John made no reply to this aggravating little speech. Fortunately for him, the day was not one of rest, neither was the hour meal-time; so that the unhappy husband could escape from the irritating attacks of Mrs. Beacham’s “deadly weapon.” In truth, he was in no mood to listen patiently to the “I told you so,” and the “You see, I was right,” of the old lady’s equivocal sympathy. His anger—hard to rouse in downright earnest against the beautiful girl, young enough, as the poor fellow often told himself, to be his daughter—had aroused at last to almost boiling-point; and, as is often the case with self-constrained but naturally passionate men, the change now lay in the probability that he would visit still more heavily than they deserved the indiscretions of the culprit, and that in his anger he would not even remember mercy.
Finding him still silent, Mrs. Beacham, accustomed from long habit to watch the changes on her son’s countenance, glanced up at it from her eternal knitting, and was startled, strong-nerved woman though she was, at its stern rigidity, and at the colour—that of a livid leaden hue—which had taken place of the usual ruddy brownness of his cheeks.
“John, what is the matter? My gracious me, boy! you look as if you were going to faint.”
The old woman had risen hastily from her chair, and, standing before him, had laid her two hands upon his arms, holding him thus, while with anxious motherly eyes she peered into the face of him who, being all the world to her, she loved with such a jealous and exacting devotion. For the first time in his life, John answered her shortly, and with what his mother, making scant allowance for the condition of his mind, chafed under as disrespect.
“Bother!” he said gruffly, putting her aside with one hand, while he donned his wideawake with the other. “I’m all right. What should be the matter?” And then, in a more collected voice, and with a more composed manner, he added, “I shall go to town to-morrow, mother, by the 10.30 train. I’ve no end of business to-day—other people’s business, or I’d let it all go to Hanover, for what I cared. But for that, I wouldn’t be so many hours before going up to see what that scoundrel Norcott is after with my wife; for, by Heaven”—and he struck a blow upon the old oak floor with his ash-stick that was enough to test the solidity of both—“by Heaven, I begin to think that there’s more than we know of in his sending for her in the way he did. That illness of his was all a sham—I’m pretty sure of that by this time; and then his having Vavasour about her”—and John ground his strong white teeth together as he said the hateful words—“looks as if there was something devilish up with the rascal. God knows! I’ve more than once had a fancy—why, I couldn’t tell you any more than the dead—that all wasn’t square about Rough Diamond. It was no business of mine to inquire into it. If young Vavasour’s been stuck, why, I shall be sorry, that is, if—”
He stopped abruptly; for there were circumstances connected with the possible victim of Colonel Norcott’s rascality that would effectually check any feelings of pity which John might be inclined to entertain for him. Could the mother who bore him have looked into the heart of her only child that day, she would bitterly have repented the stirring-up of the smouldering fire within which her words—uttered, as so many dangerous words are uttered, without much thought of future consequences—had effected. It is easy, terribly easy, to raise the demon of suspicion and jealousy in the human breast. Were the laying of the same an equally facile task, or one equally congenial to the unregenerate nature of men and women, there would be fewer of the crimes consequent on the strength of our worst passions to record, fewer blighted lives, fewer consciences burdened with the weight of scarcely bearable remorse. But though the woman, whose tongue had wagged (without ulterior design, but simply as a consequence of her own maternal jealousy) to such fell purpose, could not read the heart she had unconsciously been working up to madness, she yet experienced something very like uneasiness when John, with the heavy cloud still lowering over his brow, and with the ruddy brown half-vanished from his cheeks (so changed was he since the poison of suspicion had suffused itself through his veins), left her alone to ruminate on the past, and anticipate darker doings in the future than she had either hoped or calculated on. That John—the dearly-beloved of her aged heart, the son of whom she was so justly proud—could prove himself, under provocation, to be of a very violent and passionate nature, she had not now to learn. He had done his best to subdue and conquer his constitutional sin; a sin, however, it was that might and did lie dormant, and indeed half forgotten, within him, from the simple fact that it required the great occasions that happily are comparatively rare in all our lives to bring it into notice and action. The blow struck in a moment of ungovernable rage at Frederick Norcott’s unprotected head had for a time, as we already know, filled John Beacham’s breast with remorse and self-reproach. He had been very angry with himself, very angry and ashamed; but that shame and anger had not, in any degree, either softened his nature or disposed him to any especial leniency towards his victim. On the contrary, the soreness produced by self-condemnation, and by imagined loss of caste, only served to better prepare the mind of the man for the reception of evil suspicions, and of perilously active venom; and when John Beacham left the quiet little parlour, and the tardily-repentant old lady, who, when it was too late, would gladly have recalled her words, he was in the mood of mind that leads, at down-hill pace, to crime.
After his departure Mrs. Beacham picked up the ball of gray worsted that she had in her agitation allowed to roll away upon the carpet, and recommenced the task of turning the heel of John’s lambswool sock. Click, click went the knitting-needles, and steadily jerked the bony wrinkled hands that held the pins; but, contrary to custom, the thoughts of the aged woman were wandering far away from the work in hand—away with the son whose fiery passions she had helped to rouse—away with the thoughtless girl whose “cunning ways” (Mrs. Beacham’s vials of wrath were filled to overflowing in readiness for Honor’s devoted head) and artful, “flirty goings on were hurrying her poor John into his grave.”
Suddenly a novel thought occurred to her, and, laying down her knitting-needles, the distracted old lady, who was not “good at” doing two things at a time, set herself to “think it out.” She would write—such was the idea with which the mother of invention had inspired her—to Honor herself! It was true that neither caligraphy nor the art of “composition” were among the gifts which nature and education had bestowed upon the ever-busy mistress of Pear-tree House, but for all that she would—so she then and there decided—give “milady” a piece of her mind that would bring back that “artful faggot”—Mrs. Beacham was angry enough to apply any names, however opprobrious, to her daughter-in-law—in double quick time to her husband and her duty.
When a woman—especially one of unrefined mind—sits down under the influence of wrathful passions to write a letter, the chances are greatly in favour of her pen running away with her discretion—that is to say, of her using stronger expressions; and of her doing a good deal more mischief, than she had intended. The not-over-well-concocted missive, which occupied the worthy old lady who penned it during two good hours of the afternoon, and was posted in time for the early morning delivery in Stanwick-street, proved, as the reader will hereafter learn, no poor exemplification of the truth of this not very novel remark. There are moods of mind in which the receipt of even a judiciously-penned letter irritates and offends the weak vessel that requires both tender and tactful handling. The missive of autocratic Mrs. Beacham was neither tender nor tactful, and pretty Honor’s fate and conduct were terribly influenced for evil by what appeared at first sight to be one of the most every-day occurrences of every-day life.