HONOR TURNS REBELLIOUS.
It is unfortunate perhaps, and decidedly suggestive, but so it
undoubtedly is, that beauty leads the wisest amongst us terribly astray
in our judgment both of character and motives. What observer,
dispassionate or otherwise, who looked--were such a privilege granted to
him--at lovely Honor’s face and form, lying indolently, lazily if you
will, upon her narrow couch (the iron bedstead in the Stanwick-street
lodging), would have been able to allow, without infinite regret and
caution, either that she was _wrong_, or the least in the world
deserving of punishment? A creamy complexion, slightly tinged with the
most delicate of rose-colours; a tumbled mass of fairest brown
hair--“off the flax and _on_ the golden,” as Miss Pratt would say; blue
eyes, “languid with soft dreams;” and full crimson lips, moist with the
morning dew of youth and health,--composed a sum of attractions very
decidedly calculated to disarm criticism, and to modify the verdict of
“Guilty” with the strongest recommendations to mercy. “Youth” and
“previous good conduct” were pleas which might be safely urged as
extenuating circumstances in the case of poor Honor Beacham’s feminine
sin of truth-suppressing; and as with her fair face slightly flushed,
and her long brown eyelashes sparkling with indignant tears, she read,
for the second time, a letter which Lydia (alias Polly), cross and out
of breath with the labour of mounting the attic stairs, had just
deposited on the bed, it was easy to perceive that the process of
retribution had already, in some sort, commenced.
That letter, as the reader will have no difficulty in guessing, was the
one mentioned in the conclusion of the last chapter as the happy result
of old Mrs. Beacham’s interference with the connubial relations of her
children. It took the well-meaning woman, as we already know, two hours
in its concoction, and ran as follows:
* * * * *
“MY DEAR HONOR,--I write this to my great illconvenience, and to tell
you that your conduct is not what it ought to be. John is not at home,
but he was much surprised, as so was I to hear which we did by accident
that you had been seen riding in Hyde Park in the place where I am told
the ladies go, that honest women oughtnt to look at with a gentleman. I
may as well say who Mr. Arthur Vavasour. Knowing the way you useter go
on with that person I am not surprised at this, but John is, and I write
to say that I cant have him vexed nor put out, and that you must come
back directly and learn to behave yourself, and whats more, make
yourself useful as you should do. Of course things wont be pleasant when
you do come home, _that_ isnter be expected, but we must take what
Godamighty sends, and I knew when John married what it would be. I
expect you will come back directly you get this, and I will send Simmons
for you with the taxcart to meet the first afternoon train. John besides
being so put about with what youve been doing is too busy with his
horses to think of going himself.”
* * * * *
A pleasant missive this to receive at early morning-time, when the
recipient’s head, a little turned by flattery and excitement, was full
of fresh plans of pleasure, and was sedulously endeavouring to shut out
intrusive thoughts of home, and to ignore the conscience-pricks against
which it was so hard sometimes to kick! It would have been scarcely
possible for the picture of what awaited her in her husband’s dull _chez
soi_, to have been brought with more unpleasant force before the
luxury-loving, indolent-natured girl, who was becoming hourly more what
is called _spoilt_ by the new life that she was leading. At no time
greatly drawn towards her mother-in-law (could it well, all things
considered, have been otherwise?), Honor, at that inauspicious moment,
almost loathed the domineering, hectoring old autocrat, whose ways were
so very far from being _her_ ways, and who had thus unscrupulously laid
bare to her the treatment that she, Honor, might expect when she should
return tardily, and, alas, not over-willingly, to the sphere of the
irritated old lady’s dominion. It may seem to some of my readers that
the thoughts and feelings, the likings and dislikings of Honor, the
married woman, bore but scanty relation to those of the same individual
who, when a laughing, light-hearted, unselfish girl, had found it so
easy to win, not only golden opinions, but, still surer test of worth,
the affections of the small men and women committed to her youthful
guardianship. But while making this objection, it is well to remind the
critic of the truth, that we none of us show what we really are--either
for evil or for good--till we are tried. With youth, and beauty, and
good spirits,--petted too and much indulged, albeit she was “only a
governess,”--with the lamp of hope burning brightly before her, and with
no shadow darkling over the past, Honor _Blake_ could have claimed
small praise for being cheerful, yielding, and contented. It was in
part, perhaps, owing to that very absence of trial that might be traced
some of the striking changes that had apparently taken place in her
disposition and character. Accustomed to be made much of, and dearly
loving the _evidences_ of being appreciated--well aware that her beauty
was of that high and uncommon order which can be disputed by none, and
that takes the senses, as it were, by storm--Honor, the stay-at-home
wife of a staid and almost middle-aged man, had every chance of becoming
discontented with the lot which at first sight, and before she had been
allowed time to feel its flatness and monotony, had seemed to her all
that was to be desired. That Mrs. Beacham--that the jealous
mother-in-law, whom an angel from heaven would probably, under similar
circumstances, have failed to please--should have had her lines also
cast in the pleasant places of the Paddocks, had proved a real
misfortune to Honor. “If she were _anywhere_ but here!” had been often
and often the girl’s inward cry, when the peace of every moment, and the
bright coming of each returning day, were disturbed and darkened by the
small aggravations of John’s crabbed and exacting mother. It is
wonderful, the power that _one_ person possesses to make or mar the
comfort of a household. The constant _fears_ of “something coming,” the
dread of words being taken amiss, the fretful answer, or even the mute
reproach of shrugged-up shoulders, and a peevish sneer, can make to a
sensitive nature the interior of a home that outwardly seems fair enough
a daily, hourly purgatory. Poor Honor! As she lay upon her bed, thinking
how very near the time had come when she must perforce exchange the
delights, mingled though they were with the bitterness of self-reproach,
of her present existence for the uncongenial company, the harsh
sarcastic words, and the contemptuous looks of her unloving
mother-in-law, her heart sank within her with disgust and fear.
“I cannot do it!” she said half aloud. “And John, too! What will he say
to me?” And at the thought of her husband’s displeasure, the wife who
had lacked moral courage to speak the truth began to feel that, rather
than face those two outraged and indignant spirits, she would gladly
flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, and be at rest. 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, 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.
The idea of obeying her mother-in-law’s behests, and returning with the
least possible delay, did not, after the first shock of reading the
letter, either form any portion of Honor’s thoughts, or tend in any
degree to increase her troubles. Go, till she had fulfilled one or two
of her remaining engagements, she _would not_. To that conclusion she
had come at _first_, and being one of those exceptional
characters--characters, I suspect, more fanciful than real--whom a
silken thread can lead, but who, like the Celtic animal that shall be
nameless, turn restive when coercion is the order of the day, young Mrs.
Beacham, resenting the old lady’s tone of authority, set herself, with a
determination of which one short year before she never would have
believed herself capable, against that distasteful dose, the swallowing
of which she knew (none better) to be her duty. Perhaps--we do not say
it would have been so--but perhaps had _John_ written to her, even
angrily, this wrong-headed, but still warm-hearted, young woman might
have been a trifle more amenable to reason, and better disposed to bear
with patience the lot that she had drawn; but John, as we well know, did
not write to his young wife at this momentous crisis of her life. He was
busy. Epsom was at hand. Betting, sporting men were daily finding their
way by express trains to the Paddocks, and all John’s interest, time,
attention were taken up, so Honor entirely and _half_-gladly believed,
by other cares and pleasures than those connected with herself. “He does
not trouble himself enough about me either to write or to mind whether I
am here or there,” she said with a sigh, as, standing before her small
mirror, she noted self-complacently each of the undimmed beauties by
which she believed her husband set so little store. “He does not care
enough about me to be displeased if I ride with Arthur Vavasour. His
mother says so--the tiresome old thing!--but I don’t believe her; and
she shall not--no, she _shall_ not--have the satisfaction of thinking
she has frightened me into obedience;” and with that doughty resolution
Honor descended her many flights of stairs to breakfast with her
newly-found and outwardly affectionate relations.