Perhaps in all that crowded house—amongst that forest of faces that filled the boxes and gallery to the roof—there was not one, save that honest countryman, whose attention was not fixed and absorbed that night on one of the most sensational melodramas that have ever drawn tears from weak human eyes. At another time and under other circumstances John Beacham who, strong-bodied and iron-nerved man though he was, could never keep from what he called making a fool of himself at a dismal play, would not have seen unmoved the wondrous tragic acting of one of the very best (alas, that we must speak of him in the past!) of our comic actors: but John Beacham, on the night in question, was not in the mood to listen with interest to the divinest display of eloquence that ever burst from human lips. He was there for another and less exalted purpose: there as a spy upon the actions of another—there to feast his eyes (for, as I said before, in spite of all her errors, his heart was very soft towards the one woman whom he loved) on the wife who had defied his authority, and, possibly, made him an object of ridicule.
He had not been long in the unconspicuous place he had chosen before, not far removed from him—in a box, as I before said, on the pit tier—he descried his unsuspecting wife. Such a start as he gave when first he saw her! Such a start that, had not his neighbours on the next seat been fully occupied with the Stage, they must have perceived and wondered at his agitation. At first he could hardly bring himself to believe—so changed was she, and so wondrously beautified—that it could in reality be his own Honor whom he saw there, radiant in her glorious loveliness, and with that loveliness—ah, poor, poor John Beacham!—displayed, in a manner which almost took away his breath, to the gaze of hundreds upon hundreds of admiring eyes.
Until that moment—the moment when he saw her the admired of all beholders, in the evening toilet which so enhanced her attractions, it may be doubted whether John had ever entirely realised the exceeding beauty of the wife whom he had chosen. In her simple morning-dress, and especially in the little coquettish hat which he had sometimes seen her wear, the honest farmer was quite willing to allow that Honor was prettier by far than nine out of ten of the pretty girls that tread the paths of life; but it was in the dress, or rather undress, that evening dissipation rendered (according to Mrs. Norcott’s dictum) necessary that young Mrs. Beacham became—in her husband’s eyes—not only a marvel and miracle of loveliness, but a source of such exceeding pain to that inexperienced rustic that in his agony of jealous susceptibility he clenched his muscular hands together till the blood well-nigh burst from his finger-ends with the strong though all involuntary compression of his fingers.
For there was more than the sight of those white shoulders to rouse the demon of anger in his breast; there was more than the memory of the woman’s deceit to harden his heart against her; for beside, or rather behind her, leaning over those same white shoulders in most lover-like and devoted fashion, stood Arthur Vavasour, the man of whom his mother had in her rude fashion warned him, the man whose father had been not only his (John Beacham’s) friend, but his benefactor!
Whispering in her ear, calling the crimson blush to her fair cheek—the husband saw it all! And ah, how at that moment poor John hated that dark handsome face—the face of one looking so like a tempter sent to try the faith and virtue of an angel only too ready, so it seemed, to fall!
Will any of my readers—any, that is to say, who have in their own persons borne the burden and the heat of human passions—marvel that this man, spurred by the spectacle before him—the spectacle not of fictitious crimes and sorrows, for there was a side-scene in which a deeper melodrama was being enacted for his benefit—should have “lost his head” under the pressure of such unwonted excitement?
Something—it was not common sense or reason, for he was long past any safeguard they could render him—something retained the man, whose passions were so rapidly growing to be his master, in the place which, between two elderly playgoers who were entirely absorbed by the “scene,” had been assigned to him—retained him, that is to say, till such time as, the act being over, he could move from his place without causing public excitement and commotion.
When the curtain fell, and the rushing, rustling sound betokened that the spectators, over-wrought and excited, were stretching their limbs and refreshing their brains by a change of scene and posture, John Beacham, following a sudden and uncontrollable impulse, and with no fixed purpose within his brain or choice of words upon his lips, staggered like a drunken man to the box where Honor, breathless with eagerness and her fair face flushed with excitement, had just—in entire and happy ignorance of her husband’s proximity—turned her glossy head to talk over the startling incidents of the play with Arthur Vavasour.
CHAPTER IX.
JOHN PROVES HIS RIGHT.
As he opened the box-door, a ray of reason—there is often on such occasions something sobering in the mere presence of strangers—threw a composing light over John Beacham’s troubled brain. He was not, as we already know, a man who loved excitement and “went in” for sensation; on the contrary, his country habits and his rather matter-of-fact nature unfitted him for taking part in any emotional scene, of what kind soever it might be.