Honor Beacham would have been no true woman if she had not, before making the first commonplace preparations for flight (which, of course, she being pro tem. a heroine, included counting out the money, and putting on the inevitable cloak and bonnet), written a few lines to announce her resolution to the person whom she deemed, in her insane delusion, to be the most deeply interested therein. There is something, to many of the softer sex, very reassuring in wielding that dangerous instrument of feeble woman, the one to which it is so fatally easy in moments of passionate excitement to have recourse—to wit, the pen; and Honor, with the following note written, stamped, and ready for posting in her pocket, felt far more prepared than she had done (previous to its production) for the difficulties and dangers with which her path was strewed:
“Dear Mr. Vavasour,—I am afraid you will think me foolish” (Honor did not entertain any such alarm, but the sentence appeared to her in the light of the proper thing, so she allowed it to stand), “but since my return home—which was very sudden, as Mr. Beacham would not even allow me to say good-bye to my father—I have been made too unhappy and too angry to stay here any longer. It is not so much because of my husband, who would be good to me if he was allowed, but on account of old Mrs. Beacham, who has grown crosser than ever, and who quite hates me now, I am sure. I would bear it if I could, but I cannot; so to-day I go up to London, and shall soon, I hope, get a place of some kind through your help. I should like to be nursery governess best, as I was before, at the Clays’, and should like to begin directly, as I have not much money. I shall be called Honor Blake, as I was before; and John will know nothing, any more than my father or other friends, excepting you, where I am. When I am in London, I will write again to you, to say where I am. Please to burn this; and believe, with a great many thanks, that I am your grateful friend,
“Honor Beacham.
“P.S.—I was so sorry to leave the play; you will tell me when we meet how it ended.”
After writing this letter, the child of impulse by whom it was penned felt, for the time requisite to perfect her arrangements, equal to any emergency. With the letter directed to Arthur Vavasour in her pocket, a something of his actual presence seemed to support and strengthen her. That letter, she doubted not, would bring joy—not guilty joy—that, to do her only justice, Honor never suspected—to the heart that desired her happiness, and was glad to sun itself in her presence. That any wrong was done to the trusting wife of her friend, by that friend’s kindly feelings towards herself, Honor was innocent of imagining. She believed in this young man’s virtuous attachment, and gratefully enjoyed the comfort of her convictions.
The hardest task which she had to perform—for she could not wholly divest herself of the idea that John, in his blundering, unattractive way, did cherish, and would for a time grieve over her loss—was the inditing of a farewell missive to her husband. Two attempts did she make ere she could express in a few words the contradictory sentiments which caused, in spite of herself, the tears to fall over the paper, and which made the pen with which she wrote look misty between her agitated fingers. At last the painful duty was over, and the words that were so soon to shake the frame of the strong man who read them like a reed, ran as follows:
“Dear John,—I hope you will forgive me for not being able to stay at the Paddocks any longer. I could have lived with you, and perhaps have been happy; for I know you are good, and you would not have been hard upon my silliness. What drives me away I leave it to yourself to guess. I have had a good deal to bear; but what hurt me the most was your mother telling me that you meant to be hard upon me too. Do not, please, try to find out where I am. I shall go into service, and try to keep an honest name, though your mother says I have brought disgrace on hers. I should like to think that you forgave me, John. Perhaps I shall some day; or I may not till we are both in another world, where I pray that we may meet, and that you may be happier without me than they say I have made you here. I cannot keep from crying over this letter; for, John, we might have been happy, if only your mother had not had bad thoughts of me from the beginning. God bless you, John; and believe that I am your foolish, but not your wicked wife, as your mother says I am,
“Honor Beacham.”
By the time that this letter was finished it wanted but an hour of noon (they kept old farmhouse hours at the Paddocks), and the striking by the big hall-clock of the time o’ day warned Honor that if she wished to catch a certain train that touched, on its way to London, for a few minutes at the small station of Switcham, she must waste no more time, either in thinking over her plans, or in making ready for her journey. Accordingly, with a steadiness which, under the circumstances, was surprising, she put together a very few articles of dress—and leaving behind her the simple ornaments, poor John’s wedding-gifts—over which she was so little of a heroine that she heaved a faint sigh of regret—this wife of little more than a year left the shelter of her husband’s roof, and, apparently with the intention of taking one of the quiet country walks to which she was accustomed, sauntered slowly, till she was out of sight of the Peartree-house occupants, across the fields that lay between them and the village.
Once the station reached, she cared little either for notice or discovery. The desperate step she had taken could not long remain a secret from the neighbourhood at large; but by the time that John received her letter, she would—according to her present expectations—be already lost to him, and far beyond reach of discovery, in some well-chosen but, of course, very humble retreat, which Arthur Vavasour’s thoughtful kindness would, she doubted not, speedily provide for her. With her mind full of these projects, but with a heart only half rejoicing over her newly-found freedom, Honor went on her way. Her head ached, and a strange sense of weariness rendered her steps slow and lagging; but, for all that she both felt and looked ill, there was about her air and walk (her face was too hidden by a thick veil for strangers’ eyes to gaze upon it) that nameless charm which commands attention, and excites the notice of the curious. Unconscious of, and at the moment utterly indifferent to, admiration, Honor turned her eyes neither to the right hand nor to the left as she passed slowly along the village-street. On her arrival at the post-office, she dropped—without allowing herself a moment’s reflection—the two letters she had written into the box; and then feeling a little more frightened and bewildered than she had done before—for there was a sense of the inexorable in this apparently unimportant act—she walked forward, erect, and outwardly with something of defiance in her mien, towards the station.