Of Mrs. Beacham she had not yet brought herself to think with charity. If the possibility of a return to the Paddocks lingered for a moment in her mind, that possibility was rendered so dark and unattractive by the image of her mother-in-law, that Honor, although beginning to long for reconciliation with John, turned from it with as much detestation as it was in her gentle and affectionate nature to feel. Not yet was she thoroughly and effectually subdued; not yet had the chastening rod of affliction done its perfect work. Honor still found herself, when the good spirit within was drawing her to an entire oblivion of her wrongs—to a perfect pardon of the past, and to a self-effacing sense of her own unworthiness—she still, I say, in spite of her sometimes conviction that she ought, in deep humility, to entreat forgiveness of her aged persecutor, shrunk with very natural repugnance from such an act of self-abasement. The provocations she had received would rise up in her memory, like evil ghosts that refused to be laid to rest; while it was as yet, I fear, only in theory that Honor regarded the endurance of wrong with patience, as one of the first of Christian virtues. The time, however, came when she not only believed, but demonstrated her faith by practice, that the great duty of bearing and forbearing may be so gracefully, as well as rigidly practised, that the fruits of such forbearance can scarcely fail to be those of mutual affection, confidence, and good-will.
The obtrusive and constant visits of Mrs. Casey did not tend to render poor Honor better satisfied with her condition. That quick-sighted and not over-charitable personage had drawn her own conclusions from the lengthened stay of a young and handsome gentleman in the “second-floor front,” and those conclusions had not tended to increase her show of respect for the young lady—the “Miss Blake” who was so beautiful and so befriended.
When the long day was at last over, and all chance of seeing Arthur till the following morning was at an end, Honor prepared herself for bed, with the heaviest heart for company she had ever known. With the impatience of suspense so common at her age, she asked herself how it was possible to wear through the hours till morning—the long and lonely hours in which she had naught to do save to turn and twist, and twist and turn again, the arguments for and against each possible reason for Arthur’s breach of faith—the miserable hours during which she would be for ever saying with the sleepless victim of unrest recorded in Holy Writ: “Would God it were light! Would God it were the morning!”
But when morning came it brought with it no comfort for the lonely watcher. The hope which she had nourished that the early post would bring to her some explanation of the absence of her only friend proved a fruitless one; for though the sharp tap-tap of the postman’s summons sounded dear and loud at the door of No. 29, there was no letter, so the little dirty drab of a servant-girl informed Honor, for her; and again the unhappy and restless creature, seated before her untempting and scarcely-tasted breakfast, was forced to summon all her fortitude to endure the scarcely endurable torments of uncertainty.
CHAPTER XXII.
JOHN GIVES WAY.
When John Beacham, after his worse than fruitless search after his missing wife, returned, which he at once did, to the Paddocks, Mrs. Beacham, though by no means addicted to sudden alarms, was startled by the change which a few short hours had wrought in his outer man. The soft spring evening was beginning to draw in, and the scent of the honeysuckle was filling the air, when the old lady, catching the sound of horse’s hoofs (Tom Simmons’s thoughtful care for the master whom he loved had prompted him to have Black Jenny in waiting at Switcham for the chance of John’s return), laid down the knitting which was her unfailing occupation after dark, and stood beneath the blossoming woodbine that Honor loved, waiting to greet her son. He rode forward very slowly—so slowly that Mrs. Beacham, who had been accustomed for years to the brisk walk, verging on a trot, at which the best rider in Sandyshire was in the habit of bringing in his horse, imagined for a moment that it could not be really John who came at such a lingering, lagging pace towards his home. But if the mother, who knew his ways so well, thought that the step of her son, or rather that of his good black steed, was strangely altered, how much greater was the shock of surprise when, by the failing light, she looked upon John’s careworn face!
Throwing himself in a listless fashion, widely different from his accustomed energetic movements, from the saddle, he stood by the old woman’s side beneath the rustic porch, she looking up with sad inquiry (for the suspense and worry of the last six-and-thirty hours had quelled her spirit) into her son’s dulled and altered eyes.
“O, John!” she said pitifully, “dear, dear John!” and then turning her head aside, for the strong-minded old woman scorned her own weakness, she in secret wiped away the tears which the sight of poor John’s misery had wrung from her aged eyes.
He put her very gently aside, so gently that none could see the action, and then striding in with a firm step to his own business-room, he closed and locked the door. Truly he was in no mood either to endure pity or submit to the questionings even of the mother who bore him. The return to his home, to the sight of familiar faces gazing at him with the compassion which was so hard to bear, had been in itself a severe trial to the proud man, to whom a good name was a treasure beyond, price, and who could never—never, as he repeated with a terrible monotony to himself—hold up his head again. But grievous as these trials were, there was worse, much worse remaining behind; for the death of that poor young woman, who had so short a time before been full of life and happiness, lay (indirectly, it is true, but still it did lie—John never deceived himself on that point) on his own miserable head; and the weight of that death and the dread of it pursued him as might the swift footsteps of an avenging spirit, even into the stillness of his closet. Turn which way he would, all seemed dark around him. Alone henceforth, and while life should last (for since the evident impossibility on Arthur Vavasour’s part to deny that he had seen Honor in London, the last ray of hope as regarded her virtue had been swept away)—alone in his deserted home—alone with his shame and his disgrace—what wonder was it that John Beacham, in the silence and solitude of his chamber, should have given way to a despondency that was twin-brother to despair?
A tap at the door, not a delicate or gentle one, for there were no genteel and well-trained servants at the Paddocks, roused the master of the house from the kind of stupor of grief into which he had fallen.