OUT AT SEA.
The sun rose bright and cloudless on the day following Honor’s return;
and John Beacham, whose hands were, as usual, brimful of business, and
who moreover had decided, after a short consultation with himself, that
his womankind were more likely to come to a good understanding without
him, betook himself, immediately after breakfast, to the hay-fields,
which were ripe for the scythe, and only waited the master’s fiat to lie
in promising swaths upon the rich meadow-land which called John Beacham
owner.
Honor saw him depart with a weary sigh. The prospect of a lengthened
_tête-à-tête_ with the stern old lady, whose brow never relaxed for a
passing moment from its rigidity, and who had not even vouchsafed a
distant “good-morning” in answer to her civil greeting, was a penance
which it almost made her blood run cold to think of. Her own
courage--the temporary boldness which was the offspring of hurt feeling
and great but temporary excitement--had oozed out either at the ends of
her taper fingers, or with the tears with which she had watered her
morning pillow. When she found herself alone with her dreaded foe, poor
Honor had not--as the saying goes--a word to throw at a dog; she was in
the mood to cry her eyes out, and in the temper to long earnestly for
pity and tenderness. One kind and encouraging word, one look even of
sympathy, would have brought the poor thing on her knees before her
natural enemy, and all might have been well between the pair whom God
had joined together in bonds that nought save sin could sever.
For three days--three miserable days--during which John, engrossed by
business cares, and hoping, as sanguine men in spite of appearances
will, that all would come right at last, appeared to take no notice of
the silence only broken by sarcastic speeches, and by the “talking at”
(which to some women is a positive accomplishment) on his mother’s part,
which reigned between her and Honor--during those three miserable days,
the seeds destined to produce very bitter fruit were being sown with
terrible certainty in Honor Beacham’s breast. She was the last woman in
the world to endure without evil consequences the description of torture
to which she was being subjected. Fond of popularity--eager to be
loved--impulsive--passionate if you will, this girl, who could only be
what she called angry for a passing moment, would, for anyone who, to
use her own expression, have been “kind to her,” have been the most
docile and tenderest of friends and dependents.
But unfortunately--_most_ unfortunately, as the sequel will prove--it
was not in Mrs. Beacham’s nature to forgive. She believed herself to be
a Christian; she thought, so little did she know her own feelings, that
she harboured neither malice nor hatred in her heart, but all the while
there was scarcely a harder (and certainly there could scarcely be a
harder _seeming_) idiosyncrasy than that which was owned by this
_soi-disant_ believer in the Christian faith. Mercy for Honor--pity for
the wicked wife who had shown herself so false and flighty--she had
none. The pale delicate face, bending over her woman’s-work, appealed to
this unrelenting woman’s heart in vain. The days--even supposing them
ever to have existed--when Mrs. Beacham knew what temptation was, had
long since passed away, and were forgotten; all she remembered was that
_she_ had through all her married life been blameless, industrious, and
submissive, and that these virtues endowed her with the right to be the
judge and condemner of others was neither to be removed nor shaken.
Poor Honor, poor little impressionable, impulsive girl! Her spirits felt
very heavy, and her heart beat with almost painful quickness when, on
the fourth morning after her compulsory return, Mrs. Beacham brought her
work (it was her first time of doing so) and established herself
alarmingly near to the broad old-fashioned window-seat, Honor’s favorite
and accustomed working-place. Dragging after her the big sheet on which
she was about to perform the housewifely operation of “turning,” her
tortoiseshell spectacles fixed on her keen hawklike nose, John’s mother
did indeed appear in the light of a terrible object to her timid and
easily-subdued daughter-in-law. Honor did not possess (and well she knew
her weakness) the courage requisite for self-defence; and during the
short period of silence which followed on Mrs. Beacham’s establishment
of herself in front of her own special little work-table, Honor, had she
dared, would gladly have taken flight, and betaking herself to her room,
have there waited in silence and solitude for her husband’s return. But
to make this move required an amount of hardihood of which poor Honor
was utterly incapable. She felt entirely subdued--oppressed beyond the
power of description, by the very presence of her mother-in-law.
Whatever resolutions--whatever plans of resistance she might have
formed whilst alone, or in the presence only of her husband, faded away
entirely when those light-gray, aged, but still penetrating eyes were
fixed upon her, and when she knew with the intuition of fear that Mrs.
Beacham was about to give her what is vulgarly called a “piece of her
mind.”
The dreaded exordium began after this fashion:
“When you was a child, Mrs. John,” the old lady said, pushing up her
spectacles and peering at Honor through her half-closed eyelids--“when
you was a child, did you get any Bible learning? and was anybody good
enough to teach you your catechism?”
“They were,” Honor replied, opening her large blue eyes in wonder, and
using, to the old lady’s disgust, the peculiar Irish form of assent
which, singularly enough, seemed indigenous in this girl who had had so
little experience of her fatherland--“they were;” and then she stopped,
poor child, marvelling greatly to what these singular opening questions
were about to lead.
“Well, then,” continued Mrs. Beacham, spreading out two bony hands in
simulated horror, “all I can say is, that _I_ can see _no_ excuse for
you. If, besides being what I won’t defile my lips by naming, you had
been turned out into the streets, as many of them creatures are, without
eddication, and without knowing how to read your Bible, I _might_ have,
and so might John have, passed over something; but when a gell has been
taught her dooty, and, more than that, when a gentleman as is
respectable is good enough to make an honest woman of her, all I can say
is, that when she can behave as you have done, when she can lie and
deceive, and act light with other men, why she ought--and there ain’t a
decent person that wouldn’t say as much--she ought to be ashamed of
herself!”
To this coarse attack Honor vouchsafed no reply. The violence of
invective employed by the determined old woman positively stunned her.
The only feeling of which she was at all conscious was one of anger, of
anger stirred up by grievous words in as gentle a breast as ever
belonged to woman. The silence with which her words were received was
very irritating to the speaker. She had looked forward, with very
considerable satisfaction, to the moment when she should overwhelm her
recreant daughter-in-law with a fire of well-merited reproaches; and
now, to her infinite annoyance, her shots seemed to miss fire, and not a
single one was returned as a proof that the volley had in any way been
felt by the enemy.
“If anyone had told me,” the old lady went on to say, speaking very
calmly and deliberately now, and as if determined that every word
should tell--“if anyone had told me, fifteen months ago, that my son’s
wife would bring his family--_my_ family, that is to say, that has lived
respectable time out of mind--to disgrace, I wouldn’t, no, _I wouldn’t_
have believed it! It’s the first time (though I say it, as perhaps
shouldn’t) that a Turton or a Beacham has numbered such a one as you
among them; and I never thought to live to see the day when folks could
point at one as bears my name, and even her to a wanton!”
The word was out at last, the ugly shocking word that struck through
Honor’s brain like a knife, and which, when it had passed the lips that
spoke it, the irritated woman, when it was too late, possibly wished
unsaid. In very truth, there was something startling in the sight of
Honor’s livid face and flashing eyes, something almost painful even to
the unsympathising witness of her agony in the change which a few
outspoken syllables had wrought in that young girl’s countenance.
Rising suddenly from her chair, tossing aside with reckless hand the
woman’s-work with which she had been occupied, her pretty taper fingers
pressed against her throat (for there was a tightening there that felt
like suffocation), Honor Beacham stood erect before her stepmother.
“You are wicked!” she stammered forth. “A wicked, cruel woman! John
would not have used me so--John knows I do not deserve such words. I
will go to him--to my husband--I will--”
“You will do nothing of the kind. If you do not know your duty, I must
teach it to you,” almost shrieked the passionate old woman, losing all
command over herself, as the idea of Honor’s appealing to John against
his mother presented itself to her mind. “You think, do you, that
John--that _my_ son is going to indulge you in all your good-for-nothing
ways? Why, girl, he said to me himself that it was high time something
was done to bring milady to her senses; he said--”
But Honor--nervous, excited, and scarcely mistress of her
actions--waited to hear no more. With a cry like that of a hare hard
pressed by the hounds, she rushed from the room, leaving the startled
old woman to ponder with some trepidation on the mischief she had
wrought. Long, and not very comfortably, did she think over her words;
but after a considerable amount of putting two and two together, and no
little leaning towards herself as an oracle to be respected, the balance
of opinion being on the whole decidedly in favour of her own
proceedings, Mrs. Beacham arrived at the conclusion that she was fully
justified in speaking as she had done to the erring Honor. Judging that
strong-minded woman according to the average truthfulness of her sex,
John’s respected parent could not, on the whole, be accused, while
quoting John’s indignant words, of the sin of mendacity. According to
the letter of those words, she was justified in repeating as a fact her
son’s awful threat--the one which more than any other of her angry
vituperations had told upon Honor’s feelings--the threat, namely, that
her husband would, instigated thereto by his mother, bring his pretty
young wife “to her senses.”
There was something very vague and terrible in this menace; and Honor,
after locking the door of the pretty bedroom which John, little more
than one short year before, had taken such pleasure in making ready for
his darling, brooded over them with a sick heart and miserably. She was
utterly in the dark, as I have already and more than once endeavoured to
explain, regarding her husband’s character generally, and his feelings
towards herself in particular. Could anyone at that particular
moment--when she was brooding over her wrongs--over her husband’s
coldness of heart and heat of temper; over his cruelty in delivering her
over to the tormentor, _id est_, the mother who bore him, and her own
misery in being condemned to live _en tiers_ with two people who
disliked and despised her--had anyone, I repeat, at that especial moment
whispered in Honor Beacham’s ear that John the _in-compris_ possessed in
reality the very tenderest of hearts; that his apparent coldness towards
herself was the result of a keen sense of personal and educational
inferiority; and that a few sweet smiles on her dear lips, and a few
kind loving words whispered in his ear, would make poor John not only
the happiest, but the most demonstrative of husbands, Honor would simply
have told that well-intentioned comforter that he knew not what he said,
and, turning on her restless pillow, would have sternly refused to
credit the fact that she was otherwise than a victim.
I fear me much that the behaviour of Honor at this crisis of her life
will find few to excuse it; and yet to the thinking of the lenient there
will be found some plausible reasons for her folly. In the first place,
she was both mentally and bodily out of health. Of neither truths,
patent though they were, had she any real or wholesome suspicion. She
was too young, too ignorant of cause and effect, to be aware that the
life she had been leading had thrown her into a mental fever, the which,
seeing that it was a malady of weakness, required the nicest care and
the most judicious of treatments in order to effect its cure. Neither
could she give a name to the _malaise_, showing itself in languor, in
nervous headaches, and in occasional heart-palpitations; all of which,
with the carelessness so common to the young, she had hitherto allowed
to pass unnoticed. That she was in no frame, either of mind or body, to
do battle successfully against the violence of her own feelings and
forebodings is very certain; and as certain is it that, though she did
not yet what is called _love_ the man who had conspired so selfishly
against her peace, the image and the memory of Arthur Vavasour formed no
small portion of her troubled thoughts, as she lay sobbing on her bed,
and repeating to herself that she could not, would not bear the lot that
lay before her.
“To the old,” as someone--I know not who--has truthfully said, “sorrow
is sorrow, while to the young it is despair.” Despair at least as they
to whom sorrow is new count the extreme of human suffering. The smallest
insect, as the inspired poet tells us, “feels a pang as great as when a
giant dies;” and Honor, frail little vessel as she was, could, she
believed, endure no heavier or more wearing woe than that of submitting
in her fresh young beauty--the beauty that Arthur Vavasour
worshipped--to the tyranny of her mother-in-law, and the cold
displeasure of a husband who loved her not.
As she dwelt--with the pleasure which under twenty is so often felt in
the indulgence of a mournful self-pity--on her unmitigated woes, the
idea, once before entertained, and never wholly forgotten, of finding a
home for herself--of working for her bread--of escaping from the
tyranny, the evil-speaking, the taunts and evil suspicions of her
mother-in-law, flashed through her mind. At first, with something very
like a shock--for to Honor the leaving of her husband’s house and home
appeared (distinction without a difference though it was) a far more
adventurous and desperate act than that which she had before, with
tolerable calmness, contemplated--the act, that is to say, of separating
herself whilst under her father’s roof from the husband who, in her
opinion, neither loved, appreciated, nor understood her; from the man
who could see her wronged, insulted, and put upon by the hard-tempered
old woman, who, from the hour of her introduction to Updown Paddocks,
had never ceased to make Honor’s life a misery and a burden to her;--the
act and deed of remaining hidden in some obscure London lodging, had, as
I said before, seemed simple and easy enough to the young wife when,
encouraged and buoyed-up by the devoted attentions of Arthur Vavasour,
she vaguely contemplated a future in which Mrs. Beacham had no share,
but which was to be cheered by the unfailing friendship (Honor knew so
little of men’s nature that she had faith in constancy, and dreamed of
friendship as a delicious possibility) of her kind and disinterested
adviser. But the prospect before her was a trifle changed by the point
of view from which she now contemplated it; and far greater courage and
strength of mind seemed required to induce her to leave her husband’s
home than had been needed to enable her to stay away from it. As her
fever of passion cooled, so did the power within her to take a step so
decided and so desperate fade away likewise. Honor’s nature was
naturally an indolent one--indolent and yielding. Should she be led, by
the force of her own rebellious temper, to do that which would blight
her name and ruin her hopes of future happiness, the guilt of that act
would lie--as such guilts so often do--more at the door of another than
at her own. Already the quiet tears of self-pity and womanly submission
were taking the place of hysterical sobs and passionate ejaculations;
already she was subsiding into the dull calm which is the natural
consequence of over-excitement, when the voice, harsh-sounding and
dreaded, of the domestic tyrant--whose will had grown to be law, and
whose ways were not as the ways of her young daughter-in-law--smote
suddenly on Honor’s sensitive ear, and awoke again within her the evil
spirit of resistance. Mrs. Beacham was only, at that unlucky moment, in
the exercise of her right; she was but scolding the girl-of-all-work,
the female “odd boy” of the establishment, for some trifling neglect of
her multifarious duties; but the evil done by that loud high-pitched
voice was as surely effected, and its baneful influence on the
listener’s mind was as great and fatal, as though the most inexcusable
deed of injustice and cruelty had been then and there by John’s
hasty-tempered parent committed. Rising in a sitting posture on her bed,
Honor, with shaking fingers, pushed the hair back from her aching
forehead, and repeating to herself more than once, as if in excuse for
her premeditated sin, that she could not, could not bear her life at
Updown, she slowly slid down her feet upon the floor, and (half
mechanically at first) commenced her preparations for departure. For
departure? Yes; but to what place, and with what ulterior end, she knew
not. All she cared for was escape--escape from the sight and sound of
the woman who had always hated her, and who, as Honor firmly believed,
had begun to undermine her husband’s love and trust, and would
eventually succeed in turning his heart against her. To live any longer
under the same roof with one who had accused her of the vilest sin--who
had reproached her in the coarsest terms, for acts of which she was
utterly incapable--was, as Honor kept repeating to herself, more than
she could endure. _More_ unhappy, the foolish child believed she could
not be. It might be hard, trying at first, and humiliating, to work as a
servant, or in other ways, for her bread; but anything, to her then
thinking, was better than her present life; and Arthur Vavasour--(it is
to be feared that, innocent though in truth she was, that young
gentleman played rather a conspicuous part in the programme of her
future plans)--Arthur Vavasour would be ever at hand to aid, advise, and
encourage her. On one subject only did Honor from the first, and wholly
without reservation, make up her disturbed and rather bewildered mind.
She would not, under any circumstances, take refuge under her father’s
roof. That John would immediately commence the strictest search to
discover her whereabouts Honor was well assured, and therefore it was
above all things necessary for the preservation of her secret, that in
Stanwick-street they should know positively nothing of her proceedings.
The only individual--alas, for this poor silly girl--this frail, weak
vessel about to put to sea without a pilot, and with no chart or compass
to guide it on its way--the only individual to whom the mystery of her
setting sail on her adventurous cruise was to be no mystery, was the
last person in the world to whom she should have confided the secrets of
her life. To Arthur Vavasour--to the man whose “brotherly” kindness (he
had been very cautious in his love-making of late, and Honor had in
consequence grown proportionally off her guard)--to Arthur Vavasour only
would she at once apply in this emergency for counsel and support. From
him, she was well assured, she would never fail to meet with gentleness
and respect. When she looked back upon his deferential manner--on his
unceasing _kindness_, as Honor in her simplicity considered it--above
all, when she compared that kindness and that deference with the
aggressive treatment which from John’s unendurable parent had so greatly
angered her, and also with the absence, for reasons which she knew not,
of demonstrative affection from her husband--it is scarcely matter for
surprise that Honor Beacham should have loved and cherished the man who
gave to her--such was her woman’s faith--the offering which she prized
the most; the offering, that is to say, of an affection on which,
through evil report and through good report, and while life should
last, she could confidently rely.
Honor Beacham would have been no true woman if she had not, before
making the first commonplace preparations for flight (which, of course,
she being _pro tem._ a heroine, included counting out the money, and
putting on the inevitable cloak and bonnet), written a few lines to
announce her resolution to the person whom she deemed, in her insane
delusion, to be the most deeply interested therein. There is something,
to many of the softer sex, very reassuring in wielding that dangerous
instrument of feeble woman, the one to which it is so fatally easy in
moments of passionate excitement to have recourse--to wit, the pen; and
Honor, with the following note written, stamped, and ready for posting
in her pocket, felt far more prepared than she had done (previous to its
production) for the difficulties and dangers with which her path was
strewed:
“DEAR MR. VAVASOUR,--I am afraid you will think me foolish” (Honor
did not entertain any such alarm, but the sentence appeared to her
in the light of the proper thing, so she allowed it to stand), “but
since my return home--which was very sudden, as Mr. Beacham would
not even allow me to say good-bye to my father--I have been made
too unhappy and too angry to stay here any longer. It is not so
much because of my husband, who would be good to me if he was
allowed, but on account of old Mrs. Beacham, who has grown crosser
than ever, and who quite hates me now, I am sure. I would bear it
if I could, but I cannot; so to-day I go up to London, and shall
soon, I hope, get a place of some kind through your help. I should
like to be nursery governess best, as I was before, at the Clays’,
and should like to begin directly, as I have not much money. I
shall be called Honor Blake, as I was before; and John will know
nothing, any more than my father or other friends, excepting you,
where I am. When I am in London, I will write again to you, to say
where I am. Please to burn this; and believe, with a great many
thanks, that I am your grateful friend,
“HONOR BEACHAM.
“P.S.--I was so sorry to leave the play; you will tell me when we
meet how it ended.”
After writing this letter, the child of impulse by whom it was penned
felt, for the time requisite to perfect her arrangements, equal to any
emergency. With the letter directed to Arthur Vavasour in her pocket, a
something of his actual presence seemed to support and strengthen her.
That letter, she doubted not, would bring joy--not guilty joy--that, to
do her only justice, Honor never suspected--to the heart that desired
her happiness, and was glad to sun itself in her presence. That any
wrong was done to the trusting wife of her friend, by that friend’s
kindly feelings towards herself, Honor was innocent of imagining. She
believed in this young man’s virtuous attachment, and gratefully enjoyed
the comfort of her convictions.
The hardest task which she had to perform--for she could not wholly
divest herself of the idea that John, in his blundering, unattractive
way, did cherish, and would for a time grieve over her loss--was the
inditing of a farewell missive to her husband. Two attempts did she make
ere she could express in a few words the contradictory sentiments which
caused, in spite of herself, the tears to fall over the paper, and which
made the pen with which she wrote look misty between her agitated
fingers. At last the painful duty was over, and the words that were so
soon to shake the frame of the strong man who read them like a reed, ran
as follows:
“DEAR JOHN,--I hope you will forgive me for not being able to stay
at the Paddocks any longer. I could have lived with you, and
perhaps have been happy; for I know you are good, and you would
not have been hard upon my silliness. What drives me away I leave
it to yourself to guess. I have had a good deal to bear; but what
hurt me the most was your mother telling me that you meant to be
hard upon me too. Do not, please, try to find out where I am. I
shall go into service, and try to keep an honest name, though your
mother says I have brought disgrace on hers. I should like to think
that you forgave me, John. Perhaps I shall some day; or I may not
till we are both in another world, where I pray that we may meet,
and that you may be happier without me than they say I have made
you here. I cannot keep from crying over this letter; for, John, we
might have been happy, if only your mother had not had bad thoughts
of me from the beginning. God bless you, John; and believe that I
am your foolish, but not your wicked wife, as your mother says I
am,
“HONOR BEACHAM.”
By the time that this letter was finished it wanted but an hour of noon
(they kept old farmhouse hours at the Paddocks), and the striking by the
big hall-clock of the time o’ day warned Honor that if she wished to
catch a certain train that touched, on its way to London, for a few
minutes at the small station of Switcham, she must waste no more time,
either in thinking over her plans, or in making ready for her journey.
Accordingly, with a steadiness which, under the circumstances, was
surprising, she put together a very few articles of dress--and leaving
behind her the simple ornaments, poor John’s wedding-gifts--over which
she was so little of a heroine that she heaved a faint sigh of
regret--this wife of little more than a year left the shelter of her
husband’s roof, and, apparently with the intention of taking one of the
quiet country walks to which she was accustomed, sauntered slowly, till
she was out of sight of the Peartree-house occupants, across the fields
that lay between them and the village.
Once the station reached, she cared little either for notice or
discovery. The desperate step she had taken could not long remain a
secret from the neighbourhood at large; but by the time that John
received her letter, she would--according to her present
expectations--be already lost to him, and far beyond reach of discovery,
in some well-chosen but, of course, very humble retreat, which Arthur
Vavasour’s thoughtful kindness would, she doubted not, speedily provide
for her. With her mind full of these projects, but with a heart only
half rejoicing over her newly-found freedom, Honor went on her way. Her
head ached, and a strange sense of weariness rendered her steps slow and
lagging; but, for all that she both felt and looked ill, there was about
her air and walk (her face was too hidden by a thick veil for strangers’
eyes to gaze upon it) that nameless charm which commands attention, and
excites the notice of the curious. Unconscious of, and at the moment
utterly indifferent to, admiration, Honor turned her eyes neither to the
right hand nor to the left as she passed slowly along the
village-street. On her arrival at the post-office, she dropped--without
allowing herself a moment’s reflection--the two letters she had written
into the box; and then feeling a little more frightened and bewildered
than she had done before--for there was a sense of the inexorable in
this apparently unimportant act--she walked forward, erect, and
outwardly with something of defiance in her mien, towards the station.
There may be some among my readers who perhaps will consider that
Honor’s proceedings--her intemperate conduct in thus suddenly giving up
home-ties and the respectability attendant thereon, and her apparent
absence of womanly feeling regarding her husband--are overstrained and
unnatural. But let it be remembered that she was young--young and
inexperienced--impulsive too, as well as a little vain and exacting. To
understand the young, however, the investigator into character must be
young himself. When youth has passed, we forget not only the feelings
that dwelt within us in the days of the long-ago past, but the excuses
for our sins and follies, which then seemed to us as sands by the
sea-shore in number. We forget the craving after the storms of life, the
desire to be “for ever climbing after the climbing wave,” together with
the loathing of sad satiety, the satiety which a quiet and unbroken
existence awakens in the breast of those who are yet idle and untried
enough to talk of indulging in grief, and who have still to learn the
bitter truth that to endure is hard enough. Honor Beacham was so
romantic and simple that she could hug to her breast the discontent
which she had dignified into despair. Very like a heroine she felt as
the swift train bore her onwards into the unknown regions of the future.
With the sharp and scolding voice of her mother-in-law still ringing in
her ears, and with the _certainty_ (for Honor was of an age and nature
to believe in every result she wished for) of having escaped from Mrs.
Beacham’s tyrannic rule, it was surely natural that she should feel a
keen sense of triumph at her own success, and that an involuntary smile
should flit over her lips as she thought of the old woman’s face of
discomfiture when the startling and unwelcome discovery would be made,
that her victim was already far beyond the precincts of her power.
Of John--of the husband who, excepting in rare moments of anger, had
always been kind to her, and considerate, as far as he comprehended
them, of her feelings, it was not quite so pleasant to think; and Honor
endeavoured to the best of her ability to put aside the obtrusive
reflections connected with his probable regret by repeating to herself
the scarcely-believed truth that her husband would soon forget her. “His
mother is all in all to him,” the young wife told herself: “had she not
been, he never would have allowed me to be so tormented; and besides, he
is so busy, so always, always busy;” and Honor heaved a little sigh over
the enjoyment by honest John of one of the greatest blessings that can
fall to the lot of any human being, whether he or she be young or old,
rich or poor, gentle or simple. If idleness be, as the Book of books
informs us, the root of all evil, so surely is _work_, wholesome,
needful work, the surest and best safeguard against the ills of life. It
is the idleness of the rich which, more than any other cause, renders it
harder for them than for their fellows to “enter into the kingdom of
heaven.”