MEA CULPA.
A villain! Arthur Vavasour--the “fine,” noble-hearted, brilliant
gentleman to whom this simple-minded Honor had so looked up, and of the
loss of whose friendship she had been so afraid that she had “led him
on”--the silly woman knew she had--to fancy that she loved him better
than she did her husband--was he in very truth a man to be avoided,
shunned, and looked on with contempt? She could not, did not think it
possible. He was accusing himself unjustly, working on her compassion,
speaking without reflection: anything and everything she could believe
possible rather than that her friend should deserve the odious epithet
which had just, to her extreme surprise, smote upon her ears. Before,
however, she could give words to that surprise, Arthur spoke again, and
with an impetuosity which almost seemed to take away his breath poured
forth his explanation of the text.
“Yes, a villain! You may well look astonished; and I expect, when you
know all, that you will turn your back upon me, Honor, as all the world
must; that is, if the world _has_ to be taken into my confidence, which
I still trust it will not be. There are extenuating circumstances
though, as the juries say; and perhaps, if I had been better _raised_, I
shouldn’t have turned out such an out-and-out bad ’un as I have!”
He stopped for a moment to gulp down a sigh, and then proceeded thus:
“I think I told you once before how awfully I was in debt, and that it
was the burden of debt that drove me into marrying poor little Sophy
Duberly--the best girl in the world; but I _did not_ love her (more
shame for me), and whose affection, poor child, is so much more of a
torment than a pleasure to me. Well, enough of that: the worst is to
come; and if _you_ can tell me, after hearing it, that I am _not_ a
villain, why, I am a luckier dog, that’s all, than I think myself at
present!”
Honor, feeling called upon to make some response, muttered at this
crisis a few words which sounded like encouragement; but Arthur, too
entirely engrossed with his _mea culpa_ to heed this somewhat premature
absolution, continued hurriedly to pour forth the history of his sin.
“You would never believe, you who are so young, so ignorant of the
world’s wickedness, what the temptations are which beset a man. Pshaw! I
was a boy when I began life in London, and there were no bounds to my
extravagance, no limits to what you in your unstained purity would call
my guilt. I sometimes think that had my poor father lived, or even if I
had possessed a dear mother whose heart would have been made sore by the
knowledge of my offences, I _might_ (God knows, however; perhaps I was
bad in grain) have sinned less heavily, and have been this day
unburdened by the weight of _shame_ that oppresses me both by night and
day. Darling Honor!--you sweet warm-hearted child! why were there no
loving eyes like yours to fill with tears, in the days gone by, for me?
In those days only guilty women loved, or seemed to love; and not a
single good one prayed for or advised me. And so--God forgive me!--I
went on from bad to worse! For _them_--for those worthless creatures
whose names should not be even mentioned in your hearing--I expended,
weak vain idiot that I was, thousands upon thousands, which, being under
age, I raised from Jews at a rate so usurious that it could scarcely be
believed how they could dare to ask, or any greenhorn be such a fool and
gull as to accept, the terms. And then, reckless and desperate,
_afraid_ to confide in the mother who had never shown me a mother’s
tenderness, I played--I betted on the turf--I--in short, there is no
madness, no insane extravagance, of which, in my recklessness and almost
despair, I have not been guilty. But the worst is yet to come. You
remember that I bought Rough Diamond for a large sum of your husband. I
gave him a bill at six months’ date, renewable, for the amount; and
John--he behaved as well as man could do, I must say that--promised that
it should remain a secret that the colt was mine. Well, some little time
before my marriage--that marriage being a matter to me of absolute
necessity--old Duberly grew anxious and uneasy at my being so much at
the Paddocks. He had an idea, poor dear old fellow, that I could only be
there on account of matters connected in some way with racing. So he
wrote to my mother, of all people in the world, for an explanation, and
she naturally enough referred him to me. Then, Honor, came the moment of
temptation. I _could not_--I positively could not, with my expectations,
my almost certainty, and John Beacham’s too, of Rough Diamond’s
powers--part with him to any man living. So--it was an atrocious thing
to do; I felt it at the moment, and Heaven knows I have not changed my
opinion since--I allowed Mr. Duberly--allowed! humbug!--I told him that
the horse was not mine, and, liar that I was, that I had nothing to do
with the turf!”
“It was very bad,” murmured Honor; “but I suppose that if Mr. Duberly
had thought the contrary, he might have refused his consent to your
marriage, and then his daughter would have been wretched. Still, indeed,
indeed, you had better--don’t you think so now?--have been quite open
with him. If you had said--”
“Yes, yes, I know; but who ever does the right thing at the right time?
And, besides, I could not be sure, as you have just said, and knowing
old Duberly as I do now, that he would have allowed his daughter to be
my wife if he had been told the truth. His horror of what he calls
gambling is stronger than anything you can conceive. I hear him say
things sometimes which convince me that he would rather have given Sophy
to a beggar--a professional one, I mean--than to me; and if he _had_
acted as I feared, what, in the name of all that is horrible, was to
become of me? The tradesmen, the name of whose ‘little accounts’ is
legion, only showed me mercy, the cormorants! because of the rich
marriage which they believed was to come off; while the Jews, the
cent-percent fellows--but what do you know of bills and renewals, of the
misery of feeling that a day of reckoning is coming round--a horrible
day when you must either put the gold for which those devils would sell
their souls into their grasping hands, or by a dash of your pen plunge
deeper and deeper into the gulf of ruin and despair? But there are other
and more oppressive debts even than these, Honor--debts which I have no
hopes of paying, except through one blessed chance, one interposition of
Providence or fate--for I don’t suppose that Providence troubles itself
much with my miserable concerns--in my behalf.”
“And that chance?” put in Honor, imagining that he waited to be
questioned.
“That chance is the winning of the Derby to-morrow by Rough Diamond. I
have no bets, at least nothing but trifling ones, on the race; but if
the horse wins, his value will, as of course you know, rise
immeasurably, and with the money I can sell him for I shall be able, for
a time, to set myself tolerably straight. Your father--whose horse you
have, I suppose, hitherto fancied Rough Diamond to be--has, he tells me,
backed him for all that he is worth. My reason for not doing so has been
that I am not up to making a book, and that the debts of honour I
already groan under are sufficiently burdensome without incurring others
which I might not be able to pay.”
“How anxious you must be and unhappy!” Honor said pityingly. “But there
is one thing which puzzles me, and that is, how you could keep all this
a secret from your wife. Surely she would have been silent; surely she
might have softened her father, and made all smooth between you.”
“She might; but I could not risk it. Sophy is very delicate; and then
there has been such entire confidence between her and her father, that
it would have been almost impossible for her to keep anything from him.
No; as I have brewed, so I must bake. I can only hope the best; and
that, or the worst, will very soon be no longer matter for speculation.
The devil of it is--I beg your pardon, I am always saying something
inexcusable--but really the worst of it is, that the fact of my mother’s
intention of fighting my grandfather’s will is no longer a mystery. Old
Duberly’s fortune is, as all the world believes, very large; but at the
same time he is known to be what is called a ‘character,’ and that his
eccentricities take the turn of an extraordinary mixture of
penuriousness and liberality has been often the subject both of comment
and reproach with people who have nothing to do but to talk over the
proceedings of their neighbours. In short--for I am sure you must be
dreadfully tired of hearing me talk about myself--the world, my cursed
creditors included, would be pretty well justified in believing that my
worthy father-in-law would flatly refuse to pay a sum of something very
like fourteen thousand pounds for a fellow whose extravagance and love
of play were alone accountable for the debt; one, too, who has
nothing--no, not even a ‘whistle’--to show of all the things that he has
paid so dear for. Disgusting, is it not? And now that you have heard the
story,--I warned you, remember, that it was a vile one,--what comfort
have you to bestow on me? And can you, do you wonder at my calling the
world--my world, that is--a miserable one? and is it surprising that, in
spite of outward prosperity, of apparent riches, and what you call good
gifts, I should sometimes almost wish to exchange my lot with that of
the poorest of the poor, provided that the man in whose shoes I stood
had never falsified his word, or lived as I have done and do, with a
skeleton in the cupboard, of which another--one, too (forgive me, dear,
for saying so), whom I not greatly trust--keeps, and must ever keep, the
key?”
Honor paused for a moment ere she answered, and then said, in a gentle
and half-hesitating way (they had turned their horses’ heads some time
before, and had nearly arrived at Honor’s temporary home), “I almost
wish you had not told me this; but we are neither of us very happy, Mr.
Vavasour, and must learn to pity one another. Perhaps--I don’t know much
about such things--but perhaps I ought to say that you were wrong; only,
I am sure of this, that, tempted as you were, _I_ should have done no
better. It must have been so very difficult--so very, very frightening!
In your place I should never have had courage enough to speak the truth;
and I hope--O, how I hope!--both for your sake and my father’s, that
your horse may win! But am I to say,” she whispered, as with his arms
clasped round her slender waist he lifted her from the saddle, “am I to
say to him, to my father, that I know about Rough Diamond? I should be
so sorry, from thoughtlessness, to repeat anything you might wish
unsaid.”
He followed her into the narrow passage, where for a single moment they
were alone, and the craving within him to hold her to his heart was
almost beyond his power to conquer. Perhaps,--we owe so much sometimes
to simple adventitious circumstances,--but for the chance opening of a
door on the landing-place above, Honor would at last have been awakened
to the danger of treating Arthur Vavasour as a friend. She was very
sorry for him; but she would have been more distressed than gratified
had he pressed her to his heart with all the fervour of youthful
passion, and implored her to trust herself entirely to his tender
guardianship. On the contrary, seeing that he simply asked if Mrs.
Norcott were at home, and reminded Honor of her wish to see the famous
chestnut avenue, and of the practicability of realising her wishes,
pretty Mrs. John Beacham tripped upstairs before him with a lightened
heart, in search of the _chaperone_ who was ever so good-naturedly ready
to contribute to her pleasures.