JOHN BEACHAM MAKES A DISCOVERY.
People, especially imaginative ones, are apt to talk a good deal about
coming shadows and presentiments of evil, becoming especially diffuse on
the subject of the low spirits which they feel or fancy they have felt
previous to any great and dire calamity. In my humble opinion such
warnings lie entirely in the imagination, and, moreover, those who prate
about this gift of second sight are apt to forget the million cases of
_un_announced misfortunes to be set against the isolated instances of
anticipated evil. Amongst these million cases we may safely cite that of
Honor Beacham on the afternoon of that famous Tuesday when, with
complaisant Mrs. Norcott for her duenna, she strolled with Arthur
Vavasour under the avenue of arching trees, then in their rich wealth of
snowy beauty, which leads, as all the world well knows, to
“The structure of majestic frame
Which from the neighbouring Hampton takes its name.”
Had Honor either been a few years older, less constitutionally light of
heart, or more experienced in sorrow, she would never have been able so
entirely--as was the case with this giddy young woman--to cast off the
sense and memory of her woes. A reprieve after all is _but_ a reprieve;
and the consciousness that each moment, however blissful, serves only to
bring us nearer to its termination, ought to and does fill the minds of
the thoughtful with very sobering reflections. But, as I have just
remarked, Honor’s constitutionally happy spirits buoyed her up
triumphantly on the waters whose under-swell betokened a coming tempest,
and throughout the two swiftly-passing hours which she spent in the
beautiful park with Arthur Vavasour by her side, she, recklessly setting
memory and conscience at defiance, was far happier than she deserved to
be.
The “pale and penitential moon” was rising over the Hyde-Park trees as
the open carriage drove into Stanwick-street, and Honor, half pale and
remorseful too now that the hour was drawing near when she must _think_,
promised, in answer to Arthur’s whispered entreaty, that no commands, no
fatigue, no dangerous second thoughts, should cause her to absent
herself that night from the theatre, where she was to enjoy one of their
_last_ pleasures, he reminded her, together. She ran upstairs--a little
tired, flushed, eager, beautiful. Would there be--she had thought more
than once of _that_ as they drove homewards--would there be any letter
for her upon the table in the little sitting-room where what Mrs.
Norcott called a “heavy tea” was set out for their delectation? Would
there--she had no time to speculate upon chances; for her quick eye soon
detected a business-like-looking missive directed to herself, and lying
on the table in front of her accustomed seat.
With a feeling of desperation--had she delayed to strive for courage the
letter would probably, for that night at least, have remained
unread--she tore it open and perused the following lines, written in her
husband’s bold, hard, rather trade-like writing, and signed by the name
of John Beacham:
“DEAR HONOR,--I suppose you have some excuse to make for yourself,
though _I_ can see none any more than my mother does. You seem to
be going on at a fine rate, and a rate, I can tell you, that won’t
suit me. I have been at the house you lodge at to tell you that I
shall take you home with me to-morrow; so you had better be ready
early in the day. My mother thinks you must have been very badly
brought up to deceive us as you have done, and it will be the last
time that I shall allow you to spend a day under your father’s
roof.”
Poor Honor! Poor because, tottering, wavering between good and ill, it
required but a small impetus, given either way, to decide her course. If
it be true (and true indeed it is) that grievous _spoken_ words are wont
to stir up anger, still more certain is it that angry sentences written
in moments of fierce resentment, and read in a spirit of rebellion and
hurt pride, are apt to produce direful consequences. When Honor, with
the charm of Arthur Vavasour’s incense of adulation still bewildering
her brain, and with the distaste which the memory of old Mrs. Beacham’s
society inspired her with strong upon her, read her husband’s terse and
unstudied as well as not particularly refined epistle, the effect
produced by its perusal was disastrous indeed. Dashing the passionate
tears from her eyes, and with a wrench throwing off the dainty little
bonnet and the airy mantle in which Arthur Vavasour had told her she was
so exquisitely “got up,” she prepared herself to meet again at the New
Adelphi the man whose influence over her, aided by the unfortunate
circumstances in which she was placed, had more than _begun_ to be
dangerous. On that night, her _last_ night--but--and here Honor laid
down the brush with which she was smoothing out her rich rippling
tresses--but must it be indeed, she asked herself, the last night that
she would be free? The last night that she might hope to pass away from
the wretched thraldom, the detested daily, hourly worry of her unloved
and unloving mother-in-law? Must she indeed return (and at the unspoken
question her heart beat wildly, half with terror and half with the
joyful flutter of anticipated freedom), must she obey the _order_--for
order it was, and sternly, harshly given--to place herself once more in
Mrs. Beacham’s power, in the home which that domineering and unkind old
woman had rendered hateful to her?
To do Honor only justice, there was no glimmering, or rather, to use a
more appropriate word, no overshadowing, of guilt (of guilt, that is to
say, as regarded the straying of the thoughts to forbidden pleasures) in
her desire--a desire that was slowly forming itself into an
intention--of making a home for herself elsewhere than at the Paddocks.
She had arrived, with the unreflecting rapidity of impulsive youth, at
the decision that John had ceased to love, and was incapable of
appreciating either her beauty or her intellect. His mother, too--and in
this decision Honor was not greatly in the wrong--wished her anywhere
rather than in the house where _she_ had been accustomed to reign
supreme; and this being the case, and seeing also that poor Honor could
expect (for did not those two threatening letters proclaim the fact?)
nothing but unkindness on her return, there remained for her only the
alternative--so at least she almost brought herself to believe--of
separating herself from those with whom she lived in such continued and
very real unhappiness.
During all the time that was employed in tastefully arranging the hair
whose rich luxuriance scarcely needed the foreign aid of ornament, and
in donning the dress fashioned after the _décolletée_ taste of the day,
but which Mrs. Norcott--who entertained an unfortunate fancy, common to
bony women, of displaying her shoulders for the public benefit--assured
her was the _de rigueur costume_ for the theatre,--during all the time
that Honor was occupied in making herself ready for the evening’s
dissipation, the idea of “living alone” haunted and, while it cheered,
oppressed her. Of decided and fixed plans she had none; and whether she
would depart on the morrow, leaving no trace to follow of her
whereabouts, or whether she would delay her purpose till a few days
should have elapsed after her enforced return to Pear-tree House, were
subordinate arrangements which this misguided young woman told herself
that she would postpone for after consideration. For the moment, the
prospect of listening to the most exciting of dramas, and of seeing (for
she was easily pleased) the well-dressed audience of a popular theatre,
bore their full share in causing the future, as it hung before Honor’s
sight, to be confused and misty. The convenient season for thought was
to be _after_ this last of her much-prized pleasures; and when this
bouquet of the ephemeral delights by which her senses had been so
enthralled would be a memory and a vision of the past, the young wife
told herself that the time for serious reflection should begin.
An hour later, in a box on the pit tier, listening with every pulse (for
Honor was too new and fresh not to take an almost painful interest in
the half-tragic and perfectly-acted play) beating responsive to
newly-aroused sensations, the young wife of the Sandyshire farmer
attracted a good deal more attention and admiration than she--entirely
engrossed with the scene and the performance--could, vain daughter of
Eve though she was, have supposed to be possible. Her dress, made of
inexpensive materials, but of pure, fresh white, and unadorned, except
with a bunch of pale-blue convolvulus, matching another of the same
flower in the side of her small, fair head, was a triumph of
unpretending simplicity. Alas, however, for the fashions of these our
days! For well would it have been--before one pair of eyes, gazing on
Honor’s attractions from the pit, had rested on her beauty--could some
more efficient covering than the turquoise cross, suspended from her
rounded throat by a black velvet ribbon, have veiled her loveliness from
glance profane! Honor little knew--could she have had the faintest
surmise that so it was, her dismay would have been great indeed--Honor
little knew whose eyes those were that for a short ten minutes--no
more--were riveted, with feelings of surprise and horror which for the
moment almost made his breast a hell, upon the box in which she was
seated. John Beacham--for the individual thus roused to very natural
indignation was no other than that much-aggrieved husband--had learned
from chattering Lydia, on his visit to Stanwick-street, that Mrs.
Beacham was on that evening to betake herself to the New Adelphi
with--the name went through honest John’s heart like a knife--Mr.
Vavasour and Mrs. Norcott. They were gone--“_them three_,” Miss Lydia
said--to “’Ampton Court” for the afternoon; but the Colonel--he was
expected back before the others. Perhaps the gentleman--the parlour-maid
was totally ignorant of the visitor’s right to be interested in Mrs.
John Beacham’s movements--perhaps the gentleman would wait, or it might
be more convenient to him to call again when the Colonel would have come
back from the races. She didn’t believe that Colonel Norcott would go to
the theatre. She’d heard some talk of his going to the club; but if--
John, who had heard with dilated and angry ears the main points of these
disclosures, and who was very far from desiring to come in contact with
the man whom upon earth he most despised and disliked, waited to hear no
more, but, striding hastily away, surrendered himself, not only to the
gloomiest, but to the most bitter and revengeful thoughts. That this
man--unsuspicious though he was by nature, and wonderfully ignorant of
the wicked ways of a most wicked world--should at last be roused to a
sense of the terrible possibility that he was being deceived and wronged
was, I think, under the circumstances, only natural; and in proportion
to the man’s previous security--in proportion to his entire trust, and
complete deficiency of previous susceptibility regarding Honor’s
possible shortcomings--was the amount of almost uncontrolable wrath that
burned within his aching breast. For as he left that door, as he walked
swiftly down the street, and remembered how he had loved--ay,
worshipped--in his simple, inexpressive way, the lovely creature who was
no longer, he feared, worthy either of his respect or tenderness, no
judgment seemed too heavy, no punishment too condign for her who had so
outraged his feelings and set at naught his authority. Full of these
angry feelings, and boiling over with a desire to redress his wrongs,
John Beacham repaired to the tavern where he was in the habit, when
chance or business kept him late in London, of satisfying the cravings
of hunger. Alone, at the small table on which was served to him his
frugal meal of beefsteak and ale, John brooded over his misfortunes,
cursing in bitterness of spirit the hour when he first saw Honor Blake’s
bewildering face, and exaggerating--as the moments sped by, and his
blood grew warmed with one or two unaccustomed “tumblers”--the offences
of which she had been guilty.
He was roused from this unpleasant pondering by the clock that ticked
above the tall mantelshelf of the coffee-room sounding forth the hour of
eight. Eight o’clock, and John, who never passed a night if he could
help it in London, had not yet made up his mind where to spend the hours
which must intervene before his morning meeting with his wife. Enter the
doors of Colonel Norcott’s abode--save for the purpose of carrying away
the headstrong, deceitful girl whom he, John’s enemy, had so meanly
entrapped--the injured husband mentally vowed should be no act of his:
not again would he trust his own powers of self-command by finding
himself, if he knew it, face to face with the object of his hatred. From
the hour, and to that effect he registered a vow--from the hour when he
should regain possession of his wife, all communication of every kind
whatsoever should cease between Honor and the bold bad man in whose very
notice there was contamination and disgrace. From henceforward Honor, so
he told himself, would find a very different, and a far less yielding,
husband than the fool who had shut his eyes to what his mother’s had so
plainly seen. Henceforward the young fop and spendthrift, whom for the
boy’s father’s sake he had encouraged to visit at his house, should find
it less easy to make an idiot of him. Henceforward--but at this point in
his cogitation a sudden idea occurred to him; it was one that would in
all probability have struck him long before, and would certainly have
shortened the modest repast over which he had been lingering, if he had
entertained--which certainly was not yet the case--any doubts and
suspicions of a really grave character relative to Arthur Vavasour’s
intimacy with his wife. That she had deceived him with any design more
unpardonable than that of temporarily amusing herself was a thought
that had not hitherto found a resting-place within the bosom of this
unworld-taught husband; though that Honor had so deceived him was a blow
that had fallen very heavily upon him. Thoroughly truthful in his own
nature, and incapable of trickery, he had been so startled and engrossed
by the discovery in Honor’s mental idiosyncrasy of directly opposite
qualities, that for a while he was incapable of receiving any other and
still more painful impression concerning her. To some men--especially to
those unfortunately-constituted ones who see in “trifles light as air”
“consummation strong” of their own jealous fantasies--it may seem
strange that John Beacham should not have sooner taken the alarm, and
vowed hot vengeance against the destroyer of his peace. That he had not
done so was probably owing to a happy peculiarity in his constitution.
He was a man too well aware of his own hasty temperament to rush without
reflection into situations to which I can give no better or more
expressive name than that of _scenes_. To quarrel with, also, or to
offend the son of Cecil Vavasour would have been a source of infinite
pain to the man whose respect and affection for his dead landlord would
end but with his life; his wish, therefore, that Arthur had been and was
no more to Honor than the companion, in all innocence, of her girlish
follies, was the father to the conjecture as well as to the belief that
so it was.
Probably, had John been returning for business purposes that day to the
Paddocks, the idea which did then and there occur to him, of hurrying
off to the New Adelphi, in order to _judge for himself_--as if in such a
case any man could judge justly!--of Honor’s conduct and proceedings,
would never have entered his head. It was a sore temptation only to look
again, sooner than he had expected, at his wife’s beautiful face; and
as, in memory as well as in anticipation, he dwelt upon it, the strong
man’s heart softened towards the weak child-like creature whom he had
sworn to honour as well as to love, and it would have required but one
smile from her lips, one pressure of her tender arms, to persuade him
once again that _she_ was perfect, and that if fault or folly there had
been, the error lay in himself alone.
Perhaps in all that crowded house--amongst that forest of faces that
filled the boxes and gallery to the roof--there was not one, save that
honest countryman, whose attention was not fixed and absorbed that night
on one of the most sensational melodramas that have ever drawn tears
from weak human eyes. At another time and under other circumstances John
Beacham who, strong-bodied and iron-nerved man though he was, could
never keep from what he called making a fool of himself at a dismal
play, would not have seen unmoved the wondrous tragic acting of one of
the very best (alas, that we must speak of him in the past!) of our
comic actors: but John Beacham, on the night in question, was not in the
mood to listen with interest to the divinest display of eloquence that
ever burst from human lips. He was there for another and less exalted
purpose: there as a spy upon the actions of another--there to feast his
eyes (for, as I said before, in spite of all her errors, his heart was
very soft towards the one woman whom he loved) on the wife who had
defied his authority, and, possibly, made him an object of ridicule.
He had not been long in the unconspicuous place he had chosen before,
not far removed from him--in a box, as I before said, on the pit
tier--he descried his unsuspecting wife. Such a start as he gave when
first he saw her! Such a start that, had not his neighbours on the next
seat been fully occupied with the Stage, they must have perceived and
wondered at his agitation. At first he could hardly bring himself to
believe--so changed was she, and so wondrously beautified--that it could
in reality be his own Honor whom he saw there, radiant in her glorious
loveliness, and with that loveliness--ah, poor, poor John
Beacham!--displayed, in a manner which almost took away his breath, to
the gaze of hundreds upon hundreds of admiring eyes.
Until that moment--the moment when he saw her the admired of all
beholders, in the evening toilet which so enhanced her attractions, it
may be doubted whether John had ever entirely realised the exceeding
beauty of the wife whom he had chosen. In her simple morning-dress, and
especially in the little coquettish hat which he had sometimes seen her
wear, the honest farmer was quite willing to allow that Honor was
prettier by far than nine out of ten of the pretty girls that tread the
paths of life; but it was in the dress, or rather undress, that evening
dissipation rendered (according to Mrs. Norcott’s dictum) necessary that
young Mrs. Beacham became--in her husband’s eyes--not only a marvel and
miracle of loveliness, but a source of such exceeding pain to that
inexperienced rustic that in his agony of jealous susceptibility he
clenched his muscular hands together till the blood well-nigh burst from
his finger-ends with the strong though all involuntary compression of
his fingers.
For there was more than the sight of those white shoulders to rouse the
demon of anger in his breast; there was more than the memory of the
woman’s deceit to harden his heart against her; for beside, or rather
behind her, leaning over those same white shoulders in most lover-like
and devoted fashion, stood Arthur Vavasour, the man of whom his mother
had in her rude fashion warned him, the man whose father had been not
only his (John Beacham’s) friend, but his benefactor!
Whispering in her ear, calling the crimson blush to her fair cheek--the
husband saw it all! And ah, how at that moment poor John hated that dark
handsome face--the face of one looking so like a tempter sent to try the
faith and virtue of an angel only too ready, so it seemed, to fall!
Will any of my readers--any, that is to say, who have in their own
persons borne the burden and the heat of human passions--marvel that
this man, spurred by the spectacle before him--the spectacle not of
_fictitious_ crimes and sorrows, for there was a side-scene in which a
deeper melodrama was being enacted for his benefit--should have “lost
his head” under the pressure of such unwonted excitement?
Something--it was not common sense or reason, for he was long past any
safeguard they could render him--_something_ retained the man, whose
passions were so rapidly growing to be his master, in the place which,
between two elderly playgoers who were entirely absorbed by the “scene,”
had been assigned to him--retained him, that is to say, till such time
as, the act being over, he could move from his place without causing
public excitement and commotion.
When the curtain fell, and the rushing, rustling sound betokened that
the spectators, over-wrought and excited, were stretching their limbs
and refreshing their brains by a change of scene and posture, John
Beacham, following a sudden and uncontrollable impulse, and with no
fixed purpose within his brain or choice of words upon his lips,
staggered like a drunken man to the box where Honor, breathless with
eagerness and her fair face flushed with excitement, had just--in entire
and happy ignorance of her husband’s proximity--turned her glossy head
to talk over the startling incidents of the play with Arthur Vavasour.