SUSPENSE.
Alas, alas for the young creature that was taken, and for the old man
that was left behind! Kate’s words were only too true; and Sophy, the
loved of many hearts--the wealthy heiress, on whose bright blooming face
the winds of heaven had never been allowed to play too roughly--was
numbered with the dead. She never spoke again, after they laid her upon
her bed by the side of her sleeping infant; and that she died
unconscious of the truth--that the frantic denials poured forth in his
agony by Arthur of the guilt and treachery of which he had been accused,
fell upon ears that heard them not--was, perhaps, the bitterest portion
of his punishment. That he had been accused unjustly, and that he had in
reality never what is called _wronged_ the tender wife who had paid for
her jealous curiosity with her life, was Arthur’s only consolation in
his hour of trial and bereavement. He forgot that his freedom from
actual guilt was owing to no virtue on his own part; forgot that in his
heart he had committed the sin the bare accusation of which, overheard
by his poor Sophy, had consigned her to an early grave; forgot that
while _she_ was tender, loving, and true, his heart, ever since he had
led her to the altar, had been bound up in, and wholly occupied by,
another. But if, in his yearning for self-comfort, and in the natural
longing of cowardly mortals to escape from the sharp stings of
conscience, Arthur Vavasour could find consolation in the reflection
that he had escaped _actual_ guilt, there was one who, from the hour
when he was first prostrated to the earth by the intelligence of poor
Sophy’s death to the day when his own sorrows were buried in the grave,
could never bring himself to see any mitigation of Arthur Vavasour’s
offence, or any plea for mercy on the ground that he had not been, in
_fact_, faithless to his marriage-vows. To describe the grief, the
frantic despair it might rather be called, of the father whose only
child was thus, in the bloom of her innocent and happy youth, torn from
his arms and from his love, would be impossible. The blow had, indeed,
fallen with terrible suddenness on the aged head that never, never again
rose erect, as it had done before, with the proud, glad look that
prosperity and domestic content are wont to lend to their possessors.
“Old Dub” (there was such a touching solemnity, a sacredness as it were,
thrown around his undying grief, that the name seemed no longer to suit
him, and died away speedily, as do the nicknames of children when age
and wisdom renders their foolish _petits noms_ inappropriate and
absurd), “old Dub” was never the same man again after he had seen the
delicate limbs of his dead daughter laid out for her burial. It was a
touching sight to witness, that of the gray hairs falling over the white
closed eyelids of the corpse, while the scant tears of age wrung from a
father’s agony fell slowly one by one upon poor Sophy’s marble forehead.
At the foot of the bed Arthur, pale almost as the dead that lay in its
dread immovability before him, stood with folded arms, and with ever and
anon a strong shiver shaking him from head to foot. He felt (it is the
nature of his sex and kind) a good deal for himself, even in those
moments of deep grief and self-reproach; and certain questions _would_
intrude themselves on his mind which were out of place in the breast of
a newly-made widower, and in the chamber of mourning. Would Mr. Duberly,
who knew nothing at present of the share which he (Arthur) had in poor
Sophy’s death,--would he be _very_ hard upon him if, which was only too
probable, he should come to know the truth? Would he believe in
Arthur’s assurances, on his oath, that John Beacham’s visit had been the
act of a madman, an act unjustified by any conduct, any intentions on
Arthur’s part to injure or to wrong him? That the old man, sorrowing
with a grief which would not be comforted, and lamenting over his lost
treasure with “groanings that could not be uttered,” would not so
believe, Arthur more than suspected. Well did he remember the jealous
watchfulness, the unceasing solicitude, with which this doting father
had striven to guard his child from even a transient sorrow; and it was
not difficult to imagine the fury that would rage within his breast when
the truth should be revealed to him that Arthur was, as Kate Vavasour
had in her agony of fear and love exclaimed, his daughter’s murderer!
Meanwhile, these two were not alone in enduring, with such patience as
in the first dark moments of bereavement we can summon to our aid, the
consequences of guilty passions, of deceit, of vanity, and of folly.
Watching, waiting, grieving,--watching and waiting for the friend who
came not, and grieving with bitter tears over her past folly,--Honor sat
in the dismal chamber of that dirty and barely respectable
lodging-house--a piteous sight, indeed, to look upon. As usual, the
sense of error had been the result of mortification and of sorrow. _Le
remord est né de l’abandon et non pas de la faute_; and if Arthur
Vavasour had not been prevented in a manner as yet undreamt-of by Honor
from keeping his engagement with her, and aiding her in the course which
she had faintly marked out for herself, it is probable that Honor would
have been far longer than was actually the case in arriving at a due and
contrite sense of her _mistakes_. The hours after Arthur’s departure
dragged on very wearily for the imprudent girl who, a prisoner in that
dismal room, began, as the time wore on and she heard nothing either of
or from him, very seriously and repentantly to commune with her own
thoughts. It was then that the mist of prejudice in favour of a class
above her cleared away for ever; then that she no longer craved to be
what is conventionally termed a “lady;” then that she learned (the
teaching was a severe and uncompromising one, but none the less
effectual because of the heavy hand that had been raised in teaching
her)--then it was that she learned the valuable truth that sterling
worth is more to be desired than the outside graces of a soft manner and
a flattering tongue, and that the heart of gold is better than the
glitter of a refined and fair appearance. Instead of inwardly glorying
in her near kindred to the well-born, and in lieu of rejoicing over the
fact that _she_ came of a gentle race, and that in her veins ran the
pure Norman blood of the well-descended “Norcotts of Archerfield,” Honor
Beacham would henceforth shrink in shame from the memory of her
parentage, bearing ever before her the unwelcome and dishonouring truth,
that the man to whom she owed the birth on which she had been weak
enough to pride herself was, in very truth, nothing better than a
swindler!
And out of the painful conviction that so it was there grew another, and
if possible a still more harrowing thought--the thought, namely, of the
more than possibility which existed of a life-long separation (the
consequence of her own impatience under what appeared to her now
chastened spirit in the light of very minor grievances) from the husband
whose excellence she was tardily beginning to value as it deserved. It
was true that she had committed no act which must of necessity cause an
eternal breach between them, and equally true was it that she had,
previous to her departure, written a half-protesting, half-apologetic
letter--_the_ letter of which the reader is already cognisant, and which
(on such apparently trifling causes do the most important events of our
lives depend) was not delivered at Pear-tree House till _after_ its
owner’s fatal visit to London--it was true, I repeat, that Honor had
written a letter which _might_, she felt, eventually soften John’s
heart towards her. In it she had explained, as well as she was able--she
could not abuse as heartily as she wished John’s mother to John
himself--but in it she had not disguised the fact that the old lady’s
unkindness was the sole motive cause of her departure; nor had she
hesitated to assure the husband she was leaving that she might, under
other circumstances, have lived happily beneath his roof.
How keenly, as Honor strove to call to mind the only half-remembered
expressions in that hastily-written epistle, did she regret that she had
not endeavoured to fix them more firmly on her memory; for every
syllable that she had written seemed to her of importance now, when
wondering to herself what John was thinking of her, and whether or not
she was beyond the reach of pardon.
Of Mrs. Beacham she had not yet brought herself to think with charity.
If the possibility of a return to the Paddocks lingered for a moment in
her mind, that possibility was rendered so dark and unattractive by the
image of her mother-in-law, that Honor, although beginning to long for
reconciliation with John, turned from it with as much detestation as it
was in her gentle and affectionate nature to feel. Not yet was she
thoroughly and effectually subdued; not yet had the chastening rod of
affliction done its perfect work. Honor still found herself, when the
_good_ spirit within was drawing her to an _entire_ oblivion of her
wrongs--to a perfect pardon of the past, and to a self-effacing sense of
her own unworthiness--she still, I say, in spite of her sometimes
conviction that she ought, in deep humility, to entreat forgiveness of
her aged persecutor, shrunk with very natural repugnance from such an
act of self-abasement. The provocations she had received _would_ rise up
in her memory, like evil ghosts that refused to be _laid_ to rest; while
it was as yet, I fear, only in theory that Honor regarded the endurance
of wrong with patience, as one of the first of Christian virtues. The
time, however, came when she not only believed, but demonstrated her
faith by practice, that the great duty of bearing and forbearing may be
so gracefully, as well as rigidly practised, that the fruits of such
forbearance can scarcely fail to be those of mutual affection,
confidence, and good-will.
The obtrusive and constant visits of Mrs. Casey did not tend to render
poor Honor better satisfied with her condition. That quick-sighted and
not over-charitable personage had drawn her own conclusions from the
lengthened stay of a young and handsome gentleman in the “second-floor
front,” and those conclusions had not tended to increase her show of
respect for the young lady--the “Miss Blake” who was so beautiful and
_so befriended_.
When the long day was at last over, and all chance of seeing Arthur till
the following morning was at an end, Honor prepared herself for bed,
with the heaviest heart for company she had ever known. With the
impatience of suspense so common at her age, she asked herself how it
was possible to wear through the hours till morning--the long and lonely
hours in which she had naught to do save to turn and twist, and twist
and turn again, the arguments for and against each possible reason for
Arthur’s breach of faith--the miserable hours during which she would be
for ever saying with the sleepless victim of unrest recorded in Holy
Writ: “Would God it were light! Would God it were the morning!”
But when morning came it brought with it no comfort for the lonely
watcher. The hope which she had nourished that the early post would
bring to her some explanation of the absence of her only friend proved a
fruitless one; for though the sharp tap-tap of the postman’s summons
sounded dear and loud at the door of No. 29, there was no letter, so the
little dirty drab of a servant-girl informed Honor, for _her_; and again
the unhappy and restless creature, seated before her untempting and
scarcely-tasted breakfast, was forced to summon all her fortitude to
endure the scarcely endurable torments of uncertainty.