JOHN WISHES THE PAST UNDONE.
“Well, mother, and how does she seem now? I wish I could hear that she’d
gone to sleep, poor child! If she doesn’t get better soon, I shall call
in Dr. Kempshall.”
“Send for Dr. Fiddlestick!” said Mrs. Beacham in a pet. “Now, John,
don’t you be foolish. There’s nothing the matter with Honor except airs
and foolishness. You just let her alone--there’s nothing like _that_ for
bringing girls to their senses. Make a fuss with ’em, and they’ll worry
your life out with their nonsense.”
John Beacham and his mother were sitting together in the gloaming in one
of the small dingy sitting-rooms appertaining to not the most cheerful
side of that excellent hostelry known from time immemorial as the Bell
Inn, Gawthorpe. Neither mother nor son were in the best possible temper
of either mind or spirits. The old lady especially was what may be
called, in vulgar parlance, “upset.” The mere circumstance of being
disturbed from the delightful monotonous routine of her every-day life
would have been alone sufficient to account for the fact of Mrs. Beacham
being “put out.” But, in addition to this misfortune there was the worry
of Colonel Norcott’s “accident,” an accident the real facts of which had
been penitently explained to her by John; and as a climax to all this
terrible annoyance (for though she had said little on the subject, Mrs.
Beacham had been thrown into a grievously anxious, as well as extremely
mortified, state of mind by the fact that John had lost his temper and
rendered himself amenable to the law), there was the more than
probability that Honor would be giving herself more than ever the airs
of a fine lady, and that, too, in Mrs. Beacham’s opinion, with some show
of right,--so true is it that good blood, even when illegitimately
inherited, induces a certain amount of servile respect.
John had found it no easy matter--it never was easy when his mother’s
understanding had to be appealed to--to make that worthy personage see
both sides of the question at issue.
“You see, mother,” he said, after having, to the best of his ability,
explained what had taken place between himself and his victim,--“you
see, mother, it was the man’s talk that aggravated me so. The boastful
brutal way that he had with him was enough to provoke a saint. It was
bad enough to hear that Honor, poor girl, wasn’t an honest woman’s
child; but when it came to impudence, and from a fellow like that--a man
that would cheat his best friend, if he had one, in the matter of a
horse--it was more than I could stand. I am sorry now I hit so hard,
I’ll own to that; but he got no more than he deserved; no, by George!”
and John’s heavy hand came down with a thump upon the table--“he got no
more than he deserved!”
Mrs. Beacham, who was looking, in her company silk and Sunday bonnet,
very unlike her normal self, sighed heavily at this new evidence of her
son’s intemperate spirit.
“Well, well, John,” she said, “what’s done can’t be undone. It’s a bad
business altogether; a terrible business, _I_ call it--bad blood o’ both
sides, according to you; but we must hope the best. And the first thing
to hope for is that the Colonel himself won’t die this bout. It would be
a shocking thing if he wasn’t to get over it; and though _he_ said it
was an accident--which was honourable, as I call it, on _his_ side--yet,
who knows, there are plenty in the world ready to think the worst, and
the truth will out--which there’s a Providence over all to find out.”
This view of what had occurred as taken and delicately hinted by his
depressed parent, did not greatly tend to enliven poor John’s spirits.
On the whole the unburdening of his heart and conscience had not proved
a satisfactory operation. He had not even been able to ascertain--so
taken up was the old lady in the minor details to which she had just
alluded--whether his mother felt drawn to her daughter-in-law, or the
contrary, in consequence of this wholly unexpected discovery. John
Beacham had not now to learn that matters had not gone always smoothly
between his womankind; nor, with all his affection and respect for his
parent, had it been difficult to arrive at the conclusion that the
crumpled roses had been almost always of the old lady’s strewing. He had
abstained from any remarks on this unsatisfactory state of things,
trusting to time, that (supposed) universal settler of schisms, to set
all to rights. Whether that desirable arrangement was likely to be
hastened or retarded by the knowledge that in Honor’s veins ran the blue
blood of the ancient race of Norcotts, remained to be seen.
In the mean time honest John Beacham, the man whose life had hitherto
been so uneventful, whose experience of the exciting scenes that to some
are as the very breath of life was so wonderfully limited, was about as
miserable as it is possible for a healthy, strong-nerved, unsentimental
man to feel. There was a vague sensation (_only_ vague, thank God for
that!) within him that a wall of separation was being raised between him
and the young wife who, for the first time, had interests separate from
his. He was a man not prone to the anticipation of misfortune. The fear
of having fallen upon evil days was one that he would in his
matter-of-fact simplicity have been very far from hugging to his heart,
with the morbid clinging of the _tête montée_ and the imaginative. But
though a sensible man, and a cheerfully disposed, the shadow of a coming
change was cast before his path; and John Beacham, leaning his head upon
his hand, gazed vacantly into the inn-yard, where busy ostlers and
ubiquitous stablemen were fulfilling the noisy, swearing, slopping ends
of their several beings, and thought, more gloomily than in his life he
had ever done before, upon the future. What, he asked himself, if his
mother’s boding prophecy should come true? What if Frederick Norcott
were indeed to die, and the blood of the man whom he had slain should be
required at his hands? That, in case of the Colonel’s death and his own
inculpation, any extreme or heavy penalty would be inflicted on himself,
John was too well versed in the laws and common sense of the land to
think probable; but there was another punishment--a punishment from
which neither human laws nor even the sense of a powerful press can
avail to save the guilty--and that punishment is the sting, poisonous as
an asp’s, and more stinging than the cruellest serpent’s--the sting,
that is, of an accusing conscience. Well did poor John Beacham know
that, should Honor’s father die of that foul blow that _he_ had dealt
him, the memory of that day’s work would haunt his spirit, both in his
waking and his sleeping moments, both in his goings out and his comings
in, whilst life should last; while as for _her_--as for the woman in
whom his all of happiness here below was centred--if she should turn her
bright face from him; if she, looking upon him as her father’s murderer,
should no more be the light and blessing of his home; if--But the
unhappy man could pursue the terrible picture no farther. With a groan,
involuntarily uttered in his deep anguish, but which startled his mother
from a refreshing nap, John’s honest head fell forward in his clasped
hands, and tears (the first that he had shed since he was a boy) oozed
slowly through his fingers.