MRS. BEACHAM REFUSES TO FORGET.
“Well, mother,” John said airily, and with the laudable desire of making
things pass off with ease and comfort to all parties--“well, mother,
we’ve got Honor back again, you see; but I’m sorry you got up. I tried
to keep Hannah quiet, but she’s got a foot like a cart-horse, and a
voice like a peacock, hang her!”
“I wasn’t asleep, my dear,” sighed the old lady, seating herself with a
dignified air--the effect of which was slightly neutralised by the
above-named dressing-gown and cap--“I wasn’t asleep; it ain’t easy to be
with all that is going on;” and she folded her aged hands before her
with an air of patient resignation, which was not without its effect
upon poor John. For that excellent man, at this crisis of his hitherto
unexciting life, was really very greatly to be pitied. Longing, above
all things, for peace and quietness--loving his young wife with a deep
and passionate fondness, and sincerely wishing that his respected parent
might find a dutiful daughter in his precious Honor--it was to him a
terrible thought that a “scene” of some kind must inevitably take place
before matters could run smoothly again between his womankind.
“Mother,” he said desperately, “let bygones be bygones. Honor has been
foolish enough, I know, and she had better not have made things out
different from what they were; but there’s no manner of use hammering on
about what’s past and over. So, Honor--there’s a good girl--just tell
mother you’re sorry for what’s happened, and let us all be friends
again. It’s the best way, to my thinking, times and over.”
He laid his hand very lightly on his wife’s bare shoulder as he spoke,
giving the slightest of impulses to his touch; but, to his dismay,
Honor, instead of obeying that impulse, recoiled from the pressure of
his hand, and said in a low tone, but resolutely:
“I have done no harm. I am sorry, of course, if she is angry; but, John,
you do not know--if you did, you would understand it all better--what
your mother wrote to me. I would do anything for you--I would, indeed,”
she added passionately; “but _she_ hates me--she always did; and I will
not--no, I _will_ not humble myself before her!”
“You _will_ not? There’s for you!” cried the indignant old woman, roused
to fury by Honor’s resistance to her husband’s wishes. “Didn’t I tell
you how it would be? Didn’t I say that you had got rather more than you
could manage in milady there? Why, only to look at her is enough, and
more than enough for me. If _you_ call _that_”--and she pointed with a
fierce trembling finger at Honor’s polished shoulders--“if you call
_that_ the dress of a modest woman, why you are a bigger fool, John,
than I took you for. I should have liked to see _my_ husband’s face if
_I_ had made such a wanton of myself as to--”
“Come, come, mother, enough said,” interposed John. “I don’t like the
way that young women get themselves up nowadays a bit better than you
do; but she’s in the fashion--Honor is, and anyway I won’t have her
called hard names even by you.--Honey, my dear,” he went on more gently,
as he noticed his wife’s quivering lip, “you mustn’t be so foolish as to
think what you said just now. Mother doesn’t hate you; she couldn’t be
so wicked, letting alone that you’re not one that the worst woman--which
God knows she isn’t--could dislike. So, now _do_, for Heaven’s sake, let
us have done with it all. You’re looking as pale and as cold”--wrapping
the opera-cloak round her carefully, in order to conceal the smooth
white shoulders which were so obnoxious in his mother’s sight--“as cold
as death, my dear. Here, take a cup of tea; and, mother, suppose you
have a drop of something warm?--Here, Hannah, bring in the
‘matarials’--as Joe Connor calls ’em--and let’s make ourselves
comfortable.”
His voice--it was a very pleasant one at all times--sounded loud and
cheerful through the ill-lighted room--it was a voice that his old
mother dearly loved to hear; but, just then, so uncongenial were her own
feelings, and so hardened was her heart against the girl whom she
_really_ believed to be “gay and giddy,” if not worse, that she refused
to be softened by her son’s cordial tones.
“You may do as you please,” she said, rising in what was intended for a
stately manner from her chair, “but _I_ shall not remain in the same
room with Mrs. John. Hate her, indeed! I never heard such words. ‘He
that hateth his brother is a murderer!’--and nobody before ever evened
me to that. I wish you good-night, John; and I hope that God will give
you both better thoughts. I may forgive--but it isn’t likely I should
forget.”
The door closed behind the jealous wrong-headed old woman; and John,
preparing mechanically to mix his nightly jorum of weak
brandy-and-water, heaved a more weary sigh than had often escaped his
lips. There was something touching in the sound--proceeding as it did
from one so habitually (at least to outward semblance) cheerful and
_insouciant_--and Honor, hearing it, suddenly felt penitent and
sympathetic.
“I am so sorry,” she said softly. “I know I was wrong--and, John, I
should be so much happier if your mother would be kind to me. It was
more that--I mean more because of her--that I seemed to care to stay
away--I--”
“There, there, my dear,” he said, his arm round her waist, and drawing
her towards him tenderly, “don’t bother yourself any more about it. We
must all try to bear and forbear; and mother is old now--and old people
have their fancies. You, poor little thing,” gazing pityingly on the wet
eyelashes that swept her pallid cheeks, “I would make you happy, God
knows, if I could. You are such a child still--and somehow, it seems to
me that you were not made for this rough life of ours;” and John,
loosening the hand that pressed the slender waist, sighed again even
more discontentedly than before.