Chapter XVI: The Elements Were in Fault

From the time of that chance meeting, Arthur Vavasour became a very frequent visitor at the Paddocks. Ostensibly there was generally some business excuses for the “calls” that were made so often, and lasted so long. There was so frequently an ailing or an unsound horse, concerning which an opinion was required; and then, as we already know, the Paddocks lay so conveniently on the road to Fairleigh, that it was hardly surprising that poor Sophy’s somewhat fickle lover should stop to rest him on the way.

There is no denying the truth that young Mrs. Beacham did greatly enjoy Mr. Vavasour’s society. They had so many (the old reason!) tastes in common. He had read the books _she_ liked, and he delighted in less commonplace and more classic music than “The soldier’s tear,” and that old, old “Banks of Allan Waters,” which Honor was so tired of. His voice too, when he spoke, was so soft and low--an “excellent thing” in man as well as woman--and that same voice sounded doubly pleasant after a morning spent in listening to Mrs. Beacham’s querulous tones and harsh Yorkshire dialect.

It was surprising to herself how soon Honor felt at her ease with Arthur Vavasour, and how short a time had been necessary to make her forget that he was the son of that formidable Lady Millicent; while she--but what had been _her_ origin Honor believed herself never destined to learn--it was enough that she had been but a humble teacher to some farm-house children, and that John, that best and kindest of created beings, had taken her, penniless and almost friendless as she was, to his home and to his heart.

There is something not altogether unsuggestive in the fact that John Beacham’s bride was, at that period of her short married life, for ever reminding herself that she “owed everything to John.” It almost seemed as though she were throwing up a line of defence, a formidable battery, to guard against any future attacks upon his peace. He was so really kind to her, not tenderly demonstrative certainly, and anything but sentimental; but she could _trust_ him so entirely. John was never capricious, and rarely hasty or rough of speech; he never “bothered” either about trifles--a delightful negative quality which many wives never appreciate properly till they have experienced the bore of having a womanly, housekeeping kind of helpmate “worrying” about a home, the space and means of which are necessarily limited. That John Beacham was all, and more than all, this, Honor was constantly repeating to herself. Perhaps--it was more than likely--she was anxious to hide, under this heap of estimable qualities, the aggravation of some of poor John’s trifling defects of _manner_, his few uncourtly habits, his sometimes ill-pronounced words. Be this as it may, Honor betrayed no sign, even to herself, that she would have desired any change in one so excellent and unselfish as her husband; it is even probable that, had not the peccant places been pointed by force of contrast, she would have found little to regret in John’s cheery voice and genial, though untutored, manners.

One great pleasure--_the_ pleasure of which Honor had spoken with such girlish glee to Arthur Vavasour--that, namely, of riding on horseback--had been without loss of time vouchsafed to the breeder’s wife. She had a “wonderful figure for a horse” he had said from the first, and when to that was added the conviction that, though she had not been in the “saddle from a child,” his wife’s seat and hand were perfect, John’s delight was extreme. The “teaching” proved a comparatively easy matter; Lady Meg was quiet as a lamb; and very soon (for John was often too busy to accompany her) Honor was trusted on horseback, with only a small farm-boy as attendant, to take her equestrian pleasure where she chose.

The only individual to whom this new state of affairs gave any umbrage was old Mrs. Beacham, who, when John did not happen to be present, grew very bitter on the subject of Honor’s favourite pleasure.

“It’s more than I ever had--and I a Yorkshire-woman born--is a horse of my own,” she said one day to Honor, as the latter stood waiting for Lady Meg, and looking very pretty and graceful at the window, her long green habit trailing on the floor, and her gauntleted hand (John had _got her up_ beautifully) playing with her little dandified whip. “I wonder John can allow of such a thing as your riding about the country in this way. Things _have_ got turned upside down with a vengeance since I was young.”

“John likes it,” Honor said, turning round with a smile that disclosed two rows of pearly teeth, and which ought to have mollified the sour old lady’s temper. “I never should have thought of riding if it hadn’t been for John, and now I do love it so! I don’t think I ever liked anything half so much.”

“You’d like anything that kep you idle, that’s my belief. You’d leave everything for other people to do, you would. Anybody else may slave themselves to death, so as you keep your hands white and don’t bend your back to work.”

“Now, that _is_ hard,” replied Honor, trying to laugh off the old woman’s irritation. “I won’t bear any more of John’s sins! Why, don’t you remember, mother”--she called her so, to please John--“don’t you remember how he came home one day and found me rubbing the table, and how angry he was, and how he said that neither you nor I were ever to do such things again, for that, thank God, he was rich enough to pay for servants to do the housework? Dear John! he always tries to please everybody.”

“More fool he! Everybody indeed! That’s the sort of thing that brings people to the workhouse. _I_ was brought up different. _I_ never could see, not I, the good of young people being idle. Work keeps ’em out of mischief, and hinders white hands, which ain’t of no use as far as I can see, except to make the gentlemen stare at ’em.”

It was perhaps fortunate for Honor that the old lady could not see the crimson blush that mantled over cheek and brow at this coarse and uncalled-for remark. Had that been the case, Mrs. Beacham would have suspected--what was indeed the truth--that her daughter-in-law was quite conscious of, and felt indeed rather gratified by, the fact that one gentleman at least had both looked at and admired the taper fingers, white and soft as those of the finest lady in the land, to which Mrs. Beacham alluded.

At that moment, and while Honor’s face was still turned towards the window, a few heavy drops were seen to fall against the panes, and the prolonged roll of distant thunder gave tokens of a coming tempest.

“O, there’s the rain! How dreadfully provoking! Just when I was going out! What shall I do?”

“What will you do? Why, bear it to be sure, and be thankful you’ve nothing worse to bear. I’m going across the meadow to see James Stokes’ whitlow. It will be long enough before such a helpless thing as you has the stomach for such sights;” and so, grumbling as she went, the busy old soul departed--to do her justice, she was always ready to _help_--on her errand of mercy.

Honor sat down before the work-table, which was strewed all over with the marks of woman’s industry and handicraft--men’s lambswool stockings in readiness for mending, a corner of hideous patchwork protruding from an open basket, and a general aspect around of rather unpicturesque disorder. It was part of Honor’s daily employment to “tidy the tables” after one of Mrs. Beacham’s mending mornings was brought to a close, and, but for the rattling thunder overhead, she would have proceeded to her task at once. The noise of the storm, however, together with the solitude of the room, overcame and oppressed her--the vivid flashes of lightning, darting across her face, dazzled her eyes; so resting her face upon her outspread arms, she endeavoured, as best she could, to shut out the startling tokens of the tempest. But all in vain. Honor, though not (as it is called in common parlance) _afraid_ of thunder and lightning, had it in her to be morbidly sensitive to an atmosphere heavily laden, as was the case at present, with electric fluid. Her head, which had begun to ache violently, seemed as if bound with a circlet of iron, and she felt miserably depressed and nervous--so nervous, that for almost the first time in her life she experienced a dread of being alone. It was intensely foolish and cowardly and absurd--of _that_ Honor would have been the first, in her sober senses, to acknowledge the truth; but she was hardly herself just then, the thunder boomed with such startling violence over the old house, and the wind, which had commenced with a warning murmur, was howling amidst the trees, as it seemed, in very rage and fury. Truly it was an awful storm. Each thunderclap sounded louder and more vengeful than the last, till gathering, as it would appear, its forces for a final outburst, such a volley rattled over Honor’s bent-down head, that in a perfect agony of terror she sprang upon her feet, and was rushing from the room when her steps were arrested by the sight of a human figure advancing rapidly from the open doorway.

A real cordial, even in that moment of bewilderment and fear, the cheerful voice of Arthur Vavasour seemed to Honor when he said lightly--

“What, all alone in the storm? No joke, is it? By Jove, I don’t know that I was ever out in a worse.”

She tried to recover herself; it was mortifying, hateful, to be thought such a silly coward; but her nerves were overwrought (meteorological influences have a peculiar effect sometimes on certain delicately-organised constitutions); and when another thunderclap, still fiercer than the preceding one, crashed over the old-tiled roof, and the room was all ablaze with dazzling light, Honor, pale and trembling, and utterly bereft, for the moment, of self-command, uttered a faint cry of terror, and hid her white face against the nearest screen--that screen chancing, unluckily, to be Arthur Vavasour’s shoulder!

It was the wrong place for the wrong head certainly; nor did it rest there long. A slight, the very faintest, pressure of the hand that had in all loyalty taken hers, to reassure and strengthen the failing nerves, was sufficient to recall the trembling girl to a sense of the error into which the wild instinct born of alarm had led her. The storm, too, had suddenly abated in violence, the thunder was already dying away in the distance; and Honor, viewing her conduct from a commonsense as well as a commonplace point of view, felt thoroughly ashamed of herself.

“I can’t think how I could be so foolish,” she said, with a blush that made her look, Arthur thought, more beautiful than ever.

He laughed. He was very anxious to make her feel comfortable as regarded that quite unintentional act of trifling familiarity.

“I don’t know what you call foolish, Mrs. Beacham,” he said. “It strikes me that a woman who could stand such a row as that must be a very strong-minded party indeed. I didn’t above half like it myself, and having a lively recollection of the day when I was a small boy--when the big oak in your husband’s meadow was struck with lightning, and a man killed under it--I thought that a wetting was better than that, so I cut along through the rain and--here I am.”

He had scarcely finished when another step, a _masterful_ and heavy one, was heard in the passage, and John Beacham, out of breath and wet to the skin (a calamity concerning which, greatly to his mother’s displeasure, he was never known to trouble himself), hurried into the room.

After shaking hands heartily with Mr. Vavasour, the master of the house set about accounting for his sudden return and the plight in which he found himself.

“I was away at Leigh,” he said, wiping his face and head with a large coloured-silk pocket handkerchief, “when the storm began, and I saw at once it was going to be a sneezer. Says I to myself, ‘The missus won’t like this;’ not that I had any particular reason for thinking so. There’s been no thunderstorm since we knew each other--eh, Honor? But somehow it struck me that you might be frightened, so I told the ostler, though it was raining cats and dogs by that time, to bring out Scrapegrace in a jiffy. Tim thought I was mad, I do believe. You see,” he added with an arch glance at his audience, “he hadn’t a little wife at home to trouble his head about and make an old fool of him. Says he, ‘You’ll be wet through, sir, before you’ve been out five minutes;’ and so, of course, I was. But what did it matter? I never troubled myself about a wet jacket, and Scrapegrace isn’t the boy to be afraid of a flash of lightning, so I threw my leg over the saddle and--here I am.”

“Here I am!” the very words (a singularity, trifling as it may appear, which struck Honor’s sensitive imagination at once) that Arthur Vavasour had used while accounting for _his_ opportune presence at the farm. The two men were standing one on either side of her, and the marked contrast between them impressed itself for the first time on Honor’s mind and heart. There was John, large-framed and strong of bone; his rather massive features redeemed from plainness by the frank and kind expression which softened and almost idealised them; his skin roughened by exposure to the weather; and his hands, usually guiltless of gloves, brown, muscular, and manly. His very dress, moist and rain-stained, and his shirt-collar limp and blackened with the dingy drippings from the good man’s “wideawake,” told against his personal appearance; whilst, on the contrary, Arthur’s _tout ensemble_, from the crown of his dark waving hair to the tips of his well-made, though not by any means dandified, boots, was as perfect as care and money and taste, to say nothing of an excellent _material_, in the shape of his own handsome face and graceful figure, could make it.

Honor _felt_ the contrast, and a pang of self-reproach darted through her breast: of self-reproach and shame; shame that her head had rested, though only for a moment, against that well-made coat; and ah, far more fatal impulse than that which shame can give--the impulse that closed her lips against the avowal of the deed!

And yet, in very truth, there was nothing to tell; and, moreover, it would have given the matter far more importance than it deserved, had Honor made a small descriptive narrative, for her husband’s benefit, of what had occurred. And so, for a second time, where her relations with Arthur Vavasour were concerned, she held her peace; and the consciousness that there was this secret between them, albeit that secret was one of so very trivial a description, lent the kind of charm to the intercourse between Honor and Arthur Vavasour which is never without its fruits. Arthur had a sincere regard for John Beacham. The former was what is called an honourable man, but he was only twenty-one, and at that age, though flesh is in one sense weak, it is terribly strong too. Honor was wonderfully fair, and the man had not courage to flee the temptation which the woman, beguiling him in her simple ignorance, was daily so unfortunate as to set before him.

Verily it was time that interference came; time that Horace, strong in brotherly affection, spoke his mind without fear of consequences to Arthur Vavasour.