herself correcting him stealthily when he developed
some trivial trait which she, and she alone, recognised as part of his
father’s legacy. It was what in the old days she would have called
“contradictions,” but there it was, and she could not help it; the
nearer George in her memory approached to faultlessness, the more
obstinately her instinct fought against her child’s imitation of him;
and yet, because the child was obstinately George’s, she loved him with
a double love.
There came a day when he told her a childish falsehood. She did not
whip him, but stood him in front of her and began to reason with him
and explain the wickedness of an untruth. By-and-by she broke off in
the midst of a sentence, appalled by the shrillness of her own voice.
From argument she had passed to furious scolding. And the little fellow
quailed before her, his contrition beaten down under the storm of words
that whistled about his ears without meaning, his small faculties
disabled before this spectacle of wrath. Her fingers were closing and
unclosing. They wanted a riding-switch; they wanted to grip this small
body they had served and fondled, and to cut out-- what? The lie?
Honoria hated a lie. But while she paused and shook, a light flashed,
and her eyes were open and saw--that it was not the lie.
She turned and ran, ran upstairs to her own room, flung herself on
her knees beside the bed, dragged a locket from her bosom and fell to
kissing George’s portrait, passionately crying it for pardon. She was
wicked, base; while he lived she had misprised him; and this was her
abiding punishment, that not even repentance could purge her heart
of dishonouring thoughts, that her love for him now could never be
stainless though washed with daily tears. “‘_He that is unjust, let
him be unjust still_.’ _Must_ that be true, Father of all mercies? I
misjudged him, and it is too late for atonement. But I repent and am
afflicted. Though the dead know nothing--though it can never reach or
avail him--give me back the power to be just!”
Late that afternoon Honoria passed an hour piously in turning over the
dead man’s wardrobe, shaking out and brushing the treasured garments
and folding them, against moth and dust, in fresh tissue paper. It was
a morbid task, perhaps, but it kept George’s image constantly before
her, and this was what her remorseful mood demanded. Her nerves were
unstrung and her limbs languid after the recent tempest. By-and-by she
locked the doors of the wardrobe, and passing into her own bedroom,
flung herself on a couch with a bundle of papers--old bills, soiled and
folded memoranda, sporting paragraphs cut from the newspapers--scraps
found in his pockets months ago and religiously tied by her with a
silken ribbon. They were mementoes of a sort, and George had written
few letters while wooing--not half a dozen first and last.
Two or three receipted bills lay together in the middle of the
packet--one a saddler’s, a second a nurseryman’s for pot-plants (kept
for the sake of its queer spelling), a third the reckoning for an
hotel luncheon. She was running over them carelessly when the date at
the head of this last one caught her eye. “August 3rd”--it fixed her
attention because it happened to be the day before her birthday.
August 3rd--such and such a year--the August before his death; and the
hotel a well-known one in Plymouth--the hotel, in fact, at which he had
usually put up.... Without a prompting of suspicion she turned back
and ran her eye over the bill. A steak, a pint of claret, vegetables,
cheese, and attendance--never was a more innocent bill.
Suddenly her attention stiffened on the date. George was in Plymouth
the day before her birthday. But no; as it happened, George had been in
Truro on that day. She remembered, because he had brought her a diamond
pendant, having written beforehand to the Truro jeweller to get a
dozen down from London to choose from. Yes, she remembered it clearly,
and how he had described his day in Truro. And the next morning--her
birthday morning--he had produced the pendant, wrapped in silver
paper. He had thrown away the case; it was ugly, and he would get her
another....
But the bill? She had stayed once or twice at this hotel with George,
and recognised the handwriting. The bookkeeper, in compliment perhaps
to a customer of standing, had written “George Vyell, Esq.” in full on
the bill-head, a formality omitted as a rule in luncheon-reckonings.
And if this scrap of paper told the truth-- why, _then George had lied!_
But why? Ah, if he had done this thing nothing else mattered, neither
the how nor the why! If George had lied?... And the pendant--had that
been bought in Plymouth and not (as he had asserted) in Truro? He had
thrown away the case. Jewellers print their names inside such cases.
The pendant was a handsome one. Perhaps his cheque-book would tell.
She arose, stepped half-way to the door, but came back and flung
herself again upon the couch. No; she could not... this was the second
time to-day... she could not face the torture again.
Yet... if George _had_ lied!
She sat up; sat up with both hands pressed to her ears to shut out a
sudden voice clamouring through them--
“_And why not? A son’s a son--curse you!--though he was your man!_”