POOR SOPHY!
“I am so glad they have let me see you, though I _am_ only to speak in a
whisper, and to stay just one half-hour and no more. You darling thing!
How pretty you look in that dear little cap!” And Katie Vavasour, who
had been allowed, as a great favour, to visit her much-loved
sister-in-law, pressed her fresh young lips to the invalid’s forehead,
and took her seat beside the bed preparatory to a “quiet talk.”
“I am glad you came too, dear,” Sophy rejoined. “It is so dull without
Arthur, and he has been gone away so long--many hours, I am sure. What
o’clock is it now? Three, I am sure; and he left me long before twelve.
Where do you think he is?”
“O, I don’t know. Gone somewhere about horses, I daresay,” rejoined
Kate, who was rather glad of Arthur’s absence, since it enabled her to
have Sophy to herself. “But tell me, does he love the baby _very_ much?
Does he often kiss it?”
“No, not often; indeed, I don’t think he ever has; but I shouldn’t mind
that, if he would but come back,” said poor Sophy, whose nerves were
weak (a malady which her young sister-in-law found it hard to
understand), and whose impatience at her husband’s absence was often a
little trying to those about her.
“O, never mind him. There is no use ever in wondering what men are
about,” said unsympathising Kate. “I want to tell you about poor Rhoda.
I am certain she is pining for that stupid Mr. Wallingford. It would not
have been a nice match, of course; but as she liked him, that ought to
be enough; and Rhoda was never strong, and now she looks like a ghost.”
“Poor thing!” murmured Sophy. “But if I remember right, Mr. Wallingford
had straight hair and a long neck, and seemed terribly _poky_.”
“Exactly; but if Rhoda did not think so, what did it signify?” was
Kate’s somewhat involved rejoinder. “All I know is, that if anything bad
happens, it will be mamma’s fault. O, she is so dreadfully hard and
proud and unfeeling! And she will be worse than ever, if she gets the
better of poor Arthur about the property. O, Sophy! is it not too bad
that she should have things all her own way like this? Do you know, I
would give ten years of my life--”
“To be taken in your old age, of course,” put in Sophy, with something
of her former girlish playfulness.
“O, yes; that of course,” said Kate; “and besides--”
But the current of her confidences was at that moment checked by the
entrance through the adjoining boudoir of Mrs. Vavasour’s maid, who, in
a hesitating voice, made the whispered announcement that a person
calling himself Mr. Beacham was below, and was very anxious to have
speech with one of the family. Both Mr. Duberly and Mr. Vavasour were
out of the way, the woman said, so she had thought it best to come to
Miss Catherine about it.
“I will go down directly,” Kate said; but of this, Sophy, with the
caprice common to invalids, would not hear. She insisted, for some
reason best known to herself, on Mr. Beacham being shown into the
boudoir.
“You can see him there, dear,” she said to Kate; “he is a sort of
gentleman you know” (poor, _poor_ John!); “and I shall not be left
alone, which I hate.”
Foreseeing no reason for objecting to her sister-in-law’s wish, Kate
gave the necessary directions, and in a few more moments a man’s
strong, vigorous step was heard treading the Aubusson carpet in Sophy’s
“morning-room.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Vavasour,” John said aloud--he was totally
ignorant of the fact that within earshot lay the sick and nervous wife
of the man he had come to seek, the man against whom he felt as an enemy
so bitter that blood could neither wash out the offence, nor quench the
rage that burnt so madly in his veins--“I beg your pardon, but I require
to know if you will have the goodness to tell me where I am likely to
find your brother, Mr. Arthur Vavasour. The people down below, the
servants, seem too grand to answer questions, so I am driven to the
masters for information. He is not, I suppose, in the house, hiding
behind his wife’s apron-string? He--”
“Hush! For Heaven’s sake speak lower,” said Kate in an eager whisper. It
was so dreadful to think that Sophy _might_ hear, although the rooms
were large and there was no great probability of such a catastrophe, but
still the sound of John’s angry words _might_ reach the ears of Arthur’s
wife; and Kate, girl though she was, could foresee and dread the
consequences of such a terrible calamity. “Speak lower,” she said a
little proudly, for there was a spice of her mother’s _hauteur_ in her
veins, and Kate Vavasour chafed under the familiar _brusquerie_ of one
beneath her.
“Speak lower, do you say? And why? Is this man, this base betrayer
of--but I beg your pardon once more. You are a young lady, Miss
Vavasour; one of a class that is protected from insult and wrong by the
shield of position and a great name. A name, forsooth! Why _mine_ was,
in its humble way, respected once; respected till your brother
came--your brother, whose father was my friend--and dragged the honour
of my house, _my_ honour--” and he dealt a savage blow on his broad
breast--“in the dust! My wife has left me,” he groaned out; “_that_ can
be no secret now--left me for him, although I never knew it was so till
to-day. It was yesterday I lost her; lost the poor child I loved so
well: and in the evening I inquired for her at her rascal father’s
house, but they could, or perhaps would not tell me anything. But to-day
I went again, and forced them to be more explicit. Then I learnt how
_he_ had, while she was with her father, how he had spent his days, his
evenings, all his time, with Honor. I came here three hours ago, and
tried to learn something of the man’s movements--something which would
guide me to my wife; but all the answer was that he had been out for
hours, no one could tell me where; but the rascal that I spoke to
grinned, and hinted of a lady’s letter till I was almost driven mad; and
here I am, hoping that you, at least, will not--”
He was interrupted by a cry--a cry, feeble it is true, but so piercing
and peculiar in its tone that it haunted his brain afterwards for weeks;
then there was the sound of a heavy fall--a fall which Kate knew, in the
twinkling of an eye, was that of poor Sophy’s lifeless body on the
floor. In a moment all was wild confusion; a very Babel of cries and
consternation; and John Beacham (awakened, when too late, to a sense of
the evil which his intemperate words had wrought) lifted the inanimate
form of the poor young wife in his strong arms, and laid her gently on
the bed from which a fatal curiosity had roused her. Verily in the old
tale of Bluebeard there is much and truthful knowledge of female nature,
for to every woman there is a subtle and terrible attraction in the
_bloody key_; and to know that which it is well for their peace that
they should ignore, has ever been an insatiable craving amongst the fair
daughters of Eve.
Poor Kate proved herself fully equal to the emergency in which she found
herself. Forgetful of John Beacham’s hasty and passionate revelations,
she could only think of him in the light of an able-bodied man, ready
and willing to do good service to the helpless.
“Try and find her father,” she said imploringly; while the monthly
nurse, who had already despatched a messenger for the physician in
attendance, was endeavouring, with no apparent result, to restore
animation to poor Sophy’s apparently lifeless body. “Try and find Mr.
Duberly. Perhaps he will be at the Union Club; and Arthur, poor Arthur!
_he_ ought to be here. Mr. Beacham,” she continued with imploring
eagerness, the thought of her brother bringing back the memory of the
man’s desperate words, “Mr. Beacham, at such a moment you cannot, will
not, think of yourself. You see what your words have done. Poor, poor
Sophy!” And the tears fell in torrents from her blinded eyes. “You will
find Arthur for _her_. I do not believe in his wickedness. He may have
been foolish, but he loved his wife and little child; you have been
deceived; and it is all a dreadful, dreadful mistake.”
John shook his head gloomily. He was too convinced of his former
friend’s share in his wife’s flight for any words to alter his
convictions. Men who are habitually unsuspicious are often the most
tenacious of a dark idea when once it has taken root within their
breasts; and John’s present belief was, he then felt assured, for
_life_. But certain although he was of Arthur Vavasour’s guilt, he
could not view, without the bitterest remorse, the wreck that his
untamed passion had wrought in that so lately happy and prosperous home.
There was no need now for Kate to press upon him the duty of
forbearance. God, the Judge of sinners, had taken the task of
retribution into His own hands; for if it were indeed true, as Miss
Vavasour had asserted, that Arthur loved his wife, why, in that pale
corse lying lifeless before him, his own wrongs, the wrongs inflicted by
the bereaved husband, would indeed be fearfully and terribly avenged.
Well he knew that to himself, as the acting cause of that dire
catastrophe, poor Sophy’s death (if, as seemed only too probable, her
pale head was never to be raised in life again) might be traced; and it
was with his already heavily-burdened spirit weighted with another load,
that John Beacham, with the purpose of fulfilling Kate Vavasour’s
behest, and endeavouring to seek out poor Sophy’s father, prepared to
leave the house where his presence had been productive of results as
unexpected as they were deplorable. But he was not destined to go many
steps before a fresh call was made upon his patience and his temper. On
the threshold of that splendid mansion, drawing forth the latch-key with
which he had just opened the door, there stood, confronting the
departing visitor, no less important a personage than Arthur Vavasour
himself. On seeing John, he started visibly and turned pale--not with
the pallor of fear, for at that instant very thankful was the younger
man that he had no serious wrongs, as regarded his father’s friend, with
which to reproach himself; but the sight of John Beacham perplexed and
startled him. It was connected, of course, with Honor’s flight from
home; and there existed, undoubtedly, a certain awkwardness in the fact
that he, Arthur, was so much better informed regarding Honor’s
whereabouts than was the husband from whom that misguided young woman
ought, in the opinion of sticklers for marital rights, have had no
secrets of any kind whatsoever.
“_You_ here! Beacham, how is this?” Arthur said, holding out a hand
which was not taken; and then the anger of the older man, a moment
controlled by the sight he had just witnessed above-stairs, burst out
afresh. Drawing Arthur Vavasour’s slender form back into the house, and
holding the arm of his enemy with the fixedness of a vice, he said in a
voice tremulous with concentrated passion,
“You ask me, do you, why I am here? What if, in return, I call you
_scoundrel_, and ask you where you have taken my wife? for you have
been with her; I see it in your face--your white, cowardly face. God,
that I should live to speak so to your father’s son!” And,
half-overpowered with contending emotions, John sank upon a chair that
stood in the large empty hall, and gazed for a moment helplessly upon
the young handsome features, which at that terrible moment reminded him
strangely of Cecil Vavasour, of the man whom in all his life he had most
loved and respected.
“John,” Arthur exclaimed, “do not, for God’s sake, talk in this way. I
declare before Heaven that you are mistaken. I swear to you that your
wife--”
“Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?” cried John impetuously.
Poor fellow! he would have caught only too gladly at the belief that his
suspicions were unfounded, and that his still dearly loved Honor had
been foolish only, but not guilty. O no, not guilty! the thought of that
evil was too dreadful to be endured; so he said very eagerly, and with a
touching entreaty in his tone, “Mr. Vavasour, only say--swear it to me
by your father’s memory--that within these three days you have neither
seen nor heard from my wife, and I will thank and bless you to my dying
day.”
But Arthur could not, dared not, swear to this. With all his longing,
not only to save Honor, but to console and reassure the excellent man
who had ever treated him with such frank and cordial kindness, he could
not take the oath required of him. He could not, even for the woman whom
he loved, _quite_ drag what he called his honour in the dirt.
The sight of his hesitation was enough, and more than enough, to confirm
the husband’s worst apprehensions; and to what lengths his passion would
have carried him, had not this stormy interview been interrupted, it
would be hard to say. Already John had begun to pour a torrent of
invectives on the young man’s head, when the sight of Kate Vavasour
running, almost flying, down the broad marble staircase, arrested his
words.
“Arthur, Arthur!” she screamed, “for the love of Heaven, for poor
Sophy’s sake, come away. She is dying--dead, they think,” she added
distractedly, for, in very truth, she scarcely knew what she said; “and
_you have killed her_!”