“AS WELL AS CAN BE EXPECTED.”
The great day of the sporting year, the “maddest,” if not exactly the
“merriest” day, was close at hand; and the world, both high and low,
rich and poor, one _against_ another, were on the _qui-vive_ of
excitement and the very tip-toe of expectation. Among these variously
interested beings, one of those who had in reality most at stake, was
Arthur Vavasour. Fortune, honour, credit, all were involved, and that to
no limited extent, in the winning of the Derby race by that big-boned,
coarse-made, but wonderfully _staying_ horse, Rough Diamond. Time was
(before the master passion had laid hold of, grappled with, and finally
taken possession of this impulsive and ill-trained young man) when the
result of the morrow’s racing would have occupied his every thought, and
would have seemed to his eyes the most important of all earthly
considerations. And all-important indeed it was; for spurred on thereto
by money difficulties, and being but of a weak and unstable character,
Arthur Vavasour had, as the reader must have already gathered, deceived,
and to a certain degree outwitted, the shrewd and rather obstinate old
man, whose ideas of honour and morality were so widely different from
his own. By marrying Sophy Duberly he had for a time escaped the
consequences of his own reckless extravagance, and of the gaming
propensities, the knowledge of which would, as he well knew, have
entirely prevented the union between himself and one of the richest
heiresses of the day; but happiness had not followed upon his sin, nor
had a sense of security been the consequence of his deception.
That Mr. Duberly was not wholly without his misgivings on the score of
the young aristocrat on whom his daughter’s maiden affections were fixed
was evidenced by the fact that “nothing was left,” as the saying is, in
Arthur’s “power.” The allowance that “old Dub” made to his future
heiress was liberal to profuseness; and Arthur himself, had he desired
such an indulgence, might have had his path paved with gold, provided
always that he, the retired Manchester man, was perfectly _au courant_
of how the money was disposed of, and that his dearly-beloved Sophy trod
the same brilliant way, side by side and lovingly with the partner of
her life. More than this, however, for his son-in-law at least, old Dub
was never likely to do. To have his penny-worth for his penny, to keep
his accounts regularly and systematically, were, in his opinion, among
the first duties of man; and any _known_ neglect of these duties by his
daughter’s husband would have annoyed and disquieted him. Well aware of
this “absurdity,” as he considered it, on the part of his father-in-law,
Arthur had for some short time after his marriage gone through certain
minor forms calculated to convey the impression that he was a “business
man.” A room, called by courtesy his study, had been devoted to his use;
and a book dignified by the title of an “account-book” was disfigured by
certain scrawling entries in Arthur’s large illegible hand, and was
supposed to contain a record of Mr. Vavasour’s daily expenditure.
Happily for him, old Duberly had hitherto either taken his business
talents for granted, or, like many other good-natured, as well as
slightly indolent people, had shrunk from discoveries which might only
tend to his own discomfort, and the possible unhappiness of his child.
Sophy--the darling of his age, and the sunshine of his luxurious
home--was blithe and joyous as a bird which has just found its mate; and
this being so, why was he to disturb her from her security, and fill
her unsuspecting mind with doubts and fears which never might be
realised? As long as Sophy, who was a very _girl_ still in simplicity
and buoyant spirits, went singing about the house (a little heavy in
step now, poor thing, for she was very near to her hour of pain and
travail), old Duberly was well content to let everything remain as it
was, and to hope the best regarding his young and outwardly very
likeable son-in-law. That there was any _great_ harm in one who seemed
so frank, and who was too young as well as too well-born (the Manchester
man thought a great deal of birth) to have had either much opportunity
or much temptation to sin, Mr. Duberly never for a moment suspected; but
in spite of this trust, and gladly as he would have entirely confided in
his daughter’s husband, there lingered, almost unknown to himself, a
grain--the very shadow of a shade it was--of doubt; a doubt born of the
former visits of Arthur Vavasour to the Paddocks, where lived the most
beautiful woman that Mr. Duberly had ever seen, and where the “tempting”
yearlings put on strength and muscle for the arduous work that lay
before them. That such a doubt did linger in the old man’s mind was a
fact of which he himself was almost ignorant. Had any human being
ventured to hint a syllable in disparagement of Arthur Vavasour the
blood of the quondam cotton lord would have been up at once, and he
would have indignantly repelled the insinuations of the enemy. According
to his own belief he had placed implicit faith in Arthur’s assurances
that the turf and he were strangers, and that his “occasional” visits to
Pear-tree House were either purely business ones, or were the natural
consequences of his dead father’s respect and liking for honest,
straightforward John Beacham.
It was the certainty that his father-in-law had so believed, and in
consequence of that belief had consented to the already arranged
marriage, which was the main cause of Arthur’s anxiety that Rough
Diamond should, by winning the Derby, diminish the chance--a very
slender one he hoped and trusted--of Andrew Duberly’s discovering the
trick--for trick it was--that had been played upon him. “Manchester man”
though he was, and somewhat rough in manner--to say nothing of his
living out of the pale of Arthur’s “world”--that young man nevertheless,
such is the force of moral worth, dreaded, more than he would have cared
to own, the betrayal to his wife’s father of the secret which, for all
his seeming carelessness, had not lain altogether lightly on his bosom.
His debts--barring those of _honour_, considerable though they
were--troubled him but little. Tradesmen, however careful of their own
interests, will never press inconveniently for payment when they know
for a certainty that in the family of their debtor there are assets
sufficient to defray ten thousandfold the “little account” which added
interest is yearly swelling. It was the floating paper, his debts to
so-called friends, and above all, as I have just said, it was the
guarding of his disgraceful secret, which, even under other
circumstances than the present, would, on the day before the Derby, have
made Arthur Vavasour’s brow a clouded one by day, and broken his natural
sleep by night. And even now--madly, passionately as he loved the woman
of whom it was guilt even to think, and from whom, to his intense
annoyance, he had been so suddenly and violently separated--Arthur could
not avoid the frequent recurrence of the oppressive thoughts connected
with his own falsehood, and the morrow’s all-important event. Even on
his way home on foot from the theatre--walking, contrary to his custom,
because he desired time for thought previous to his return to home and
Sophy--even then, with the memory of Honor’s bewildering beauty still
fresh within his brain, reflections born of his complicated troubles
forced themselves upon his unwilling mind. What would happen to him if
the favourite--a chance quite, of course, upon the cards--were
distanced? What would happen to him if--and the idea was not by any
means a novel one--he could not trust the unprincipled associate in his
scheme? what would happen if Honor’s father should in some way or
other--Arthur had never gone the lengths of guessing _how_--play him at
the eleventh hour false?
These and sundry other such-like questions were easy enough--as
tormenting questions usually are--to ask, but the responses to them were
not in the present case forthcoming. Plodding on, with anything but a
young man’s elastic spring, Arthur wended his way to Hyde-park-gardens;
and grievous as the truth must seem, there was not, in the certainty
that one warm woman’s heart would throb with joy at his return, a drop
of balm to soothe the wounds from which he suffered. And reason good was
there that so it should be, for those wounds were of his own
inflicting--dealt by his own guilty hand, and not to be healed save by
the slow and painful process of repentance and atonement. Slowly, then,
and with a troubled spirit, this man, who to the world’s eye appeared
one of the most favoured of Fortune’s adopted darlings, proceeded on his
way. Arrived at the grand spacious house, with its marble portico, its
solid pillars, and its sculptured ornamentation, which he called his
home, he paused for a moment, looking up with some feeling of undefined
surprise at the more than usual amount of light which found its way
through the closed shutters of the several windows. Almost before,
however, he had time to lay his hand on the bell, the door was softly
opened by a servant who had evidently been on the watch for his arrival,
and a low voice--the voice of the hall-porter, softened and subdued in
compliment to the momentous occasion--informed the young master of the
house that Mrs. Vavasour had half an hour before given birth to a fine
boy, and was “as well as could” reasonably “be expected.”