HONORIA

She was sitting there rigid, cold as a statue, when the rescuers brought

them ashore and helped them up the slope. A small crowd surrounded the

carriage. In the rays of their moving lanterns her face altered nothing,

to all their furtive glances of sympathy opposing the same white mask.

Someone said, "There's only two, then!" Another with a nudge and a

nod at the carriage, told him to hold his peace. She heard. Her lips

hardened.

Lizzie Pezzack had rushed down to the shore to meet the boat. She was

bringing her child along with a fond wild babble of tender names and

sobs and cries of thankfulness. In pauses, choked and overcome, she

caught him to her, felt his limbs, pressed his wet face against her neck

and bosom. Taffy, supported by strong arms and hurried in her wake, had

a hideous sense of being paraded in her triumph. The men around him who

had raised a faint cheer, sank their voices as they neared the carriage;

but the woman went forward, jubilant and ruthless, flaunting her joy as

it were a flag blown in her eyes and blindfolding them to the grief she

insulted.

"Stay!"

It was Honoria's voice, cold, incisive, not to be disobeyed. He had

prayed in vain. The procession halted; Lizzie checked her babble and

stood staring, with an arm about Joey's neck.

"Let me see the child."

Lizzie stared, broke into a silly triumphant laugh, and thrust the

child forward against the carriage-step. The poor waif, drenched, dazed,

tottering without his crutch, caught at the plated handle for support.

Honoria gazed down on him with eyes which took slow and pitiless account

of the deformed little body, the shrunken, puny limbs.

"Thank you. So—this—is what my husband died for. Drive on, please."

Her eyes, as she lifted them to give the order, rested for a moment

on Taffy—with how much scorn he cared not, could he have leapt and

intercepted Lizzie's retort.

"And why not? A son's a son—curse you!—though he was your man!"

It seemed she did not hear; or hearing, did not understand. Her eyes

hardened; their fire on Taffy and he, lapped in their scorn, thanked

God she had not understood.

"Drive on, please."

The coachman lowered his whip. The horses moved forward at a slow

walk; the carriage rolled silently away into the darkness. She had not

understood. Taffy glanced at the faces about him.

"Ah, poor lady!" said someone. But no one had understood.

* * * * *

They found George's body next morning on the sands a little below the

footbridge. He lay there in the morning sunshine as though asleep, with

an arm flung above his head and on his face the easy smile for which

men and women had liked him throughout his careless life.

The inquest was held next day, in the library at Carwithiel. Sir Harry

insisted on being present and sat beside the coroner. During Taffy's

examination his lips were pursed up as though whistling a silent tune.

Once or twice he nodded his head.

Taffy gave his evidence discreetly. The child had been lost; had been

found in a perilous position. He and deceased had gone together to the

rescue. On reaching the child, deceased—against advice—had attempted

to return across the sands and had fallen into difficulties. In these

his first thought had been for the child, whom he had passed to witness

to drag out of danger. When it came to deceased's turn, the crutch, on

which all depended, had parted in two and he had been swept away by the

tide.

At the conclusion of the story Sir Harry took snuff and nodded

twice. Taffy wondered how much he knew. The jury, under the coroner's

direction, brought in a verdict of "death by misadventure," and added

a word or two in praise of the dead man's gallantry. The coroner

complimented Taffy warmly and promised to refer the case to the Royal

Humane Society for public recognition. The jury nodded and one or two

said, "Hear, hear!" Taffy hoped fervently he would do nothing of the

sort.

The funeral took place on the fourth day, at nine o'clock in the

morning. Such—in the days I write of—was the custom of the country.

Friends who lived at a distance rose and shaved by candle-light, and

daybreak found them horsed and well on way toward the house of mourning,

their errand announced by the long black streamers tied about their

hats. Their sad business over and done with, these guests returned to

the house, where, until noon, a mighty breakfast lasted and all were

welcome. Their black habiliments' and lowered voices alone marked the

difference between it and a hunting-breakfast.

And indeed this morning Squire Willyams, who had taken over the hounds

after Squire Moyle's death, had given secret orders to his huntsman; and

the pack was waiting at Three-barrow Turnpike, a couple of miles inland

from Carwithiel. At half-past ten the mourners drained their glasses,

shook the crumbs off their riding-breeches, and took leave; and after

halting outside Carwithiel gates to unpin and pocket their hatbands,

headed for the meet with one accord.

A few minutes before noon Squire Willyams, seated on his gray by the

edge of Three-barrow Brake and listening to every sound within the

covert, happened to glance an eye across the valley, and let out a low

whistle.

"Well!" said one of a near group of horsemen catching sight of the

rider pricking toward them down the farther slope, "I knew en for an

unbeliever; but this beats all."

"And his awnly son not three hours under the mould! Brought up in

France as a youngster he was, and this I s'pose is what comes of reading

Voltaire. My lord for manners and no more heart than a wormed nut—that's

Sir Harry and always was."

Squire Willyams slewed himself round in his saddle. He spoke quietly at

fifteen yards' distance, but each word reached the group of horsemen as

clear as a bell.

"Rablin," he said, "as a damned fool oblige me during the next few

minutes by keeping your mouth shut."

With this he resumed his old attitude and his business of watching the

covert side; removing his eyes for a moment to nod as Sir Harry rode up

and passed on to join the group behind him.

He had scarcely done so when deep in the undergrowth of blackthorn a

hound challenged.

"Spendigo for a fiver!—and well found, by the tune of it. See that patch

of gray wall, Rablin—there in a line beyond the Master's elbow? I lay

you an even guinea that's where my gentleman comes over, and inside of

sixty seconds."

But honest reprobation mottled the face of Mr. Rablin, squireen; and as

an honest man he must speak out. Let it go to his credit, because as a

rule he was a snob and inclined to cringe.

"I did not expect"—he cleared his throat—"to see you out to-day, Sir

Harry."

Sir Harry winced, and turned on them all a gray, woeful face.

"That's it," he said. "I can't bide home. I can't bide home."

* * * * *

Honoria bided home with her child and mourned for the dead. As a clever

woman—far cleverer than her husband—she had seen his faults while he

lived; yet had liked him enough to forgive without difficulty. But

now these faults faded, and by degrees memory reared an altar to him

as a man little short of divine. At the worst he had been amiable.

A kinder husband never lived. She reproached herself bitterly with

the half-heartedness of her response to his love; to his love while

it dwelt beside her, unvarying in cheerful kindness. For (it was the

truth alas! and a worm that gnawed continually) passionate love she

had never rendered him. She had been content; but how poor a thing

was contentment! She had never divined his worth, had never given her

worship. And all the while he had been a hero, and in the end had died

as a hero. Ah, for one chance to redeem the wrong! for one moment to

bow herself at his feet and acknowledge her blindness! Her prayer was

ancient as widowhood, and Heaven, folding away the irreparable time,

returned its first and last and only solace—a dream for the groping

arms; waking and darkness, and an empty pillow for her tears.

From the first her child had been dear to her; dearer (so her memory

accused her now) than his father; more demonstratively beloved, at any

rate. But in those miserable months she grew to love him with a double

strength. He bore George's name, and was (as Sir Harry proclaimed) a

very miniature of George; repeated his shapeliness of limb, his firm

shoulders, his long lean thighs—the thighs of a born horseman; learned

to walk, and lo! within a week walked with his father's gait; had smiles

for the whole of his small world, and for his mother a memory in each.

And yet—this was the strange part of it, a mystery she could not

explain, because she dared not even acknowledge it—though she loved

him for being like his father, she regarded the likeness with a growing

dread; nay, caught herself correcting him stealthily when he developed

some trivial trait which she, and she alone, recognized as part of his

father's legacy. It was what in the old days she would have called

"contradictious;" but there it was, and she could not help it; the

nearer George in her memory approached to faultlessness, the more

obstinately her instinct fought against her child's imitation of him;

and yet, because the child was obstinately George's, she loved him with

a double love.

There came a day when he told her a childish falsehood. She did not

whip him, but stood him in front of her and began to reason with him

and explain the wickedness of an untruth. By and by she broke off in

the midst of a sentence, appalled by the shrillness of her own voice.

From argument she had passed to furious scolding. And the little fellow

quailed before her, his contrition beaten down under the storm of

words that whistled about his ears without meaning, his small faculties

disabled before this spectacle of wrath. Her fingers were closing and

unclosing. They wanted a riding-switch; they wanted to grip this small

body they had served and fondled, and to cut out what? The lie? Honoria

hated a lie. But while she paused and shook, a light flashed, and her

eyes were open, and saw—that it was not the lie.

She turned and ran, ran upstairs to her own room, flung herself on

her knees beside the bed, dragged a locket from her bosom and fell

to kissing George's portrait, passionately crying it for pardon. She

was wicked, base; while he lived she had misprized him; and this was

her abiding punishment, that even repentance could purge her heart of

dishonoring thoughts, that her love for him now could never be stainless

though washed with daily tears. "'_He that is unjust let him be unjust

still_'—_Must_ that be true, Father of all mercies? I misjudged him, and

it is too late for atonement. But I repent and am afflicted. Though the

dead know nothing—though it can never reach or avail him—give me back

the power to be just!"

Late that afternoon Honoria passed an hour piously in turning over the

dead man's wardrobe, shaking out and brushing the treasured garments

and folding them, against moth and dust, in fresh tissue-paper. It was a

morbid task, perhaps, but it kept George's image constantly before her,

and this was what her remorseful mood demanded. Her nerves were unstrung

and her limbs languid after the recent tempest. By and by she locked

the doors of the wardrobe, and passing into her own bedroom, flung

herself on a couch with a bundle of papers—old bills, soiled and folded

memoranda, sporting paragraphs cut from the newspapers—scraps found in

his pockets months ago and religiously tied by her with a silken ribbon.

They were mementoes of a sort, and George had written few letters while

wooing—not half a dozen, first and last.

Two or three receipted bills lay together in the middle of the

packet—one a saddler's, a second a nurseryman's for pot-plants (kept

for the sake of its queer spelling), a third the reckoning for a hotel

luncheon. She was running over them carelessly when the date at the

head of this last one caught her eye. "August 3d"—it fixed her attention

because it happened to be the day before her birthday.

August 3d—such and such a year—the August before his death; and the

hotel a well-known one in Plymouth—the hotel, in fact, at which he had

usually put up.... Without a prompting of suspicion she turned back

and ran her eye over the bill. A steak, a pint of claret, vegetables,

cheese, and attendance—never was a more innocent bill.

Suddenly her attention stiffened on the date. George was in Plymouth

the day before her birthday. But no; as it happened, George had been in

Truro on that day. She remembered, because he had brought her a diamond

pendant, having written beforehand to the Truro jeweller to get a dozen

down from London to choose from. Yes, she remembered it clearly, and how

he had described his day in Truro. And the next morning—her birthday

morning—he had produced the pendant, wrapped in silver paper. "He had

thrown away the case; it was ugly, and he would get her another...."

But the bill? She had stayed once or twice at this hotel with George,

and recognized the handwriting. The book-keeper, in compliment perhaps

to a customer of standing, had written "George Vyell, Esq.," in full

on the bill-head; a formality omitted as a rule in luncheon-reckonings.

And if this scrap of paper told the truth—why _then George had lied_!

But why? Ah, if he had done this thing, nothing else mattered; neither

the how nor the why! If George had lied.... And the pendant, had that

been bought in Plymouth and not (as he had asserted) in Truro? He had

thrown away the case. Jewellers print their names inside such cases.

The pendant was a handsome one. Perhaps his check-book would tell.

She arose; stepped half-way to the door; but came back and flung herself

again upon the couch. No; she could not ... this was the second time

to-day ... she could not face the torture again.

Yet ... if George _had_ lied!

She sat up; sat up with both hands pressed to her ears, to shut out a

sudden voice clamoring through them—

"_And why not? A son's a son—curse you—though he was your man!_"

(To be concluded in November.)