MRS. BEACHAM WRITES A LETTER.
The late post on Monday (the eventful Monday it was--for we have
retrograded twenty-four hours in our story in order to recount what
happened on that Sabbath afternoon at the Paddocks--the eventful Monday
it was which Honor spent with Arthur Vavasour on horseback first, and
afterwards in that feverishly enjoyable Richmond dinner), the second
post, brought no letter from the truant, and John’s brow grew ominously
dark as he turned over his numerous business-like-looking epistles, and
amongst them found no dainty missive in a fair running hand, and adorned
with an entwined H. B. in mingled shades of brown and blue, by way of
monogram.
“There now! What did I tell you?” exclaimed his mother triumphantly. “I
was as sure as sure could be, she wouldn’t write. Guilty consciences
never do. And another time, my dear, I hope 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.” In truth, he was in no mood to listen
patiently to the “I told you so,” and the “You see, I was right,” of the
old lady’s equivocal sympathy. His anger--hard to rouse in downright
earnest against the beautiful girl, young enough, as the poor fellow
often told himself, to be his daughter--had aroused at last to almost
boiling-point; and, as is often the case with self-constrained but
naturally passionate men, the change now lay in the probability that he
would visit still more heavily than they deserved the indiscretions of
the culprit, and that in his anger he would not even _remember_ mercy.
Finding him still silent, Mrs. Beacham, accustomed from long habit to
watch the changes on her son’s countenance, glanced up at it from her
eternal knitting, and was startled, strong-nerved woman though she was,
at its stern rigidity, and at the colour--that of a livid leaden
hue--which had taken place of the usual ruddy brownness of his cheeks.
“John, what _is_ the matter? My gracious me, boy! you look as if you
were going to faint.”
The old woman had risen hastily from her chair, and, standing before
him, had laid her two hands upon his arms, holding him thus, while with
anxious motherly eyes she peered into the face of him who, being all the
world to her, she loved with such a jealous and exacting devotion. For
the first time in his life, John answered her shortly, and with what his
mother, making scant allowance for the condition of his mind, chafed
under as disrespect.
“Bother!” he said gruffly, putting her aside with one hand, while he
donned his wideawake with the other. “I’m all right. What _should_ be
the matter?” And then, in a more collected voice, and with a more
composed manner, he added, “I shall go to town to-morrow, mother, by the
10.30 train. I’ve no end of business to-day--other people’s business, or
I’d let it all go to Hanover, for what I cared. But for that, I wouldn’t
be so many hours before going up to see what that scoundrel Norcott is
after with my wife; for, by Heaven”--and he struck a blow upon the old
oak floor with his ash-stick that was enough to test the solidity of
both--“by Heaven, I begin to think that there’s more than we know of in
his sending for her in the way he did. That illness of his was all a
sham--I’m pretty sure of that by this time; and then his having Vavasour
about her”--and John ground his strong white teeth together as he said
the hateful words--“looks as if there was something devilish up with the
rascal. God knows! I’ve more than once had a fancy--why, I couldn’t tell
you any more than the dead--that all wasn’t square about Rough Diamond.
It was no business of mine to inquire into it. If young Vavasour’s been
stuck, why, I shall be sorry, that is, if--”
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. Were the laying of
the same an equally facile task, or one equally congenial to the
unregenerate nature of men and women, there would be fewer of the crimes
consequent on the strength of our worst passions to record, fewer
blighted lives, fewer consciences burdened with the weight of scarcely
bearable remorse. But though the woman, whose tongue had wagged (without
ulterior design, but simply as a consequence of her own maternal
jealousy) to such fell purpose, could not read the heart she had
unconsciously been working up to madness, she yet experienced something
very like uneasiness when John, with the heavy cloud still lowering over
his brow, and with the ruddy brown half-vanished from his cheeks (so
changed was he since the poison of suspicion had suffused itself through
his veins), left her alone to ruminate on the past, and anticipate
darker doings in the future than she had either hoped or calculated on.
That John--the dearly-beloved of her aged heart, the son of whom she was
so justly proud--could prove himself, under provocation, to be of a very
violent and passionate nature, she had not now to learn. He had done his
best to subdue and conquer his constitutional sin; a sin, however, it
was that might and did lie dormant, and indeed half forgotten, within
him, from the simple fact that it required the great occasions that
happily are comparatively rare in all our lives to bring it into notice
and action. The blow struck in a moment of ungovernable rage at
Frederick Norcott’s unprotected head had for a time, as we already
know, filled John Beacham’s breast with remorse and self-reproach. He
had been very angry with himself, very angry and ashamed; but that shame
and anger had not, in any degree, either softened his nature or disposed
him to any especial leniency towards his victim. On the contrary, the
soreness produced by self-condemnation, and by imagined loss of caste,
only served to better prepare the mind of the man for the reception of
evil suspicions, and of perilously active venom; and when John Beacham
left the quiet little parlour, and the tardily-repentant old lady, who,
when it was too late, would gladly have recalled her words, he was in
the mood of mind that leads, at down-hill pace, to crime.
After his departure Mrs. Beacham picked up the ball of gray worsted that
she had in her agitation allowed to roll away upon the carpet, and
recommenced the task of turning the heel of John’s lambswool sock.
Click, click went the knitting-needles, and steadily jerked the bony
wrinkled hands that held the pins; but, contrary to custom, the thoughts
of the aged woman were wandering far away from the work in hand--away
with the son whose fiery passions she had helped to rouse--away with the
thoughtless girl whose “cunning ways” (Mrs. Beacham’s vials of wrath
were filled to overflowing in readiness for Honor’s devoted head) and
artful, “flirty goings on were hurrying her poor John into his grave.”
Suddenly a novel thought occurred to her, and, laying down her
knitting-needles, the distracted old lady, who was not “good at” doing
two things at a time, set herself to “think it out.” She would
write--such was the idea with which the mother of invention had inspired
her--to Honor herself! It was true that neither caligraphy nor the art
of “composition” were among the gifts which nature and education had
bestowed upon the ever-busy mistress of Pear-tree House, but for all
that she would--so she then and there decided--give “milady” a piece of
her mind that would bring back that “artful faggot”--Mrs. Beacham was
angry enough to apply _any_ names, however opprobrious, to her
daughter-in-law--in double quick time to her husband and her duty.
When a woman--especially one of unrefined mind--sits down under the
influence of wrathful passions to write a letter, the chances are
greatly in favour of her pen running away with her discretion--that is
to say, of her using stronger expressions; and of her doing a good deal
more mischief, than she had intended. The not-over-well-concocted
missive, which occupied the worthy old lady who penned it during two
good hours of the afternoon, and was posted in time for the early
morning delivery in Stanwick-street, proved, as the reader will
hereafter learn, no poor exemplification of the truth of this not very
novel remark. There are moods of mind in which the receipt of even a
judiciously-penned letter irritates and offends the weak vessel that
requires both tender and tactful handling. The missive of autocratic
Mrs. Beacham was neither tender nor tactful, and pretty Honor’s fate and
conduct were terribly influenced for evil by what appeared at first
sight to be one of the most every-day occurrences of every-day life.