SINK OR SWIM?
A Novel.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“RECOMMENDED TO MERCY,”
ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND.
1868.
[_The right of translation and reproduction is reserved._]
LONDON:
ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS,
PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
CHAP. PAGE
I. “HE COMES TOO NEAR,” ETC. 1
II. A LOVER FOUND AND LOST 21
III. WHAT WAS HONOR DOING? 36
IV. MRS. BEACHAM WRITES A LETTER 46
V. HONOR TURNS REBELLIOUS 54
VI. WHAT, SELL ROUGH DIAMOND! 62
VII. MEA CULPA 77
VIII. JOHN BEACHAM MAKES A DISCOVERY 87
IX. JOHN PROVES HIS RIGHT 104
X. “AS WELL AS CAN BE EXPECTED” 111
XI. FROM LIVELY TO SEVERE 119
XII. MRS. BEACHAM REFUSES TO FORGET 131
XIII. ARTHUR CHEERS UP 136
XIV. ARTHUR FINDS HIMSELF DONE 146
XV. MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY 154
XVI. OUT AT SEA 164
XVII. HONOR MAKES A NEW ACQUAINTANCE 188
XVIII. JOHN DISCOVERS HIS LOSS 202
XIX. ANOTHER ESCAPE 208
XX. POOR SOPHY! 216
XXI. SUSPENSE 227
XXII. JOHN GIVES WAY 237
XXIII. HONOR RECEIVES A LETTER 243
XXIV. THE USES OF ADVERSITY 259
XXV. CONCLUSION 274
SINK OR SWIM?
CHAPTER I.
“HE COMES TOO NEAR,” ETC.
The merrie month of May was speeding onward, and with it--fast and
furious--rattling over stones, and dashing over impediments, ran the
fierce strong current of “London life.” There is an intoxicating
influence, especially on the inexperienced, in the rapid motion, the
ever-changing aspect of pleasure, the atmosphere redolent of poisonous
influences, that is breathed by the upper ten thousand in the month of
May, in busy, half-mad London. By none was this insidious influence more
perilously undergone than by the impressionable, weak-nerved woman who,
through her own folly, considerably aided by “circumstances over which
she had no control,” was standing on the very brink of the abyss, the
name of which is “ruin.”
It was now the middle of May, and during a swiftly-passing fortnight
Honor Beacham, continuing her course of semi-deception regarding her
father’s condition, and entirely concealing from the husband whom she
believed to be exclusively absorbed in his own pursuits and interests
the fact that her days and nights were spent in one continued round of
exciting pleasure, went on her way--if not rejoicing, at least in a
condition of such delightful mental inebriation, that she found barely
sense or time enough to ask herself the serious question, if the life
which she was leading indeed were joy.
John’s answer to her letter, written under the influence of hurt
feeling, and penned by a man utterly destitute, not only of the art to
make a thing appear the thing it is not, but of _l’eloquence du billet_
in general, was one exactly calculated to rouse in a high-spirited
nature a dormant inclination to rebel. In it there was an implied right
to command, a right solely arrogated (to Honor’s thinking) by reason of
the writer’s indifference to her proceedings, and scanty appreciation of
her merits. “You will come back, I suppose,”--so wrote the unwise man,
who, on his side, had so egregiously erred in his estimate of
character,--“you will come back when you have had enough of London. I
don’t say to you, ‘come home,’ for women that are made to do the thing
they don’t like are, as mother says, not over and above pleasant in a
house. We are uncommon busy, too, just now; there is painting to be
done, and the chintz to be calendered, so perhaps you are as well out of
the way of the bother.”
Poor John! Could Honor have heard the heavy sigh that broke from his
full heart as he closed the letter; could she, above all, have looked
into that heart and read its secret sorrows, she could not have doubted
of her husband’s love; and perhaps, removed from the glamour of Arthur
Vavasour’s presence, from the mesmeric influence of a passion which was
becoming terribly overpowering in its hourly-gathering strength, she
might have been again a happy woman in the simple fashion and the humble
sphere to which she had been brought up. Such a “chance,” however, was
not for the foolish, beautiful woman who, with half-tender words (for,
alas, it had come to that) from her high-bred adorer lingering on her
memory, read the simple letter, which it had cost so much pain to write,
in anger and in bitterness. Tossing it on her toilet-table with an
impatient jerk, she told herself that John did not care for her. It was
nothing to him, she said mentally, whether she stayed away or not; but
as she inly spoke the words, the fingers of her little gauntleted
hand--she had just returned from riding in the Park--dashed away
something very like tears that had gathered on her long lashes and
nothing short of the recollection that she was going in a few hours’
time to dine at Richmond with Arthur Vavasour and a few other friends of
her father’s prevented her (for it would be dreadful to make her
appearance with red eyes) from indulging in the luxury of a “good cry.”
That party to London’s prettiest suburb--an evening’s enjoyment which
was to include a row towards Twickenham and Teddington on the clear,
flowing river, and a delicious dinner after dusk in one of the charming
_cabinet particuliers_ appertaining to the Star and Garter, and opening
on its pleasant gardens, had been for days looked forward to with keen
anticipations of delight by Honor Beacham. They were to proceed thither
in two open “_hired_ carriages,” in one of which was to be seated Honor
and the Colonel’s wife, while Arthur Vavasour and a dull, unobservant
Mr. Foley, a gentleman, like Pope’s women, “with no character at all,”
were to occupy the opposite seats. In the second carriage the party
collected was likely to be of a far more noisy, as well as a more
congenial, description. Mrs. Foley--a lady a little on the wrong side of
thirty, and whose animal spirits, being apt occasionally, as the saying
is, to “get the better of her,” were in their full swing of triumph on
such an occasion as a Richmond dinner--arrived at Stanwick-street
punctually as the clock struck four, arrayed in a toilet which, but for
the still more amazing costume of the young lady with whom she was
accompanied, would have decidedly monopolised the attention and wonder
of every female observer in that quiet neighbourhood. Shaking themselves
clear of the straw and _tumble_, consequent on their cab-drive from some
distant locality, Mrs. Foley and her bright-eyed sister Dora Tibbets
stood on the doorsteps of No. 14, laughing noisily--more noisily than
ladies of their stamp often laugh when no one of the male sex is present
to stir their spirits up to boiling point. Their dresses, as they stood
there in the bright sunshine of a May afternoon, were of the kind better
suited to a wedding breakfast than to a “quiet dinner,” as Fred Norcott
had described it, in the country. Light and fair and frolicsome they
looked; women with more _auburn_ frizzled hair about their heads than
could, by the most lively and charitable imagination, have been supposed
to be their own, with bright pink roses mingling with their hirsute
ornaments, and with a _quantum suff._ of _poudre de riz_ softening the
lustre of their complexions.
“How smart they are!” Honor whispered in dismay to Arthur, as the two
caught a glimpse of the lively sisters from behind the muslin curtain of
the first-front drawing-room.
“Awfully. It’s a bore they’re coming, but if there had been nobody it
would have been worse,” said Arthur, leaning over her chair, and
speaking in the low tones which always went so thrillingly to her heart.
“Imagine! I _might_ have been unable, all this evening, to say one word
alone to you. And we have so few more days, Honor! You say that you
cannot expect a much longer holiday; but tell me--do you never, never
think what will become of me when you are gone?”
“Don’t talk in that way,” she said, one of her crimson blushes speaking
far more eloquently than her words, while she tried to hide her
confusion by carefully drawing on finger after finger of her delicate
Paris gloves. “Don’t talk in that way; I must talk to these people now.
You don’t know them, of course?” And rising gracefully, she went through
the ceremony of introduction which her father deemed it necessary to
perform.
The next arrivals (they dashed up to the door in a hansom, and remained
talking up to the balcony during the few minutes that elapsed before
the descent of the major portion of the party) were Mr. Foley, and a
young gentleman of slightly _horsey_ appearance, but who, nevertheless,
contrived to snip his words and lisp as ridiculously as any foolish
would-be fine gentleman in town. Captain Bowles was the son of a general
officer, and was himself, though of small dimensions, and of anything
but military bearing, a soldier. He was plain of feature, with a large
mouth and a beardless face. His appearance was more that of an inferior
order of counter-jumper than of a guardsman; nevertheless he was petted
and made much of, especially by the fair sex. Mrs. Foley and her sister
were “fine women,” and “fast,” so the general’s son--who would have been
voted, under less favourable circumstances, a little snob--was allowed
to stand up before them with his hands in his trousers pockets like a
man; and while he minced his platitudes with graceful ease, was smiled
on as fondly as though he were a hero and a gentleman.
There could scarcely have been found a more good-natured _chaperone_,
_duenna_,--call her what you will,--than the Colonel’s lanky wife,
seated opposite to dull, sleepy Mr. Foley, who, by the way, was an
individual of no particular profession, gaining a precarious livelihood
as “director” to one or two doubtful companies, and having a floating
capital in the same. Mrs. Norcott, under cover of her pink parasol, kept
up a dozy conversation with that harmless man of business, while Arthur
Vavasour, who had no right whatever (seeing that his young wife was in
the most delicate of situations--nervous during his absence, and only
comforted by the certainty that he was within call) to be there at all,
had--alas for the credit of poor selfish human nature!--forgotten every
duty, and ignored the sacred claims of wifehood, for the sake of passing
a few blissful hours by the side of the forbidden woman he adored. 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?
For it had come to that with this “fond, foolish,” passionate young man.
Made of the stuff that loves in wild extremes, unused to put a bridle on
his fierce desires, restrained by no sweet early home-affections, the
dear love, mother-love, that bids the profligate, sometimes in his
wildest moments, to go no further--only a myth to him--with a God above
but half believed in, and himself the deity on earth he worshipped--who
can wonder that this man, vigorous with the strength and health of his
one-and-twenty years, should make no effort to resist the devil that,
without resistance, _would_ not flee from him?
“How glad I am that you remembered the Park,” Honor said, as they, the
carriages following at a foot’s pace, sauntered slowly along the
beautiful wooded brow beyond Pembroke Lodge; “I would not have missed
this view for the world.”
They were together now,--those two who had been better far had the wide
seas divided them--those two who could not but have owned that so it
was, had any put the question to them in the rare sober moments which
nineteen and twenty-one, in the heyday of folly and of love, are blessed
with. The rest had strolled away in pairs; so that Arthur could speak as
well as look his love into the bewildering eyes of his friend’s lovely
wife.
“Mad,--yes, I suppose I am mad,” he said, in answer to a half-reproach
from his companion; “but who, I ask, would not be mad--mad as you are
beautiful--seeing you as I do, Honor, nearly every day, every hour? It
is my fate--for by the heaven above me I _cannot_ help it--to look upon
your beautiful face, and see you smile, my love, my darling! Ah, do not,
for the love of all that is good and beautiful, be angry with me! From
the moment that I saw you first, Honor, I felt as I never felt before
for mortal woman--I--”
“Don’t say so. All men say that,” put in Honor, who was more versed in
the theory of love-making than its practice, and who, while she felt the
necessity of checking her admirer’s outpourings, was terribly shy and
untutored in the process. “Besides, Mr. Vavasour,”--gathering courage as
she proceeded,--“it is very wicked--_terribly_ wicked, both for you to
talk and for me to listen to such words. There is your wife at home,
poor thing,--I often think of her,--how unhappy she would be could she
only guess that you said such things to any woman as I have just been
wicked enough to listen to!”
Arthur could scarcely repress a sigh as the image of poor neglected
Sophy, stretched on her luxurious couch in the gorgeously-furnished back
drawing-room in Hyde-park-terrace, presented itself to his mind’s eye.
“She knows nothing, guesses nothing,” he said, with an ineffectual
effort at carelessness. “Where ignorance is bliss, you know, it’s worse
than folly to be wise. I suspect there is a Bluebeard’s closet in
almost every house, and as long as women don’t try to look inside, all
goes on smoothly.”
For a moment, whilst Arthur was imparting to his fair companion this
result of his worldly experience, _her_ thoughts glanced back to her own
home, and to the marked exception to her lover’s rule which it afforded.
At the Paddocks--and well did Honor know that so it was--there could be
found no hidden chamber barred off from the investigations of the
curious. The wife of true-hearted John Beacham could pry at her own
wondering will into any and every corner of his big warm heart, and find
there no skeleton of the past, no flesh-covered denizen of the present,
warning her with uplifted finger that he was false.
Very guilty she felt for a second or two, and humbled and odious, as the
consciousness of being a vile deceiver sent a blush to her fair cheek,
and checked any answering words that had risen to her tongue. Time,
however, for useful reflection was denied her. The sound of her father’s
voice announcing that it was five o’clock, and that the boats were
waiting at the Castle-stairs, effectually interrupted a reverie of a
more wholesome description than might, under the circumstances, have
been expected; and, reëntering their respective carriages, the party
were soon on their way down the hill so loved by Cockney
pleasure-seekers, and so be sung by nature-worshipping poets.
* * * * *
Once in the large comfortable wherry which had been hired for the
occasion, Arthur found very little opportunity, beyond that of paying
the most devoted attention to her personal comfort, of making himself
agreeable to his lady-love. That there was _one_ subject, at least,
besides herself of real and almost absorbing interest to Arthur Vavasour
soon became evident to Honor; and that subject was the approaching Derby
race. Since her instalment in Stanwick-street, Honor had heard more talk
of that all-important annual event than--horse-breeder’s wife though she
was--she had listened to through all the many months of her married
life; and naturally enough, seeing that the “favourite” was her father’s
property, and that Arthur Vavasour appeared deeply interested in the
triumph of Rough Diamond, the success of that distinguished animal
became one of the most anxious wishes of Mrs. John Beacham’s heart.
“O, I do so hope he’ll win!” she exclaimed enthusiastically; “he is such
a wonderfully beautiful creature. And he has a brother who, they think,
will be more perfect still;--no, not a brother quite, a half-brother, I
think he is; and I used to watch him every day led out to exercise,
looking so wild and lovely. He is only a year old, and his name is
Faust; and they say he is quite sure to be a Derby horse.”
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. She saw herself
despised, and--so true is it that we cannot scarcely commit the smallest
sin without doing an injury as well to our neighbours as to
ourselves--she resolved, to the utter extinction of the very inferior
beauties near her, to make the most of the wondrous gift of loveliness
which she was conscious of possessing. Hitherto she had “borne her
faculties meekly;” the consciousness that she was, by marriage, without
the pale of the “upper ten thousand” had, together with an innate
modesty which was one of her rarest charms, kept her silent and somewhat
subdued when in what is called “company.” It had required the looks of
contempt which she had seen passing between the well-got-up sisters to
rouse the spirit of display in Honor Beacham’s heart; but, once aroused,
the intoxication of success encouraged her to proceed, and the demon of
Coquetry was found hard indeed to crush.
The row, slow and dreamy, up-stream to Teddington-lock, would, even had
there been no unlawful and much-prized lover--of whom, explain it as you
will, Honor was more than half afraid--by her side, have been simply
delightful. The river was so purely clear that the water-weeds beneath
its pellucid surface showed brightly, freshly green; and then the long
low islets, with the graceful willow-boughs, vivid with the hues of
early spring, dipping their last-opened buds into the laving stream, and
the banks, verdant and fair, and cattle-sprinkled--all combined to make
a Breughal-like picture of spring verdure and beauty.
Notwithstanding a certain amount of horsey conversation, flirting,
covert as well as open, was the order of the afternoon. Both Mrs. Foley
and her sister were adepts at that truly feminine and easily-acquired
accomplishment. To look the thing they meant not, to understand or not
understand the ingenious _double entendre_, to give the little hope that
hinders from despair, and _only_ the _little_ hope, lest the excited
lover should presume, were arts in which _ces dames_, the
unprofessional demi-monde of gay middle life, were thoroughly skilled.
It required more audacity than Honor would have previously believed that
she possessed to cope with rivals such as these, but, _champagne
aidant_, she got through the female duty well; and the dinner which
succeeded the aquatic excursion owed not a little of its success to the
lively spirits lending added charms to the powerful influence of beauty.
The hour of ten had struck by the town clocks, and the many wine-bottles
on the table of No. 3 room were near to emptying, before it occurred to
any of the party therein assembled that the night was fine and warm and
starlight, and that in the gardens of the hotel a fresher, purer air
could be imbibed than that which reminded them somewhat too forcibly of
the good things they had been imbibing.
At a conjugal hint from the Colonel, his watchful and obedient wife
suggested that the moon had risen, and was looking lovely over the
river. A turn on the terrace would be delightful, she thought; and as
her proposal met with no opposition, they made themselves an impromptu
drawing-room under the starry canopy of heaven.
“What a lovely night! how glad I am to have seen this! The moonlight
never looked to me so soft and beautiful before!”
“Never? I am glad of that,” Arthur said, his face very near to Honor’s
as they leant over the stone balustrade and gazed out upon the tranquil
scene. “I may hope then that, for a little while at least, the memory of
this night will linger with you. It is a day that I at least shall find
it very hard to forget. You smile and shake your head. Perhaps you take
me for one who knows nothing of his own mind,--one whom a fresh face can
stir into new and soon-to-be-changed feelings. But, Honor, listen to
me--listen while we have these few moments we can call our own. I tell
you that the love I feel for you is one that will defy all time and
space and change. You have never been loved, my beautiful one, with such
a love as this. You would tell me, were you not an angel, and too pure
and good for such a world as this, that your husband--”
“Hush, hush! please don’t; I cannot bear to hear you speak of him, Mr.
Vavasour,--well, well, _Arthur_--I know I have been very weak and
wicked; but for my own folly you would never have--have told me that you
loved me; and indeed I did not mean--I--”
He seized both her little hands in his strong grasp, and held them there
as in a vice.
“Honor,” he whispered,--and his voice trembled with concentrated
passion,--“are you going to tell me that I have been a blundering fool,
and that I have mistaken every look and word and smile that led me on to
love you? If so,--but no, I cannot, will not think it possible. Long
ago, my darling,”--and his voice softened into entreaty,--“long ago,
when first I held this precious hand in mine, you might, with cold words
and scanty smiles, have taught me”--and he smiled bitterly--“my place.
But that you did not do, Honor: you _know_ you did not. What your motive
was in leading me on to hope that I was something--a very little--more
to you than a mere acquaintance, you best can say. If it were well meant
on your part, all I can say is that it was cruel kindness; for it will
be a hard fall down again to the place from which your gentle words and
smiles had raised me. But once more, Honor, for the love of Heaven, tell
me that you have not trifled with me. Do not make me lose my faith in
every woman. Tell me before we part to-night that if we were doomed
never to meet again you would sorrow a little, just a very little, for
my loss. Tell me that sometimes, when you are alone, you think of me;
tell me”--and he ventured unreproved to steal his arm round her
waist--“tell me that you love me just a very little, Honor, in return
for the heart’s whole devotion that I feel for you.”
Her bosom heaved, and her heart beat very quickly, under the strong firm
pressure of his hand; but for all that--and perhaps some of my readers
may understand the anomaly--the strongest feeling in Honor Beacham’s
mind at that important crisis was one of relief that she was not _alone_
with her adorer. And yet in one sense she loved him. His touch, his
lingering gaze into the depths of her blue eyes, exercised--and never
more so than at that moment--a strange magnetic influence over her
nerves. She could ill have borne a decree that banished Arthur Vavasour
from her society, and yet she felt that he was to play no actual part in
the misty future of her life--the life which she never doubted she was
to spend with John; the life that _might_ be a tolerably happy one when
Mrs. Beacham was gathered--not to her forefathers, but to the place
allotted to her by her dead husband’s side.
Honor, to do her justice, never imagined an existence apart from her
husband. She was not happy at home; the life there was unsuited to her,
and John, she believed, did not love her well enough to care whether his
mother tormented her or not. In London, on the contrary, she _did_ enjoy
herself, wildly, feverishly, but with a zest and an impulse that had
nothing in it that was natural or lasting. When the day came, she longed
for the hour which should bring Arthur Vavasour to her side; but with
the longing came a kind of nervous dread--a fear of his impatience, an
alarm as of a hunted animal at the thought of finding herself within his
power--all which symptoms might have told a more experienced woman that
in her love for Arthur Vavasour there was an alloy which, had he
imagined its existence, would have deprived the longing for possession
of more than half its value.
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.
Nearer and nearer, happy in this blessed conviction, to his heart he
held her, secured from observation in a shadowy corner, and _safe_ under
the protection of the remainder of the party, who lingered just out of
earshot on the terrace.
Honor, afraid of offending her high-born lover, and sincerely hoping
that never--_never_ under less safe and satisfactory circumstances might
a similar scene be enacted, contrived to stammer out the foolish, false,
and guilty assurance,--an assurance that filled the young lover’s heart
with the wildest hopes--the assurance, namely, that her heart was his,
and that in his love she found her dearest, sweetest happiness!