Chapter XIII: A Breeze About a Bonnet

It was on a Sunday morning, about a fortnight after the return of the travellers, that Honor had the first serious warning of coming “difficulty” with her mother-in-law. I have often heard it remarked, and I fear with some degree of truth, that the Seventh is very apt to be the one, of all days in the year, when domestic differences do most frequently arise. Why this should be is not, I think, very difficult of comprehension. To such women as Mrs. Beacham--to the habitually “busy”--the enforced idleness of Sunday hangs terribly heavy on the folded hands. When an active-minded and energetic female has nothing to do, there is a terrible temptation to be cantankerous. With John’s restless, vigorous-bodied parent the Sabbath was anything but a favourite time. She paid all outward respect to the hours between sunrise and bedtime on the “Lord’s day.” Her best gown was donned, and her roast beef eaten; the knitting-needles were put away, and Cowper’s Sermons or Law’s _Serious Call_ brought forward in their stead. Mrs. Beacham might even go so far as to _call_ the “Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable;” but she was, nevertheless, very thankful (under the rose) when the irksome hours drew to a close; and if there did happen to be a day when, to use Letty’s favourite expression, “missus got out the wrong side of her bed,” that day was pretty certain to be the Seventh.

It would seem that John was not altogether unaware of this trifling peculiarity, for during breakfast-time he was seen to _wink_ more than once with an air of comic warning to Honor, as much as to say, “Take no notice; this is but a passing shower, the looming of a summer cloud; the slightest possible crumpling of the tender roses with which our bed is strewn.” He was quite in the dark--Honor understood that well--as to the real state of things between her and his mother. He had yet to discover that, during his long daily absences, although no overt act, no _words_ even of which she could actually complain, had made her life uncomfortable, still there was an undercurrent of “nagging,” a perpetual though not always a very perceptible “talking at,” on the old lady’s part, which was far harder to endure patiently than the open harshness of language which Honor felt certain that John’s mother was often longing to attack her with.

The first Sunday at the Paddocks having been a hopelessly rainy day, there had been no walking along the lanes to attend Divine Service: the Seventh day had, however, now come round again, and the shy consciousness of early wifehood having a little worn off, Honor, as was only natural, had allowed her thoughts to wander to a no less important subject than the dress in which, at Switcham Church, she was to make her first appearance as a wife. The result of these meditations, and also--if the truth must be told--of a little stitching and altering, was as pretty a specimen of Sabbath-day adornment as ever entered the walls of a village church. And yet there was nothing (bright as a spring butterfly though she looked) the least over-dressed, or unbecoming her situation in life, in Honor Beacham’s attire. There were no incongruities, no single article of dress outshone or put shame upon the other, there had been no “trimming of robe of frieze with copper-lace;” but all was neat, effective, and, so far as Honor and the Leigh dressmaker together could achieve the desired object, according to the make and fashion of the day.

“Now then, Honey, let’s have a good look at you,” exclaimed John, as, five minutes before the moment appointed for setting forth, his wife, with a blush of gratified vanity on her cheek (for the glass had told her she was worth the looking at), tripped confidently up to him for approval. Before he could speak, however, Mrs. Beacham’s harsh voice broke the charm, and John’s complimentary words were frozen on his lips.

“My good gracious me!” she cried; “why you’re never surely going to church in that thing!” and she pointed with a thick finger, clothed in the stoutest of useful bottle-green gloves, at Honor’s airy bonnet; a small senseless thing enough, but very becoming all the same, with its trimming of blue forget-me-nots, showing off to perfection the soft beauty of the brown braided hair, and matching the azure eyes, John thought, so prettily. “To church of all places!” continued the old lady, whose headgear, being of very ancient fashion and materials, had struck Honor as far more remarkable than her own. “Why, you’ll have everyone looking at you!”

“And like enough too,” said John with a laugh, and hoping by this _judicious_ manœuvre to divert the rising storm, “let her put on what she may. But I say, mother, what’s wrong with Honor’s bonnet? I don’t pretend to know much about women’s dress, about their crinoline and hairbags, for instance. You don’t wear one of them I’m glad to see, Honey,” he went on, twisting a shining curl that strayed upon her white throat round his big finger as he spoke. “I’m all for nature, I am; but as for the child’s bonnet, mother--”

“Now, John,” put in Mrs. Beacham irritably, “don’t you be foolish. I _must_ know better than you can do what’s proper for a young woman to wear; and I say that such a thing as _that_ isn’t fit to be seen within a church door.”

Honor could not help smiling--for she did not foresee to what extent her stepmother’s temper would carry her--at the old woman’s abuse of her unoffending costume. She felt certain too of John’s support, and therefore replied cheerfully:

“I am very sorry; I thought it such a pretty bonnet. However, I daresay nobody will look at it; and my best hat got so spoilt at Ryde--”

“Spoilt indeed! Ryde seems to have played the mischief with all your smart new clothes. And as if you could venture into church in one of those flighty pork-pies, that I hate the very sight of!”

“Well then,” interposed John, “as that matter’s settled, suppose we cut along. Got your Prayer-book, eh, Honey? That’s all right;” and he was half out of the door, when, instead of following on his footsteps, Mrs. Beacham plumped her ample figure down on her own especial arm-chair, and planted her two hands defiantly on her knees.

“You may go to church, John, if _you_ like; but as for me, if you’ve no objection, I prefer to remain at home.”

“Nonsense, mother! Come! The idea of going on so about a bonnet! I’m sure Honor doesn’t care, do you, Pet? She doesn’t mind what she wears, mother, not she! She’s pretty enough not to, any way,” he added in a lower tone; not so low, however, but that his mother heard the words, and grew thereupon more than ever determined to conquer and humble the object of John’s foolish admiration and absurdly weak and blamable indulgence.

“If she doesn’t care then, let her change it,” she said stolidly,--“let her change it. She’s got another in her box--one that a decent woman needn’t be ashamed to be seen in, and--”

“O, John, it’s _such_ an old-fashioned one!” Honor broke in. “I’ve had it these two years, and it’s only fit for rainy days. I’d rather not go, indeed I would;” and the tears, I am sorry to say, were already very near her bright blue eyes.

John scratched his head in very positive perplexity. To yield to his mother had, from long habit, become almost second nature to the good-tempered man; but then, nature--and nature too with a very powerful voice--pleaded within him strongly for Honor. He could not bear to see her vexed; and she would be vexed, that he knew right well, if they both--his mother and himself--went off to church and left her all alone. But then, if she so disliked the idea of wearing the two-year-old bonnet, and if--which he knew well enough would be the case--his mother would not yield, why what was to be done? It was the beginning of domestic troubles--a foreshadowing of the cloud that was to darken all John’s future life--the first faint warnings of the fell disease that, like the cankerworm, eats into the vital parts, and poisons the whole sap of life, and this truth (though John was far enough from shaping to himself any, even the most indistinct, of the evils that were threatening his peace) probably lay at the root of the strange discouragement which, while he turned his eyes alternately from his wife to his mother, gave a look of bewilderment to his usually placid face.

It was that look which decided Honor, showing her the way her duty lay, and awakening her pity for the man halting so helplessly between two opinions.

“After all,” she said to herself, calling up as much philosophy to her aid as a weak vessel of her sex and age could hope to summon,--“after all, what does it signify? It _is_ absurd to make so much fuss about a bonnet;” and then aloud, “I don’t care--indeed I don’t, John; and rather than vex you, I’ll change it in half a moment;” and she ran upstairs with an alacrity which confirmed John in the impression that she was an angel.

And so at the moment--or at least very like one--Honor felt that she had earned the right to be considered; for she was--absurd as it may seem to those among my readers who have either outlived, or have never been subject to, the weakness of personal vanity--about to make what was to her a great, ay even a heroic, sacrifice. She had so looked forward to appearing her very best that day. Religion, I grieve to confess, had little enough to do (when, alas I has it ever much?) with the fitting on of the best gown, and the extra smoothing of the shining hair. In nine cases out of ten, the remembering of the Sabbath-day does not mean the keeping of it holy. Jill, it is to be feared, goes to church to show herself; while Jack, in his best coat and Sunday hat, goes through the same ceremony that he may join his sweetheart. Can we wonder that too often these respective parties come to grief, and, like the Jack and Jill in the story-book, wounds and bruises (metaphorically speaking) are the well-deserved consequences of their levity and _supercherie_?

Seeing then that the female mind is, both from nature and habit, loth to believe in the “glaring impotence” of “dress,” we may excuse this poor Honor for her petulance, and for the little angry jerk with which she threw open the old mahogany wardrobe, and drew from it the contemned and faded specimen of bygone finery. With a flushed face, and hands that trembled a little with the passing irritation of the moment, she tied the tumbled strings under her dainty chin, and then, without stopping to look at her “shabby” self in the glass, she hastened down the stairs.

John and his mother had already left the house when Honor, feeling very proud of her holocaust, and not a little eager to judge of its effect upon those she had endeavoured to please, rushed into the hall. She knew it was late, and moreover Mrs. Beacham was, she felt, precisely the kind of old woman who would not enter a Church after the service had begun for the world; but in spite of these and other excuses that might be made for the disappearance of her companions, Honor did feel it a little hard that they had not waited for her--a trifle provoking that John should have cared so little whether she looked well or ill in that “guy of a thing” that she had put upon her head. She betrayed no outward signs of the foolish, perhaps too it may be called _puerile_, inward struggle--the battle against what I fear might almost be called a “bit of temper” that was rife within her. Overtaking John and his mother walking quietly arm-in-arm, “as if nothing had happened,” it was only natural, I think, that this silly girl should have entertained a vague impression that she, the bride of four weeks old, had been “thrown over”--and that, too, after she had shown herself so willing to “oblige”--for the sake of the “cross,” “fussy” old woman, behind whose broad uncompromising back Honor (and it must be confessed that at the moment she did not greatly love the sight) was trudging across the meadows, with her fair face--that bonnet was so very old-fashioned and ugly!--slightly overshadowed by a passing cloud.

It _was_ only a trifle, you will say, that produced this inauspicious result; but need I repeat that trifles make up the sum of human life? Were we all to look back upon some of the most important incidents of our lives, I think--could we all be strictly honest with ourselves--we should be willing to allow that what seemed a mere “nothing” at the time was not without its influence, not only on our conduct, but on that which goes by the name (for want of a better) of our destinies. Honor would have been as incredulous as her neighbours had it been suggested to her that in her present petulance there lay the germ of future peril, and that the apparently insignificant family feud with which that peaceful-seeming Sabbath had been marked was _le commencement de la fin_ of her life’s history; and yet that so it was the events hereafter to be disclosed will greatly tend to prove.

Many and curious were the eyes turned towards “Farmer Beacham’s” pew that holiday in early June, when the sun shone out and nature’s garb was fresh, and when it would almost seem that, out of compliment to the bride, each daughter of Eve there present had bedecked herself in her Sunday’s best. With her head bent down and half hidden by the high oaken walls of the old-fashioned pew, Honor endeavoured, and not wholly without success, to remember that the “place in which she stood was holy ground.” She never once raised her blue eyes from the bran-new red-morocco Prayer-book--gilt-edged, and which was one of John’s earliest offerings to his betrothed--which she held in her hand. A shy consciousness that she was the observed of all observers in that crowded village church, together with the mortifying reflection which, _malgré elle_, would intrude itself, that she was not “fit to be seen,” brought pretty waves of colour to the lowered girlish face.

From his place in the gallery, the most conspicuous one in the big, well-cushioned, luxurious family pew, there was one who throughout the service continued furtively to gaze upon the features which to his eyes were so surpassing fair. Though, for his age, he had seen a good deal of the world, Arthur Vavasour was still in every way too young to set the opinion of that world at absolute defiance; so he chose the opportunity when he and the rest of the congregation were on their knees, repeating with wearisome monotony that they were all “miserable sinners,” to gaze his fill at the farmer’s lovely bride. In the house of God, under the shelter of his folded arms, in the humble posture of a penitent, he was already breaking in his heart the one of the commandments on which most strenuously depends “our neighbour’s” peace, his honour and well-being!

Truly it was well for Cecil Vavasour that his sleep was sound in the churchyard vault that day, and that to him it was not given to look within the erring heart of his eldest born! That son, who in his beautiful childhood had been so very near his father’s heart, stood terribly in need that Sabbath-day, proud and handsome and prosperous though he seemed, of the “effectual fervent prayer” which in the sight of Heaven “availeth much.”