Chapter XVIII: Nature Abhors a Vacuum

After the departure from the neighbourhood of Arthur Vavasour, there seemed at first to be a great gap in Honor’s life. He had told her that he was going to remain a fortnight or more in London previous to his marriage, which was to take place there in great form and state on the last day of August. Arthur had no intention, as he assured Mrs. Beacham, of being present at the Danescourt festivities. His mother--that was his avowed reason--did not view those festivities, in so far as they regarded _him_, with a favourable eye; and it was “better taste” (so Arthur assured his intimate acquaintances, his brother and his sisters included) to keep away, during Lady Guernsey’s well-intended hospitalities, from his home at Gillingham. His real motive for absenting himself was, however, a widely different one. He was well aware that not only would his intended bride be present, to expect, and with good right and reason, that he should devote himself to her service, but also that the woman whom it was his fate to love (men are very apt to account for the indulgence of their evil propensities in some such irrational manner) with a passion hitherto by him undreamt of would be a guest though a humble one, within the walls of Danescourt Park; and those glorious eyes of hers--Honor’s eyes were haunting ones, and followed or rather _led_ Arthur to what he was pleased to call his “doom,” when he was far away--would look their wonder if he kept aloof; an evidence of self-controlling powers, by the way, which Mr. Vavasour, to do him justice, greatly doubted his own ability on that occasion to display.

The fêtes--it was now past the middle of July--were to commence in three days’ time, and the certainty that her friend would take no part in them had thrown a little damp on Honor’s highly-wrought expectations. The pretty new dress, another of John’s expensive _cadeaux_, was not to her the “thing of beauty” that it had been when she had wondered to herself, in all innocence (Honor’s thoughts and mind were pure as yet as unsunned snow), whether Mr. Vavasour would think her well-dressed--dressed “like a lady,” in short, which was Honor’s _ne plus ultra_ of ambition. It would be a pretty sight--she could look forward to that; and it was very good of John to give up a whole afternoon--two even, he said, if it would please her and his mother (ah, Honor, how silly it was to half resent this sharing of your husband’s attentions!)--to see the “tomfooleries” at Danescourt. But although Mrs. John Beacham would of course make her appearance on the croquet and the archery ground, yet the zest, the charm of the day’s amusement, seemed, in some to her incomprehensible way, to have momentarily departed, if not to be utterly extinct. But it was when on horseback, and during the long rides, longer than ever now, which she took during those sweet summer afternoons, that Honor the most missed and regretted her companion. She had no “young friends,” no intimate associates of her own rank and degree, with whom to exchange the nothings or the _somethings_, as the case may be, which are of interest to juvenile matrons, whose housekeeping is in its infancy, and whose husbands are rich enough to make the _ménage_, trouble a source of pleasure and of pride. Honor stood, for her misfortune, very much alone at the Paddocks. There was something, as I once before explained, anomalous in her husband’s position--a something which, even had his wife _not_ been what the neighbours called a little inclined to be “set up,” would have prevented her being “hand-and-glove” with such personages as the widows Thwaytes and Tamfrey, or even with Miss Parsons, who sold caps and bonnets at a “high figure” at Leigh, and dignified her shop-girls with the title of young ladies. It was unfortunate, I repeat, that young Mrs. Beacham, for the reasons aforesaid, found herself companionless in the home which John had hoped to make so pleasant for her; and it was doubly unfortunate in that, by eschewing as intimates those with whom her husband’s mother did not consider herself too good (forsooth!) to consort, Honor contrived without much difficulty to provide herself with more than one very efficacious enemy.

It chanced that in the afternoon succeeding Mr. Vavasour’s farewell visit, the widow Thwaytes, who had for many years occupied the post of humble friend to the greater lady at the Paddocks, had come panting along the lanes (for the day was warm, and the fair pedestrian inclined to “stoutness”) to take a neighbourly cup of tea with her more aristocratic crony. As the reader may possibly remember, albeit he has to glance mentally as far back as the first chapter of this story, the widow Thwaytes, being withal a good-natured woman enough, was by no means ill-disposed towards the sweet-spoken beauty of whom the Clays, and, indeed, all who knew her, “_thought_ so much.” Very willingly, and often feeling that the jealous-tempered old lady was decidedly in the wrong, would Mrs. Thwaytes have spoken her mind to her old chum and neighbour on the subject of Honor’s merits. It angered her at the first to hear Mrs. Beacham’s querulous and uncalled-for innuendoes against her daughter-in-law; but the time soon came--after it grew to be unmistakably evident that “Mrs. John meant to keep herself to herself”--when the widow went over, heart and soul, to the enemy. Her ready sympathy, which procured her many an excellent “dish” of her favourite beverage, was well appreciated by the mistress of Updown Paddocks; “mistress,” as her guest persisted in calling her, in spite of Mrs. Beacham’s plaintive assurance that she had nothing now to do with the management of John’s household, and that if things went wrong she was not answerable for them. _Her_ day was over; but the time would come, perhaps, when some people--she named no names--would find that new brooms, though they swept ever so clean, were not so good as old ones, and that pretty faces couldn’t make up for fanciful ways and idle habits. Mrs. Thwaytes would listen by the hour encouragingly to these outpourings of a wounded spirit, and though very far, as I before hinted, from an ill-natured woman, she would occasionally throw in a drop of balm in the shape of an admittance that Mrs. John was but young, that she would improve in time, and last (not least in novelty and conclusiveness), that it was a moral as well as a physical impossibility to place an old head on the shoulders of the young.

It was with some such conversation as this that the two old gossips (John was never in the house at that hour, and Honor was getting ready for her ride) were beguiling the time on that warm July afternoon. The window of the “parlour” was wide open (it was not the _best_ apartment; _that_ was kept sacred to visitors of a more aristocratic stamp than the widow Thwaytes), and from it there was a view of the ancient paved court, or stable-yard, where the Morello cherry trees grew against the north wall, where Honor fed her pigeons in the morning, and where stood the lichen-covered old horse-block which Honor, in default of Arthur Vavasour’s assistance, was fain to climb, in order (it was rather an ignoble proceeding) to mount as best she could that graceful, high-born animal, the Lady Meg.

“A little nearer, please, Jem, I can’t quite reach the stirrup;” and Honor, standing on the top of the block, which had, in the days of John’s father and grandfather, done good service in its line, with her long habit just raised enough to show her dainty foot, and with her fair girlish face slightly flushed, both with amusement and vexation, tried by coaxings and caresses to draw the mare within her reach.

“She’s frightened, that’s what it is, Jem,” she said. “So! Meg!” and again she stroked the mare’s arched neck with the tips of her gauntleted fingers. Near enough, however, to be mounted Lady Meg would by no means consent to be led, and Jem scratched his head at last in perplexity.

“It’s a pity the young Squire beant here,” he said; whereupon Honor flushed crimson, and Mrs. Thwaytes, who overheard the words, laughed significantly.

“Lead her on once more, and then try again,” Honor said, feeling desperate with those two pairs of aged eyes fixed curiously upon her. Jem did as he was ordered, and the experiment proving successful, Honor mounted her steed, and with an unconcern that was less real than affected, rode slowly away.

“Humph! I’m glad that Milady has had to help herself at last,” Mrs. Beacham remarked. “No fine gentleman from the Castle to put his hand, with the beautifullest of gloves on, under her foot to-day! What was good enough for John’s grandfather she’ll have to find good enough for her. I’ve no patience, _I_ haven’t, with such stuck-up ways.”

Mrs. Thwaytes listened and sighed. The subject on which her ally had touched was not one that could be pursued without due thought and deliberation. As yet, though well aware that a mean maternal jealousy had begot something very like hatred to Honor in Mrs. Beacham’s breast, the widow did not feel by any means thoroughly assured that she could safely touch upon the _impropriety_ of Mr. Vavasour’s intimacy with John’s young wife. The old lady had not, in that quiet busy home of hers, marched even ever so laggingly with the times. In a groove, her mind was that of the right woman in the right place. She had never, in the course of a long life, striven to throw off a prejudice, or struggled to free herself from the trammels of a preconceived and stolidly retained idea. To the simple (may I be pardoned for calling it the _pure_?) mind of the farmer’s widow crime _was_ crime, and had never been softened by a _petit nom_. On the second of those two tables of stone, at which, for nearly forty years, she had looked reverently from her pew, there were certain Commandments which she (in common with many of the young, who say their Catechism, and are taught to fear God) believed, as regarded herself and her belongings, to be futile and useless ordinances. “Thou shalt not steal;” “Thou shalt do no murder;” “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” It was right, of course, that the injunctions should be there; but what had she or hers, or, indeed, any respectable members of the community, to do with wickedness so horrible? Mrs. Beacham was neither a newspaper reader, a novel lover, nor a dissecter of human character and motives. Of the degrees of crime, of relative amount of guilt (temptation and temperament being taken into account), she was as ignorant as poor Joe Griggs, the village idiot; and this being so, her companion having withal sufficient shrewdness to comprehend the same, that worthy gossipmonger hesitated slightly, and took time to choose her words, before she startled Mrs. Beacham with the news of what the Switcham folks might, could, or did say about John’s pretty wife. She had laughed significantly--for a woman who could not be called ill-natured, it was not a pleasant laugh--as Honor rode away. That young lady had been more than usually “’aughty, the saucy thing!” Mrs. Thwaytes had told herself that afternoon, and she did not feel at all inclined to spare her any of the consequences of her misdeeds.

“She’s a pretty creature, is Mrs. John,” she said, with a commiserating sigh, as the two congenial spirits resumed their places (they had been, as I said, watching Honor “mount” from the window) at the tea-table; “a sweet pretty creature, and so I always said. It’s a pity she’s so thoughtless, though it’s the way, as one may say, with young folks. We should remember that we was young once ourselves, and not be hard upon them as is like the little bears with all their troubles afore them.”

“I don’t know what you mean by troubles,” said Mrs. Beacham, stirring her tea with a great accession of energy. “John’s wife isn’t likely to have much of _them_, I fancy. The work’us isn’t built, no, nor yet the alms’us, that’s to hold her, I’m thinking. We can pay our way, and can put a pound or two on one side at the end of the twelvemonth; and for that,” she added solemnly, “I’m thankful to the Lord this day.”

The widow, feeling slightly rebuffed by her friend’s serious tone of remonstrance, was silenced for a while; the occasion was, however, too tempting to be lost, so she continued with greater caution the difficult task of opening her companion’s eyes to the truth.

“Well, well, mem,” she said soothingly, “to think that you should fancy I had need to be told that! There’s more troubles, though, as we all well knows, than those which comes from poverty, and it was of them I thought it my dooty to speak. I beg pardon if I’ve offended,” dusting the crumbs from her company silk dress as she spoke. “It’s a painful thing is dooty, and what’s got through at all times with a heffort, which, as the Bible says, is its own reward.”

“I know what the Bible says as well as you do,” retorted Mrs. Beacham loftily, “which I read it times and often when other folks that shall be nameless is in their beds; and if you come to dooty, Jane Thwaytes, let me tell you that--”

“Lor’ bless me!” put in the general dealer in a fright, “you’re taking me altogether wrong, mem; it was t-totally of someone else I was a-speaking, and, indeed, a-thinking of. There’s many a night, if you’ll believe _me_, that I’ve laid awake a-wishing, and a-wondering how I was to go through with this unpleasantness. People _will_ talk, we know, and injynes won’t stop ’em; but if you was just, maybe, to say a word or two to Mrs. John--” She paused, for something in the hard but still mobile face of her companion revealed that the insidious droppings had taken effect upon the stone, and that the worst part of her evil work, namely, the beginning, had been accomplished. Mrs. Beacham, however, was not the kind of woman to allow (if she knew it) of any, even the most homœopathic triumph, over her either by friend or foe. To whatsoever extent she might dislike her daughter-in-law, and though it is to be feared that she would have welcomed any occasion of either humbling or annoying her son’s petted wife, the proud old woman would have shrunk sensitively from any open scandal, and would have stoutly denied any assertion calculated to bring discredit on the honour of her son. The idea of Honor being spoken of in the manner hinted by the widow Thwaytes, was positively hateful to her, and she parried the affront in her haughtiest and grandest manner.

“I don’t understand your meaning, Jane Thwaytes,” she said, “and I don’t want to. Talk, indeed! I’d soon talk them if they gave _me_ any of the nonsense going on in the village about _this_ house. Talk, indeed! The idea of people _talking_!” and the irate old woman sniffed and snorted vigorously at the bare idea of a climax so preposterous.

Mrs. Thwaytes was terribly distressed. She would not, as she solemnly declared, have had Mrs. Beacham “put out” for the world. It had given _her_ trouble enough, goodness knew, to stop people’s evil tongues. It wasn’t Mrs. John’s fault--that she always _had_ said--that gentlemen _would_ look after her. Mr. Vavasour had made a little free, perhaps, but it didn’t follow that Mrs. John had anything to say to him; anyway, he was to be married in a fortnight, people said and, as far as Switcham was concerned, it was, as everyone must allow, “a good job too.”

A good job, in sooth; but the boon would have been a still more precious one to all concerned if the officious widow had been gagged before she could administer that “_harmless_ hint,” and present that _innocuous_ nut to her grand friend to crack. Mrs. Beacham was not one who received ideas with exactly wax-like ease, but once a novel thought took root within her, it would have been as hard to efface it from its granite bed as to destroy letters graven “with a pen of iron on the surface of a rock.”

* * * * *

“Well, Honey,” said John Beacham, when he met his wife an hour or two afterwards at the doorway of the parlour; he a trifle tired with his hard day’s work, and quite ready for the meal he called his supper, while Honor, her long habit gathered up over her arm, was looking all the fresher and prettier for the exercise she loved, “well, Honey, and how did Lady Meg carry you to-day? Rode her pretty fast, eh? Took her a breather, I suspect, on the downs. I must be looking out for one with more bone for you soon. Women are the deuce and all to ride a horse hard,” he added, with a laugh, as he helped himself to a foaming glass of home-brewed ale.

Mrs. Beacham, who had struck Honor as looking more than usually crabbed, here put in her word.

“If Honor doesn’t know how to ride, I think she had better give it up,” she said. “I wonder, John, you should like to have your horses ruined with her working them to death.”

John was immensely amused at his mother’s remark. It was such an excellent joke, her taking him in earnest. The idea of his kind-hearted, gentle Honor--his wife, who petted and spoilt every living thing that came in her way--being seriously believed capable of riding a great strong horse to death, was to him irresistibly comic.

“Well, that is a good un!” he said, as soon as he had recovered from the excess of merriment in which Honor’s natural sense of the ludicrous, and the contagion of John’s irresistible laugh, had induced her to join. “That _is_ a good un, by Jove! Why, mother, you must think that Honor is a ‘great jockey,’ as the Paddies say; but I can tell you that she’s far and away too good a rider to damage a horse. I never knew man or woman to have a better nor a lighter hand on a horse’s mouth. You should hear Mr. Vavasour talk of your seat, Honor! And he’s a pretty good judge of such things. Arthur Vavasour is his father all over about horses, and what belongs to ’em. I’m sorry he’s gone; and more sorry, too, that he’s changed his mind about Rough Diamond. He’s a sure card is that animal, and I would a deal rather that Arthur had him than that Colonel Fred Norcott, that he says he’s sold him to.”

Mrs. Beacham had fixed her eye steadily on Honor’s countenance from the moment that Arthur Vavasour’s name was mentioned; and when her son had finished speaking, she said in a cold, inquiring manner that could scarcely fail to convey the impression that more was meant than met the ear:

“Well, if you haven’t tired out the horse, you’ve made your own face red enough, in all conscience. I say, John, did you ever see such a colour as Honor’s got all of a sudden?”

John Beacham looked at his wife admiringly, and the flush, as he did so, deepened on her face.

“I don’t see much difference,” he said with a laugh. “Honor’s always like the pretty rose that has grown ever since I can remember next the big lavender-bush in the kitchen-garden--they call it the ‘maiden blush,’ I think; not but what you’re something redder now, Pet? It’s the being looked at, I suppose. Why, who knows? I might begin blushing myself, if anybody took the trouble to notice my looks. But they don’t; the more’s the pity--ain’t it, Honey?” and getting up from the table, for his evening meal was over by this time, he laughingly patted his wife’s glowing cheek, and then kissed it fondly--so fondly, that Mrs. Beacham, looking on with jaundiced eyes, and with the evil demon of maternal jealousy let loose within her, could hardly succeed in keeping that precious thing, her temper.

“I wonder what’s come over the old lady,” John said, when he found himself that evening alone with his wife, and could indulge in a few minutes’ confidential discourse before sleep--the deep, healthy sleep of the weary--overtook him. “She isn’t half the woman she was. She’s grown peevish, to my thinking, and nagging--a thing she never was given to before. Perhaps it’s her health,” he added meditatively. “She’s a strong woman for her time of life; but she’s getting on, and I fancy she’s altered--don’t you think so, Pet? Grown wrinkled-like, and haggard, eh?”

Honor could not perceive any outward change, she said; and in the matter of temper, the subject being a delicate one to discuss with her husband, she deemed it wisest to hold her peace. To her great relief, unsuspecting John was too sleepy to pursue the subject, and in a few minutes his deep regular breathing was the only sound that broke the stillness of that large old-fashioned bedchamber.

Honor was what is called a light sleeper, and the early birds had begun to twitter in the branches before her eyes were closed in slumber. She was but eighteen however, and therefore sleep, when it did steal over her senses, was dreamless and refreshing. Under twenty-five, all our material acts, when they are done at all, are done so thoroughly!