But while the man who had been the chief cause (humanly speaking) of this one amongst the thousand tragedies wrought by human selfishness and frailty bore his burden with such a light and unreflecting spirit, the chief sufferer by the calamity was he who was in no way—as far, that is, as short-sighted mortal eyes can see—deserving of punishment. The grief of poor Sophy’s bereaved father was for life. For him, for the aged man, who could no longer look to new ties, new hopes to bind him to this earthly tabernacle, the loss of his child was a blow from the effects of which he never could recover. He was a Christian in thought as well as in outward belief and conduct, and he strove earnestly not only to forgive, but to manifest the forgiveness which he tried, not with entire success, to feel not only towards Arthur Vavasour, but towards the beautiful woman whom he ever considered, with the tenacity of faith that is characteristic of old age, as the fellow-culprit of poor Sophy’s faithless husband. It is a hard thing even for the young to have their belief in all human excellence, in all human honesty, destroyed; but it is harder still upon the old, when faith and trust, the virginities of the soul, are for ever taken away, and when in loneliness of heart, with mistrust and suspicion usurping the place of former confidence and unquestioning credulity, they wend their weary way towards the grave in silence and in gloom. Nor was that unhappy father the only one who, mourning for the child who would not return to him, became a changed and saddened character. Mrs. Beacham, though, as might have been supposed, rather too old to learn, had yet, during the anxious days and nights when John lay between life and death, laid her shortcomings to heart, and, making some allowance for a stiff-neckedness, which had become a chronic evil of her idiosyncrasy, had reviewed the past without a certain proper sense of her own sins regarding her daughter-in-law. To confess those sins was more than could be expected of one who had arrived at the age of seventy with the conviction that all she said and did was right, beyond the possibility of question; but Mrs. Beacham did endeavour, as much as in her lay, to make amends for the past; and although she could not wholly overcome her former jealousy of Honor’s influence over her son, she kept her temper in tolerable subjection, and instead of (as was the case with Arthur) throwing the occurrences of the painful past into the waste-basket of memory, she—it was the woman’s nature so to do—kept them alive with persevering industry in her breast, knowing well that with forgetfulness might come a relaxation of her constant efforts to obliterate the evil she had wrought—evil to the son she loved, and to the woman with whom, come what come might, the happiness of his future life was bound up.
Happily, both for the peace—such peace as they could henceforth hope for—of John Beacham and his wife, the little world of Sandyshire remained in ignorance of the main facts attendant on the death of young Mrs. Vavasour. She had died in childbed it was reported, and unhappily such deaths are of too common occurrence for especial wonder to be created thereby. Any reports of a close connection between John Beacham’s domestic affairs and those of Arthur Vavasour and his dead wife were put a stop to by Honor’s return, and by the restored affection and trust which, after John’s recovery, were seen to exist, not only between the husband and wife, but between Honor and her hitherto implacable mother-in-law. They left the Paddocks for a time, a few not unhappy weeks, change of air and scene having been recommended by the doctors for the perfecting of John’s recovery; and during that absence from their home the bonds of affection, strengthened by the ties of a great sorrow shared between them, were knit very closely together. The dawn of their wedded life had been overcast with clouds; the morning had been dull, and doubts of whether fine weather would even come at noon had strengthened as the day grew older. But the “morning gray,” according to the old shepherd’s adage, will not, let us hope, fail to end in the “fine day” that ofttimes follows. The grieving over love’s decay is of all griefs the gloomiest. To be shedding—I speak of a wife now (men’s eyes are not formed for weeping)—to be shedding secret tears over the memory of an affection passed away is a very hopeless form of sorrow. The
“Distilling bitter, bitter drops
From sweets of former years”
formed, however, no part of the trials to which Honor Beacham was henceforth exposed. Her duty was, by undying efforts to efface the memory of past error, and to strive by every act and word to render herself worthy of a good man’s love. The memory of the bitter past—of the past, unconnected by any lack of love on John’s part—could never, never be washed away; but to “redeem the time,” the present that was left to her, became, because of the evil of the days that were past, a still more sacred duty. Sorrow had done good service in forming while it humbled the character of our poor little impulsive heroine, for “la vertù è simile ai perfumi, che rendono più grato odore quando-riturati.” Heaviness had indeed endured for the morning, but content, if not joy, had come to her and hers with the quiet evening light.
CONCLUSION.
If the reader of this half-true story has followed with any portion of just indignation the tortuous ways through which an insane craving after power has lead the nominal heroine of these pages, he or she will not regret to learn that, in consequence of a high legal opinion—the highest, indeed, in the land—having been given, at the eleventh hour, against the possibility of setting aside Earl Gillingham’s last will and testament, Lady Millicent was forced, with a reluctance comparable only to the pang of plucking out a right eye or wrenching out a wrong tooth, to abandon the unfilial as well as unmotherly intention which she had so long secretly as well as avowedly harboured.
The intense though silent wrath of Lady Millicent when she found that the great law-lords were not to be led—albeit the forceps or chain, call it what you will, was held and drawn by a lady of great estate, strong courage, and ancient name—by the nose may be better imagined than described. Misfortunes never, according to the old adage, come singly, and this autocratic lady found the proof of the proverb to her cost. In her youth she had never cared to provide herself with friends, and, when it was too late, she made the unwelcome discovery that there are certain manufactures of which the art cannot be learned save in the freshness and elasticity of early womanhood. The world, too, which had interested itself a good deal in Lady Millicent’s efforts, and which was hesitating as to its decision from a laudable desire to side with the strongest, bore rather hardly in her discomfiture on the baffled and indignant woman. That she had been unmotherly, grasping, avaricious—everything that was least feminine and most odious—everyone was more than willing to allow; whereas Arthur—regarding whom heads had been ominously shaken, and of whose scampishness so many (while the great affair was in abeyance) had a word, more or less severe, to say—became once more the popular “young fellow,” the idol of fair women’s hearts, and the object of future attacks from prudent mammas and half-despairing demoiselles à marier.
It was while smarting under the first wounds inflicted by disappointed ambition and frustrated love of power that Lady Millicent discovered the bitter truth that as we sow so we must reap, and that there can be no harvest of affection where the seeds of tenderness have been neglected to be sown. The news—very melancholy intelligence it was to his brother and his sisters—that Arthur Vavasour had, for an indefinite period, bade farewell to home and country, child and kindred, was communicated to Lady Millicent by her son Horace. He, the younger brother, who had always been in secret very impatient of parental control, and whose strong affection for his elder brother had ever been a marked and amiable feature of his character, was roused by the departure of Arthur to the strongest feelings of displeasure against the mother whose unfeeling conduct had, in his opinion, been the cause of her son’s expatriation. Walking one morning unannounced into the dull morning-room in which Lady Millicent, now that the occupation of her life was over, sat brooding over the turpitude and cowardice of lawyers, and the general injustice and stupidity of all connected with wills and will-making, Horace Vavasour took the liberty of giving his mother a piece of his mind.
“So, ma’am,” he began, his lips pale with agitation, and his voice (Horace was a little shaken by a year’s dissipation) a trifle difficult to steady,—“so, ma’am, Arthur’s off—gone—bolted. This confounded law-business put the finishing-stroke to his affairs, poor fellow! I knew how it would be. He never had a chance of doing well—never, by G—!” and Horace, who was standing near some greenhouse plants in full flower, whirled his light riding-whip lasso-like over their heads, thereby ruthlessly severing some half-dozen from their parent stems.
Lady Millicent looked up in mute dismay. The outbreak was so unexpected, and disrespect to her person and authority an occurrence so entirely new, that for a moment she found no words either sufficiently powerful or cutting for the expression of her indignation. At last she said, drawing herself up haughtily: