“THERE’S GOOD, AFTER ALL, IN HER.”
John Beacham tried very hard to believe that he rejoiced in his wife’s
pleasure in the society of her new connections. Again and again he told
himself how well and delightful it was that not only the Bakers, above
him in position as they were, but Mrs. Colonel Norcott herself, a
personage and an heiress--one, too, who _might_ very naturally have
looked coldly upon poor Honor--had treated her from the first with a
consideration and regard as sincere as they were flattering. John was
well aware that the converse of this state of things would have
surprised no one; and often, reflecting on the mortification that
_might_ have been his wife’s portion, he endeavoured to reconcile
himself to the deplorable fact that she had been removed, fatally, as he
felt, removed, from his sphere into another, and that from being the
light and joy of his fireside, Honor had been virtually translated to a
world in which _he_ had neither part nor interest. That the anxious man
was to a certain degree justified in this suspicion, no judge of
character who carefully watched that pretty Honor on her return to what
John had, alas! begun to call her duties, could have doubted; for, when
she did return, it was not very difficult to perceive that she was not
the same Honor who had left the Paddocks only eight short days before.
In what the change consisted, however, it would have been difficult to
say. She was as willing to oblige, as anxious to please, and as
sweet-tempered as before; but there could be traced a languor in her
movements, an occasional absence of mind from things present, and a
decided want of the _zest_--the spring of life and energy--which,
previous to the fatal gala-day, had been conspicuous in the girl’s half
Celtic character. All this John, to whom she was far dearer than his own
life, noticed with a jealous and ever-growing irritation. With the
dangerous faith possessed by many of his sex in their own perceptive
powers, this man, so utterly in the dark regarding the complex machinery
of a woman’s nature, decided at once that he knew what was the matter
with Honor. During that week--that long miserable week--that she had
been away from him, her father (how hard it was for John even in thought
to call the Colonel by that tender name!) had amused himself, the farmer
feared, by initiating Honor into some of the wicked doings of the bad
world in which he lived. Of what should, or indeed _could_, such a man
talk, John Beacham said to himself, but of things of which a pure-minded
young woman had best know nothing about? What are people the better, he
went on to ask himself, for hearing what fashionable people are about in
London or in foreign parts? He was no Methodist, not he, and was all for
a little pleasure at odd times for everybody; but if Honor were to grow
discontented because she couldn’t go about like a lady, and have a
lodging up in town sometimes, like Mrs. Kempshall, and go to the
theatres to learn all sorts of wickedness, why, he and Honor had better
come to an understanding. It was an awful threat, certainly, but one
which, perhaps unfortunately for Honor, was never carried into
execution. I say unfortunately, for at that time a little _stir_, even
the commonplace stir of an actual scolding, would have done Honor good.
She was suffering from the natural consequences of reaction after an
excitement which had told heavily on her nervous system. Now, neither
John nor his mother understood anything about nerves. They had heard of
such things, to be sure, but they had about as much faith in their
actual existence as they had in that of the king of the cannibals, or
the great sea-serpent himself. Had Honor, however, been questioned on
the subject of her _malaise_, she would have found it no easy matter to
account for her sensations. She felt wearied, listless, and depressed.
There was no actual wearying in her mind for change, and yet there was
within her a latent conviction that _only_ in change would she find
comfort and improvement.
How heavily hung at that trying period of this young woman’s life the
time that God had given her to improve, she alone could tell. If
_they_--her husband and her husband’s mother--would only have talked to
her about the late transactions, all might have been better. There are
seasons when there is a positive craving after conversation on _self_--a
craving which is in itself a token of an unhealthy and morbid condition
of mind; and Honor Beacham, seated dejectedly at her work during those
long summer evenings--evenings whose silence oppressed her like the
lowering of a heavy thunder-cloud--would have been thankful for any
discussion that might break the dull monotony of that weary time.
If Honor believed that lack of interest in her concerns was at the
bottom of this reserve, she was greatly mistaken. She would, perhaps,
have found it hard to imagine that an innate delicacy was the cause of
this singular _retenue;_ yet so in fact it was. On John Beacham’s side
especially, there existed a very natural shrinking from to any allusion
to the past. The blow struck by him in a moment of wild and unpardonable
passion was ever present to him as an offence alike against the laws of
God and the enactments of man. Had Honor not been, unfortunately, deeply
interested in the victim of his ungovernable fury, John would still have
felt considerable repugnance to speaking of the man whom he had wounded.
But things standing as they were, and, above all, with Honor looking so
changed, so quiet, so _grand_, as Mrs. Beacham was once heard to say of
her, what wonder that honest John, far from coming to what he called an
“understanding” with the wife of his bosom, should, by his
hourly-increasing reserve, have opened the gulf between them, which day
by day grew wider and more difficult to leap over?
Nor were matters much better as regarded the relations between Mrs.
Beacham and her silent daughter-in-law. The old lady, whose heart had
begun to warm towards John’s well-descended wife, was not well pleased
to find that Honor scarcely seemed aware of the change of manner adopted
in her favour. Always courteous, but never familiar, Mrs. John Beacham
(and the result was scarcely to be wondered at) conveyed the impression
that she was proud; and this conviction hardened more than one heart
against the suffering girl. Proud! What was there, in very truth, in
her birth to excite sensations of arrogance and self-esteem in even the
weakest of human hearts? Could Honor have been able to answer this
question as it should have been answered, there would have been a better
chance of safety for this poor, ignorant, and ambitious girl. As it was,
however, the senseless idea that she was a lady, and the memories of
those superior refinements in habits, manners, and _entourage_ which (in
connection with her father and his belongings) clung around her, were
fatal to Honor’s happiness and peace of mind. If she only, in those
miserable days, when everyone--when even John himself--seemed estranged
from her, could have been blessed with that chiefest of blessings, the
blessing of _hope_--hope in the shape of a tenderly longed-for
maternity--all might, in spite of the past, have been well with poor
little Honor Beacham; but of that--the commonest of earthly boons--there
appeared to be no immediate prospect. By one of those strange caprices
of Nature, which we find it so hard to understand, this woman, with the
large tender heart, whose love for children, and indeed all helpless
things, was almost intense, seemed destined (as the months wore on, and
still there was no call for the pretty preparations which so delight the
heart of a young, expectant mother) to be childless.
That this seemed not unlikely to be the case, was a constant source of
aggravation to old Mrs. Beacham; and in moments of strong irritation
against Honor, she would even go so far as to endeavour to make John
share her feelings on the subject.
“It all comes of marrying a fine lady,” she said one day, as her son,
with the look of care that had grown habitual to his honest face, was
taking what he called a “snack,” previous to a hurried journey up to
London on business. “In my time, married women had children, and plenty
of ’em, if so be they kep their healths. There’d have been four of you,
John, as you know, if I hadn’t buried three, bless ’em! before they--”
“But, mother,” said John, ruthlessly cutting short these maternal
reminiscences, “Honor hasn’t what you call her health; and what’s more,
no one can say with justice that I married a fine lady. Why, she was
ready enough--too ready I might say--to work, a year agone. You just ask
the Clays about her. Never sparing herself, and singing about the house
like a bird. But that’s all over now,” he went on sadly. “She’s so
changed, Honor is, poor child!” and the rough, kind-hearted man gulped
down a sigh as he looked back upon his vanished hopes, and on the fading
vision of the wife who was so different, he told himself, from the
languid girl who shared his home.
“It’s my belief,” said Mrs. Beacham bluntly, “that she’s pining for the
Colonel.”
“For the Colonel? D--n him!” burst forth John in one of those sudden
passions that surprised as well as half-frightened those about him,
“it’s too bad, it’s a deal too bad, to have that man for ever coming up
between me and Honor! And yet I don’t believe it; upon my soul, I don’t
believe it! It isn’t likely that just the name of being her father--for
it’s nothing more--should make her think so much of him. Sometimes it
comes into my head,” he went on meditatingly, and cutting a huge slice
off the brown loaf as he spoke, “sometimes I think that it would be
better to break the ice, and talk to her about him. Of course, it’s only
right to honour one’s parents; and I should be the last man, I hope, to
backbite and to speak ill of another; but I think--God forgive me if I’m
wrong, mother!--that it might be as well just to open Honor’s eyes a
little about that same father of hers. If she knew--”
“You couldn’t do it, John; it wouldn’t be--as far as I can see--right;
and though Honor is a love-child, and her father--according to
you--would be in his proper place at Botany Bay, it isn’t for us to
malign him to his own daughter. No, John,” the old woman continued, for
notwithstanding her jealousy of Honor there existed in the old woman’s
heart a certain fund of good sense, as well as kindliness of nature, to
fall back upon in time of need,--“no, John, we must trust to Providence
that all will come right in time. There’s good, after all, in Honor; and
some day, perhaps, she will have done with whimsies, and take at last to
sense.”