“And that chance?” put in Honor, imagining that he waited to be questioned.
“That chance is the winning of the Derby to-morrow by Rough Diamond. I have no bets, at least nothing but trifling ones, on the race; but if the horse wins, his value will, as of course you know, rise immeasurably, and with the money I can sell him for I shall be able, for a time, to set myself tolerably straight. Your father—whose horse you have, I suppose, hitherto fancied Rough Diamond to be—has, he tells me, backed him for all that he is worth. My reason for not doing so has been that I am not up to making a book, and that the debts of honour I already groan under are sufficiently burdensome without incurring others which I might not be able to pay.”
“How anxious you must be and unhappy!” Honor said pityingly. “But there is one thing which puzzles me, and that is, how you could keep all this a secret from your wife. Surely she would have been silent; surely she might have softened her father, and made all smooth between you.”
“She might; but I could not risk it. Sophy is very delicate; and then there has been such entire confidence between her and her father, that it would have been almost impossible for her to keep anything from him. No; as I have brewed, so I must bake. I can only hope the best; and that, or the worst, will very soon be no longer matter for speculation. The devil of it is—I beg your pardon, I am always saying something inexcusable—but really the worst of it is, that the fact of my mother’s intention of fighting my grandfather’s will is no longer a mystery. Old Duberly’s fortune is, as all the world believes, very large; but at the same time he is known to be what is called a ‘character,’ and that his eccentricities take the turn of an extraordinary mixture of penuriousness and liberality has been often the subject both of comment and reproach with people who have nothing to do but to talk over the proceedings of their neighbours. In short—for I am sure you must be dreadfully tired of hearing me talk about myself—the world, my cursed creditors included, would be pretty well justified in believing that my worthy father-in-law would flatly refuse to pay a sum of something very like fourteen thousand pounds for a fellow whose extravagance and love of play were alone accountable for the debt; one, too, who has nothing—no, not even a ‘whistle’—to show of all the things that he has paid so dear for. Disgusting, is it not? And now that you have heard the story,—I warned you, remember, that it was a vile one,—what comfort have you to bestow on me? And can you, do you wonder at my calling the world—my world, that is—a miserable one? and is it surprising that, in spite of outward prosperity, of apparent riches, and what you call good gifts, I should sometimes almost wish to exchange my lot with that of the poorest of the poor, provided that the man in whose shoes I stood had never falsified his word, or lived as I have done and do, with a skeleton in the cupboard, of which another—one, too (forgive me, dear, for saying so), whom I not greatly trust—keeps, and must ever keep, the key?”
Honor paused for a moment ere she answered, and then said, in a gentle and half-hesitating way (they had turned their horses’ heads some time before, and had nearly arrived at Honor’s temporary home), “I almost wish you had not told me this; but we are neither of us very happy, Mr. Vavasour, and must learn to pity one another. Perhaps—I don’t know much about such things—but perhaps I ought to say that you were wrong; only, I am sure of this, that, tempted as you were, I should have done no better. It must have been so very difficult—so very, very frightening! In your place I should never have had courage enough to speak the truth; and I hope—O, how I hope!—both for your sake and my father’s, that your horse may win! But am I to say,” she whispered, as with his arms clasped round her slender waist he lifted her from the saddle, “am I to say to him, to my father, that I know about Rough Diamond? I should be so sorry, from thoughtlessness, to repeat anything you might wish unsaid.”
He followed her into the narrow passage, where for a single moment they were alone, and the craving within him to hold her to his heart was almost beyond his power to conquer. Perhaps,—we owe so much sometimes to simple adventitious circumstances,—but for the chance opening of a door on the landing-place above, Honor would at last have been awakened to the danger of treating Arthur Vavasour as a friend. She was very sorry for him; but she would have been more distressed than gratified had he pressed her to his heart with all the fervour of youthful passion, and implored her to trust herself entirely to his tender guardianship. On the contrary, seeing that he simply asked if Mrs. Norcott were at home, and reminded Honor of her wish to see the famous chestnut avenue, and of the practicability of realising her wishes, pretty Mrs. John Beacham tripped upstairs before him with a lightened heart, in search of the chaperone who was ever so good-naturedly ready to contribute to her pleasures.
CHAPTER VIII.
JOHN BEACHAM MAKES A DISCOVERY.
People, especially imaginative ones, are apt to talk a good deal about coming shadows and presentiments of evil, becoming especially diffuse on the subject of the low spirits which they feel or fancy they have felt previous to any great and dire calamity. In my humble opinion such warnings lie entirely in the imagination, and, moreover, those who prate about this gift of second sight are apt to forget the million cases of unannounced misfortunes to be set against the isolated instances of anticipated evil. Amongst these million cases we may safely cite that of Honor Beacham on the afternoon of that famous Tuesday when, with complaisant Mrs. Norcott for her duenna, she strolled with Arthur Vavasour under the avenue of arching trees, then in their rich wealth of snowy beauty, which leads, as all the world well knows, to
“The structure of majestic frame
Which from the neighbouring Hampton takes its name.”
Had Honor either been a few years older, less constitutionally light of heart, or more experienced in sorrow, she would never have been able so entirely—as was the case with this giddy young woman—to cast off the sense and memory of her woes. A reprieve after all is but a reprieve; and the consciousness that each moment, however blissful, serves only to bring us nearer to its termination, ought to and does fill the minds of the thoughtful with very sobering reflections. But, as I have just remarked, Honor’s constitutionally happy spirits buoyed her up triumphantly on the waters whose under-swell betokened a coming tempest, and throughout the two swiftly-passing hours which she spent in the beautiful park with Arthur Vavasour by her side, she, recklessly setting memory and conscience at defiance, was far happier than she deserved to be.