gratifying terms to her late husband’s interest in, and she might almost
say (Lady M. was certainly wonderfully condescending) her friendship
for, John; not to be till, holding the bride’s hand within her own (an
_honour_ which it is to be hoped that young woman fully appreciated),
she had expressed a gracious hope that Mrs. John would prove worthy of
her mission upon earth--namely, that of being a true and obedient wife,
and a devoted mother to the children with whom Providence might deign to
bless her union.

“A very neat and appropriate speech,” laughed Horace, as the two young
men sauntered out of the churchyard. “I should have liked to put in
something poetical and complimentary about the ‘bridal of the earth and
sky,’ for, by Jove! she looks a good deal too delicate and ethereal to
be John Beacham’s wife.”

“She is very beautiful, certainly,” Arthur responded. “I hope it will
answer; but somehow those sort of marriages don’t always end as well as
they begin;” and having thus lucidly delivered himself, they walked on
for a short while in silence.

CHAPTER VIII.

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!”

CHAPTER IX.

THE WELCOME HOME.

A fortnight, minus two days, had passed since John Beacham was married,
and once more, on the occasion of the return of the bride and bridegroom
to their home, all Switcham was on the tiptoe of expectation. At the
little wayside station, almost a private one for the accommodation of
“the Castle,” few trains throughout the day were in the habit of
stopping. There was one at 7.10 P.M., a fact to which the time-table and
_Bradshaw_, those sworn enemies to indiscreet surprises, bore useful
witness; and as by that train the bridal party was by the Switchamites
fully expected to arrive, a considerable crowd had (when the down
passengers were due) assembled round and about the station, ready, with
more heartiness than good taste, to bestow on the returned travellers a
noisy and a cordial welcome home.

Meanwhile John and his pretty wife had spent the greater part of the day
in London, enjoying, amongst other inexpensive pleasures, the
apparently inexhaustible one of looking in at the tempting windows of
the West-end shops. It was Saturday afternoon, and the carriages, as was
usual on that day, were pretty well filled with passengers. Honor and
her husband had already taken their places, the first bell had been
rung, and only one seat remained unappropriated in the compartment which
they occupied, when a handsome, distinguished-looking young man, whose
face Honor thought she had seen before, came slowly sauntering along the
platform. He glanced in a careless manner towards the carriages as he
passed, but his eye chancing to catch sight of John’s honest sun-burnt
face, he stopped, and nodding familiarly, asked the latter if there was
a vacant place.

“Plenty,” John said cordially.--“Make a little room, Honey. That’s
it.--Quite well, sir?”--shaking hands cordially with the new-comer, whom
he introduced to his wife as “the young Squire.”

“You must excuse me,” he went on, speaking with the cheery voice and
pleasant smile that were among the various causes of the well-known
horse-breeder’s popularity,--“you must excuse me for calling you so.
I’ve known you ever since you was such a little chap, and your noble
father” (John’s ideas of nobility were somewhat confused, inasmuch as
the simple fellow was weak enough to believe in the “patent” of a good
man who “fears God, and loves his neighbour as himself”)--“your noble
father was ‘the Squire’ before you, sir, and we wouldn’t like the title
to die out.--I have known this gentleman, my dear,” turning to Honor,
who was blushing crimson behind her little coquettish veil, “ever
since”--suiting the action to the word--“he was _that_ high.”

Arthur laughed. The train was going at express speed now, so that
conversation was carried on under difficulties. “You must have had
wretched weather during your excursion,” he said, addressing himself
less exclusively to Honor than he would have done had she been exactly
in his own position in life. He was, as I have more than once said, a
very good-looking young gentleman, and being besides unfortunately
endowed with the often dangerous gift, described by one of the most
brilliant of French novelists as _l’œil à femmes_, he was a little in
the habit of _bonnes fortunes_. Honor, too, was looking wonderfully
pretty, as she sat opposite, with lowered eyelids, colouring under the
pleasing consciousness of being gazed at and admired. Arthur was not
much troubled with shyness, but for some reason, or other he did not
find it quite easy just then to talk to John Beacham’s wife.

“Well, I can’t say that the sun did trouble us much,” John said: “as I
told Honor there, she might have left her parasols and sun-shades
behind her. Such a fortnight as it’s been I never knew before, for the
time of year. We’ve come back a day or two before time; but we were half
afraid the old lady would find it dull by herself at the Paddocks, to
say nothing of the stock,” he added, laughing. “Honor tells me sometimes
that she believes I care more for the mares and foals than I do for kith
and kin.”

“Ah, now I didn’t say quite that, John,” Honor said in a very low tone;
but Arthur caught the words and replied to them:

“I’m sure you didn’t, Mrs. Beacham, and John will be forgetting his
out-of-door amusements altogether, now that he’s got something better
than kith and kin at home. I only wish that we were half as well off at
the Castle. The old house has grown more melancholy than ever since I
went away. By Jove, what a county it is! No hunting--no
neighbourhood--nothing earthly to be done!”

“Why don’t you take to breeding?” John asked; “there’s an interest for
you at once. Manage one of your own farms, and have plenty of young
stock, and, take my word for it, you’ll be all right then.”

Before Arthur could make any reply to this characteristic piece of
advice, the train had slackened speed, and looking out, he announced
that they had arrived at Switcham. It was, as I before remarked, a small
unpretending station, very quiet as a rule, which made the crowds
assembled in and about it all the more remarkable.

“What _can_ be going on?” said Honor. “John, look at those people. Maybe
the Queen is coming along the line;” and she looked out curiously upon
the throng, as the long train slowly rolled on towards it.

Suddenly there was heard a shout--the welcome cry of a hundred tongues,
as the bride’s fair face was recognised, and John Beacham, the man whom
both rich and poor loved and respected, was known to be once more
amongst them. Honor drew back, embarrassed and distressed.

“O, John! it’s because of our coming home,” she whispered; but John was
too busy, and, if the truth must be told, too pleased at this public
reception, to be very ready with his sympathy.

“Switcham! Switcham!” shouted the bustling official, as he threw open
the carriage-door; and in a moment John was on the platform, his hands
full of packages, and a broad smile of unmitigated happiness lighting up
his honest face.

“Can I be of any use? Hadn’t you better take my arm?” Arthur said. He
spoke in the soft conventional tone which the constant mixing with what
is called “good society” renders habitual, but to Honor, at that moment
of (to her) real distress, it seemed the confidential whisper of a
friend, and the gentle intervention of a champion.

“Make way!--Will you be so good?--A little on one side, there’s a good
man,” urged Arthur, pressing forward with John Beacham’s bride upon his
arm, and addressing certain individuals amongst the complimenting crowd,
who allowed their curiosity to get the better of their good breeding,
with an impertinent amenity that was not without its effect. “Stand
back, please.--That’s all right.--This is your brougham, is it not?” to
Honor, who, pale, bewildered, and overcome, was looking round helplessly
for her husband.

“O, you needn’t expect Beacham yet,” said Arthur, laughing; “he is
shaking hands with everybody, right and left. That’s what comes of being
popular. It would be long enough before all those fellows wanted to
shake hands with me. Ah, there he is! You will let me see you safe into
the carriage? By heavens! what are all those fellows going to do?” he
exclaimed, as a number of young men and boys, who had crowded round the
brougham, gave evident tokens of preparing for an ovation. Already the
coachman--one of John Beacham’s most trusted retainers--was off his
box, and had taken his professional stand by the head of the powerful,
high-stepping bay mare, whose traces were hanging loosely at her sides,
and who was beginning to manifest very decided symptoms of impatience.
Honor was greatly agitated--her nerves, like all those of persons who
_feel_ deeply, were not strong--and the shout of welcome which had
brought tears to her eyes, and a _globus hystericus_ to her delicate
throat, was still tingling in her ears. Arthur felt her hand tremble,
and her breath come quick and pantingly from her parted lips. He feared
she was going to faint, and in his exasperation made matters worse by
swearing at the crowd, and devoting to perdition the authors of her
annoyance.

At that moment (the whole affair had not occupied many minutes) John
Beacham, hot, red-faced, and happy, made his appearance. He laughed
heartily, having no suspicion of his wife’s distress, at what was going
forward.

“Fire away, boys!” he cried to the strong men who had already taken the
Wild Woman’s place in the shafts. “Rather you than me, this warm day,
anyhow!--Jump in, Honor;” and then, looking round at his wife, he saw
with dismay how pale she was. “Never mind, Pet; they’re good fellows,
and they won’t be long about it.--Now then, away with you!--Good-bye,
Mr. Vavasour;” and Arthur, standing by, his eyes fixed on the white
frightened face within the carriage, saw, as in a dream, the laughing,
shouting throng, and in the midst of it, moving slowly onward, the
dark-green brougham that bore the lovely Honor to her home.

“By ----” he muttered to himself, as he gathered up the reins of his
dog-cart, “to think that such beauty as that should be wasted on a
boor!”

CHAPTER X.

HOW THE “OLD LADY” TOOK IT.

It would be hard to say whether gratified maternal pride or a perhaps
natural jealousy was uppermost in Mrs. Beacham’s mind when she saw from
her parlour window the uproarious advent of her belongings. It was
delightful to think how popular John was,--for what but the respect and
affection in which he was universally held could, in her opinion,
account for the great amount of bodily exertion attendant on dragging a
heavy carriage a mile and upwards to the very door of the Paddocks? It
was pleasant also to reflect that she was the mother of one whom the
world delighted to honour; but with that reflection came the alloying
thought that another, _id est_, the “Irish gel” sitting
complacently--for so Mrs. Beacham pictured her--by the side of the
infatuated John, was to come in for far more than her merited share of
popular attention.

The house from which the stern old lady watched the return of her son
from his first lengthened absence was a long, rambling, one-storied
abode, built of brick whose hue was mellowed by age, and with its south
front covered almost to the roof with two centenarian pear-trees, the
fruit of which was renowned for its size and flavour throughout the
whole country-side, and to which, moreover, was owing the name of
“Pear-tree House,” that had, time out of mind, been the appropriate
designation of John Beacham’s home. From the elevated site of that home,
those within, who chanced to be gazing from the south windows, could
obtain an excellent view of what was passing in the Paddocks outside.
They could trace the well-kept private road winding through the bright
green meadows, which were portioned off from each other by shade-giving
hedgerows, and dotted with white freshly-painted gates. Many a time had
Mrs. Beacham, knitting in hand--she could make a stocking blindfold, as
the good woman had been heard to boast--sat at the window of the small
low-roofed parlour (the parlour with the heavy beams across the ceiling,
which she never would allow to be modernised and made smooth), watching
the coming of her son--listening for the sound of his well-hung
dog-cart, or the swift footsteps of the weight-carrying thoroughbred
bearing his owner home, after a hard day’s exercise, to his evening
meal.

The news that “the master” was on the road, that the Wild Woman had been
left behind at Switcham, and that the carriage was being _drawed_ home
by the boys from the village, was not long in reaching Pear-tree House.
It was through the means of Letty the parlour-maid, a young woman given
to holding evening converse with smart serving-men over out-of-sight
palings, that the intelligence arrived at Mrs. Beacham’s expectant ears.

“Coming home without the horse? Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed the old
lady, rising from her seat, however, with considerable alacrity, to
ascertain the truth or falsehood of Letty’s report. She was not kept
long in suspense. Round the thick screen of laurel-bushes there was
heard a confused sound of human voices, shouting, laughing, and
_hooraying_,--then the carriage, with John and Honor inside, was drawn
up with a rush to the door, and “the master,” much moved with happiness
and gleeful excitement, sprang out upon the hall steps.

“Well, mother,” he said, kissing her cheek with warm affection, while
his arm was thrown round the old woman’s waist, “what do you think of
this start? Jolly, ain’t it?” And in the exceeding delight of the moment
he forgot his precious Honor altogether!

She was well content, poor child, to be overlooked. It had required a
strong effort on her part not to mar her husband’s enjoyment by any
display of foolish womanly weakness. She felt faint and nervous, and the
painful shrinking from her first interview with the dreaded autocrat of
Pear-tree House had returned with redoubled force as the crisis of
arrival drew nearer and more near. She had made no sign, however, of her
distress, and had even contrived, in the fear that John might make the
uncomfortable discovery that she was less happy than himself, to summon
the ghost of a smile to her pale and quivering lip.

They were standing together--those three who fully expected that all the
years of their future lives would be passed together--on the broad,
well-worn stone steps leading to the entrance-door of the house. Mrs.
Beacham had returned her son’s embrace with interest. There was for the
moment unmixed pleasure in seeing his well-loved face again; but,
because of that very pleasure, her welcome to Honor was stiff and
ceremonious. A touch of the small cold hand with her unbending fingers,
and a kiss on the pale cheek that grew paler still under the infliction,
was all the greeting bestowed by John’s mother on the daughter he had
brought home to her.

“Three cheers for the missus!” shouted John’s volunteer team, whereupon
the air rang with the loud hurrah that only British throats can give.
Inspired by the near prospect of the strong ale which they foresaw would
be forthcoming from the far-famed Pear-tree cellar, not a boy or man
amongst them spared his lungs, and twice and again, each time more
deafening than the last, burst forth the ringing cheer, till even John
was fain to put his fingers to his ears, and to cry, with a laugh,
“Hold, my friends; enough!”

“I’m sure, my good fellows,” he began, when the tumult had in some
degree subsided, and the necessity of returning the compliment by a
speech was evidenced by the expectant looks of the bystanders, “I’m sure
that my wife is uncommonly obliged to you.” (His _wife_! thought Mrs.
Beacham senior, who, having hitherto been considered in the light of
“missus” at the Paddocks, had taken the compliment to herself.) “My
wife,” repeated John, laying what poor soured Mrs. Beacham considered an
insulting stress upon the obnoxious word,--“my wife has, I am sorry to
see, retired. She is not very strong, and the journey has knocked her
up; but another time--”

“At the christening of little master, eh?” cried a shrill voice from the
very centre of the crowd; whereupon there was a laugh--one of those
rude, coarse, blustering laughs with which untaught human nature, before
it has learnt to discriminate between wit and humour, erects the sole
form of joke which it is capable of understanding.

John looked about him in dismay. It was dreadful to think that
Honor--his delicate blushing Honor--should have overheard, and been
shocked by, that horrible allusion. For the first time since he had
known her it was a relief to find that she was not by his side; he only
hoped that she had gone upstairs--to bed--anywhere rather than run the
risk of being wounded by such coarse, such premature remarks.

“I have been more gratified than I can well express,” John went on to
say, and briskly enough this time, for he wished to get the whole thing
over, and to have his house to himself, “by the flattering manner in
which you have welcomed us home again. I see a great many old friends’
faces among you, and I hope one day to see your wives’ faces--and may
you all be as happy as I am! There is plenty of ale, thank God! in the
cellar, and as cheering is thirsty work, to say nothing of coming up
here against collar this warm day, I hope you’ll all accept a glass
apiece, and then go back and set the bells of Switcham Church a-ringing.
I’m not much of a hand at a speech, and so, as it’s getting late, and
we’re all pretty well tired, I shall wish you a very Good-Night.”

He shook hands heartily, after this delicate hint, with those that stood
nearest to him, and the crowd, eager to taste the reward of their
exertions, caused no further delay by any lengthened expression of
applause. In a few minutes all was peaceful outside the south front of
the old house. There was no sound save the faint rustling of the wind
among the branches, and the last twitter of the birds ere they nestled
to their nightly sleep. Only inside was there strife. Not the strife of
outward jangling, or of sneering words, but the far more perilous
discord that lies hid behind a smiling mask. John’s mother was very
civil to Honor, but she could not forgive her for the _slight_ put upon
Mrs. Beacham of the Paddocks.

“Three cheers for the missus” indeed! It remained to be seen, the old
lady said to herself, who _was_ mistress at Pear-tree House. _Two_
couldn’t be, that was very clear; but if Mrs. John fancied that _she_
was going to “knock under,” why all that she could say was, that that
young woman would find herself pretty considerably mistaken.

CHAPTER XI.

BETWEEN TWO STOOLS.

“Do any of you happen to know when Arthur is going to be married?”

The question was Lady Millicent’s, and she asked it of her three younger
children one day towards the end of May, when Arthur was absent for a
few days in London, and the family dinner--not a very lively one--had
been just concluded. The servants--two of them in plush and powder, with
their chief in all the dignity of a white tie and glittering studs--had
left the room, and milady, looking as usual fat, fair, and comfortable
in her dark dress, a little _passée de mode_, ensconced her double chin
within the palm of her puffy white hand, and quietly awaited a response.

The girls from either side of the richly-furnished table glanced
furtively at each other, and Horace, who was feeling especially bright,
in consequence of having that day received the long-looked-for
notification that his examination would take place in the following
week, tapped his fingers lightly against the mahogany table, with an
assumed air of taking no interest in the question. He was seated in his
brother’s place, a half smile--a smile in which there was much latent
satire--playing over his intelligent face. Probably Lady Millicent’s
real or affected interest in her son’s proceedings rather amused than
disturbed him.

“Can’t anyone answer?” said Lady Millicent, who, like all great people,
had an objection to being kept waiting, and who was apt to be what is
vulgarly called “put out” by any apparent absence of obsequious respect.
“It doesn’t give much trouble to say either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and Arthur is
so extremely mysterious that I am unfortunately obliged to address
myself to others for information.”

“I think it depends a good deal on his coming of age,” said Horace, who,
in spite of a certain vein of cynicism which occasionally gave
bitterness to his words, was sincerely attached to his brother, and ever
ready to give him a helping hand.

“I don’t suppose that old Dub will make any objection to its being a
case of no settlements on _our_ side--he’s such an uncommon liberal old
fellow; but, as Atty says,--and upon my word I think he’s right,--it is
awfully disgusting to owe everything to a woman.”

“Your poor father was of a different opinion,” said Lady Millicent
drily, and with her voice lowered to the properly pathetic tone in which
alone she allowed herself to speak of her dead husband. Horace turned
very red at this unexpected and, as he mentally called it, indelicate
remark. He was by nature an observant character, and young as he had
been at the time of his father’s fatal accident, he had, without
entertaining any desire to spy into peccant places, into the _rifts_,
great or small, of his parents’ inner life, already seen enough with
those keen eyes of his to convince him that only the outside surface of
things was smooth in his stately and prosperous home. The two lads had
during Cecil Vavasour’s lifetime been accustomed to hear much obsequious
praise and prosternating flattery of their mother. For years they had
grown up in the faith of her prudence, her large-mindedness, her
liberality, and her cleverness; and it was not till long after they were
fatherless that either Horace or Arthur became entirely convinced that
Lady Millicent had shone with reflected lustre only, and that the good
gifts for which the world had given her credit were not _hers_, but
those of the husband who had borne his faculties through life with such
a meek and unobtrusive grace. How far Lady Millicent was at that time
aware of the fact that the eyes of not only her children but the world
were opened to her shortcomings we need not now inquire. Proud and
arrogant though she was, “milady” would have been very far from pleased
could she have learned the truth, and known what a “falling-off was
there,” where but a few short years before all tongues, both male and
female, great and small, were wagging in her praise.

“Please, dear mother,” Horace said, with the angry spot deepening on his
brow, “to remember that my poor father’s name can never be brought
in--in--this way without giving pain to all of us. I always feel that
the opinions of one that is dead should be held even more sacred than
those of a person who is absent. The latter _may_ come back either to
uphold or to deny them, while--”

“My dear Horace,” interrupted Lady Millicent haughtily, “this will never
do; you will be thought--pardon me for saying so--a terrible bore in
society if you take to laying down the law in this prosy way. I little
thought when I asked you a simple question about your brother what I was
bringing upon myself.”

Horace laughed good-humouredly. Like most young men, he hated a _scene_
of any kind, and was very apt, for his sisters’ sake as well as his own,
to turn off Lady Millicent’s attacks with a joke.

“Thank you, ma’am, for the hint,” he said good-humouredly. “It _was_ a
great mistake on my part dogmatising in such a ponderous fashion. As to
your question, my dear mother, I really believe that Arthur is waiting
to learn something of your wishes on the subject. As we all know, he
will be twenty-one next month.”

“Yes, the parish register could have told you that,” put in Lady
Millicent sarcastically; “but I confess to seeing no connection whatever
between your brother’s age and his marriage.”

She fixed her eyes firmly on her son as she spoke. They were large,
handsome, defiant eyes, the only good feature in her face--good, that
is, if a feature can be called so which assists to give a hard and
unfeminine expression to its owner’s countenance. Again Horace
endeavoured to pass the matter lightly and playfully off.

“Well, it _is_ very absurd, I daresay,” he said; “but somehow or other,
though, the two _do_ seem to be connected. Perhaps, as I said before,
Arthur does not quite like marrying _in forma pauperis_. He may expect
that the tremendously important event of his coming of age would be
ushered in by a ‘ceremony’ which would require his presence. You can
understand, my dear mother,” Horace went on rather hurriedly, for he
felt that he was treading on dangerous ground,--“you can understand that
this is rather an--an awkward subject to talk over with you; and
besides, you will, I am sure, enter into his feelings about Mr. Duberly.
He is, as I said before, a capital old fellow; but, nevertheless, he
_may_ perhaps take it into his head to think that Arthur’s family
might--might come forward--”

“Come forward! Why, the man’s father was a cowkeeper, or a butterman, or
something of that kind! You don’t mean to say that _they_ are going to
make difficulties?”

“Not _difficulties_. O, no. Mr. Duberly would never run the risk of
‘dear Sophy’ losing what she had set her heart on. I believe that if she
wished to marry the chimney-sweep--”

“Which would be not at all an unsuitable alliance.”

They all laughed, following Lady Millicent’s lead, that lady evidently
thinking that she had made rather a happy hit. Kate, however, who was
growing nervous, telegraphed to her brother a hint that he should be
silent--a caution which the wilful Horace utterly disregarded.

“Poor old Atty,” Horace said, very impertinently his mother thought (in
fact, it was really surprising how greatly his approaching emancipation
was awakening the spirit of self-assertion in his juvenile
breast),--“poor old Atty, it is terrible to think that he should be
driven at his time of life by force of circumstances and adverse fate
to such awful _encanaillement_ as this!”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘adverse circumstances,’” said Lady
Millicent, looking very stern, and rising from her chair with a
considerable accession of dignity; “if young men will be extravagant and
get into debt, they must take the consequences;” and having so said,
Lady Millicent, after signing to her daughters to remain where they
were, swept grandly out of the room.

“O, Horace, how could you!” exclaimed Kate in an awe-struck whisper.

“How could I!” mimicked Horace. “How could I what? Why, you little
goose, when shall I make you understand that it is always better to take
(metaphorically speaking, of course) the bull by the horns? You ought to
know _that_ by this time; but, as you don’t, I can only repeat what I
have said fifty times before--that, what with your grimaces and Rhoda’s
tears, you are about the two silliest young women in Christendom.--Now,
Roe dear,” he went on, addressing his eldest sister in a tone of mock
displeasure which, together with the quaint name which he had bestowed
upon the quiet and slightly sentimental girl, set Kate off--no unusual
occurrence--into what Horace called a fit of the giggles,--“now, Roe
dear, what in the world are you crying about now?”

“I wasn’t crying, Horace,” said Rhoda. She was rather a pretty
pale-faced girl, whose tears--for her nerves were weak--came at very
slight provocation to her eyelids. She had wiped one furtively away
while her brother began to “chaff” her about this well-known propensity,
and then was quite ready to say tremulously: “I wasn’t crying, only
everything seems so uncomfortable; and it is so odd, not knowing when
Arthur is to be married. I believe he has told you! Now, has he, Horace?
Don’t be ill-natured;” and both the girls at once set to work to kiss
and coax him.

“Paws off!” cried Horace, laughing. “No, then, he hasn’t--upon my word,
he hasn’t. There! I hate not knowing the truth as much as you do; and I
only wish he was to be married next week.”

“And why?” Kate eagerly exclaimed; “you usen’t to like--”

“_Usen’t!_ What grammar! You’ll want Miss Bates back again if you can’t
speak your mother-tongue better than that.”

“Never mind my mother-tongue,” Kate began impatiently. “I want to be
told--”

“You want to be told a thousand things that you’ve no business to know.
You are both as curious as a couple of magpies; but you may chatter
till midnight without getting a word out of me. I’m off to the stable
for a smoke; so you needn’t bother me any more.”

In spite of the cheerful air and janty manner with which he endeavoured
to conceal his troubles, Horace Vavasour did not smoke on that especial
evening “the pipe of contentment;” nor could the corn-bin on which he
sat be in the smallest degree considered as typical of that well-known
“carpet of hope” on which the lethargic Turk is supposed to take his
ease.

“It is all my mother’s fault,” he murmured to himself, as he kicked his
dangling heels disconsolately against the solid oak. “If my mother would
but behave like other people! If she had kept up her house and
establishment in London, or even if she had given Arthur the means of
living like a gentleman, I never will believe that he _could_ have got
into these awful scrapes. What will happen if he does not marry soon,
God knows; and yet _for_ that poor girl’s sake one ought not to wish it.
I was sure how it would all be if once--” He drew a long whistling
breath, and threw down the end of his cigar, crushing its last spark out
with the heel of his boot. It was nine o’clock now, and the great
church-like stable-bell had already called the “faithful” to evening
prayers; and from force of habit, it is to be feared, rather than from
a higher and more Christian cause, Horace Vavasour hurried back to the
Castle. He did not seem to himself, however, to care much whether he
infringed Lady Millicent’s rules on that sweet May evening or not. He
was a man now, with a man’s profession, a man’s cares, and, to a certain
extent, a man’s responsibilities. For years--very long years they
appeared now as he looked back to them--he had nightly seen that long
array of serving men and women lining the old oak wall, and, as it were,
praying. He had heard his lady mother read many a blessing over their
heads; but somehow or other the ceremony had not seemed to bring a
blessing with it; and Horace was certainly rather consoled than
otherwise with the reflection that from that day forward, for many a
night to come, he would be allowed to spend his evening hours as he
pleased.

CHAPTER XII.

UPHILL WORK.

It was now the middle of June, and Honor Beacham was undergoing the
often painful process of “settling down” in her new home. The
observation is no new one, that the presence of a mother-in-law, be she
the parent of either wife or husband, in the _ménage_ of a newly-married
couple is seldom conducive to happiness. Honor, in common with all the
world, had heard the aphorism--heard it without believing it; for why,
she had often asked herself, should there of necessity be jealousies and
bickerings amongst those who were so near of kin, and whose interests
were identically the same? For her part, although a certain nervous
shyness, rare amongst her country people, made her a little “foolish,”
as John called it, when she thought of the possible difficulty of
pleasing his mother, yet, on the whole, she had entertained no doubt of
her success. The experience of her short life had not accustomed her to
failure. As yet, Honor had met with far more smiles than frowns, as she
stepped gaily along the flower-strewn path of life. Why, then, was she
to entertain misgivings of the future? Why suppose that her untiring
efforts to gain love and praise would be likely, in the case of John’s
obdurate mother, to be met with nothing better than “snubbings” and
mortification?

“Well, Honey, and how do you and the old lady get on together?” was
John’s first question, when, on the evening following their return, and
after an absence of many consecutive hours, he found himself alone with
his young wife.

Poor Honor! What would she not have given to be able to say with a full
and grateful heart that John’s mother had been “so good” and “kind” to
her? that henceforward she could love the dear “old lady” as though the
strongest ties of blood had knitted them together? She would have been
so glad, too, to give John pleasure; for well she knew how much, how
very much, at heart he had it that she and his mother should, to use his
characteristic phraseology, “pull well together.” Poor Honor! poor
little well-intentioned Irish maiden! She was sadly, altogether indeed,
deficient in moral courage, or in that early stage of her married life
she would have done that which might have changed the whole future of
her existence; namely, have frankly confessed to John her belief that
never, do what she could, and strive with all the powers of both head
and heart, could she hope to succeed in softening Mrs. Beacham’s
feelings towards her.

Against such a course, not only the tenderness, but the harmless,
natural vanity of the young wife revolted. It would be hard upon John to
be told that his expectations were so very far from being realised, and
it would be almost equally hard upon her were she forced to confess that
she had so signally failed in making a favourable impression. Honor, I
am ashamed to say, had shed more tears on that her first day’s
experience of an actual “home” than were either sensible or becoming.
Her poor little lip had quivered painfully when Mrs. Beacham, treating
her “like company,” had politely refused her assistance in such small
household cares as the dusting of dainty china and the “tying down” of
bottled gooseberries, both of which tasks were, as Honor thought, quite
within her powers skilfully to perform. But it was worse still when, at
the early dinner (without John, who was kept away by urgent business
connected with the “stock”), her mother-in-law, calling her “Mrs. John”
with stately formality, had kept her at arm’s-length in a forbidding
manner better imagined than described. In vain she strove by all the
simple arts she knew to work her way within the fence that girded the
good dame about as though with palisades of iron. She spoke of
John--_her_ John--with a large warm-hearted admiration and a meek
self-effacing gratitude that might have warmed a heart of stone. But all
in vain. Mrs. Beacham evidently considered that laudation of John was an
encroachment on her own rights, and, with a snort of dignified
displeasure, turned the subject to one more within the province and
capacity of the daughter-in-law whom she neither wished nor intended to
love. John Beacham little guessed how sore a heart it was that watched
so longingly that day for his return. If he thought about Honor at all
(and dearly as he loved his wife, why should he have thought of her when
his hands were so brimful of business, and his head, long though it was,
could scarcely carry all the weighty load that, for the nonce, it had to
bear?)--if he thought, then, about Honor at all, it was to fancy her
sitting side by side with “the old lady,” talking, as foolish women do,
with eager interest about the trifles that to them make up the sum of
life--the fashion of a bonnet, the wearing capabilities of a carpet, and
the merits or misdemeanours of a maidservant.

There was not a misgiving as to the truth in John’s honest breast,
while, helping himself to slice after slice of a cold sirloin, which he
pronounced as good a “bit” of meat as any in England, he dilated with
the loquacity and _verve_ of a man whose soul is in his subject on all
that had taken place during his absence: the promise held out by the
young stock, the health and well-being of the old, and the
trustworthiness and intelligence of Will Simmons, who had been on the
farm, man and boy, for forty years, were largely dwelt on; and for once,
as it appeared by John Beacham’s showing, things had gone on quite as
well during the master’s absence as they would have done had they been
subject to his daily supervision. Verily “eye-service” was unknown in
the breeding-establishment of Updown Paddocks!

And all this time, what was Honor thinking of as she sat by her
husband’s side, her work lying idle on her lap, and her eyes fixed
vacantly on the goodly joint so rapidly diminishing under the effects of
John’s healthy appetite? He had not waited for the answer to his
question regarding the way in which she and “the old lady” had “got on”
together. The query had, in fact, been almost made unconsciously, no
fear of a possibly unfavourable reply having for a moment crossed his
mind; but to Honor, who had yearned for his return from a vague idea
that there would be comfort and encouragement from his very
presence--to Honor, whose heart was sore and her mind engrossed by the
failures and mortifications with which that long wearisome day had been
fraught--the sight of that excellent John satisfying, with such evident
_gusto_, his carnivorous appetite, and wholly engrossed by interests
extraneous to herself, was anything but exhilarating. Nor were matters
mended when, an hour later, the tired, contented man (the empty glass,
where hot toddy _had been_, standing empty at his elbow) stretched
himself comfortably in his big leathern chair, and slept the sleep of
the just.

Will any of my readers, when I inform them that this was the climax of
poor little Honor’s woe, and that at the sight of John’s slumbering form
tears welled from her eyelids, be disposed utterly to despise my
heroine, and condemn her as one unworthy the interest and sympathy of
sensible people? If there be any such--and I am quite prepared to
believe in their existence--all I can say is, that their knowledge of
female nature is as limited as their charity for human weakness is small
and inefficient. That this young wife was very far from either feeling
or conducting herself as she should have done, I am quite willing to
admit. The deep slumber of the unconscious John, to say nothing of the
heavy breathing (I will not shock my refined readers by using a more
definite term) that arose at stated intervals from his place of repose,
ought to have sounded sweetly in his helpmate’s ears as a proof of good
digestion and a mind at ease. Patiently--contentedly even--should she
have bided the time of his awaking; while, instead, what did that
impulsive Honor do? Why, with those foolish tears still glistening on
her long lashes, she whispered a “good-night” to her mother-in-law and
crept off to bed, nothing heeding the warning finger and the
“hush--sh--sh” of the disagreeable old lady; acts which, in Honor’s
condition of mind--for the poor girl was not, I grieve to say,
perfect--were in themselves no trifling aggravation.

CHAPTER XIII.

A BREEZE ABOUT A BONNET.

It was on a Sunday morning, about a fortnight after the return of the
travellers, that Honor had the first serious warning of coming
“difficulty” with her mother-in-law. I have often heard it remarked, and
I fear with some degree of truth, that the Seventh is very apt to be the
one, of all days in the year, when domestic differences do most
frequently arise. Why this should be is not, I think, very difficult of
comprehension. To such women as Mrs. Beacham--to the habitually
“busy”--the enforced idleness of Sunday hangs terribly heavy on the
folded hands. When an active-minded and energetic female has nothing to
do, there is a terrible temptation to be cantankerous. With John’s
restless, vigorous-bodied parent the Sabbath was anything but a
favourite time. She paid all outward respect to the hours between
sunrise and bedtime on the “Lord’s day.” Her best gown was donned, and
her roast beef eaten; the knitting-needles were put away, and Cowper’s
Sermons or Law’s _Serious Call_ brought forward in their stead. Mrs.
Beacham might even go so far as to _call_ the “Sabbath a delight, the
holy of the Lord, honourable;” but she was, nevertheless, very thankful
(under the rose) when the irksome hours drew to a close; and if there
did happen to be a day when, to use Letty’s favourite expression,
“missus got out the wrong side of her bed,” that day was pretty certain
to be the Seventh.

It would seem that John was not altogether unaware of this trifling
peculiarity, for during breakfast-time he was seen to _wink_ more than
once with an air of comic warning to Honor, as much as to say, “Take no
notice; this is but a passing shower, the looming of a summer cloud; the
slightest possible crumpling of the tender roses with which our bed is
strewn.” He was quite in the dark--Honor understood that well--as to the
real state of things between her and his mother. He had yet to discover
that, during his long daily absences, although no overt act, no _words_
even of which she could actually complain, had made her life
uncomfortable, still there was an undercurrent of “nagging,” a perpetual
though not always a very perceptible “talking at,” on the old lady’s
part, which was far harder to endure patiently than the open harshness
of language which Honor felt certain that John’s mother was often
longing to attack her with.

The first Sunday at the Paddocks having been a hopelessly rainy day,
there had been no walking along the lanes to attend Divine Service: the
Seventh day had, however, now come round again, and the shy
consciousness of early wifehood having a little worn off, Honor, as was
only natural, had allowed her thoughts to wander to a no less important
subject than the dress in which, at Switcham Church, she was to make her
first appearance as a wife. The result of these meditations, and
also--if the truth must be told--of a little stitching and altering, was
as pretty a specimen of Sabbath-day adornment as ever entered the walls
of a village church. And yet there was nothing (bright as a spring
butterfly though she looked) the least over-dressed, or unbecoming her
situation in life, in Honor Beacham’s attire. There were no
incongruities, no single article of dress outshone or put shame upon the
other, there had been no “trimming of robe of frieze with copper-lace;”
but all was neat, effective, and, so far as Honor and the Leigh
dressmaker together could achieve the desired object, according to the
make and fashion of the day.

“Now then, Honey, let’s have a good look at you,” exclaimed John, as,
five minutes before the moment appointed for setting forth, his wife,
with a blush of gratified vanity on her cheek (for the glass had told
her she was worth the looking at), tripped confidently up to him for
approval. Before he could speak, however, Mrs. Beacham’s harsh voice
broke the charm, and John’s complimentary words were frozen on his lips.

“My good gracious me!” she cried; “why you’re never surely going to
church in that thing!” and she pointed with a thick finger, clothed in
the stoutest of useful bottle-green gloves, at Honor’s airy bonnet; a
small senseless thing enough, but very becoming all the same, with its
trimming of blue forget-me-nots, showing off to perfection the soft
beauty of the brown braided hair, and matching the azure eyes, John
thought, so prettily. “To church of all places!” continued the old lady,
whose headgear, being of very ancient fashion and materials, had struck
Honor as far more remarkable than her own. “Why, you’ll have everyone
looking at you!”

“And like enough too,” said John with a laugh, and hoping by this
_judicious_ manœuvre to divert the rising storm, “let her put on what
she may. But I say, mother, what’s wrong with Honor’s bonnet? I don’t
pretend to know much about women’s dress, about their crinoline and
hairbags, for instance. You don’t wear one of them I’m glad to see,
Honey,” he went on, twisting a shining curl that strayed upon her white
throat round his big finger as he spoke. “I’m all for nature, I am; but
as for the child’s bonnet, mother--”

“Now, John,” put in Mrs. Beacham irritably, “don’t you be foolish. I
_must_ know better than you can do what’s proper for a young woman to
wear; and I say that such a thing as _that_ isn’t fit to be seen within
a church door.”

Honor could not help smiling--for she did not foresee to what extent her
stepmother’s temper would carry her--at the old woman’s abuse of her
unoffending costume. She felt certain too of John’s support, and
therefore replied cheerfully:

“I am very sorry; I thought it such a pretty bonnet. However, I daresay
nobody will look at it; and my best hat got so spoilt at Ryde--”

“Spoilt indeed! Ryde seems to have played the mischief with all your
smart new clothes. And as if you could venture into church in one of
those flighty pork-pies, that I hate the very sight of!”

“Well then,” interposed John, “as that matter’s settled, suppose we cut
along. Got your Prayer-book, eh, Honey? That’s all right;” and he was
half out of the door, when, instead of following on his footsteps, Mrs.
Beacham plumped her ample figure down on her own especial arm-chair, and
planted her two hands defiantly on her knees.

“You may go to church, John, if _you_ like; but as for me, if you’ve no
objection, I prefer to remain at home.”

“Nonsense, mother! Come! The idea of going on so about a bonnet! I’m
sure Honor doesn’t care, do you, Pet? She doesn’t mind what she wears,
mother, not she! She’s pretty enough not to, any way,” he added in a
lower tone; not so low, however, but that his mother heard the words,
and grew thereupon more than ever determined to conquer and humble the
object of John’s foolish admiration and absurdly weak and blamable
indulgence.

“If she doesn’t care then, let her change it,” she said stolidly,--“let
her change it. She’s got another in her box--one that a decent woman
needn’t be ashamed to be seen in, and--”

“O, John, it’s _such_ an old-fashioned one!” Honor broke in. “I’ve had
it these two years, and it’s only fit for rainy days. I’d rather not go,
indeed I would;” and the tears, I am sorry to say, were already very
near her bright blue eyes.

John scratched his head in very positive perplexity. To yield to his
mother had, from long habit, become almost second nature to the
good-tempered man; but then, nature--and nature too with a very powerful
voice--pleaded within him strongly for Honor. He could not bear to see
her vexed; and she would be vexed, that he knew right well, if they
both--his mother and himself--went off to church and left her all alone.
But then, if she so disliked the idea of wearing the two-year-old
bonnet, and if--which he knew well enough would be the case--his mother
would not yield, why what was to be done? It was the beginning of
domestic troubles--a foreshadowing of the cloud that was to darken all
John’s future life--the first faint warnings of the fell disease that,
like the cankerworm, eats into the vital parts, and poisons the whole
sap of life, and this truth (though John was far enough from shaping to
himself any, even the most indistinct, of the evils that were
threatening his peace) probably lay at the root of the strange
discouragement which, while he turned his eyes alternately from his wife
to his mother, gave a look of bewilderment to his usually placid face.

It was that look which decided Honor, showing her the way her duty lay,
and awakening her pity for the man halting so helplessly between two
opinions.

“After all,” she said to herself, calling up as much philosophy to her
aid as a weak vessel of her sex and age could hope to summon,--“after
all, what does it signify? It _is_ absurd to make so much fuss about a
bonnet;” and then aloud, “I don’t care--indeed I don’t, John; and rather
than vex you, I’ll change it in half a moment;” and she ran upstairs
with an alacrity which confirmed John in the impression that she was an
angel.

And so at the moment--or at least very like one--Honor felt that she had
earned the right to be considered; for she was--absurd as it may seem to
those among my readers who have either outlived, or have never been
subject to, the weakness of personal vanity--about to make what was to
her a great, ay even a heroic, sacrifice. She had so looked forward to
appearing her very best that day. Religion, I grieve to confess, had
little enough to do (when, alas I has it ever much?) with the fitting on
of the best gown, and the extra smoothing of the shining hair. In nine
cases out of ten, the remembering of the Sabbath-day does not mean the
keeping of it holy. Jill, it is to be feared, goes to church to show
herself; while Jack, in his best coat and Sunday hat, goes through the
same ceremony that he may join his sweetheart. Can we wonder that too
often these respective parties come to grief, and, like the Jack and
Jill in the story-book, wounds and bruises (metaphorically speaking) are
the well-deserved consequences of their levity and _supercherie_?

Seeing then that the female mind is, both from nature and habit, loth to
believe in the “glaring impotence” of “dress,” we may excuse this poor
Honor for her petulance, and for the little angry jerk with which she
threw open the old mahogany wardrobe, and drew from it the contemned and
faded specimen of bygone finery. With a flushed face, and hands that
trembled a little with the passing irritation of the moment, she tied
the tumbled strings under her dainty chin, and then, without stopping to
look at her “shabby” self in the glass, she hastened down the stairs.

John and his mother had already left the house when Honor, feeling very
proud of her holocaust, and not a little eager to judge of its effect
upon those she had endeavoured to please, rushed into the hall. She knew
it was late, and moreover Mrs. Beacham was, she felt, precisely the kind
of old woman who would not enter a Church after the service had begun
for the world; but in spite of these and other excuses that might be
made for the disappearance of her companions, Honor did feel it a little
hard that they had not waited for her--a trifle provoking that John
should have cared so little whether she looked well or ill in that “guy
of a thing” that she had put upon her head. She betrayed no outward
signs of the foolish, perhaps too it may be called _puerile_, inward
struggle--the battle against what I fear might almost be called a “bit
of temper” that was rife within her. Overtaking John and his mother
walking quietly arm-in-arm, “as if nothing had happened,” it was only
natural, I think, that this silly girl should have entertained a vague
impression that she, the bride of four weeks old, had been “thrown
over”--and that, too, after she had shown herself so willing to
“oblige”--for the sake of the “cross,” “fussy” old woman, behind whose
broad uncompromising back Honor (and it must be confessed that at the
moment she did not greatly love the sight) was trudging across the
meadows, with her fair face--that bonnet was so very old-fashioned and
ugly!--slightly overshadowed by a passing cloud.

It _was_ only a trifle, you will say, that produced this inauspicious
result; but need I repeat that trifles make up the sum of human life?
Were we all to look back upon some of the most important incidents of
our lives, I think--could we all be strictly honest with ourselves--we
should be willing to allow that what seemed a mere “nothing” at the time
was not without its influence, not only on our conduct, but on that
which goes by the name (for want of a better) of our destinies. Honor
would have been as incredulous as her neighbours had it been suggested
to her that in her present petulance there lay the germ of future peril,
and that the apparently insignificant family feud with which that
peaceful-seeming Sabbath had been marked was _le commencement de la fin_
of her life’s history; and yet that so it was the events hereafter to be
disclosed will greatly tend to prove.

Many and curious were the eyes turned towards “Farmer Beacham’s” pew
that holiday in early June, when the sun shone out and nature’s garb was
fresh, and when it would almost seem that, out of compliment to the
bride, each daughter of Eve there present had bedecked herself in her
Sunday’s best. With her head bent down and half hidden by the high oaken
walls of the old-fashioned pew, Honor endeavoured, and not wholly
without success, to remember that the “place in which she stood was holy
ground.” She never once raised her blue eyes from the bran-new
red-morocco Prayer-book--gilt-edged, and which was one of John’s
earliest offerings to his betrothed--which she held in her hand. A shy
consciousness that she was the observed of all observers in that crowded
village church, together with the mortifying reflection which, _malgré
elle_, would intrude itself, that she was not “fit to be seen,” brought
pretty waves of colour to the lowered girlish face.

From his place in the gallery, the most conspicuous one in the big,
well-cushioned, luxurious family pew, there was one who throughout the
service continued furtively to gaze upon the features which to his eyes
were so surpassing fair. Though, for his age, he had seen a good deal of
the world, Arthur Vavasour was still in every way too young to set the
opinion of that world at absolute defiance; so he chose the opportunity
when he and the rest of the congregation were on their knees, repeating
with wearisome monotony that they were all “miserable sinners,” to gaze
his fill at the farmer’s lovely bride. In the house of God, under the
shelter of his folded arms, in the humble posture of a penitent, he was
already breaking in his heart the one of the commandments on which most
strenuously depends “our neighbour’s” peace, his honour and well-being!

Truly it was well for Cecil Vavasour that his sleep was sound in the
churchyard vault that day, and that to him it was not given to look
within the erring heart of his eldest born! That son, who in his
beautiful childhood had been so very near his father’s heart, stood
terribly in need that Sabbath-day, proud and handsome and prosperous
though he seemed, of the “effectual fervent prayer” which in the sight
of Heaven “availeth much.”

CHAPTER XIV.

MR. DUBERLY TAKES THE ALARM.

Before the summer days had begun to shorten, and by the time that Arthur
Vavasour’s evident admiration for young Mrs. Beacham had begun to make
his more cool and sensible younger brother seriously uneasy, the
period--namely, the end of August--was fixed for the marriage of the
heir with Miss Sophia Duberly, the only child of one of the richest
_nobodies_ in the county. A fortnight previous to the epoch named,
Arthur would, unless, as Horace facetiously remarked, anything happened
to the contrary, attain the mature age of twenty-one. As regarded the
latter event, Lady Millicent had continued to maintain a dogged and
portentous silence. She was well aware that her children, the girls
especially, had hoped and expected that Arthur’s “coming of age” would
not pass over entirely without the “praise and honour due” to a rich
man’s son so situated; and though the traditional ox need not be
exactly roasted whole, nor gigantic bonfires lighted on the occasion,
yet Lady Millicent was as well aware as if the county newspapers had not
persistently proclaimed the fact that England expected her on this
occasion to do her duty.

“I do really believe she would hinder Atty coming of age at all if she
could,” Kate said one day, when Horace had “run down” for an hour to
brighten up his sisters, and see how things in general were going on.
“Mamma does so hate any of us being jolly.”

“And you call ‘coming of age’ ‘being jolly,’ eh, goosie? Learn then, O
foolish child, that the event you speak of means ‘looking up,’ paying
one’s own bills, being responsible for one’s own actions--being, in
short, out of _nonage_, without the accruing of a grain of brains to
oneself thereby.”

“But I suppose that something will be done,” persisted Kate, who, in
spite of her brother’s repeated assurances that a miracle would probably
not be wrought in her behalf, still nursed the hope that “milady” would
at last be brought to reason. “I cannot believe that the 14th of August
will pass like every other dull stupid day. I thought there was always a
dinner, and a ball, and speeches.”

“And buttering up, and slithering down,” broke out Horace savagely;
“toadying, flattering, and lies! Of all the occasions in life when that
kind of thing is carried on, there’s nothing like the coming of age of
an heir-apparent!”

“I quite agree with you, my dear Horace,” said Lady Millicent, sailing
in silently from behind a treacherous _portière_, and raising a painful
doubt in her children’s mind as to the extent of her knowledge thus
surreptitiously acquired of their opinions. “A great waste of words
always, to say nothing of the whole proceeding being always in the worst
possible taste.”

“Of course! The idea of crying _Vive le roi!_ before the poor old king
is dead! Simply monstrous, I call it. Arthur too quite agrees with me;
and after all, what business has the county to trouble itself about the
matter one way or the other?”

“I hear,” said Lady Millicent, who did not feel quite sure that her son
was not speaking in the ironical vein to which she had so especial an
objection,--“I hear that the Guernseys are going to make themselves more
than usually ridiculous this year at Fairleigh. Lady G. intends to do
the popular, they say, for a whole fortnight. Open house is to be
kept--so intensely absurd! And people of all kinds to be asked! In
short, a regular _omnium gatherum_!”

“O no, mamma, not quite that,” Rhoda said timidly, but terribly eager
withal to do away with an impression which might tend to exclude _her_
from a participation in the gaieties of Fairleigh. “Not quite; and O,
mamma,” gathering a kind of desperate courage from the emergency of the
case, “you promised that if Lady Guernsey gave a ball this year, I
_should_ go to it. I know just how it is; Charlotte Mellon told me all
about the arrangements. _All_ kinds of people are to be asked to the
archery meeting and the fireworks--all the out-of-doors amusements, that
is; but at the ball there will only be the county families, and--”

“How delightfully dull and select!” said Horace. “And how highly
satisfactory, Rhoda, to think that you will make your _début_ under such
very favourable auspices!”

“Anything is better than a mixed society,” said Lady Millicent loftily.
“In these days one cannot be too careful whom one associates with. I
foresee no end of annoyances with the Duberly connections. The women
belonging to that class of persons are often positively dreadful. Really
Arthur is much worse than thoughtless! Only this afternoon he has been
the cause of my being excessively worried and disturbed! Here is a
letter which I have just received from Mr. Duberly. I thought it most
extraordinary when I saw the post-mark, Bigglesworth, that _I_ should
receive a letter from any of the family; but I was still more astonished
when I glanced over the contents. _Read_ it! I really couldn’t get
through it all, but I saw it was about your brother being so much at
Updown Paddocks. _His_ father--fancy the man talking to me about his
relations!--considers it very wrong, he writes, and dangerous to be on
the turf; and Arthur _must_, he concludes, have to do with race-horses,
or he would never be so much with John Beacham at the Paddocks. You had
better see your brother about it, Horace, as soon as possible. I really
can have nothing to do personally with these people. They are
respectable, of course, or your poor father would not have countenanced
them; but they are terribly _mezzo cetto_, and when that is the case,
anything approaching to familiarity had better be avoided.”

Amongst Lady Millicent’s “peculiarities” (and they were not a few) that
of extreme bodily restlessness was one of the most remarkable. She was
one of the very busiest of idlers, never for fifteen consecutive
minutes, excepting at meal or prayertime, in the same place. These
“fidgety ways” were troublesome, as well as frequently inconvenient, to
those about her. To know where _others_ of a household _are_, the more
especially when those “others” chance to be of the nature of Lady
Millicent Vavasour, is often of advantage to the subordinates of a
family. Severity, Caprice, an absence on the said subordinates’ part of
knowing how anything “will be taken” by the “head of the family,” are
each and all sufficient to account for the secretiveness, guilty in
appearance, that kindles in both children and servants the very natural
desire that the whereabouts of the domestic autocrat should not always
be a matter of conjecture. But it was to no inward fever, no derangement
of the sensitive nerves, that the nomadic condition of the lady of
Gillingham could be attributed, for her health was perfect, and her
constitution sound. The erratic habit had been formed in childhood, and
had increased, instead of diminishing, with advancing years.

“I say, Miss Curiosity, that won’t do. You mustn’t read other people’s
letters.”

Lady Millicent had glided with her accustomed stately step from the
room; and Horace, in whose hand was Mr. Duberly’s open letter, glanced
up at his sister Kate reading over his shoulder the epistle which her
lady mother was either too autocratic or too indolent to answer. Kate’s
colour, between shame and amusement, mounted visibly. Although taught by
experience that his “bark was worse than his bite,” she was still a
little afraid of her brother Horace.

“I thought everybody was to read it,” she said deprecatingly. “Don’t be
ill-natured, Horace; I do so want to know about Atty.”

“I daresay you do; and if you did, why everybody else would pretty soon
be in the secret, and with a vengeance too! No, no, Miss Katie; a young
lady who chatters to her maid is neither old enough nor wise enough to
be told family secrets to--so off with you! If you want anything to do
go to the terrace, and keep a good look-out for Arthur; tell him there’s
a row going on, and that he’d better look sharp, and take the bull by
the horns.”

“And now for old Dub’s letter,” muttered Horace, after convincing
himself by ocular demonstration that both his sisters were sauntering
along the broad gravel-walk, and, as he doubted not, exercising their
united powers of guessing on the subject of Arthur’s misdemeanours. “Old
Dub’s too straightforward to say anything that my lady can understand;”
and with this dutiful commentary on his parent’s powers of
comprehension, Horace Vavasour betook himself to his task.

     “MY DEAR MADAM,”--so this straightforward letter began--“I greatly
     regret the necessity of calling your attention to the subject of
     your eldest son; but as that subject is at present connected with
     the happiness of my only daughter, there is no other course left me
     to pursue. You are aware that Sophy is my only child, and your own
     feelings as a mother will lead you to understand that her welfare
     must be infinitely precious to me. My reason for troubling you
     to-day is very simple, and the question I desire to have answered
     is, I think, natural enough, being neither more nor less than a
     demand, on my part, whether the report that your son Arthur has a
     horse in training for the turf is true or false. You will perhaps
     be inclined to ask why I have thought it necessary to beat about
     the bush; why, in short, I did not put this question to your son
     instead of to you. To this very natural remark all I could say is
     that I _did_, without delay, mention the reports which had reached
     my ears to Arthur, and that from him I could gain no satisfactory
     reply. He neither positively denied or actually confirmed the
     scandal; for so great is my horror of gambling in any shape that I
     can designate taking a single step on what is called the ‘turf’ by
     no milder name; and the consequence of our conversation was simply
     this,--namely, that, being very far from satisfied either by your
     son’s words or manner, I take the liberty of requesting your
     maternal aid in discovering the truth. Of your son’s constant, I
     was about to say daily, visits at the Paddocks there is, I fear, no
     doubt, and you can hardly wonder that, with my child’s future
     comfort at stake, I feel it my bounden duty to investigate
     thoroughly, and without loss of time, the cause and motive for a
     proceeding so remarkable. I have no desire that this inquiry, on my
     part, should be kept secret either from Arthur or from the world at
     large, and have the honour to remain, dear madam,

                                                     “Yours faithfully,
                                             “ANDREW DUBERLY.”

“Well, old fellow, you are in for it now! I wouldn’t be in your place
for something,” said Horace when, half an hour after he had finished
reading “old Dub’s” letter, and long before the annoyance caused by its
perusal had in any degree subsided, Arthur lounged, after his usual
indolent fashion, through the open window into the library.

“Well, what _is_ the row? The girls told me there was something wrong.
Upon my soul, one might as well pitch one’s tent in Mexico, or in the
Argentine Republic, for any chance of peace one has in this confounded
place.”

“Better a great deal,” said Horace seriously,--“better, a thousand
times, go to the uttermost ends of the earth than sow such a storm as,
if I’m not mistaken, you will reap the whirlwind of by and by.”

“Well, but what _is_ in the wind?” asked Arthur, smiling at the faint
idea that he had made a joke.

“_What!_ Just read _that_, and you’ll soon see what a kick-up there’s
likely to be.”

“Prying old idiot!” exclaimed Arthur, tossing the letter of his future
father on the table in disgust. “Why the ---- can’t he mind his own
business, and be hanged to him!”

“Perhaps he thinks that his daughter _is_ his business; but however that
may be, the deed is done, the letter written, and the question now is
how you can satisfy old Dab’s mind that all is right. I conclude that it
_is_ all right, though I must say, Atty, it does, between you and me,
look fishy, your going so very often over to John Beacham’s house.”

“But I don’t go there so very often,” broke in Arthur eagerly; “it’s all
a pack of cursed lies. How could I go to the Paddocks every day, as the
old fool says I do, when I am twice a week, at least, at Fairleigh?”

“Really! How pleasant for Sophy!” said Horace drily. “The worst of all
this, though, is, that old Dub isn’t quite in his dotage yet, and may
be sufficiently up in local geography to be aware that, by judicious
management, it is possible to reach Fairleigh _viâ_ Updown Paddocks.
Seriously now, Atty, can you in your sober senses think that the way you
are going on is either right or prudent? Here you are, within a few
weeks of marrying the girl you are engaged to--a nice girl, too, and you
thought so yourself before you got spooney (nay, hear me out, for it
_is_ true, and you know it is) on John Beacham’s wife,--here you are, I
say, making her (I mean Sophy Duberly) miserable; and what is far
worse--for girls soon get over that kind of thing--you are sowing the
seeds of lasting wretchedness in another man’s house. You are--”

“I--I am doing nothing,” broke in Arthur pettishly; adding, with
brotherly familiarity, “What a fool you are!”

“Thanks for the compliment; but I must be a still greater fool than I am
not to foresee a _little_ of the mischief that is brewing there.” And he
pointed over his shoulder in the direction of John Beacham’s home. “Why,
even a child could see it,--even Katie, who for a girl is wonderfully
unknowing in delicate matters of this kind and description--”

“But,” said Arthur, very seriously this time, and speaking in language
which would have carried conviction to his brother’s mind, even had the
latter (which was not the case) entertained the idea that there was
anything “really wrong” in Arthur’s intimacy with John Beacham’s
family,--“but, Horace, I declare to you solemnly, by all I hold most
sacred--I won’t say by my love for my mother, for I don’t love her, and
it would be extremely odd if I did--but I swear to you by my father’s
memory that there is no foundation, none whatever, for any of the
spiteful things that people dare to say of John Beacham’s wife. She’s
not happy, poor little thing, certainly, but--”

“Not happy? Why, what’s the matter with her? She’s got the best husband
in the country, and the nicest house to live in--I declare I don’t know
a more comfortable place than Pear-tree House--and the prettiest horse
to ride, and--”

“Yes, of course; all that is very nice; but then there’s the old woman.”

“John’s mother? So she is the crumpled rose-leaf, eh?”

“Well, yes, in some degree; but then John himself is partly to blame.
You see, he does not understand Honor.”

“That may be more his misfortune than his fault, poor fellow! But, Atty,
I _am_ sorry to hear that you have come to _confidences_. I had an idea
before all this that Honor was a quiet, good, honourable girl; and I
know that the parson’s wife had the best possible opinion of her, when
she was a girl, and used to teach a class at milady’s school; but what
you say now makes me think her very far from either sensible or
grateful--to say nothing of rectitude. When I know what a real good
fellow John Beacham is, it seems such a shame of his wife to be
complaining of him.”

Arthur laughed. He felt, in his superior wisdom, that his brother knew
wonderfully little of the qualities required by a woman in the man who
aspires to her love.

“Nonsense!” he said; “she doesn’t complain. One sees those things for
oneself, without hearing about them. I never saw a gentler or a more
forbearing creature than that dear little Irish girl, who is wretchedly
out of place at Updown Paddocks. She is utterly wasted upon John, who,
as you say, is the best fellow in the world, only so boorish compared to
her, and so thoroughly unintellectual! Thinks of nothing from morning
till night, and probably dreams of nothing _then_, but of his farm and
breeding-stud. I declare that it seems the work of some horrible fate,
some malicious demon, to have bound such a glorious woman as that to the
side of a man so totally unsuited to her--so completely incapable of
appreciating the beauty, and the delicacy, and the refinement--”

Horace stopped him with a laugh.

“The Lady Clara Vere de Vere and the clown, eh, over again? Well, I
suppose it may be because I happen to be one of the rougher-looking sort
myself--made of coarser clay, you know--that I cannot help having a sort
of fellow-feeling for poor John. I wonder now, if I were ever to
marry--and such an event is just possible, though I confess that it does
not seem likely, as things stand at present,--I wonder, I was going to
say, whether in that case any of you good-looking, languid swells--you
fastidiously refined fellows--would be found willing to believe me
capable of appreciating the charms of my own wife. Of course, it is not
in the power of we ordinary mortals to make ourselves as agreeable as
men who are blessed with straight noses, six feet of manhood, and wavy
hair; but you might give us credit for _some_ sense of the beautiful;
you really might allow that we can see and feel and love the woman whom
you admire, even though nature may have cruelly denied us the gift of
charming in our turn.”

Arthur looked at his brother in surprise. It was very seldom that
Horace, who was not of an impulsive nature, broke into so discursive a
speech. He had a way--at least, so it had hitherto appeared--of taking
life and the things of life so easily. Judging from the airy
_insouciance_ of his words and manner, his own lack of personal
attraction had never weighed upon his spirits; the giving of advice,
too, whether by implication or otherwise, to his big, experienced elder
brother, was so out of Horace’s line, that Arthur’s surprise at this
unexpected outbreak is scarcely to be wondered at. Any relative
response, however, whether in the shape of protest against, or of
acquiescence in, the general truth of his brother’s remark, appeared to
him to be simply impossible, and he therefore betook himself to the open
field of general observation.

“What a bore it is,” he said with a yawn that was not wholly the result
of weariness, “that every simple thing one does gets commented on and
gossiped about!”

“That comes of being an elder son. One of the penalties of greatness is
the bore, as you call it, of being the observed of all observers. It
would be long enough before the world paid me such a compliment.
Seriously, though,” he continued, glad, perhaps, of the opportunity thus
afforded of passing off as a jest the sarcasms which had in a moment of
irritation escaped his lips,--“seriously, though, Arthur, this strikes
me as being that unpleasant thing called a ‘crisis.’ If I know anything
of old Dub, he won’t let this matter rest till it’s thoroughly cleared
up. He wouldn’t have written to Lady M. if he hadn’t been in earnest;
and now the question is, how the deuce you are going to tackle the old
fellow.”

“God knows; I’m quite sure that _I_ don’t!” said Arthur helplessly, for
he foresaw endless difficulties--greater difficulties far than Horace
could form any idea of--in the process of “tackling” to which his
brother alluded. “It’s such a nuisance--such a horrible nuisance--to be
questioned in this sort of way!”

“Is it? I don’t think I should mind it; that is to say if I was all
right--all on the square, you know. The fact is, Atty,--and I can see it
as plain as possible, though of course it isn’t pleasant to you to
believe it,--that old Duberly has got _two_ ideas about this business in
his head; and these two ideas are, in my opinion, two too many. In the
first place he is suspicious, as old fellows of that kind are so apt to
be, about the horse-breeding part of the affair. Now, if you could tell
him on your honour that you have no horse in training--that you have not
the slightest intention, either directly or indirectly, of going on the
turf--why there would be nothing more to be said on that score.”

Arthur rose from his chair and walked about the room impatiently.

“But suppose I _can’t_ swear to that?” he said, speaking in the annoyed
tone of a man who had forced himself to utter a disagreeable truth. “The
fact is,” he went on confidentially, “I have bought--on tick of
course--one of John Beacham’s yearlings--the best he has bred since he
began the concern--by Oddfellow out of Gay Lady. You never saw such
bone! John’s quite certain--and you know how safe he is--that my
colt--Rough Diamond his name is--will be a Derby horse. I paid a long
price for him--I’m half afraid to say how much--but when one is so
positively certain to make such a pot of money as I shall, why what
_does_ it signify?”

The look--half comic and half pityingly sardonic--that settled for a
moment on the plain, but singularly expressive, face of Horace Vavasour
would have been a study for a picture.

“So!” he drawled out, “the old fellow is not so far wrong after all! No
wonder you were taken aback when he asked those leading questions!”

“Taken aback! I should think I just was! Why I should like to know what
_you_ would have been!”

“Quite as much disgusted, I suspect, if not more than you were
yourself; but somehow or other, Atty--though I don’t set up for being a
bit better than other people--these are not, I fancy, exactly the kind
of hobbles that I should have been likely to get into.”

“What do you mean?” asked Arthur a little sulkily. “It strikes me that I
haven’t done anything at all out of the common way.”

“Not the least in the world,” rejoined Horace drily; “but that does not
disprove what I said. I don’t want to boast. The fact, if it were
proved, is nothing to be proud of; but I feel sure that I should not
have made love to one woman while I was engaged to another; and as
certain am I of this--that I should not have gone into partnership with
an honest man like John, in order that--”

“Horace!” cried Arthur in a towering passion, and taking his stand in
front of the chair in which his brother leant back, calm and impassible,
“you have no right--none whatever--especially after what I said just
now, to believe me capable--”

“It is partly from the very words you said just now that I draw my
conclusions,” interrupted Horace. “What old Duberly drew _his_ from can
only of course be guessed at.”

“_Guessed_ at! What utter rot! What confounded humbug!”

“Well, have it your own way. Give up that poor girl Sophy--for it _is_
giving her up if you don’t satisfy her father--be talked of all over the
county as--”

“I don’t care a d--n about that,” growled Arthur.

“So many fellows have said before they were tried. Throw away all chance
of that blessed home at Fairleigh, that the poor girls have built upon
so much; and all because you haven’t the courage, or rather because you
are too self-indulgent, to give up a little momentary amusement,--or
rather, if you like it better, though I confess to considering it a
distinction without a difference, because you happen to be a little--as
I said before--spooney on John Beacham’s wife.”

Arthur made a gesture indicative of disgust.

“Hear me out, please,” Horace went on to say. “What I want you to do is,
to think seriously of all these necessary consequences, and to ask
yourself whether _le jeu vaut la chandelle_. I, for my part--but then I
have the good fortune neither to be, nor to fancy myself, in love--have
an idea that it does not. In the first place, remember--not that we are
any of us in much danger of the fact escaping our memory--what a
wretched home this is. Think what a contrast to the dulness, the
restraint, the everyday--well, I won’t go on; we both know only too
well how wretched one person can contrive to make a house--but just
think of the contrast to all this that Fairleigh is! Old Duberly, with
his cheerful, hearty ways--I declare Lady M.’s are enough to give one a
sickener of refinement; everyone allowed to please himself; no one lying
in wait for occasions on which to differ; annoying trifles, or trifles
that might have been annoying, delightfully slided over; and no
‘head-of-the-house’ tyranny, causing one to long at every hour of the
day for the desperate remedy of a bloodless revolution--”

“That is all very true, but--”

“But what? I suppose you mean to remind me that you are not doomed to
bear with the wretchedness of Gillingham for ever. Of course you are
not; but in the mean time there are the involvements,--O Atty, I hate to
talk of, but you know that _there they are_. And then there is poor
Sophy--so fond of you, so trusting and affectionate. It would not break
her heart, I know, to hear of all this nonsense; but it would make her
deuced miserable.” And the younger brother, a little overcome by the
picture he had conjured up, stopped for a moment to recover himself.
Very soon, however, he was at the old arguments again. “She wouldn’t
have a pleasant time of it, of course. And as for Lady M., she would be
less inclined than ever to give you anything of an allowance. You have
ascertained that there are insurmountable impediments to raising money
on the estates; and my mother--may her shadow never be less!--is a hale
woman of, if I mistake not, forty-two. What do you say to your
prospects? Inviting, eh? And just fancy what a blow it would be to the
girls. Why, ever since it was all settled, and you wrote from Rome to
tell us so, _their_ spirits, poor things, have been entirely kept up by
the idea--by the hope, I mean--of a kind of occasional home at
Fairleigh. They are very fond of Sophy; and, in short, Atty, if you
could but make up your mind to give up--well, all your interests at
Updown Paddocks, all would go on quite smoothly again. You could answer
old Dub face to face without fear of consequences; and--and I don’t
think you would regret it, Atty,”--laying his hand affectionately on his
brother’s shoulder,--“I don’t indeed. I think it pays, don’t you, old
fellow, making other people--I mean those that one’s fond of--jolly?”

“Well, yes; I fancy it does,” Arthur said musingly; “and of course one
hates this kind of thing. It’s nonsense, too, to suppose that I want to
make any change--about little Sophy, I mean. Of course I wish to marry
her, and if it’s only to be done by giving up Rough Diamond, why, I’ve
no alternative. It _is_ a bore though; upon my soul it is! He is so
certain to win! And then there’s all the nuisance of the talk with Mr.
Duberly. I say, Horace, do be a good fellow, and help me out of this. It
would do quite as well--ay, and better still--if you would settle the
business for me.”

“How do you mean ‘settle it’?” Horace asked.

“Well, tell him you know that it’s all _bosh_; that there was no harm in
life--you’d go bail for that--in my sometimes paying a visit of an
afternoon, just to have a look at the stock, to Beacham at the Paddocks;
and that--that, in short, the sooner I’m married the better.”

“And how about the Rough Diamond?” asked Horace, who felt perhaps the
least in the world suspicious regarding the destination of that
promising animal.

“O, I suppose I must sell him; not much difficulty about that. He
wouldn’t be a shadow of use to me unless I entered him; which is, of
course, out of the question now. I will see John about it this
afternoon. There are lots of men who would give as much or more than I
did for him. So that’s settled; and you may say so, if you like, with my
compliments to old Dub.”

“I’ll do it, of course, if you wish it,” said Horace, after deliberating
for a few moments on his brother’s proposal; “but I can’t help
thinking--don’t fancy, though, that I want to get off--that this is the
kind of thing a man had better do himself.”

“Do you think so? Well, then, I don’t,” said Arthur, laughing: “and that
makes all the difference. I should be sure to make a mess of it, while
you are the coolest hand possible at that kind of thing. On the whole,
it has just occurred to me, after I’ve seen John about the nag, that it
wouldn’t be half a bad move to go to Pemberton’s for a week or so. He
has been asking me to pay them a visit for weeks past, and I should
escape from the festivities, as they call them, at the Guernseys’ next
week. I hate that kind of thing infernally; and _engaged_ people in
public are always in a ridiculous position. Yes, I think I certainly
will go for a week or so to Sir Richard’s.”

“Very good,” rejoined Horace; he was wise, as I before remarked, for his
years, and therefore forbore (albeit he had his own opinion on the
subject) any comment on his brother’s sudden resolution to leave the
Chace during Lady Guernsey’s “popularity week.” “Very good; but,
Atty”--as his brother, throwing open the French window, gave evident
tokens of a desire to cut short the interview,--“you are quite sure it’s
all on the square about the colt? Of course you mean it now,” he added
hastily, as Arthur turned round a red and angry face; “but everyone is
liable to be tempted--I am sure that _I_ am--and seeing Rough Diamond
again might--”

“Not a bit of it. Don’t be afraid. I know what I’m about; only it’s not
fair to John to leave him in the dark about it: so I’m off. No occasion
to answer Mr. Duberly’s letter, I suppose, till to-morrow?”

“Well, I should say there is. However, I’ll ask my mother. It was
written to her, though what old Dub was thinking of when he did that
same is more than I can guess.”

“Lady Mill was deucedly indignant at the liberty,” said Arthur,
laughing. “Few things have ever amused me more than my mother’s anxiety
for this marriage, and her intense disgust at being brought into contact
with any of the Duberly lot.”

“I wonder which will behave the worst at the wedding, old Dub or my
lady! In quite another way he has ten times her pride, but then he is
far more deficient in polish.”

They both laughed lightly at the ideas which this remark called up; and
after a few more last words, each brother departed on his own separate
errand.

As Arthur Vavasour had predicted and felt assured, it required few
arguments, and a very little exertion of diplomatic talent, to convince
“little Sophy’s” good-natured parent that there was nothing really
_wrong_ either in the character or conduct of the “handsome young
fellow” who had won his daughter’s heart. A short conversation with that
“steady, sensible one of the brothers” (the thoughtful Horace), a little
coaxing and petting on the part of his “darling girl,” and a positive
assurance--it was “a case of honour, mind, Mr. Duberly”--more than once
repeated--from Arthur, that he had sold the two-year-old (that wonderful
Rough Diamond, of whom such great things were expected), to Colonel
Norcott, of sporting celebrity, for an almost fabulous sum--were
sufficient to set the unsuspicious, sanguine mind of “old Dub” at rest.
Arthur Vavasour was received again with open arms at Fairleigh; the
fatted calf, so to speak, was killed; and Sophy--caressing, tender
Sophy--put on her best robe to do honour to the exculpated prodigal.

CHAPTER XV.

A STORM AT THE PADDOCKS.

Arthur Vavasour, in all that he had said to his brother regarding the
state of things at Updown Paddocks, had not willingly diverged a
hair’s-breadth from the truth. It had caused him more vexation than
surprise to learn that other voices besides the “still small” whisper of
his own conscience were beginning to enlarge upon a course of conduct,
the imprudence of which--to use no harsher term--had long been manifest
to himself. Young as he was in years, Arthur had not, after a _jeunesse
orageuse_, still to learn how soon and easily the fair fame of a woman
is breathed upon and tarnished. In more ways than one is the breath of
man poisonous to his fellows. Well did Arthur Vavasour know that while
he--the heir-apparent to wealth and honour--he, the strong man, armed at
all points for the battle of life--would come unscathed out of the
tainted atmosphere of suspicion, she, the tender bird exposed to its
baneful influence, would flutter her feeble wings, and fall killed
_morally_ by the strong insidious poison. Of this melancholy truth Sophy
Duberly’s affianced husband was as cognisant as the oldest sage that
lives; and yet so selfish was he and so graceless--you perceive that
there is nothing singular and abnormal in this young man’s character and
conduct--that he could not bring himself to forego a pleasure, many of
the infallible evils to result therefrom, he, in his rare moments of
reflection, so plainly foresaw.

His first visit to the Paddocks was the consequence (and this young
sinner sometimes twisted the fact into a strange kind of condonation) of
a pressing invitation from honest John himself. Partly from former
respect and affection for the deceased Squire, and in some degree from a
liking which he took to the open cheerful manners of the heir-apparent,
John Beacham seized the earliest opportunity of making that young
gentleman “free,” as it were, of the house in which his father had been
so frequent and honoured a guest.

Nor was John’s hospitable parent behindhand in her well-meant endeavours
to make Lady Millicent’s first-born understand that he was a welcome
guest at Pear-tree House. He was always “pleasant-spoken,” she used to
say, “without an ounce of milady’s pride about him.” “Young Mr. Arthur”
besides (and that was another important point in his favour) was very
far from making himself “common” in the houses, whether large or small,
of his lady mother’s tenants. I am afraid, after all, that this old lady
was--after the fashion of her class in _her_ day--something of a lord
lover. The taste has somewhat left that class of late years, rampant as
it still is on the higher rungs of the social ladder; and in Mrs.
Beacham it was only preserved, and that feebly, by some of the
traditions and associations of the past. She entertained an idea too
that the son in whom all her hopes and pride were centred was better
looked on, by reason of his acquaintance (professionally) with the
titled ones of the land. It may be doubted, indeed, whether this
simple-minded body did not, in some vague and unreflecting way, consider
John’s friendship, or rather familiarity, with a rich earl of sporting
proclivities, and the fact of his being, so to speak, “hand and glove”
with the heir of Gillingham, decided proofs, had any been wanting, of
her son’s general superiority to his fellow-men.

The fever of expectation and delight into which the usually sedate old
woman was thrown on the first occasion when John informed her that “Mr.
Arthur” was coming to see the “stock” and “take” his luncheon at the
Paddocks, afforded some amusement and not a little surprise to Honor.
For herself she hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that her
acquaintance with Mr. Vavasour was likely to be improved. That his
coming was not, by any means, a matter of indifference to her cannot be
denied. It could hardly be that the railway journey passed in his
company, short and uneventful though it was, had not left some trace of
it behind. Beautiful daughter of Eve though she was, never had eyes of
man rested on her face as those of Arthur Vavasour had done that day;
but although her vanity had been to a certain degree gratified by a
scrutiny which she had _felt_ rather than seen, yet she had, whilst
undergoing it, experienced a sensation of _malaise_--a nameless _fear_
almost--which caused her rather to shrink from a first meeting with
Arthur Vavasour. As regarded John, he took the event, for which his
mother was making such grand preparations, quite as a matter of course.
Beyond the fact that Mr. Arthur was the Squire’s son, and one to whom
the farmer gave credit for possessing hereditary virtues, the handsome
young man, who, as all the country knew, was engaged to the heiress of
Fairleigh, was no more to him than any other visitor at the Paddocks.
Not that honest John was the very least in the world what is called “a
leveller.” To “even” himself with those socially above him never
entered his head. The ambition which of all others is the most apt to
“o’erleap itself and fall o’ the other side”--the ambition, namely, of a
_churl_ to be a gentleman--was an infirmity quite unknown to the simple
mind of the Sandyshire farmer. He was absorbed, besides, rationally and
wholesomely, in his business, and that business, as John was quite
conscious, he thoroughly understood. A sense of superiority (that sense,
let it be remembered, being indorsed by the fiat of public opinion) is
apt to induce (even though that superiority may be evidenced in a
comparatively humble manner) a certain sense also of independence. This
sense, then, was a strong and healthy resident in John Beacham’s breast.
He knew--none better--that his knowledge of the business in which his
soul delighted was anything but superficial, and it was to him a source
of pride that his opinion in equine matters had grown to be treated as a
law. I repeat that John Beacham was no “leveller”. He was quite as ready
as his neighbours to “give tribute to whom tribute, and honour to whom
honour,” is due; but it was pretty much the same to him, provided that
the individual in question knew _something_ about horse-flesh, whether
guest of his were prince or peasant, duke or dog-breeder. His thoughts
ran entirely on his stock, and his mind was so fully engrossed by the
future of his yearlings that he felt literally none of that common
sensation of “not-at-homeishness” which is apt to render individuals in
John’s somewhat anomalous position both awkward and uncomfortable.

Few men in any rank of life could be pleasanter as a host than the owner
of Updown Paddocks. At his hospitable board, the rich and “great,” and
even the self-important, “forgot to remember” that they were
condescending. A native politeness induced by entire forgetfulness of
self placed him on a par with the most exalted, the most fastidious, and
the most sensitive. But, above all things, let it be remembered that he
was _true_--true to the backbone. The air of the “stable,” as I have
before said, had instilled no principles of trickery into John Beacham’s
breast, and, as Cecil Vavasour had once been heard to remark, he would
as soon expect one of John’s _fillies_ to be capable of entering into a
conspiracy to defraud, as that his old friend would in a single instance
depart from the strict rules of honour and integrity.

“Now then, Honor, look sharp; I can’t have any dawdling to-day. When
gentlemen come to lunch at the Paddocks, they expect, and so does John,
to find everything good. You won’t soil your white hands, that I don’t
think likely, with helping in the setting on; but you might gather a few
flowers for the beanpots all the same, and if there’s time afterwards
you can change your gown afore Mr. Arthur comes. A silk one would look a
deal better than that washy muslin. I’m sure John, poor fellow, gave you
plenty of smart dresses, and you needn’t begrudge the wearing one of
them now and then.”

Honor, who had already learned that there is ofttimes wisdom in keeping
silence even from good words, proceeded with cheerful alacrity to the
execution of one at least of her appointed tasks. The tasteless
arrangement of those same “beanpots” had long been to her a source of
minor discomfort, and often had she longed to work, with deft and dainty
fingers, a reformation in the huge overgrown posies with which it was
Mrs. Beacham’s pleasure to adorn the windows of the “best parlour” in
the old farm-house. A very snug and pleasant room it was, and would have
been a pretty one, could Honor have effected the change she was often
planning, namely, that of introducing French windows instead of the
old-fashioned lattices, which let in so little light, and impeded the
view outside so greatly. And, as if to make the room still darker,
there were, ever and always, those dreadful beanpots standing never an
inch out of their respective places on the spider-legged pembroke tables
in front of the latticed panes. It was wonderful, Honor sometimes
thought, how flowers could be made to look so little attractive as those
which old Mrs. Beacham was in the habit of packing together for the
adornment of her show parlour. The old lady’s floral tastes were of the
massive and gorgeous school. She delighted in peonies, and many-coloured
dahlias were her passion. Honor had more than once attempted a reform in
this delicate branch of household duty; but Mrs. Beacham, who had no
opinion of her daughter-in-law’s taste, had hitherto declined her
offers, and nothing short of a press of business on the occasion of Mr.
Vavasour’s visit would have caused the busy old autocrat to break
through a fixed habit of her life.

Honor wondered to herself, as, with her large garden-hat shading her
eyes from the sun, and a flower-basket on her arm, she bent over a
favourite plant rich with pinks in brilliant blossom, dropping at the
same time one of the treasures into her basket, whether Mr. Vavasour had
the least idea what a commotion his coming to the house for half an hour
was causing. She caught herself marvelling too whether he liked the
smell of roast beef and cabbage: for the house had been redolent of
both when Honor gladly exchanged the scene of bustle and confusion, and
the aroma of a meal more plentiful than refined, for the fresh air of
heaven and the perfumes of the roses and the pinks. She did not hurry
over her task. There was time enough before the arrival of their guest
for a little more dallying with the flowers, a few more quiet thoughts
over how she would look, and what _he_--that half-dreaded new
acquaintance--would say to her. Honor had not the slightest intention of
complying with the last of her mother-in-law’s injunctions; the “washy”
dress--it was of soft blue muslin, and the girl looked like a bright
azure flower in it, as she flitted about between the rows of
fruit-bushes, culling the dear old “common” flowers that are still to be
found in such ancient kitchen-gardens as the one that appertained to
Pear-tree House--the “washy” dress that had provoked Mrs. Beacham’s
animadversion was not, Honor determined, to be cast aside. Since the
affair of the bonnet, she had resisted all attempts at interference with
her toilet. The day too, as the sun rose higher and higher in the
heavens, had grown oppressively hot, so hot that her fair face was a
little flushed, and she loosened the strings of her hat that the light
summer breeze might blow more freely round her throat. The coolest spot
in all the garden was the terrace-walk, a little raised above the level
of a shady lane, into which those above could look over the trimmed
sprays of what John--who loved the place, and smoked his quiet pipe
there often in the summer evenings--was wont to call the “nightingale
hedge.” With Honor too the terrace was a favourite resort: she would
take her book there, or her work, and sit dreamily on the rough stone
bench for hours, till summoned home by the shrill voice of her
mother-in-law, who, being essentially a woman of action, had no patience
with the “idle ways of John’s silly chit of a wife.” On that especial
day, however, Honor had no time to waste in reverie. She would, she
thought only rest for a moment under the shade of the old thorn-tree;
the sun shone so glaringly down upon the teeming apple-trees, on the
clean-kept rows of strawberry-beds sloping downwards to the gravelled
walks, yellow and glowing in the midday heat. Honor could not, however,
long remain, pleasant as it was, in that cool breezy place. Only a
moment to pluck a sprig of sweet syringa from a shrub of ancient date,
growing near the hawthorn-tree; only a moment to hear--Well! What did
she hear? Why, the slow footsteps of a horse, advancing with even pace
along the lane below! Instinctively she rose from her seat, and peering
over the hedge, she recognised in the equestrian, who politely raised
his hat from his head (for a simultaneous movement had caused him to
look towards the terrace), the figure of Arthur Vavasour.

It was too late to retreat, her blushing face was just above him, and
she could only hope that he would not think her very _missyish_ and
forward. _That_ road--the one that he had chosen--was not the usual one
from Gillingham to the Paddocks, and this, Honor, feeling and seeming a
good deal confused and awkward, endeavoured to make him understand. She
had forgotten, or rather she had never heard, the proverb, that _qui
s’excuse, s’accuse_; but Arthur both remembered and applied it. It is
always a temptation to jump at conclusions that are flattering to our
vanity, and the “jump” on this occasion was far too alluring to be
withstood. Arthur had in good truth very little grounds for supposing
that Honor had betaken herself to that quiet spot for the purpose of
awaiting his arrival. He was profoundly ignorant, beyond the simple fact
that she was beautiful, of all that appertained to or regarded John
Beacham’s wife. Unfortunately too he had been a good deal thrown among a
class of women, who would have taken no great shame to themselves had
they been caught in the deed for which he gave that pretty,
unsuspecting Honor credit. Arthur had met with a good deal of petting
and spoiling from the sex in general. He was handsome, and he knew it.
Honor was looking tantalisingly lovely and attractive as she stammered
forth her silly, smiling excuses; so--it was foolish certainly, but he
was not yet “of age,” remember, and it would have been so “muffish” to
ride on as if she were not there--so Arthur Vavasour, following the
impulse of the moment, and meaning, as he would have said, no more than
to be “civil,” contrived (without awkwardness, which would have been
fatal in such a case) to spring with his feet upon the saddle, and to
bring his face on a level with Honor’s.

She could not help laughing; it was “such a foolish thing to do;” and
then there came, after he had shaken hands with her over the hedge, the
fear that the horse would move on, and that there would be an
“accident.”

“He might move on--O, please don’t wait!” she said, feeling a little
smitten with what struck her as an act of chivalry on the part of that
good-looking young aristocrat.

“He won’t stir--he knows better,” Arthur said, as he steadied himself
against a strong ash sapling that jutted out from the bank. “Steady,
will you!” to the animal, who was picking out the tender blades of
grass for his own especial eating from among the ground-ivy, the
delicate cranesbill, and the wild violets with which the pretty rural
fence was lined. “He knows this road, and so do I, of old. Jack was my
father’s cob, Mrs. Beacham--one of _your_ father-in-law’s breeding, and
he used always to come this way to the Paddocks.”

It was a pretty way--the prettiest, Honor thought and said--from the
Castle; not that she had ever been the whole road--far from it, she
said. It was a beautiful way, people told her, all through, but she had
never been nearer to the Castle in her life than the end of
Pender’s-lane. John did promise to take her farther when he had the
time, and she was going to learn to ride, and horses were allowed in
many places inside the Chace where a carriage wasn’t, so John said, and
if so, why she might some day see, without giving trouble, she added
meekly, a little of the beautiful place of which she had heard so much.

Arthur professed himself delighted to think that he could afford the
wife of his old friend pleasure in any way; mentally regretting that,
owing to his insecure footing on old Jack’s saddle, he could not be
quite as delightful as he wished, or as the occasion deserved.

“It will be awfully jolly to have you on horseback,” he said, “and
Beacham will mount you in something like style.”

“O yes,” Honor said eagerly, “there is a chestnut--such a beauty! John
calls her Lady Meg--that he is breaking for me; not a pony--quite a tall
horse; and--O Mr. Vavasour, I told you so! Have your hurt yourself?”