EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY.
The approaching marriage of Mr. John Beacham, whose family had been time
out of mind one of the most respected and respectable in the entire
parish of Switcham, within the boundaries of which the Beachams had held
land to a large extent under many a successive lord of the manor of
Gillingham, was a very important event in that quiet locality. In his
way, John Beacham might almost be styled a _public_ character. Far and
near, whenever a certain highly interesting subject--namely, that of
horses--was upon the _tapis_, honest John’s name was pretty certain to
be brought prominently forward. It was surprising--in a country and on a
matter in which almost every young gentleman, probably, held a
first-rate opinion of his own merits as a judge of “cattle”--what weight
the fiat of John Beacham, farmer and horse-breeder, was wont to carry
with it. The latter vocation--and a highly lucrative one it was--had not
been exercised for more than a dozen years or so by the lessees of
Shotover Farm, by which name, by the way, the hundreds of broad acres
rented by the Beacham family had, for generations past, been known. Some
six years before the death of John’s father, the estate called Updown
Paddocks, and which consisted of many a broad and fertile meadow,
admirably adapted for breeding purposes, was announced to be for sale.
It lay in tempting proximity to Mr. Beacham’s farm; the price in that
prudent individual’s opinion was a reasonable one; he and his trusted
son John were agreed in the matter; so, in due course of time, the
tenants of Shotover progressed to the dignity of landowners. Meanwhile,
and pending the final arrangements for the purchase, John’s mother, the
“old lady” of whom honourable mention has already been made, showed
herself anything but favourable to the new plan. Though a Yorkshire
woman born and bred, the love of horses and of horse-dealing was not
inherent in her septuagenarian breast. She was a tall, large-boned, but,
in spite of her seventy years, still a well-favoured woman. John was her
only surviving child, infantile complaints of various kinds having
carried away four others before they had had time to wind themselves too
closely round her heart; and in the said John, therefore--in his present
comfort and his future fortunes--all her best affections and her
keenest interests were concentrated. Many were the anxious moments
endured, and not a few the querulous remarks uttered, by the farmer’s
cautious wife before the complete success of the undertaking, so
judiciously, and withal so conscientiously, carried on by her husband
and son, laid her fears to rest, and effectually put a stop to her
gloomy forebodings of loss and ruin. It is true that the excellent woman
was kept a little in the dark regarding the details of the business
which was already making for the breeding establishment of Beacham and
Son a name throughout the land. The “old lady”--for by that title John’s
stately mother was known in the neighbourhood of her abode--would have
been not a little startled had she chanced to learn the amount of money
that had been invested at Updown Paddocks. She seldom, after having
become perfectly convinced that the “concern” was a safe investment,
alluded to the subject; but it is more than probable that had Mrs.
Beacham been required to make a rough guess at the sum-total expended
yearly on the “horse-breeding business,” she would, without much
hesitation, have named something under half the amount that John, who
was no niggard of his cash, thought nothing of paying for the least
costly of his pure-blooded “sires.”
Mrs. Beacham was justly proud of the increase of wealth and
consideration which had accrued to her family by means--as she was fully
justified in believing--of the intelligence and undeviating rectitude of
her husband and son. But, most of all, in the simplicity of her feudal
zeal, she was boastful of the friendship and unfailing regard evinced
for both by the “good Squire,” as he was everywhere denominated (for
they were tenants, not of Mr. Vavasour, but of “milady”), by that
discriminating and kindly gentleman. A deeply-rooted love of the animal
of whose race so many noble specimens were always to be seen at Updown
Paddocks would have been alone sufficient to account for Cecil
Vavasour’s frequent visits to Mr. Beacham’s establishment; but, in
addition to this, there was a genuine liking and sincere respect for the
two men who never permitted the desire for gain to triumph over their
sense of honour, and who, although they breathed the air which is
supposed to be so deleterious to honesty, yet retained a pure and
healthy sense of what was due, not only to their customers and
themselves, but to the noble animals on whose merits they so
successfully traded. Cecil Vavasour thoroughly enjoyed the five miles of
pleasant country walk, which had for its end and object a chat with Lady
Millicent’s model tenants--the Beachams of Updown Paddocks. He
delighted in their shrewd uncommon sense, in their practical equine
knowledge, in their cordial welcome, and, above all, in the sight of the
young stock gambolling over the sweet short pasture of the Paddocks,
whilst their sober mothers cropped the staff of their lives in placid
and unmolested enjoyment.
The deaths, under very different circumstances, of the Squire and John’s
greatly-regretted father took place within three months of each other.
The illness of the latter was a lingering one, induced by imprudent
self-exposure to wet and cold; and when at last the news went forth that
the old man was no more, deep and general was the regret expressed by
all ranks for his loss. His widow, too, mourned very sincerely for one
who had been a good husband for the space of near upon forty years to
her; but then she was so fortunate as to have “John” to comfort her, and
he, as all the neighbours round would have been ready to acknowledge,
was “a host in himself.”
* * * * *
It was the last day of April, the eve of “the maddest, merriest day in
all the glad new year,” and the eve, besides, of John Beacham’s
wedding-day--the day that was to make him, according to his own belief,
the happiest of human beings. The weather was lovely. The spring had
been a forward one, so that there were not wanting lilacs and
laburnums, Gueldres roses and hawthorn blossom, to deck the maypoles and
adorn the floral arch which it was the gallant purpose of the Switcham
youths to erect over the churchyard gate, through which the bridal party
had to pass.
The exceeding beauty of the girl who had won what was universally
considered by her _peers_ a prize in the matrimonial market, and a
certain mystery which hung about her origin, would alone have been
sufficient, without reckoning John Beacham’s well-deserved popularity,
to account for the interest and curiosity created by the approaching
nuptials. Honor Blake certainly was very lovely; that could not be
denied. Fresh and sweet as a rose in June, with a profusion of
light-brown wavy hair, melting blue eyes (had they in very truth a
“look,” as Mrs. Tamfrey averred, in their languid depths?), and cherry
lips that seemed pouting to be kissed; but for all this beauty, and
partly, perhaps, because of her rich personal endowments, women--ay, and
men likewise--were very curious to learn something certain and tangible
regarding the quondam nursery governess at Clay’s Farm. All that was
positively known regarding John’s _fiancée_ amounted to this--namely,
that her early childhood had been passed at a superior description of
farm-house in the far west of Ireland, and, moreover, it was very
apparent that she had been delicately as well as tenderly reared. At the
age of seven, a person calling herself the child’s aunt had removed the
little Honor from the affectionate care of the “widow Moriarty,” the
“snug woman” who had hitherto acted a mother’s part by the blue-eyed
Irish maiden; and the next important event in the little girl’s life was
the being placed in a respectable country boarding-school, where she
completed an education that was more solid than ornamental. Eventually,
and when she had reached the age of sixteen, Miss Blake, through the
medium of the above-spoken-of relation, whose name was Bainbridge, and
who had been for many years in the service, as housekeeper, of a wealthy
Sandyshire family, obtained the situation of nursery governess at Clay’s
Farm. The Clays were excellent people in their line, and they neither
overworked nor underfed the young person, who did her best, though she
was still, as good-natured Mrs. Clay often said, “but a giddy thing,” to
please them.
John Beacham, although he had not been behindhand in admiring Honor’s
beauty, was too busy, and owned too little of a sentimental nature, to
fall in love with her at first sight. She was such a mere child, too,
compared to himself. He, a man of thirty-five, weather-beaten, and with
lines upon his brow, to say nothing of a rare gray hair or two that his
old mother viewed with pain cropping out in his thick brown whiskers,
was many a year too old to mate himself with that bright bud of beauty.
But though steady John Beacham was wise enough in his calmer moments,
and when safe from the glamour of Honor Blake’s blue eyes, to remember
these salutary facts, it was altogether a different affair when he
chanced to meet her, looking so brightly pretty, walking with the
farmer’s children in the shady lanes, or when the little lake, on the
borders of Clay’s Farm, was ice-bound in the cold December weather,
making a sunny spot where her sweet radiant face was seen amongst the
busy skaters. There is no need to dwell upon the not very remarkable
particulars of this rustic courtship. John was Honor’s first lover--the
first that she had ever thought or read of. Marriage--an affair to which
she, like every girl of sense, of course looked forward to--seemed a
pleasant, an exciting, and an important event in life. It would be
delightful to have new clothes, and a home and children of her own; for
Honor was very fond of, as well as patient with, little people; and
perhaps her satisfaction at her approaching marriage was more closely
connected with thoughts of baby-smiles and “waxen touches” than the
girl herself, in her pure and perfect innocence, suspected. Be that as
it may, she did not hesitate, no, not for a single moment, ere she said
“yes” in answer to John Beacham’s offer; nor afterwards, when the hour
for reflection came, did she feel one pang of regret for the unqualified
assent that she had given.
They were to be married in May--as John arranged before he left the
small old-fashioned “company” parlour at Mr. Clay’s farm, in which this
important chapter in the joint lives of himself and Honor had been
opened. To be married in May,--that is to say, in two months’ time,--and
not a word imparted as yet to the one so vitally interested in the
matter--not a hint of what was going on dropped to the “old lady” at
Updown Paddocks!
Mrs. Beacham, who had kept house for her well-beloved John from the hour
when the old man had departed for a world where seed-time and harvest
are no more, was a woman acknowledged by all who knew her (and, indeed,
she had, for that matter, been known to boast of the peculiarity
herself) to have not only a “will” but “ways” of her own. She was a
bustling busy personage, one whom no one in her household would have
ventured to “answer;” while as for interference with any of her orders
or arrangements, why not even John himself would have dreamt of such a
thing. The love of power and rule was in her plebeian breast fully as
firmly implanted as in that of the autocratic mistress of the
Castle--the division of her kingdom would have been as unpleasant a
disintegration to the one as to the other; and it therefore required
some little courage on John Beacham’s part to enable him to go through
with credit the duty of imparting to his mother that he was about to
take unto himself a wife.
Between Mrs. Beacham and her son there had always existed a sincere,
though not a demonstrative, affection. They had, moreover, no secrets
from one another, and nothing in John’s previous life and conversation
had ever tended to awaken in the susceptible mind of the “old lady” the
natural jealousy of a mother. It was wonderful during his twenty years
or thereabouts of manhood how very little the straightforward
fully-occupied fellow had had to tell. On his first emerging from
hobbledehoyhood, that discreet body, his mother, had not been without
her fears that John would play, after the example of other lads, the
lover and the fool. Anxiously, and much as a fussy trembling hen
watches, when they seem likely to get into troubled waters, the erratic
movements of a brood of ducklings, so did the parent of honest
unsentimental John torment herself with the fear that some “silly
useless chit,” some “forward wasteful hussy,” was alluring her precious
son into the hot waters of a love-scrape. Time wore on, however; the
down gave place to bristles on the young farmer’s chin, his voice grew
manly, and he took his place as one having authority in the family
councils, while as yet he betrayed no symptoms calculated to justify his
mother’s alarm.
The neighbours (for a single young man in John’s position is, to a
certain extent, public property) began at length to grow alarmed at the
apparently phlegmatic character of Mr. Beacham’s idiosyncrasy. It seemed
to them so terribly likely that he would live and die a bachelor; and
then what a throwing away of advantages, what a loss to some young woman
or other of the many who would have said “yes” to John of such a house
and home as would be provided for her at the Paddocks!
These lamentations and prognostics, when they reached the ears of Mrs.
Beacham, were met not only with ridicule, but with an indignant protest.
“What could they, a set of ignorant busybodies, know of what was passing
in the mind of a sensible man like John? She had no patience, not she,
with that everlasting talk about getting married, putting thoughts into
young men’s heads that wouldn’t be there without, and interfering in a
way that no decent person ought to do with other people’s sons. If John
meant to marry he would, and if he didn’t why he wouldn’t, and that was
all about it; and for her part, she just wished that everybody would
leave him alone and mind their own business.”
At length, and by the time that Mrs. Beacham had almost, if not quite,
ceased to think of her son as a possibly marrying man, he--the hitherto
practical and prudent bachelor--began to manifest certain symptoms,
which, but for the sense of security into which she had rocked herself,
could scarcely have failed to awaken the spirit of suspicion in the old
lady’s breast. It was again owing to the hints of her neighbours, and
the more outspoken words of that agreeable gossip the widow Thwaytes,
that certain eccentricities perpetrated by her son reached his mother’s
ears. Among the most suggestive of these eccentricities was the purchase
in London of a “booky” of hothouse flowers, and the driving of his big
black horse “like mad” to Clay’s Farm, in order that the gardenias and
the Cape jasmines might be fresh and sweet when they met the eyes of
pretty Honor Blake.
At first, Mrs. Beacham positively declined to entertain the idea that at
his time of life John would be that foolish as to be made an idiot of by
a “gel.” As long as blindness to her son’s weakness was possible, she
shut her eyes resolutely to facts, and refused to believe even the
evidence of her senses. The neighbours might, and indeed at this
interesting crisis they _did_, come about her daily like bees, buzzing
restlessly about the tempting honey-pot, in which was silently
fermenting a domestic event, in the boiling-point of which all felt
themselves to be more or less intimately concerned; but busy though they
were, and curious, as well as tolerably well informed withal, his
mother, trusting to John’s good sense, and being herself either ignorant
or forgetful of the power of the tender passion, remained tranquil in
her fancied security.
But at last the storm burst, and the hour for full confession came. On
one blustering March night, when the shutters of the old farm-house were
closed against the wild north wind--when the mother and son were sitting
at the sturdy well-polished mahogany table, he, with his account-books
before him, while Mrs. Beacham, on thrifty thoughts intent, was engaged
heart and soul in turning the heel of a gray lambswool stocking--John,
after much debating in his own mind as to the manner in which his
communication could best be made, stammered forth the few initiatory
words that rendered the after disclosure comparatively easy.
“Mother, you know Honor Blake?” and having so said, with his big manly
heart beating a trifle faster than usual, John Beacham leant back in his
chair, and thrust his two hands into his waistcoat-pockets.
The old woman dropped her knitting-needles in the extremity of her
surprise and consternation.
“Know the girl!” she repeated, looking up blankly at John’s troubled
face; whereupon he, taking heart of grace, entered upon his confession.
“Mother, it’s a long story, and I don’t know exactly where to begin.”
“Then you had better commence at the end,” said the old lady crossly.
John, however, took her up at once. His hesitation and timidity had been
terrible barriers to fluency so long as his mother’s _feelings_ were to
be soothed, and her jealousy of his affection laid to rest; but directly
it became a question of _temper_--when once the old lady, as was her
wont on rare occasions of irritation, began to take her son “up
short”--then hesitation vanished as if by magic, and John Beacham found
comparatively no difficulty in telling his news.
“Come, come, mother,” he said cheerfully, “don’t take what I’m going to
say that way. You couldn’t surely have expected--it wasn’t in human
nature, you know--that I should go on all my life like this.”
“Like this! and what, I should be glad to know, do you mean by ‘this’?
_This_, indeed! Why, John, haven’t you been done for, and cared for, and
looked to? and haven’t you had a mother that’s kep house for you as
careful and as regular, though I say it, as ever a house was? Haven’t I
seen to the linen, and made sure you wasn’t cheated, as most lads are,
by the woman servants, which they take advantage of their foolishness,
and--and,” with a little quiet whimper that went to John’s heart, “what
more--I only ask you that, John--can you want of a woman than what your
poor old mother has done for you?”
This appeal, absurd and utterly unreasonable though it was, touched
John; so rising briskly from his chair, he, to the manifest detriment of
the crimpest of ruffs, threw his arm round the old woman’s neck, and
kissed her withered but still rosy cheek fondly.
“Dear old mother,” he said cheerily, “as if I didn’t know all that!
You’ve been everything to me, God knows, and I should be a brute if I
could forget it; but, mammy,” he went on coaxingly, and with a scarcely
conscious use of the old and half-forgotten name which was hers in the
long-past days of his troublesome boyhood, “you must remember that I am
getting on; and if I’m ever to think about finding a wife at all, it’s
time I set about it. Besides, there’s Honor, who--”
“Why, John, she’s Irish!” broke in the old lady, in a tone well
calculated to convey the impression that she, at least, considered Miss
Blake’s birthplace as an insuperable bar to any closer connection with
himself. “She’s Irish, which is bad enough of itself, dear knows,
without it’s being said of her, as it is said, which well you know,
John, that she’s a young woman as hasn’t friends. In my time, which they
say everything’s changed now, and more’s the pity--if folks was
respectable they’d friends of some sort or another to show, which this
Miss Blake seemingly has not; and, John,” lowering her voice to a
whisper, although they were far enough removed from human ears, she and
John in fact being the only two persons still up and about in the old
house, “John, do you know, between ourselves, I shouldn’t wonder, that I
shouldn’t, if the girl was to turn out to be a love-child!”
John was silent for a moment, being in fact utterly at a loss how best
to reply to these decidedly unpleasant suggestions. He had himself--but
that was prior to the time when he had become so blindly and irrevocably
in love--he had himself felt some misgivings, in addition to some little
curiosity, regarding Honor Blake’s birth and parentage. Not, as he had
since taught himself to think, that the matter was one of primary
importance. To be sure, if he _had_ a rather strong prejudice regarding
such things, it was in favour of legitimate birth. He certainly would
not be exactly gratified by the tardy discovery that his dearly beloved
Honor was a “love-child;” but then, on the other hand, if his bride did
chance to be that reprobated being, a friendless girl, why there was
comfort after all to be picked out of _that_. Having no near and
acknowledged kinsfolk of her own, she would be the more likely to devote
herself exclusively to her husband; and it was this comforting
reflection which enabled him to respond with tolerable boldness to Mrs.
Beacham’s hypothesis.
“As to Honor’s being Irish, mother, I don’t think that matters much one
way or the other. There’s good and bad in all countries, and in my
opinion she’s as much too good for me, even if she was to turn out what
you call a ‘love-child,’ as she is too young and too pretty.”
“Too good!” retorted the old woman angrily; “I should just like to hear
anybody else say such a word as that! I’d pretty soon show ’em what I
thought of their opinion!”
John Beacham laughed. “There’d be plenty,” he rejoined, “if they were
only bold enough, that you’d hear say that same, mother; for Honor is
far and away too good for a man of my age, who has got somehow into
bachelor ways, and who’s a rough out-of-doors kind of man compared to
her. Yes, she’s far and away too good, and so you’ll think, mother, when
you come to know her better. She’s as gentle as a lamb, and as playful,
pretty creature! as a kitten, and not a bit vain nor stuck up, for all
that she must know how beautiful she is. So very beautiful and delicate!
Why she’s like a precious bit of china, or one of the sweet
pink-and-white flowers in the Castle conservatory. I don’t wonder that
people talk of her, or that they come from miles away to Switcham church
just to get a look at the blue-eyed Irish girl--the darling that, with
your leave, dear mother, I hope on May-day next to call my wife.”
John Beacham was certainly not intended by nature for a diplomatist;
nevertheless, he showed some knowledge of human nature, and of his
mother’s nature in particular, when he adduced the fact that the fame of
Honor’s beauty had spread far and wide, as an argument in favour of his
marriage. If Mrs. Beacham possessed one ingrained weakness more patent
than the rest, it was that very common one of steadfastly believing each
and all of her belongings to be incalculably superior to those of a
similar nature owned by anyone else. That her son’s wife would be
beautiful beyond the average loveliness of womankind was a great point
in favour of Mrs. Beacham’s future daughter-in-law. The worthy woman
forgot--as who would not have done under the circumstances?--that beauty
is a dangerous gift, and that a “fair woman,” should she chance to be
without “discretion,” is often very inconveniently placed in a sober and
quiet man’s household. For the moment too the old lady, who loved rule
so well, forgot that the more attractive in person was her son’s bride,
the less chance did there exist that she herself could “hold her own”
against this new and overwhelming influence. For the hour, however,
maternal love and a certain sense of gratified pride being in the
ascendant, she replied to John’s eulogium in a manner which,
notwithstanding the tone of plaintive resignation that marked her words,
sent John reassured and comforted to bed.
“Well, well,” she said, with the sigh peculiar to elderly ladies when
they are about to _se poser en victimes_,--“well, well! I suppose that
what is to be will be. In course, it isn’t for old folks like me to give
advice to young ones. The weak must go to the wall, as it’s only right,
I suppose, and nat’ral they should; and them as has had their day must
just make room, like the trees and the plants as is withered away, for
others. I only hope, that’s all I have to say, that she’ll make you a
good wife, John; and if so be she does, why I’m not one--be sure of
that--to be set against her. But it’s hard lines all the same, so it is.
‘A son’s not your son,’ as the saying goes, ‘when he takes him a wife.’
No, he’s not your son--come what come may.”
And Mrs. Beacham, after solacing herself with the utterance of this
soothing reflection, took herself off quietly to bed.