HONOR RECEIVES A LETTER.
In the mean while Honor, unconscious of the events that had occurred,
and the calamities which had befallen those in whom she was so deeply
interested, had supported for another weary night and day the suspense
which she found hourly more difficult of endurance. Then the courage
that had hitherto supported her began to flag, and she half
resolved--wholly objectionable as was the plan, and revolting to every
feeling of womanly modesty--to endeavour by inquiry at Arthur’s house to
obtain some information concerning him. That some evil, some sudden
accident or grievous sickness, had overtaken her only friend, Honor
could not but believe; and it was this belief, joined to a certain pride
which lingered in her still (for, after all, Arthur _might_ be simply
false), that prevented her from having recourse to her former
plan--namely, that of writing to Arthur at his house or at his club. To
sally forth after dark; to call a cab, and to be driven to within a few
yards of Mr. Duberly’s house; and when there to make a few insignificant
inquiries of the servant which might lead to something like elucidation
of her doubts and fears, seemed a plan not very difficult of execution;
and Honor was still pondering on its expediency when to her surprise
(for she had ceased to expect such consolations) a letter was put into
her hand by Mrs. Casey--a letter, too, which she perceived at once was
from Arthur Vavasour.
Hurrying with her treasure into the inner room, which was her
bedchamber, and utterly regardless of Mrs. Casey’s feelings as a friend
and would-be confidante, Honor tore open the envelope, when the first
writing that met her eye was her own! Casting the note directed by
herself impatiently on one side, she opened another inclosure--one of
deeply-bordered mourning-paper, and read as follows:
“MY DEAR HONOR,--For for the last time I may venture to call you
so; I write you this letter to bid you a last farewell. A heavy
blow has fallen on us all. My poor wife--I did love her, Honor,
more than I ever thought--is dead. It was very sudden. She
overheard words--I trust you may never know from whom--which must
have made her think that I was false to her, for she fell down as
one dead, poor girl, and never spoke again. All this grief and
wretchedness, and the sight of poor Mr. Duberly’s misery, and
knowing he must hate me soon, is more than I can bear, so I have
resolved that after the funeral is over I will have an
explanation--I mean, that I will confess everything--about the
horse and my debts, and all my horrible deceptions to the poor old
man; and after that, it is my intention to go abroad, to America or
some distant country; and my best hope is that nobody will ever
hear of me again. Writing, as I am, with the poor thing that I have
killed so near me, there are but few words, Honor, that I can dare
to say to you. One wish, one prayer, however, I _may_ breathe, and
that prayer is, that you will go home to John. It is with the hope
that you will do so, that I send you back your own innocent, simple
notes, the only ones you ever wrote to me, and which, but for the
help that they may be to you, I would never, _never_ have parted
with. Send them to your husband, dear Honor. They will convince
him, if he is ever so positive, that I was not a liar when I swore
that you were pure as the angels of Heaven from the guilt of which
he dared suspect you. And now, dear Honor, fare you well, and if in
the days to come, when you are happy, as I pray you may be, you
should ever think of these past wretched times again, let there be
forgiveness in your heart for one whose crime towards you has been
followed by a punishment almost too heavy to be borne.”
Twice did Honor Beacham, with eyes blinded by tears, read over this
miserable letter, before the whole and entire sense of it came home to
her understanding. The shock of hearing of the death, under such pitiful
circumstances, of Arthur’s wife, was very great, and the mournful
tragedy stood out in terrible and bold relief from amongst the mist and
confusion which at first (for Honor’s intellects were then not in the
clearest possible condition) seemed to envelope the other portions of
Arthur’s letter. But very soon--_too_ soon for the unhappy woman to whom
the clearing up of the mystery seemed almost the signal for
despair--light dawned upon her bewildered mind, and with a cry of agony,
she accused herself aloud as the wretched cause of the young mother’s
untimely end. At that moment, in the first keen torture of her
self-reproach, she would have hailed as an act of mercy from on high the
relief which death, her own death, would have brought to her. Flinging
herself on her knees beside the bed, and burying her face in its
covering, she strove, but strove in vain, to stifle the violent
hysterical sobs that _would_, in spite of all her efforts, force
themselves from her ice-cold lips. Ah, Heaven! so the poor tortured
creature asked herself, how _could_ she bear the life that was before
her--the life burdened with such a dreadful, dreadful weight of guilt?
Verily, to use the concluding words of Arthur’s letter, her punishment
seemed greater than she could bear--greater by far, in one respect, than
that which had overtaken _him_; for while her fellow-culprit could take
comfort from the thought that he _might_ have (yet had not) sinned more
heavily, she in her despairing humility exaggerated her guilt, and
sorrowed as one that had no hope.
* * * * *
Life, as has been said a thousand times, is made up of
contrasts--healthy, invigorating contrasts sometimes--contrasts which,
while they often jar upon the feelings, and even sometimes tinge with a
faint and humiliating colouring of ridicule the “situations” which they
mar, are, nevertheless, as I said before, highly useful in their way,
acting as a mental _douche_, the benefit of which may be as lasting as
it is immediate. It was such a shock as this, a trifling one in
appearance, yet not altogether without its use, that roused Honor from
the kind of trance of despair into which she had fallen. The sound of
Mrs. Casey’s voice, and the commonplace inquiry of “Please, _miss_, is
there anything partiklar that you’d like for dinner?” smote upon Honor’s
ear like a summons from a world that she had left, and in the interests
of which she had ceased to have a share. But although this _was_ the
case, and albeit her grief and repentance were as deep and scarcely less
agonising than they had been at first, the necessity of rising from her
knees, of hiding the traces of her agitation, and, more than all, the
obligation under which she lay, both of replying to Mrs. Casey’s
well-meant inquiries, and of baffling as best she might that
investigating person’s very natural curiosity, all these things were, to
a certain extent, good for Honor. That they were beneficial was
evidenced by the fact that, after Mrs. Casey had, with a very
dissatisfied look, which increased the always somewhat repulsive
expression of her face, left her lodger to herself, that, to the
landlady’s thinking, very mysterious and unsatisfactory young person
felt far more equal than she had done ten minutes before to the task of
thinking, with some degree of calmness and common sense, not only on the
difficulties and necessities of her present position, but on what manner
it had become her duty at this crisis of her affairs to act.
Perhaps the strongest feeling (next to her own bitter self-reproach)
which she was conscious of entertaining was one of deep compassion for,
and sympathy with poor John’s wholly undeserved sorrows. All that had
passed, and the deeds which had led with such fearful rapidity to fatal
and irretrievable results, appeared in all their miserable distinctness
to Honor’s mind. She could understand now that John, in his eagerness to
discover her whereabouts, had found his way to the house where Arthur
lived; and that, then and there, worked up to unjust suspicion by his
mother’s hints and accusations, he had with the vehemence of unbridled
passion uttered the words which, overheard by Arthur’s wife, had proved
a death-blow to that ill-fated woman. How deeply and how lastingly the
remorse of such a deed (all-unintentional though it was) would crush
down the spirit of one of whose tenderness of heart Honor had had
abundant proofs, she did not need in that unhappy hour to be reminded;
while to act to the best of her ability the part of comforter, to strive
with all the means in her power to obtain her pardon, and to induce her
husband to _believe_ her, and to forget the past, were now the dearest
wishes of her heart. But would he--ah! there lay the _one_ terrible and
ever-recurring thought--would he, even after he had read the letters
which “poor” Arthur, with what Honor was still weak enough to style his
“unselfish kindness”--had returned to her--credit the truth that her
worst faults were those of folly, of vanity; her most unpardonable
errors those arising from a quick and rebellious temper? If she could
but see him, Honor sometimes told herself, it would not be _very_
difficult--in defiance of his mother--to make John judge her rightfully;
but though in her more sanguine moments this was the poor girl’s
persuasion, there were other, and far more frequent occasions when she
despaired of forgiveness, and when a dread of even a chance meeting with
her husband made her heart sink within her for fear.
In this miserable fashion, alternating between hope and depression,
haunted by night as well as by day with the memory of the dead, and with
her heart made every hour sorer by thinking on the living, four more
painful days and nights sped by.
She had been more than a week an inmate of Mrs. Casey’s house, when that
thrifty personage--who had not yet, as she elegantly termed it, “seen
the colour of Miss Blake’s money”--made her usual afternoon _entrée_
into her lodger’s sitting-room, with an ominous long-shaped piece of
bluish-white paper in her hand. Mrs. Casey--whose wits were, like those
of many others of her class and kind sharpened by the instincts of
self-preservation necessary for her calling--was surprised on her
entrance by a change in her lodger’s countenance and manner, for which,
seeing that Miss Blake had to the best of her belief, received neither
visitor nor letter, the worthy landlady could by no means account. There
was a feverish flush; a light which, though it was scarcely joy, was
wonderfully revivifying in that beautiful face; and Mrs. Casey, who had
entered the room with one of the least tender of human purposes, felt
even _her_ prosaic fancy warm beneath its softening influence. Nor was
the woman’s surprise concerning her mysterious tenant lessened when the
latter said with a faint blush, and hurriedly:
“Mrs. Casey, I was going to ask for you; ah, that is your bill; and,”
glancing at it slightly, “perhaps you will help me to pack up my few
things, for _I am going home_!”
She said the words, there was no mistaking _that_, exultingly; and Mrs.
Casey (wondering greatly, for had not this to the end mysterious young
person told her that she had _no_ home?) uttered what was intended to be
a civil congratulation on this apparently altered condition in her
affairs. But Honor heard her not. With a nervous eagerness which
permitted of no pause either for thought or speech, she continued the
few and simple preparations for her departure. Drawing forth her purse,
she paid, with an absence of all prudence, and a degree of submission to
exorbitant charges which caused Mrs. Casey bitterly to regret her own
moderation, the “little account” which that lady obsequiously handed to
her, and, when all was ready, she shook hands nervously with the woman
with whom one of the thousand chances of life had made her acquainted,
and whom she was never likely, on this side the grave, to meet again.
“I wish you good-day, miss, and a pleasant journey,” Mrs. Casey said,
taking her last inquisitorial survey of her late lodger through the open
window of the cab which had been summoned to convey “Miss Blake” to the
station--“and if you should know any friends, gentlemen preferred, who
want a quiet lodging, good attendance, and everything found, perhaps
you’d be good enough to think of No. 29.”
“Indeed I will,” said Honor, answering the request, as such questions
usually are answered, at random; and in another moment the owner of the
dirty net-cap and incipient moustache returned, the impersonation of
baffled curiosity, into the underground precincts of the “quiet
lodging,” while Honor, Hope having at last come out conqueror over
Fear, pursued her way--a thousand conflicting feelings surging in her
breast--towards _home_! Home at last, home again, for all that in her
husband’s house Honor expected still to find the unloving woman who had
once made that home so hard to bear. Home again, though John’s anger
might still be hot against her, and though she had her pardon yet to
seek. Home once more; for on that never-to-be-forgotten day Honor had
discovered that which changed for her, in some mysterious way, the
entire aspect of her life, had made sure of that which she fondly hoped
would not only make her peace with John, but would perhaps even soften
his mother’s stony heart towards her.
“They can never, never be hard upon me _now_,” she kept repeating to
herself as visions of a great joy yet to come, a joy that would gild
over the dark and mournful outlines of the past, rose up before her.
Visions they were of a fair child--the peacemaker--a child with tender
limbs, rounded and soft, whose little cheek was pressed to hers, John
all the while looking at them both, the child and her, in wonder and in
love.
But, unfortunately for the sustainment of poor Honor’s courage, other
and less agreeable thoughts and anticipations took their place as she
drew nearer and more near to the home that she was gilding with her own
fancy’s rays. At a distance, and buoyed up by the inward consciousness
that, in her humble way, she was blessed among women, it had seemed no
such hard matter to fall at honest John’s feet and cry, “Husband, I have
sinned before thee, and am no more worthy--inasmuch as I have been
proud, passionate, and ungrateful--to be called thy wife:” but as the
moment for confession approached, stern reality usurped the place of
fancy, and the task grew to her thinking very hard indeed to perform.
Nor was it rendered easier by the reception--real or imaginary--which
awaited her at Switcham--Switcham, where, a twelvemonth before, at that
self-same hour, she had returned from her bridal tour in happiness and
half in triumph, to her home, and where, now a disgraced and lonely
wanderer, she had to endure as best she might cold looks and
disrespectful stares, from the sight of which she escaped with eager
haste into the first closed carriage that she found in waiting.
It was then that in dread and trembling she began to repent of the
impetuous haste with which she had acted--then that she regretted her
folly in not having prepared the way for her return by writing all she
had to say to John; for of course, so she whispered sadly to herself,
she was despised and utterly condemned. Public opinion, she could not
doubt, was against her, for John was beloved and respected by all;
while she--well, what, she asked herself, had _she_ done to deserve one
single emotion of affection or esteem? Nothing--to her awakened
conscience told her--absolutely nothing. She had held herself aloof from
her neighbours with a pride which she now knew was both mean and wicked;
and she had crowned all by bringing disgrace and sorrow on the man who,
from his youth upwards, had lived as a friend amongst his neighbours,
gaining by his good deeds, his honesty and kindliness, the hearts of all
who knew and understood his worth.
The short half-hour requisite to traverse the up-hill road that lay
between Switcham and Pear-tree House sped away with cruel rapidity for
Honor, who would gladly--to postpone the now dreaded moment of
arrival--have deserted the lumbering “fly,” which that well-known old
gray mare dragged on so wearily, and, resting by the wayside, have
striven better to prepare herself for the coming trial.
A cowardly wish it was, and senseless as it was cowardly, for what
change, what power to endure, what gift of boldness, would time or
thought bestow on one who for so many days and nights of solitary
thought had been picturing to herself the meeting that was now so near
at hand--the meeting which only the courage lent her by her newly-born
hopes could, she now felt, enable her to support?
As each well-remembered object, while drifting with terrible rapidity
towards the home she had so recklessly abandoned, met her eyes, the
nervous tremor which had begun, from the moment when she neared the
Switcham station, to oppress her, became gradually more difficult of
control. The hour, the season, the soft evening air, the bright green of
the opening leaves, the thousand tokens of the blithesome spring, all
these, instead of cheering and supporting Honor’s sinking spirits,
lessened through the touching of some tender chord of memory, some link
connected with the happy Past, her feeble powers of self-control.
When the carriage from the Dragon drew up before the woodbine-covered
porch, Honor’s agitation had arrived at its highest pitch, and when, at
the sound of wheels upon the gravel, Hannah made her appearance at the
door, and uttered, at the unexpected sight of the “young missus,” a
half-suppressed exclamation of astonishment, there came no sound from
Honor’s lips, while her feet, so incapable was she of movement, seemed
glued to the time-worn sheepskin on which they rested.
With noiseless fingers--Hannah was usually a bustling servant, and the
strange quiet of her movements, together with a peculiar and unwonted
stillness that reigned through the house, filled Honor’s mind with a
great, but undefined, uneasiness--with noiseless fingers then the old
servant opened the door of the vehicle, and in a low, boding whisper,
her face close to Honor’s ear, said pityingly:
“Keep a good heart, dear; he ain’t worse, thank God; and the doctors,
they _do_ say--”
But Honor waited to hear no more. The force of _reality_, the call for
immediate action, suddenly loosened her tongue and rendered her limbs
pliant. In a moment she was by Hannah’s side, and saying in tones,
unconsciously imitative of those which had been so full of startling
meaning:
“O, Hannah! what is it? O, Heaven! he is not ill! Tell me he is not
ill!” and she strove to steady herself by clinging convulsively to the
old servant’s arm.
“Hush, my dear, hush! You mustn’t take on so. I thought you’d a’ known
that master was lying in the fever, or you wouldn’t, maybe, be here. But
come in, there’s a dear. This is the fifth day, and Doctor Kempshall
says there’ll be a chrisus, I think he calls it, soon, but whether for
life or death, the God that rules us only knows.”
Hannah, who was a pious woman, and one who held to the belief that no
misfortunes happen to us by the power that is lightly called _chance_,
spoke the last words with almost devotional earnestness, adding thereby
to the wild alarm that Honor was beginning to entertain.
“In danger!” she cried, “and I never knew it! O, John, dear John!” and
she was hurrying to the stairs, when another step treading still more
softly, and a voice more whisperingly low than even Hannah’s, checked
her progress.
“You musn’t go, _my dear_,” said Mrs. Beacham, for she it was who,
looking like the ghost of her former self, pressed Honor’s white cheek
to hers. “You must not see John now. The fever may, the doctors say, be
infectious, and if it please God to spare his life, why--” with a very
sad smile, but one that was meant to be reassuring--“we may want you
yet.”
This reception, and the unlooked-for kindness of the broken-down old
woman, was too much for Honor. Falling on her knees, and with a feeble
cry of, “Forgive me! O forgive me!” she buried her face in her
mother-in-law’s gown, and sobbed as if her heart would break.