HONOR FINDS A NEW RELATION.
“Come now, take an egg, and don’t be foolish. They’re not like the
Paddocks eggs, to be sure, but you may as well taste a bit--or a slice
of ham. John, give Honor a slice of ham--terrible stripy it looks, to be
sure, but what can you expect when one is that foolish as to go away
from home in this sort of nonsensical way?”
Honor, looking very pale, and with her eyes heavy with weeping, was
sitting behind the big bronze tea-urn--an article of furniture coeval,
doubtless, with the building of the Bell--and with a trembling hand was
performing her accustomed duty of making tea for the family. John had
good-naturedly offered to take the affair upon himself, but Mrs. Beacham
had at once vetoed the idea.
“Such stuff and nonsense!” she said; “as if making tea had ever been
known in this world to do anybody harm! And a man, too, to set about
doing such things! No, no. Take my word for it,” the energetic old woman
went on to say, “there’s nothing like having something to do for keeping
the spirits up, and you’ll see, John, if you don’t make a noodle of
Honor, she’ll be herself again in half the time.”
But though the old lady did thus throw cold water on John’s simple plans
for his wife’s comfort, she did nevertheless, in her own way and to a
certain extent, feel for the girl, whose only relation (and Mrs. Beacham
entertained very strong old-fashioned prejudices on the score of
consanguinity) was in such deadly peril, and that through her own
husband’s hands. If John had not been so _very_ tender over Honor, her
mother-in-law would have almost felt inclined, so piteous was the sight
of her delicate white face, to, in her fashion, pet and sympathise with
the “poor thing,” reminding her that “misfortunes will happen;” that “we
are none of us, if we did but know it, more to be pitied than our
neighbours;” that it would “all be the same a hundred years hence;” and,
in short, recalling to the sufferer’s recollection all the various and
stereotyped phrases of consolation which well-intentioned people are apt
to din into the unwilling ears of the afflicted.
“You will try an egg, my dear” (the use of this term of endearment was
going great lengths for Mrs. Beacham), “and endeavour to make the best
of things. It’s a sad thing, as I have known myself, to lose a father;
but a father”--and here the excellent woman filled her mouth with the
much-vituperated ham--“a father that one has never seen but once ain’t
the same thing, in my opinion, as a father that has been a father, and
has done his duty by one as a father should.”
“But, mother,” interposed John, “there is no use in telling Honor that.”
“Tut, tut, my dear, you just let me speak. You’re not more fit to manage
a wife than you are a baby, but it’s never too late to learn; and if
you’ll take my advice, you’ll just order the chaise-cart directly
breakfast’s over (such a breakfast as it is too! but I’ll warrant, such
as it is, they’ll make us pay dear enough for it); and then, stopping
for nothing and nobody, we’ll drive back to the Paddocks.”
John shook his head at this wise proposal. “You can go back yourself,
mother, and I think, too, that you’d better take Honor along with you;
but it won’t do for me to be out of the way, even if I could bear myself
(which to own the truth I could not) to be out of the way of hearing
about the Colonel.”
Honor, on hearing John’s proposal, looked at him imploringly over the
Britannia-metal teapot. To her also it would be a sore aggravation to
leave the place where her father lay between life and death. That his
days _were_ endangered, Dr. Kempshall had now openly said. The blow he
had received was a very severe one, and there had been considerable
injury to the bone, but the immediate cause for apprehension lay in the
inflammatory condition of the patient’s blood. The weather was intensely
hot, and Colonel Norcott had been indulging, though not to excess, yet a
little more freely than was advisable under the circumstances, in the
good things provided for the company in the gentlemen’s tent, where Mr.
Arthur Vavasour’s health had been drunk with a good deal of enthusiasm
by his numerous friends. On the majority, whose heads had _not_ been
subsequently broken, the trifling excess had produced no unpleasant
consequences. But Colonel Norcott was unfortunately the exception to the
rule; his blood had been terribly heated; and inflammation of the brain,
and even erysipelas, might too probably be the result of his
indiscretion.
“Don’t say that I am to go, John, please,” said Honor, the ready tears
springing to her eyes, and in a voice that went straight to John’s
heart. His mother, however, was inexorable.
“Now, Honor, I won’t have you foolish. If John is to stay, which I must
own I think a great piece of extravagance and folly, there’s no reason
why you should remain, to be a trouble and an expense to him. And, John,
the more I think of it, the more I can’t understand what risks you are
likely to run in the matter. You were quite alone, you two, you say, and
after what Colonel Norcott said--”
“Mother,” broke in John a little impatiently, “what _he_ said, poor
fellow, has nothing, or next to nothing, to do with it. If the worst
comes to the worst,” he added in a lower tone, and very gravely, “I
shall be questioned; and then I shall, as a matter of course, tell the
whole truth from beginning to end.”
For the first time, on hearing this expression of her husband’s
resolution, the idea of danger to him flashed across her mind; and with
it a sudden pang of self-reproach curdled her blood painfully. Rising
from her chair, she laid her hand gently on his shoulder. She knew,
_felt_ also, how good and true he was, and at that moment he seemed of
more value to her than a hundred fathers.
“O, John,” she said, “_dear_ John! they couldn’t hurt you for it! That
would be worse than everything;” and overcome by vague visions of
imprisonment, transportation, and even (for she was very young and
ignorant) of death, she burst into a passion of tears, and lay with her
fair head on John’s broad breast, sobbing like a child.
He soothed her as best he could, stroking her glossy golden hair with a
touch tender as a woman’s. There was little to fear for him, he said;
there was no malice on his part, no intention, that would be easily
proved, to kill. At the worst it would be “manslaughter,” and, he
thought, probably _no_ punishment. No punishment--ah, poor John!--save
that of the gnawing worm within which never dies, and the torturing fire
that not rivers of remorseful tears can quench!
But for all John’s love and pity for Honor, and both were very great, he
could not be brought to say that it was in any respect advisable that
Honor should remain at Gawthorpe. The telegraph, he argued, both could
and should bring her constant intelligence of Colonel Norcott’s
condition, and in the mean time _she_ (a point on which John was more
anxious than he allowed to appear) would be secure from public
observation, and from the remarks, ill-natured or otherwise, of the
curious. The idea that his wife’s close relationship to the man lying in
danger of death so very near to them might by some possibility transpire
was very painful to the former. In that relationship he saw nothing but
disgrace both to Honor and to himself, and he was, therefore, almost
morbidly desirous of removing her from the spot where at any moment
observation might be turned towards her, and she might be spoken of, _ex
hypothesi_ at least, if not openly and decidedly, as the illegitimate
daughter of a gambler and a reprobate.
That there were reasons which John could not well bring to bear on his
wife’s powers of comprehension, the reader will readily understand.
Setting aside the fact that _he_ was not the man to throw a stone at his
prostrate enemy, there was the wholesome old-fashioned faith in the
divine right of parents to be set aside; a faith in which John Beacham,
and his fathers before him, had been born and bred. Disowned and
deserted--unrecognised as well by the laws of the land as by the man to
whom she owed her birth, owing _him_ nothing save the inheritance of
shame--John would yet have shrunk, now that excitement had subsided and
his blood was cooled, from saying aught to Honor that could lessen
either her respect or her newly-born affection for her father.
“It’s only natural, my dear,” he said, “that you should be uneasy; and
it isn’t for me to say ‘do this,’ or ‘don’t do it.’ Hush, mother,
please; it’s a trying time for Honor, and--”
But before he could descant further--either on the nature of, or the
palliations for, his young wife’s trials--a loud tap was heard at the
door, a tap which was immediately followed up by the intrusion of a
waiter’s head, the said waiter being the bearer, as speedily became
apparent, of a note.
“From Mrs. Baker, sir,” the man said, presenting it to Mr. Beacham on a
japanned waiter, “and the favour of an answer is requested.”
It was a small unportentous-looking missive, directed in an uncertain
feminine hand. Yet John opened it with strong forebodings of evil,
forebodings which were to a certain extent justified, since the
writer--one of the gentlest and most charitable, by the way, of
Christian matrons--imparted to him, in a few agitated lines, the fact
that her son, believing himself to be lying on his bed of death, had
disclosed to her one of the heaviest of his past offences against his
God, and had declared himself to be the penitent father of John
Beacham’s wife.
“The most earnest wish of my poor guilty son,” wrote the unhappy mother,
“appears to be that he may see again the child whom he has so long
neglected and forsaken. May God forgive me if I am doing wrong in urging
you to grant this prayer. At the eleventh hour there was forgiveness for
even one of the worst of sinners. May I not hope that, as a sign and
hope of that forgiveness, _you_ may be led to grant the prayer not only
of my son, but of one whom the judgments of God have followed all the
days of her life.”
John laid down the letter with something very like despair tugging at
his heartstrings. The worst that he had, as regarded Honor, ventured to
anticipate, had come to pass. To refuse the entreaty of the aged lady,
so soon perhaps, by his act and deed, to be bereaved of her only son,
was simply impossible, but that prayer granted, and Honor permitted to
take her place by her father’s dying pillow, all hope of concealing the
terrible secret--which John would have willingly given all that he
possessed to hide--was at an end.
With a heavy heart he made the contents of the missive known to his
womankind.
“You see, Honey,” he said, as his wife’s eyes glanced, almost without
taking in their sense, over the hurriedly-written lines, “you see,
Honey, we might have saved ourselves all this bother. Here’s Mrs. Baker,
poor soul, knows all about it, and wants to see you, child. It isn’t
what I should have wished; but what is to be must be; and so I suppose I
must just send word that you’ll wait on Mrs. Baker in the room she has
to sit in. Ah me, it’s a great change! And who’d a thought, when we left
home only so late as yesterday, that such things would come about!”
The revolution that was taking place seemed indeed a startling one to
that quiet stay-at-home family. To Honor, now that her vague wishes
seemed on the point of being gratified, now that she was _not_ to return
to her tranquil home at the Paddocks, but, instead, was to be suddenly
thrown into the presence and society of strangers, the variety in her
life did not appear in quite so attractive a light as she had
anticipated. She knew nothing whatever of Mrs. Baker; nothing, that is
to say, beyond the fact that she was old, religious, and a lady; none of
which qualities tended, it must be confessed, to render the prospect of
the approaching, and now not to be evaded, meeting particularly
agreeable in Honor’s sight. To make matters worse, Mrs. Beacham--her
short-lived compassion for her daughter-in-law being brought to a sudden
conclusion--took it into her head to be more than usually jealous and
hard to manage on the occasion. Now that Honor was about to be “taken
up,” as the cantankerous old lady phrased it, “by the grandees,” all the
milk of human kindness in Mrs. Beacham’s breast seemed turned to gall;
and very short and snappish were the only replies that either her son or
Honor could extract from her.
“Well, mother,” John said, with a poor attempt at sportiveness, “here we
are together again!” He had just returned from leaving his agitated
wife at the door of Mrs. Baker’s sitting-room; and--it was morbid,
foolish, perhaps, on his part--he could not wholly divest himself of a
very miserable, but quite undefinable, sensation that the curtain had
fallen on the first act of his married life, and that the happiest
portion of it was at an end for ever.
Leaving him to bear as best he could both his own sorrowful reflections
and the perpetual nagging of the old lady, one of whose weaknesses it
was never to endure patiently what she in her jealous susceptibility
denominated being “kept out” of what was going on, we will follow Honor
to her interview with Colonel Norcott’s long-suffering mother. Mrs.
Baker was one of those women--and they are not a few--who seem from
their earliest girlhood marked out for suffering. Her home-life--owing
to circumstances needless here to mention--had been so wearying and
unendurable, that she had at eighteen married a man for whom she
entertained no stronger feeling than an absence of dislike. Mr. Norcott,
who, as we already know, was a country squire of good estate, had
endeared himself to her by his sterling qualities, and by his unfailing
affection for herself. During his lifetime they were, however, rendered
for many years unhappy by the illness and deaths of five children
successively born to them. In early infancy the little Norcotts were
much, as other beings of their age, subject to occasional illnesses, but
not apparently deficient in vigour and stamina. To what the mysterious
ailment was owing that, one after the other, as they attained the age of
twelve or thereabouts, cut off those till then seemingly healthy
children, and condemned them to an early tomb, the doctors found it hard
to say. It had been very hard to see them die; very, very grievous to
watch the fading of the healthy colour, the weakening of the vigorous
limbs, the slow and stealthy, but too sure, advance of death. As each of
her beloved ones was removed from the little place that it had filled on
earth to a happier home above, Mrs. Norcott--weeping as one that would
not be comforted--had complained in bitterness of spirit that there was
no sorrow like unto her sorrow, and that the burden that had been laid
upon her was greater than she could bear. And yet she lived through
it--lived through it to the wonder of those who, not having so suffered,
are ignorant how much the human heart can endure, and yet exist--lived
also to confess, in the solitude of her own chamber, where no eye but
God’s could look into her heart, that death was not the bitterest of
mortal woes; for that a wounded spirit--a spirit crushed by a sense of
shame, and bowed down by the burden of a loved one’s sin--is of all
earthly evils the most difficult of endurance.
Mrs. Norcott had been five years a widow, and her only surviving child
was eighteen when she decided--chiefly that he might have the advantage
of a stepfather’s counsel and control--to marry again. The step,
unfortunately, did not prove a successful one. Frederick Norcott from
the first “set himself,” as the nurses say, against his medicine; and
Mr. Baker--a sensible, unassuming, but quietly proud man--did not
persevere in the up-hill work imposed upon him. Happily Mrs. Baker’s
jointure, with the addition of the small but comfortable patrimony, on
the strength of which the retired solicitor had ventured on aspiring to
the hand of the still handsome Mrs. Norcott, were safe from the
all-devouring maw of her reckless and selfish son. To what extent
he had in secret, and without even the knowledge of her
less-easy-to-be-persuaded husband, mulcted the anxious woman of her
little-prized gold, no one but the greedy spendthrift and his unselfish
parent could have told. For years, whether at home or abroad, in the
army or out of it, in youth and in middle-age, this only son of one of
the best of women had never ceased being to her a source of trouble and
of trial. Her most peaceful days concerning him had been those which
had elapsed since his marriage, since for more than twelve months there
had been no call upon her purse, no appeal to her motherly sympathy for
distresses which she had at last begun to believe were frequently
fictitious. On Fred’s return to England, which event occurred about a
year before his introduction to the reader, Mrs. Baker had made, with
some satisfaction, the acquaintance of her son’s wife. The colonial
so-called heiress, was a _fade_, sentimental, well-meaning woman; very
much inclined to worship the husband who in birth and breeding was so
greatly her superior, and little disposed to regret the loss through
advancing years of such small claims to beauty as nature had endowed her
with.
Colonel Norcott’s first visit (since his return) to his stepfather’s
house had not been hailed with much satisfaction by that gentleman. Mr.
Baker’s habits, despite his twenty-seven years or so of married life,
were decidedly those of an old bachelor; his hours for meals and family
prayers, his times for rising up and lying down, were fixed and
immutable; and the erratic proceedings of his stepson, though they were
not allowed to actually interfere with those arrangements, did decidedly
prevent their being carried through with that staid decorum which was so
precious in the sight of the _ci-devant_ solicitor. The principles too,
or rather the lack of principles, evidenced by the gallant Colonel were
very obnoxious to Mr. Baker. He was a man utterly without toleration for
the weaknesses of others; and, the power of self-command being inherent
in his own nature, he could not understand that power being either
impossible or even difficult of attainment in others. To do right was so
entirely his intention, that he was misled by that very sincerity of
desire into the belief that he _was_ doing right. His leanings were also
so completely towards the proper behaved and virtuous, that, while he
would have been a pattern stepfather to a prudent, sensible young man,
“who needed no repentance,” he turned with feelings of absolute dislike
and repulsion from the sinner whom a more forbearing, or rather a more
judiciously controlling, course of conduct might possibly have assisted
in turning from the error of his ways.
The intelligence that Colonel Norcott had met with an accident that
would probably end fatally flew on the wings of rumour to Lingfield
Cottage, preceding by half an hour, at the least, the judicious message
sent by kind-hearted Lady Guernsey to the mother of the injured man.
Mrs. Baker, notwithstanding her many trials, was still for her age,
which was under seventy, an active and a healthy woman. _Habit_ had
likewise, to a certain degree, hardened her to suffering; and moreover,
that unlucky Fred--who, as a pretty blue-eyed boy, used to keep “her
heart in her mouth,” to use a simple mother’s phrase, with his daring
tricks and perilous escapades--was probably not quite so dear to her,
when a hardened, battered _roué_ of forty-five, as he had been in his
days of comparative, but still highly troublesome, innocence.
There was of course no choice, as even Mr. Baker was obliged to allow,
but to go at once to Gawthorpe. It was intensely annoying, and that he
_was_ seriously displeased was made manifest by Mr. Baker, after the
fashion of gentlemen of his stamp and principles. It was an opportunity,
however, to make his light--the light of a self-denying, right-minded,
God-fearing man--shine before the world; the world, that is, of his
well-ordered home; the home where Godfrey Baker, Esq., whilom of
New-square, Lincoln’s-Inn, and now churchwarden of the parish of
Bigglesworth, and one of its most respected and influential inhabitants,
reigned in calm and undisputed authority.
“A most unpleasant and troublesome affair indeed,” remarked Mr. Baker,
as, with his sorrowing wife seated beside him in their little
pony-carriage, he drove with an air of especial dignity through the
well-painted iron gates that guarded his trim, citizen, box-like “front
garden” from the incursions of the profane.
“A most unpleasant and troublesome affair, but one for which I cannot
say that _I_ at least was not prepared. A disreputable life is very
likely--ve-ry likely, indeed--as I have often noticed, to end in a
violent death, and--”
“But, Mr. Baker,” began the unhappy mother, whose affection for her only
child no amount of misconduct on his part had ever been able to succeed
in effectually alienating; “but, Mr. Baker, there is no reason yet,
thank God! to imagine that anything--anything dreadful--has happened to
Frederick. Lady Guernsey mentioned an accident--a fall--an injury to the
head; but nothing serious, at least nothing to make one fear that--”
“One should always fear the worst, my dear Mary, when the person so
situated has led the life, and tempted Providence to the extent, that
Colonel Norcott has. I do not wish to be severe, and, above all, I do
not desire at such a time to aggravate your sufferings; but Frederick
Norcott has--as we all unfortunately know--been a thoroughly bad man.
God grant that, even at the eleventh hour, he may be brought to a sense
of his misconduct, and may repent, before it is too late, of his many
and grievous sins!”
He whipped the pony up vigorously after this conventional prayer;
suggestive strokes they were, as though to imply that, according to
_his_ belief, a good and efficient scourging would be aptly bestowed on
the recreant body of his guilty son-in-law. Mrs. Baker, to whom prayers
for her erring son--heartfelt and sincere--had been familiar from the
hour when the reprobate Fred first began to break the laws both of God
and man, sat very still and silent by the side of her respected
helpmate. She had nothing--could have nothing--to say for Fred; and,
moreover, her spirit was terribly sore and sad within her at the thought
of his sickness and his danger. Sickness to which he was so unused;
danger which he was so ill-prepared to meet.
At last--the way seemed a long one, and the pony, always slow and
measured in his movements, appeared more than usually addicted to his
besetting sin of taking his own time upon the road--at last the houses
of Gawthorpe came in sight, the High-street was gained, and the Bell
Inn, a flat-faced red-bricked building of imposing dimensions, rose up
before the elderly pair of anxious and troubled visitors, in all the
busy dulness of a county town’s best inn.
It was long past eight o’clock--a soft sweet summer’s evening--the
daylight fading gradually away, and the sounds of active life dying on
the ear as the solemn shades of night crept slowly onward. There were
but few persons in the street, or crowding (as they had done an hour
before) round the entrance of the hotel. For the present, at least,
there seemed nothing new to learn concerning the great and absorbing
topic of the day--namely, the mysterious “accident” which had happened
to Colonel Frederick Norcott. The public--that very curious as well as
impertinent many-headed monster--had already begun to put forth certain
likely as well as unlikely surmises on the occasion; and in those
surmises, had not the owner of Updown Paddocks been the respected John
Beacham that he was, he would probably have played a somewhat
conspicuous part. There were not a few (their remarks, however, as not
likely to be received in good part, were made _sotto voce_) who
considered it as a suggestive circumstance that Mr. John Beacham, though
the first to give the alarm, had never either to man, woman or child--so
far at least as was generally known--mentioned any particulars of the
accident; or, which was still more remarkable, seeing that the said John
was very far from being of an uncommunicative temperament, had he given
utterance to any surmises, any suggestive hints, which might have
guided the gossip-lovers to a discovery of the truth. For a long
period--a period lengthened into hours through the undisguised curiosity
of the neighbourhood--the avenues to the hotel were thronged with
persons desirous of learning something “authentic” before their return
to the quiet of their respective homes. That there did remain behind
something more to learn, everyone seemed instinctively to feel; and the
few persevering ones that still lingered round the hotel-doors would
probably have felt amply rewarded for their pains could they have stood
behind the dingy curtain of the big inn-bed, and overheard a long and
whispered converse which the object of their curiosity, pale, excited,
and contrary to the orders of Dr. Kempshall, held soon after her arrival
with his distressed and agitated mother. In that interview--moved
thereto chiefly by an unaccountable desire (the offspring, probably, of
a fevered imagination) to see by his bedside the daughter of one whom
for a brief season he had passionately loved--Frederick Norcott revealed
to his long-enduring parent the sad episode of his life, which, by so
exciting the wrath of John Beacham of Updown Paddocks, had led to the
calamitous blow from the effects of which he (the delinquent) was now
suffering. How far the guilty man was justified in believing that his
mother’s tender charity to sinners--a charity born of Christian
humility--would cause her to view not only his fault, but the innocent
victim of another’s sin, with eyes of compassion rather than those of
severity and wrath, the following chapter will tend to make apparent.