WHAT, SELL ROUGH DIAMOND!
The breakfast meal at No. 13 Stanwick-street, not being either a varied
or a luxurious one, did not occupy much of Colonel Fred Norcott’s
valuable time. It commenced, however, frequently at so late an hour,
owing to the stay-out habits over night of the master of the house, that
twelve o’clock often struck before the table was what Mrs. Norcott
called “cleared,” and the room ready for company.
Which company consisted usually, at the time of Honor’s stay, but of one
visitor--_the_ visitor whom, for reasons best known to himself, Colonel
Norcott was ever on the watch to conciliate and flatter. Arthur
Vavasour’s appearance in Stanwick-street was usually so timed that his
host’s horses--animals chiefly devoted at that period to the use of his
daughter--should be walking up and down before the house in readiness
for Mrs. Beacham’s appearance. On the eventful Tuesday morning--the
Tuesday in Epsom holiday week--which was hereafter to be a strongly
marked one in Honor Beacham’s memory, Colonel Norcott, departing
somewhat from his accustomed habits, was early astir--so early that at a
little after eleven he might have been seen, his cigar between his lips,
standing on the steps of the house he occupied, and evidently waiting
for some person whose coming was longer delayed than the Colonel found
altogether agreeable. At last, walking briskly round a corner, with a
very preoccupied expression of countenance, and swinging in the air a
light riding-whip with the manner of one lost in thought, Arthur
Vavasour, the individual expected by Honor’s impatient parent, appeared
in sight.
“By George! you’re late,” Colonel Norcott said, pulling out his watch
and displaying it reproachfully before his friend. “I haven’t more than
five minutes to spare. Five? I haven’t got three! But if you’ve anything
you want particularly to say to me, I--”
“You will wait--you _must_ wait,” Arthur broke in imperiously. “I tell
you what, Colonel Norcott, I can’t stand the bother and the wear and
tear of this any longer; Rough Diamond, as _we_ know, is all right
again, and the odds are--”
“Five to four on the favourite! We all know that. What then?” and Fred
replaced his cigar between his lips, and smoked away with a
_nonchalance_ which, to an excited man, was not a little provoking.
“What then? Why, simply this: I’d rather sell the horse, upon my soul I
would, than go on in this way. If Rough Diamond loses--”
“Well, if he does?”
“Nonsense, man, what’s the use of asking? you know nearly as much of my
affairs as I do. You know how devilishly I’m dipped, and how everything
depends on my horse winning the Derby to-morrow.”
“Well, and he will win it. Don’t be a fool. I mean don’t be out of
heart. I’m sure if I thought there were the ghost of a chance against
him, I should be pretty considerably down in the mouth too. Why, man,
I’ve backed the favourite with every farthing I’m worth, and--”
“Ah, yes--I know; but my case is different. Only fancy if old Dub was to
find out (which he would be almost sure to do if the horse didn’t win)
that the brute is mine, and has been all along; what a row there would
be! And then there’s that infernal fellow Nathan--it’s ruinous work
renewing--so ruinous that, by Jove, I sometimes think--though of course
I couldn’t decide anything without speaking to you. I sometimes think
whether it wouldn’t be better--you see it would never do for the old
fellow to get wind of these confounded bills--I sometimes think whether
it wouldn’t be the best thing I could do to let Lord Penshanger have
Rough Diamond, and so get out of the infernal bother of the business
altogether.”
Fred Norcott, at these words turning a hot and angry face to his
companion, looked by no means at his pleasantest. “What, sell the
favourite!” he said. “By Jove, you must be mad! I couldn’t allow or hear
of such a thing. I must say that--but I beg your pardon, Vavasour; you
can understand that when a man has so much at stake he loses his head,
and hardly knows what he’s talking about. The fact is that Honor--that
poor girl in there” (and he pointed to the house, before which they had
been slowly pacing to and fro) “is deuced miserable with that brute of a
farmer fellow that she married. She’s staying on with me because he and
an old mother that he has bully her so confoundedly between them; and I
should be glad to know if any tricks were to be played on Rough Diamond
(and I’ll answer for nothing if there’s any change made) what would
become of that poor child? _I_ shouldn’t have a home to offer her,
and--but, by George, there are the horses! Honor will be down in a
minute, and I shall be late,” consulting his watch again, “if I’m not
off to Waterloo in double quick time. Not going down to-day, eh? Well,
there’s no accounting for tastes. See you at Opera to-night, I suppose?”
And on receiving an affirmative nod from Arthur, who already had his
foot on the first step of No. 14, Colonel Norcott went his way towards
the station, where almost countless crowds were waiting to be conveyed
to the same goal--namely, the racecourse on Epsom Downs.
“What a lovely morning! I should like to be out of doors the whole
entire day!” exclaimed Honor, as she and Arthur rode along the least
frequented road within the precincts of the Regent’s Park, “and what is
more, I long to be in the country. Lydia had a holiday on Sunday, and
she says that all the beautiful chestnut-trees in Bushy Park are in full
blossom, and I _should_ so like to go there! Have you ever seen the
avenue? Mrs. Norcott has not, and she would like, she says, to drive
there this afternoon better than anything. Mr. Vavasour, couldn’t we do
it?” in a pretty tone of beseechment. “I have so little more time;
and”--her cheeks flushing, half with anger and half with shame at this
betrayal of her home secrets,--“I have had _such_ a letter to-day! so
cross--so unfeeling! O, Mr. Vavasour, I am afraid,” looking very
piteous, “that it will be all so dreadful when I go home. What _shall_ I
do? I almost wish that I had never come to London, the Paddocks will
seem so dull, so miserable when I go back!”
“Miserable? Are you _quite_ sure of that?” coming nearer, and resting
his hand on the pommel of his companion’s saddle. “Don’t think me _very_
selfish, but I should not like you to be too happy, Honor, not _too_
happy when you are away from me. You sweet, beautiful creature!” gazing
passionately on her downcast eyes, “why did not I see you, know you, in
the lost time gone by, when you _might_ have loved me, Honor? Am I too
bold, too vain, to think, to hope that had we met sooner--met before you
were tied and bound to another man--we two might have been happy? Speak
to me, Honor. How can you be so cold, so quiet, when I--”
He stopped, half afraid, in that public spot, on the well-frequented
road, where the girl’s striking beauty attracted every passer’s eye to
gaze upon her lovely face, of the emotions which his words had so
evidently aroused within her breast. At that moment, judging from
outward signs--from the rapid rise and fall of the bosom, shapely as
that of the glorious statue that entranced the world, and from the
changing colour of her rounded cheek--the accusation of coldness was
not altogether warranted by appearances. And yet from those signs and
symptoms the inference which Arthur drew was very decidedly a wrong, or
rather an exaggerated, one. Honor was not in the least what is called
“in love” with the man whose own passions and wild worship of his
neighbour’s wife were making such desperate work within his inner man.
Almost utterly reckless had those days of constant communion with her
made him. He had cried havoc and let loose the dogs of contending
passions within his breast; and if he had ever, when the waves of
temptation were beginning to rise and swell, said unto them with an
honest and true heart, “So far shalt thou go, and no farther,” that time
was long since gone and over, and the submission of Cecil Vavasour’s son
to the great enemy of mankind was an accomplished and a melancholy fact.
But partly perhaps because the man who really feels an overpowering
passion has less chance of _moving_ the object of that passion than has
the hypocrite who feigns a devotion which he is far from feeling. Honor
Beacham did not, as I said before, _love_ Arthur Vavasour. _Like_ him
she did; and greatly did she prize his devotion, his delicate
compliments, his evident and irrepressible appreciation of the
attractions for which her busy unsophisticated husband, the man whose
affections were not for the moment, but for Time, appeared to care so
strangely little. But although the eloquent blood that rose to neck and
brow had not its source in the inner, and to Arthur the undiscovered,
depths of her affection, although the visible palpitations of her heart
could not with truth be traced to the consciousness of harbouring one
unholy or forbidden thought, still Arthur’s words and sighs and glances
produced upon this child of nature effects precisely analogous to those
which might have been displayed had the love which he professed and felt
been returned tenfold into his bosom.
“I did not mean to be unkind and cold,” she stammered. “Quiet, Nellie!”
(to the mare she rode, and whose mild _caracoles_ her own agitation was
provoking). “It was all my fault for talking about going home; and, Mr.
Vavasour--”
“Call me Arthur,” he broke in impetuously; “even you, who grudge me
every word that is not stiff and formal, even you can see no harm
in--when we are alone together--calling me by my name? Honor, I--”
She put up a warning finger, smiling as she did so after a fashion that
would have turned a steadier head than Arthur Vavasour’s. She did not
mean to be “coquettish;” there was no purpose in her heart to lure him
into folly and madness. Honor’s were very simple, but at the same time
very cowardly, tactics--tactics, however, which have lost ere this more
silly giddy women than even vanity itself. In _public_ glad to please,
and feeling, really feeling pity for the man whose passion she
understood without reciprocating it, Honor would “smile, and smile, and
smile,” and seem to love; whilst in _private_--but then, to the best of
her powers, and with an ingenuity of which none but a frightened woman
could have been capable, she strove, and with good success, to postpone
_sine die_ the evil hour when she would perforce be brought to book, and
when the lover whose _attentions_ she would be more loth to lose than
she the least suspected would insist on the decided answer which would
render further trifling impossible--in private Honor might almost have
been mistaken for a prude.
“How can you want me to call you Arthur,” she said, with the bright
smile that lit up her countenance like a sunbeam, “when you know it
would be wrong--so wrong (and that is the best way to find out what _is_
wrong) that you would, or I should, be always in a most dreadful fright
lest I should forget myself, and say it when other people were present?
O, how I _do_ hate doing underhand things! I wish now, only it is days
and days too late, that I had written everything I was about to the
Paddocks. Then they might have abused me for being wilful and fond of
London, and plays, and amusing things; but they could not have hated and
despised me for being false.”
“But,” said Arthur with a caress in his voice, which Honor, novice
though she was, was at no loss to feel and understand--“but there are so
many things which pass, that one cannot say to everyone--many things
which are not _wrong_, as you call it, but which people at a distance
would not enter into, and had better therefore know nothing about. And
so they have been worrying you with letters, you poor darling, have
they? Wanting you to go back, and--”
“O, yes,” Honor cried, brimming over with her wrongs, her yearning for
kind sympathy, and with the self-pity which ever exaggerates the
misfortunes which our precious _self_ is called upon to endure--“O, yes,
and Mrs. Beacham--she _is_ so disagreeable; you don’t know half how
disagreeable she can be, orders me to come home, and threatens me with
all sorts of horrid things. I am to be scolded and taught my duty, and,”
blushing beautifully, “someone has told _them_ that I have been riding
in the Park with you, and--Ah, Mr. Vavasour, I feel quite frightened,
and I would rather do anything in the world almost than go back again
to the Paddocks!”
“Anything?” he asked, throwing as much meaning into the word as the
human voice was capable of expressing; but Honor, who was far as the
poles from comprehending the evil that was in his thoughts, said
eagerly,
“Indeed yes! anything! I would be a governess--you know I was a
governess before--I would go out to service--be a ‘Lydia,’” and she
smiled a little bitterly, “if I could only never, never see Mrs.
Beacham’s face again.”
An expression which she took for amusement, but which was in reality
indicative of very unholy triumph, passed over Arthur Vavasour’s dark,
handsome face.
“Don’t laugh at me,” Honor said plaintively. “You _can_ have no idea how
hard it is to live with John’s mother. Nothing I do is right, and--and,”
in a lower voice, “I know she sets him against me. She has written to
tell me that I must go home to-day; but my father says I am to lay our
not going upon him, so here I shall stay! I know I shall be in a
dreadful scrape, and that it is only a case of putting off, and--”
“But why _only_ a case of putting off, as you call it? My darling
Honor--forgive me; the words slipt out unawares--you know I would not
offend you willingly; but the best as well as the worst men are liable
to mistakes. Only tell me why you, so young, so beautiful, so formed for
the enjoyment of everything that is bright and happy, should be
condemned to pass your days in such an existence as the one you describe
at the Paddocks? It has always seemed to me,” he went on, leaning
towards her, and looking with eyes of eager passion into her face--“it
has always seemed to me an act of the most miserable folly for
people--married people--who do not _suit_, remaining together: _both_
would often be equally glad to part, to go their respective ways, to
live another and a more congenial life; and yet from some foolish
unreasoning scruple, from fear of what the world would say, or from want
of courage to take the first step, they go on through all their lives,
making each other’s existence a burden, ‘when both might separately have
been as happy’ as we are any of us fated to be in this ill-managed world
of ours, where happiness is so rare a thing.”
Honor glanced at him with rather a puzzled look in her blue eyes.
Strange as it may seem, she did not even now comprehend his meaning.
That he was advising her to leave her home was too plain to be mistaken,
but that there was to be sin--sin, that is to say, greater than that
which she could not but feel would be incurred by deserting her husband
and her duties--never occurred to this poor foolish child of nature. But
although she did not comprehend, and could not fathom, the depths of her
false friend’s guilt, yet her womanly instinct led her to evade the
responding to his suggestion. His last words also, and the tone of
sadness in which they were spoken, riveted her attention, and, catching
almost gladly at an excuse for changing the conversation, she said
sympathisingly,
“What do you mean by ill-managed? Surely _you_ can have no reason to
think this world an unhappy one! If there exists one person in it who
ought to be happy, it is you--you and your wife,” she added, with a
little sigh which again misled her companion into a blind and senseless
belief in his own power over her affections. “You have everything, it
seems to me, that human beings can hope for or desire--youth and health
and riches, living where you like, and always seeing and enjoying the
beautiful things that money can buy; and then going abroad, seeing
foreign countries, and--and--”
“And what? Tell me some more of my privileges, my delights; make me
contented, if you can, with my lot. At present it seems dark enough, God
knows; and if--but I am a fool, and worse, to talk to you of these
things; only, if I thought that you--you, who are an angel of purity and
love and peace--would sometimes think of me with pity, why, it would
give me courage, Honor, would make me feel that I have still something
to live for, something to bind me to an existence which I have begun to
loathe!”
Honor listened to this outpouring of real or fancied sorrows like one
who is not sure whether she dreams or is awake.
“Mr. Vavasour!” she exclaimed, “what _can_ you mean? At your age, with a
young wife who loves you, and with” (blushing slightly) “the hope of the
dear little child that will so soon be born, it seems so wonderful to
hear you talk in this way! What is it?” warming with pity as she watched
the young worn face prematurely marked with lines of care--“would you
like to tell me?--I am very _safe_. I have no one” (sadly) “to confide
in; and you have just said that my sympathy would be a comfort to you.”
She laid her little ungloved hand--she had taken off her gauntlet to
caress the arched neck of the pretty thoroughbred _screw_ she rode--upon
her companion’s arm as she spoke, and so fully occupied was she with her
object (namely, that of inducing Arthur to trust her with his sorrows),
that she was scarcely conscious of the warmth with which he, pressing
his hand upon the caressing fingers, mutely accepted the tribute of her
sympathy.
“Ah, then,” she said--the slight _soupçon_ of a brogue, as was often the
case when she was eager or excited, making itself apparent--“ah, then,
you will remember I am your friend, and say what it is that lies so
heavy on your heart?”
For a moment he looked at her doubtingly; and then, as though the words
broke from him as in his own despite, he said in a low husky tone:
“What purpose would it answer, what good would it effect either for you
or me, were you to learn that I am a villain?”