HONOR’S HONEYMOON.
“Nothing the matter, really, John. I am not ill, indeed--only stupid;”
and Honor, leaning on her husband’s arm, looked up into his face with
one of her sunniest smiles.
“Stupid! How’s that?” John said. “You were never stupid at the Clays’.
You were gay as a bird there, my darling. What’s come over you, my sweet
one? I hope you’ve got everything you want to make you happy?”
“Indeed I have, John,” said Honor, speaking with that smallest _soupçon_
of a brogue which made everybody wonder, so young had she been when she
left her native soil, how it was that the Celtic accent clung to her at
all. “Indeed I have, John. I am _very_ happy;” and she spoke so softly,
and pressed the arm to which she clung with such a tender loving force,
that John, entirely reassured, went on his way rejoicing.
Honor only said what she believed to be the truth, and yet, for all
that, her heart--although she could not have told you why--was heavy
within her. Perhaps it was the enforced idleness of her life--for
neither she nor John had anything to do at Ryde--which weighed upon her
spirits. It had been so very different at the Clays’. There was Ruthie
to teach, and little Jenny to pet and keep in order; to say nothing of
Tom--that terrible Tom!--whose frock and trousers were always, do what
you would, in the wash-tub; and Neddy, who was wise beyond his years,
and whose questionings on abstruse subjects were for ever taxing Honor’s
simple stores of knowledge to the utmost.
It might be, then, that she missed the avocations which kept her always
busy in her old home; and besides, she had so early seemed to have
exhausted all she had to say to John. They had talked over the kindness
of the Clays, and laughed together, just a very little, at Lady
Millicent’s grandiosity, which even Honor’s limited experience taught
her was slightly out of keeping with the nature of her gifts. The
trifling incidents of the wedding also--the abnormal and unexpected
ones, that is to say--had more than once, in the dearth of other topics,
formed cheerful subjects for conversation between the newly-married
pair.
“I was sure that Joe Griggs would do something extraordinary,” Honor
said, “when I saw him coming across the meadow with that great bunch of
yellow flowers stuck upon his coat. I little thought they were nothing
in the world but dandelions, and that he had brought them to give me in
the church. Mrs. Clay was quite vexed with me for taking them, but I
couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings; and if they did stain my frock it
didn’t signify much--I can turn the side-breadth, and then no one will
know anything about it.”
John Beacham was profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of a lady’s dress;
of “side-breadths” he knew no more than he did of Sanscrit, and he would
hardly have noticed a stain if he had seen it; but he did know--and what
was infinitely more to the purpose, he could appreciate--a delicate and
an unselfish trait in the woman that he had made his wife. He thought it
very “pretty” of Honor to accept the idiot’s offering, and so he told
her lovingly as they wandered together in the pleasant walks outside the
town, which in itself seemed to them both so infinitely dull.
Unfortunately for the success of their trip the weather proved very
unfavourable for honeymooning. The sun that had shone so brightly that
glad May-day at “home” seemed to have entirely forsaken the sea-shore,
along which John Beacham and his wife, for variety’s sake, sometimes
turned their steps. To judge of weather matters from the severity of the
cold, and the force with which the strong north-eastern blew upon “the
Island,” a second and a sterner winter than the last was visiting the
earth. The early leaves, nipped by the severity of the blast, hung brown
and withered on the twigs. Noses were suggestively roseate, warm shawls
were gathered closely round shivering forms, and the face of Nature was,
as it were, hidden behind a cloud.
Honor was very far from being a literary character; and yet--melancholy
to relate--she had not been more than three days a wife when she found
herself regretting that John was not more of a reading man. He could not
be called a dull companion, for he took a _real_ interest in the talk of
others, was easily amused, and both his remarks and replies were
sensible and to the purpose; but for all this, and though the scene and
their position were new, time--there could be no doubt about _that_
fact--did hang heavy at Ryde both with Honor and her husband. Sooth to
say, the latter was rather like a fish out of water at that sea-side
watering-place. The journey and the voyage thither, with that exquisite
Honor by his side, had been simply delicious, and the coming fortnight
would, he had doubted not, pass as a too short hour of perfect and
hitherto undreamt-of bliss. Too soon, however, the active-minded man, to
whom absence of employment was such an entirely novel phase of
existence, discovered that his short dream on the deck of the Ryde
steamer was not destined to be realised. His beautiful Honor was not one
whit less perfect, nor was his conviction that he was the happiest of
men less firm, than when he led her first within the gates of Paradise:
but--and there, in a word, lay the true cause of the evil--Ryde was not
Updown Paddocks--not the place where the interests of his life had so
long been centred; not the spot where the brood-mares, plump and
matronly, and the young stock, wild with youth and spirits, met his eyes
at every turn as he took his daily walks; not the spot, in short, where,
at every moment of his life, he had something to do, to think of, and to
project. Not to mince the matter, John Beacham--dearly and passionately
as he loved his wife--was, at the end of ten days’ holiday-time, sick to
death of the place to which he and Honor had betaken themselves to be
happy. Never in all his life had he found the days so long, never in his
experience had the wind howled and the sleet pelted during spring-time
as it did at Ryde during that memorable fortnight in the so-called
“merrie” month of May.
“I wonder what the yearlings think of this,” was John’s remark, one
bitter, blustering day, as he and Honor were boldly wrestling with the
breeze on the long wooden pier. “I only hope that Simmons has been
minding my orders. The worst of it is, that in these days understrappers
are all for having opinions of their own--a thing _I_ never was
allowed,” he added with a cheery smile, “when I was a youngster. I think
the old woman is about right in saying that everything is changed since
her time. I wonder, though, what _we_ should think of goings on if they
were to come back to what she remembers them fifty years ago.”
“We should find some of them very funny, I daresay,” said Honor,
laughing. “Dress, for instance. Now, I think Mrs. Beacham’s lace cap so
nice for an old lady, but--”
“Don’t call mother ‘Mrs. Beacham,’ Honey,” John said. “Honey” was a pet
name that he had bestowed upon his wife. It was _sweet_, he thought, and
delicate, and besides in the Bible it was written that “honey was good;”
so altogether it seemed to suit his little wife; and she, after
laughingly telling him that the _petit nom_ was still more Irish than
her own, answered to it as readily as though she had been called a
“Honey” from her birth.
“I want _my_ mother to be the same as if she was your own, Honey,” John
said. “She’s a good woman--a better, to my thinking, never trod the
ground. But she’s cranky sometimes. I can’t say that she isn’t _that_.
You’ll have to bear with her, Honey, I don’t doubt, now and then; but
you won’t mind that, pet? One must make allowances for old people; they
get into ways of their own, you know, and it isn’t easy for them to
change. Indeed, I’m not sure,” he added musingly, “that, after a certain
age, anyone is much the better for altering the ways that they’ve got
used to.”
“After a ‘certain age’! Ah, now, John,” Honor said in a tone of playful
reproach, “sure you’re not going to say that you’re not the better for
not living lonely like at the Paddocks? I only hope though--ah, you
don’t know, John, how much I wish it”--and she spoke with a sad kind of
earnestness--“that your mother--I’ll not call her Mrs. Beacham, if you
don’t like it--will not think that you are the worse for change. I know
I’m foolish, John, and young and inexperienced; but I mean to try and
please her. I hope she’ll like me. Do you think she will, John?” and
she looked up wistfully in her husband’s face, awaiting his reply.
“_Like you?_” he repeated with an amused laugh at the intense absurdity
of the doubt implied. “Like you! I should think she would indeed! Why,
Honey, you’ll be her daughter, child--think of that!--and the light of
the home that never had a daughter in it before; and you’ll be petted
and made much of; and those pretty little hands of yours won’t have
anything to do but to make pictures of the trees and flowers as you’re
so fond of doing; and sometimes, especially of a Sunday evening, when my
mother loves a hymn dearly, you’ll sing to us in that warbling way you
used to do at Clays’. I haven’t forgotten--no, nor I never shall, if I
live to be a hundred--the first time I listened to your voice, Pet. It
was just a simple nursery song to please the children--not much to speak
of, I daresay, either as to words or music--but somehow or other, I
don’t know how it was, it went to _my_ heart as straight as an arrow
from a bow.”
They were on the pier still--that cold shelterless Ryde Pier--the wild
wind whistling about their ears, and toying with Honor’s drapery in a
manner more rudely familiar than was altogether agreeable to that young
lady’s feelings. At that moment the vision of certain peaceful
lanes--lanes where the nightingales sang, and the clematis twined about
the hawthorn-trees--flashed across her tenacious memory, and filled her
mind with pleasant thoughts of home.
“Anything would be better than this,” she said to herself, as the
nor’-wester, tearing round the extremity of the pier, so nearly swept
her off her legs that she was forced to cling convulsively to her
husband’s strong arm for protection.
John’s last words, and the cheery confidence with which he spoke of the
success of their _solitude à trois_, from the contemplation of which she
had hitherto nervously shrank, contributed not a little to her
conviction that, all things considered, they would be better off at
Updown Paddocks than listening in that half-deserted town to the
melancholy murmur of “the sad sea waves.”
“What’s in your little head now--eh, Honey?” asked John, when the hearty
laugh caused by the wind’s boisterous behaviour had subsided, and they
were trudging calmly homeward to their early--that is to say, their
six-o’clock--dinner.
“Nothing particular, only--”
“Only what? Out with it, pet,” persisted John, who could not help
nourishing a faint hope that Honor, like himself, might be growing
home-sick, and was only watching for an opportunity of making known her
weakness--“out with it. I shouldn’t wonder now,” he continued archly,
“to find we were both thinking of the same thing.”
Honor reddened up to the very roots of her hair. She was an inveterate
_blusher_. A word, a look, nay even a passing thought flitting across
her own pure mind, would send the red blood coursing under her delicate
skin. This peculiarity, which formed one of her greatest charms, was a
source of constant annoyance and mortification to the young wife. It was
so tiresome to betray what otherwise no one would know anything about
but herself; so provoking, that John might be guessing now that she was
harbouring a wish that was not altogether flattering to his self-love.
She was longing, though she would not have told him so for worlds, to go
away from Ryde. The strangest feeling of depression--a depression for
which she could not in the least degree account--was creeping over her
spirits. To analyse her sensations would have been for this young girl
simply an impossibility. That the aspect of life and the things of life
had, in some inscrutable manner, changed for her, she was, after a vague
fashion, aware. There was a shade over her future. An extinguisher
seemed, by some invisible hand, to have been placed over the bright
point in the horizon, where hope had before shone with such undimmed
lustre. Honor was far too untaught in the mysteries of our complex human
nature to understand, in even a limited degree, why the sunshine of her
life--in spite of John’s love, her matronly dignity, and her new
clothes--seemed suddenly to have faded out. How was this young girl,
this almost child, to surmise that the number of newly-made wives who go
through the like ordeal is legion? Sooner or later, in a greater or in a
less degree, the same flagging of the spirits, the same
utterly-unexpected and hard-to-be-endured _tædium vitæ_, oppresses the
young spirit which had soared, alas, too high, and had dropped to earth
so quickly. Time and “habit” may, or may not, according to the
idiosyncrasy of the sufferer, produce beneficial results; but who can
deny that the condition is a critical one? Who will not be found willing
to agree that this probable condition of mind should form matter for
serious reflection before the irrevocable words are spoken which bind
one woman to one man so long as their lives shall last? There is an
easy-to-be-believed-in “flatness,” a flatness very depressing to the
female mind, when _the_ one great event--the epoch to which all the
daughters of Eve naturally look forward--is past and over, and the wife
has _quietly_ to learn whether or not she is “dearer than the bride.”
Anticipation--highly raised, and coloured by the wondrous charm
inalienable from the unknown--is at an end for ever; and fruition, in
nine cases out of ten, makes poor amends for the loss of hope’s gay
pleasures, and the absence of the joy which anticipation brings.
But, in addition to this, there were other and peculiar reasons why
Honor should be unsettled, at least, if not discontented, in her mind.
She had made the discovery that, in more ways than one, that excellent
John, of whom before marriage she had comparatively seen so little, was
unsuited to her! Beyond a mutual liking to be out of doors, and a
decided fondness for dogs and horses, Honor could not perceive that they
had a single taste in common. He liked music after a fashion; that is to
say, it gave him pleasure to hear her sing a simple ballad, such as “The
banks of Allan Water,” or the “Soldier’s Tear”--old-world songs, of
which he liked to listen to the words when Honor took especial pains
clearly to enunciate them for his benefit. Of modern poetry--of the
“whispered balm,” the “music spoken,” which thrilled through Honor’s
bright and teeming fancy to her heart--John Beacham was profoundly
ignorant. Of Tennyson he knew little, save his name; while of the
beauties of Longfellow he was as ignorant as of the scattered pages of
the Sibyl’s prophecies.
Now it chanced that this pretty, ambitious Honor, who, pending any
positive information concerning her birth, had _thought_ herself into
the belief that she was born a “lady,” had arrived at the not wholly
irrational conviction that her husband’s literary tastes (for a
gentleman) might with advantage be more extended and refined. She was
angry with herself for having come to this conclusion. John was so kind
and thoughtful, so tender of her feelings, and so unwearied in his
efforts to amuse her, that Honor felt quite wicked to have discovered in
him even one shortcoming; and the consciousness that she was not so
happy as he hoped to see her made the poor child feel positively guilty.
That dear, good John! How kindly he had taken her about! What a number
of excursions (getting wet through more than once in consequence) he had
indulged her in! And if the weather had been but fine, would there have
been a single nook, both in the Island and outside it, that the
newly-married pair would not, during the passing of those uneventful
days, have made acquaintance with?
If the weather had but been fine! Ay, there was the rub; but there also
lay, in some sort, the way out of their difficulties.
“I was thinking how unlucky we have been,” Honor said, when the quick
blush had faded from her cheek, and the glance of deprecation had been
withdrawn. “Not one single fine day have we had since we left
Sandyshire! I wonder if it has rained and blown so much at home. O my
poor feather!” she murmured piteously (for they were by this time within
the narrow entrance of their cottage lodging, and Honor had taken off
the little hat with which the wind and spray had been making havoc, and
was twirling it with an air of half-comic dismay upon her fingers),--“my
poor feather! and such a beauty as it was when it came home from Leigh!”
She was a child still in her love for new toys and the pretty trifles
that adorn a woman; and almost a child she looked as she stood there
stroking the pheasant’s breast (pheasant-plumage was the last new thing
in hat-trimmings that had, at this period, found its way to Leigh), and
pouting her rosy lip in simulated sorrow.
John Beacham was eminently “matter-of-fact,” a quality which goes very
far towards the making of common sense. He believed Honor to be really
fretting over her feather, and he comforted her accordingly.
“Never mind about the hat, Honey,” he said, after pressing his lips on
the fresh rounded cheek that was so temptingly at hand. “We’ll go home
and get another. Hats and feathers wear twice as long in Sandyshire. The
sea air is the deuce and all to pay for spoiling things. What do you
say, pet? Shall we see if the weather ain’t better at the Paddocks? This
place is all very well, and I’ve been as happy in it--well, as happy as
a king, if a king ever is happy, which I’m doubtful of, unless it’s in
the honeymoon; but home is home after all, and I--don’t laugh, pet;
you’ll feel the same one day yourself--never can manage to feel at home
anywhere else.”
“I didn’t laugh at you, John,” Honor said, passing her arm coaxingly
within her husband’s. “I was only pleased to be going home. I believe
I’m just tired of having nothing to do--you know you always called me a
busy little body--and besides, I want you to go back to the pretty
beasties you are so fond of. There’s Lady Bell; you can’t deny now,
John, that you’re dreadfully wrapped up in Lady Bell! I’ve caught you
more than once wondering what the baby would be; and then there’s the
something Dove--what do you call her?--the beautiful gray mare with the
wicked eye, that--”
“Never mind the mare,” put in John hastily; “and, Honey, mind this, I’m
not wrapped up in anything but you. I shall be glad to see the mares
again, but if you care to stay--”
“But, John, I don’t care to stay; I would rather, a thousand times, go
home; I want to begin my life--our life together--at the Paddocks. And
there’s your mother too--your mother must be so lost without you. She
said to me the very last thing: ‘Don’t keep John too long away; nothing
goes on well without the master’s eye, and time lost isn’t so easy found
again.’”
John Beacham laughed. There was his mother all over in those trite
sentences. It was so like her, too, to mix up business with the _fade_
sentimentality (as the old woman, had she known the words, would have
termed it) of the wedding-day.
“My mother knows tolerably well what she is about,” he said, “and
there’s often plenty of wisdom to be picked out of those dry sayings of
hers. I’ll be bound now she’s counting the days till we come back; I can
see her as plain now as if I was at home” (and John grew quite
enthusiastic as the _homely_ prospect rose up before him): “I can see
her giving out the yellow soap for the house-cleaning, and keeping the
maids up to their duty--ah, she was always a good one for that--and then
off to the parlour to dust the ornamental china with her cambric
handkerchief. Dear old mother! She mayn’t be one of the tender sort--not
what I call a crying kind of woman--but she’s good at heart, though I
don’t remember--no, not even when my father died--I can’t say I do, that
she what you may call shed tears. She may have done so, of course, and I
not know it; but to the best of my belief my mother is just the kind of
woman not to.”
It was characteristic of John Beacham, and of his extreme correctness
and scrupulosity of speech, that after delivering himself of this
interesting family diagnostic, he seemed somewhat uneasy in his mind,
and as if not thoroughly satisfied that he had spoken no more than the
exact and literal truth. It was characteristic too of his wife, and of a
habit which was hers of putting _this_ and _that_ together, that she
read to herself (all unwittingly, for the accusation of perusing
“character” would have been received by a laugh of incredulity) not only
in John’s cautious ways, but in the proof just adduced of her
mother-in-law’s lack of tenderness, elements of future discomfort for
herself. Visions of this _maîtresse femme_, stern, thrifty, and
uncompromising, darkened her mental vision. Ever since her engagement to
John, Mrs. Beacham had been, to a certain extent, an object of dread to
the quick-witted girl, who felt instinctively that she would never be
cordially welcomed, save by its master, to the old farm-house. She saw
her now, in her mind’s eye, with that symbolic piece of yellow soap in
her bony hands--cold, square-cut, neat, and clean. Very, ay, terribly
cold she must be, Honor thought, or she would have wept _sometimes_ in
the years that John had known her; Mrs. Beacham must--so decided the
April-natured girl, to whom tears and smiles came both so
readily--either have been blessed with a very happy life, or with very
limited powers of feeling. It was pleasanter on all accounts to
attribute the insensibility of her fellow-woman to the former cause; so
she said in her gentle acquiescing way:
“Your mother is very fortunate in having known so few troubles; I think,
though, that crying or not crying has a great deal to do with people’s
constitutions. I cry dreadfully easily: I shall try not, when Mrs.
Beacham--I beg your pardon, John--when _mother_ sees me. She would think
me such an awful little goose. But about going home, John,” she went on
after a pause, during which her husband still continued looking silently
at the empty grate; you see, he was so very anxious that Honor should
not be led by him to return a day sooner than she felt inclined. “About
going home; suppose we write and say we’re coming--_you_ would like it,
I know quite well, and I shall be so glad to see the roses in the dear
old garden that you are so fond of. They will all be in blossom soon,
and then the new greenhouse, and all the pretty new flowers--”
“And the new _pianner_, and _chaiselong_, and sofa table,” John said
slily--“you’ve got it all to see, Honey. I’ve had such a pretty sunny
room new furnished for you--a room that my mother never used nor cared
for. I don’t know how it was,” he continued musingly, “but she certainly
never _did_ care for that room. And yet it looks to the south, and opens
out upon the garden. Windows down to the ground, you know, and yet not
exactly to the ground; for there is a flight, or rather two flights, of
old stone steps, that meet together in a sort of little balcony at the
top; and the balustrades are iron, all as old as old can be, and covered
thick with honeysuckles and roses. Yes, I feel sure that you will like
your room, Honey, and be as happy in it, I hope, as a little bird.”
Honor felt sure of it too; it would be so delightful to step out among
the pinks and roses in that dear old-fashioned garden at the Paddocks.
She had only been there once--once on an occasion that it was not easy
to forget, namely, when she had been driven over from Clay’s Farm by
John to be inspected and pronounced judgment on by the formidable old
lady in the black-silk dress, who watched her with such a keen-eyed
scrutiny, calling thereby so many painful blushes to her burning cheeks.
Those days of trial were happily over now. According to John--and Honor
placed unbounded confidence in her husband’s judgment--there was no
reason for the nameless alarm which had often filled her mind at the
idea of sharing the home of John Beacham’s mother. By degrees, and
partly moved thereto by the springing trustfulness of youth, the young
wife had learned even to think with pleasure of that other inmate of her
new home, whose affection she hoped to win, and to whose comfort it was
her firm intention to devote herself.
* * * * *
“So that’s all settled,” said John, drawing a long breath, as he thrust
his writing-desk from him, and threw up his big muscular arms for what
he called a “stretch.” “Leave this at ten; strike across country; after
the voyage to Reading, and--yes, that’s exactly it--be home for my
mother’s tea at seven. Won’t she be glad to get the letter, that’s all!
And sha’n’t I be glad to tell her that I’ve got the sweetest, to say
nothing of the prettiest, wife that ever a fellow was blest with?”
“And your mother’ll say you spoil me,” Honor said, while a sigh
struggled with a smile for mastery. “You mustn’t be making too much of
me, John. You’ll be having me, like little Tommy Clay, crying for I
don’t know what, one of these days, if you don’t take care.”
“God bless you, my Irish darling!” exclaimed John enthusiastically, for
the slight Celtic accent in which his young wife spoke made her words
sound very sweet and winning to his ears. “God bless you! and while I
live, and after it pleases Him to take me, may you be as happy, dearest,
as you deserve to be!”