Chapter VIII: Honor’s Honeymoon

“Nothing the matter, really, John. I am not ill, indeed--only stupid;” and Honor, leaning on her husband’s arm, looked up into his face with one of her sunniest smiles.

“Stupid! How’s that?” John said. “You were never stupid at the Clays’. You were gay as a bird there, my darling. What’s come over you, my sweet one? I hope you’ve got everything you want to make you happy?”

“Indeed I have, John,” said Honor, speaking with that smallest _soupçon_ of a brogue which made everybody wonder, so young had she been when she left her native soil, how it was that the Celtic accent clung to her at all. “Indeed I have, John. I am _very_ happy;” and she spoke so softly, and pressed the arm to which she clung with such a tender loving force, that John, entirely reassured, went on his way rejoicing.

Honor only said what she believed to be the truth, and yet, for all that, her heart--although she could not have told you why--was heavy within her. Perhaps it was the enforced idleness of her life--for neither she nor John had anything to do at Ryde--which weighed upon her spirits. It had been so very different at the Clays’. There was Ruthie to teach, and little Jenny to pet and keep in order; to say nothing of Tom--that terrible Tom!--whose frock and trousers were always, do what you would, in the wash-tub; and Neddy, who was wise beyond his years, and whose questionings on abstruse subjects were for ever taxing Honor’s simple stores of knowledge to the utmost.

It might be, then, that she missed the avocations which kept her always busy in her old home; and besides, she had so early seemed to have exhausted all she had to say to John. They had talked over the kindness of the Clays, and laughed together, just a very little, at Lady Millicent’s grandiosity, which even Honor’s limited experience taught her was slightly out of keeping with the nature of her gifts. The trifling incidents of the wedding also--the abnormal and unexpected ones, that is to say--had more than once, in the dearth of other topics, formed cheerful subjects for conversation between the newly-married pair.

“I was sure that Joe Griggs would do something extraordinary,” Honor said, “when I saw him coming across the meadow with that great bunch of yellow flowers stuck upon his coat. I little thought they were nothing in the world but dandelions, and that he had brought them to give me in the church. Mrs. Clay was quite vexed with me for taking them, but I couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings; and if they did stain my frock it didn’t signify much--I can turn the side-breadth, and then no one will know anything about it.”

John Beacham was profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of a lady’s dress; of “side-breadths” he knew no more than he did of Sanscrit, and he would hardly have noticed a stain if he had seen it; but he did know--and what was infinitely more to the purpose, he could appreciate--a delicate and an unselfish trait in the woman that he had made his wife. He thought it very “pretty” of Honor to accept the idiot’s offering, and so he told her lovingly as they wandered together in the pleasant walks outside the town, which in itself seemed to them both so infinitely dull.

Unfortunately for the success of their trip the weather proved very unfavourable for honeymooning. The sun that had shone so brightly that glad May-day at “home” seemed to have entirely forsaken the sea-shore, along which John Beacham and his wife, for variety’s sake, sometimes turned their steps. To judge of weather matters from the severity of the cold, and the force with which the strong north-eastern blew upon “the Island,” a second and a sterner winter than the last was visiting the earth. The early leaves, nipped by the severity of the blast, hung brown and withered on the twigs. Noses were suggestively roseate, warm shawls were gathered closely round shivering forms, and the face of Nature was, as it were, hidden behind a cloud.

Honor was very far from being a literary character; and yet--melancholy to relate--she had not been more than three days a wife when she found herself regretting that John was not more of a reading man. He could not be called a dull companion, for he took a _real_ interest in the talk of others, was easily amused, and both his remarks and replies were sensible and to the purpose; but for all this, and though the scene and their position were new, time--there could be no doubt about _that_ fact--did hang heavy at Ryde both with Honor and her husband. Sooth to say, the latter was rather like a fish out of water at that sea-side watering-place. The journey and the voyage thither, with that exquisite Honor by his side, had been simply delicious, and the coming fortnight would, he had doubted not, pass as a too short hour of perfect and hitherto undreamt-of bliss. Too soon, however, the active-minded man, to whom absence of employment was such an entirely novel phase of existence, discovered that his short dream on the deck of the Ryde steamer was not destined to be realised. His beautiful Honor was not one whit less perfect, nor was his conviction that he was the happiest of men less firm, than when he led her first within the gates of Paradise: but--and there, in a word, lay the true cause of the evil--Ryde was not Updown Paddocks--not the place where the interests of his life had so long been centred; not the spot where the brood-mares, plump and matronly, and the young stock, wild with youth and spirits, met his eyes at every turn as he took his daily walks; not the spot, in short, where, at every moment of his life, he had something to do, to think of, and to project. Not to mince the matter, John Beacham--dearly and passionately as he loved his wife--was, at the end of ten days’ holiday-time, sick to death of the place to which he and Honor had betaken themselves to be happy. Never in all his life had he found the days so long, never in his experience had the wind howled and the sleet pelted during spring-time as it did at Ryde during that memorable fortnight in the so-called “merrie” month of May.

“I wonder what the yearlings think of this,” was John’s remark, one bitter, blustering day, as he and Honor were boldly wrestling with the breeze on the long wooden pier. “I only hope that Simmons has been minding my orders. The worst of it is, that in these days understrappers are all for having opinions of their own--a thing _I_ never was allowed,” he added with a cheery smile, “when I was a youngster. I think the old woman is about right in saying that everything is changed since her time. I wonder, though, what _we_ should think of goings on if they were to come back to what she remembers them fifty years ago.”

“We should find some of them very funny, I daresay,” said Honor, laughing. “Dress, for instance. Now, I think Mrs. Beacham’s lace cap so nice for an old lady, but--”

“Don’t call mother ‘Mrs. Beacham,’ Honey,” John said. “Honey” was a pet name that he had bestowed upon his wife. It was _sweet_, he thought, and delicate, and besides in the Bible it was written that “honey was good;” so altogether it seemed to suit his little wife; and she, after laughingly telling him that the _petit nom_ was still more Irish than her own, answered to it as readily as though she had been called a “Honey” from her birth.

“I want _my_ mother to be the same as if she was your own, Honey,” John said. “She’s a good woman--a better, to my thinking, never trod the ground. But she’s cranky sometimes. I can’t say that she isn’t _that_. You’ll have to bear with her, Honey, I don’t doubt, now and then; but you won’t mind that, pet? One must make allowances for old people; they get into ways of their own, you know, and it isn’t easy for them to change. Indeed, I’m not sure,” he added musingly, “that, after a certain age, anyone is much the better for altering the ways that they’ve got used to.”

“After a ‘certain age’! Ah, now, John,” Honor said in a tone of playful reproach, “sure you’re not going to say that you’re not the better for not living lonely like at the Paddocks? I only hope though--ah, you don’t know, John, how much I wish it”--and she spoke with a sad kind of earnestness--“that your mother--I’ll not call her Mrs. Beacham, if you don’t like it--will not think that you are the worse for change. I know I’m foolish, John, and young and inexperienced; but I mean to try and please her. I hope she’ll like me. Do you think she will, John?” and she looked up wistfully in her husband’s face, awaiting his reply.

“_Like you?_” he repeated with an amused laugh at the intense absurdity of the doubt implied. “Like you! I should think she would indeed! Why, Honey, you’ll be her daughter, child--think of that!--and the light of the home that never had a daughter in it before; and you’ll be petted and made much of; and those pretty little hands of yours won’t have anything to do but to make pictures of the trees and flowers as you’re so fond of doing; and sometimes, especially of a Sunday evening, when my mother loves a hymn dearly, you’ll sing to us in that warbling way you used to do at Clays’. I haven’t forgotten--no, nor I never shall, if I live to be a hundred--the first time I listened to your voice, Pet. It was just a simple nursery song to please the children--not much to speak of, I daresay, either as to words or music--but somehow or other, I don’t know how it was, it went to _my_ heart as straight as an arrow from a bow.”

They were on the pier still--that cold shelterless Ryde Pier--the wild wind whistling about their ears, and toying with Honor’s drapery in a manner more rudely familiar than was altogether agreeable to that young lady’s feelings. At that moment the vision of certain peaceful lanes--lanes where the nightingales sang, and the clematis twined about the hawthorn-trees--flashed across her tenacious memory, and filled her mind with pleasant thoughts of home.

“Anything would be better than this,” she said to herself, as the nor’-wester, tearing round the extremity of the pier, so nearly swept her off her legs that she was forced to cling convulsively to her husband’s strong arm for protection.

John’s last words, and the cheery confidence with which he spoke of the success of their _solitude à trois_, from the contemplation of which she had hitherto nervously shrank, contributed not a little to her conviction that, all things considered, they would be better off at Updown Paddocks than listening in that half-deserted town to the melancholy murmur of “the sad sea waves.”

“What’s in your little head now--eh, Honey?” asked John, when the hearty laugh caused by the wind’s boisterous behaviour had subsided, and they were trudging calmly homeward to their early--that is to say, their six-o’clock--dinner.

“Nothing particular, only--”

“Only what? Out with it, pet,” persisted John, who could not help nourishing a faint hope that Honor, like himself, might be growing home-sick, and was only watching for an opportunity of making known her weakness--“out with it. I shouldn’t wonder now,” he continued archly, “to find we were both thinking of the same thing.”

Honor reddened up to the very roots of her hair. She was an inveterate _blusher_. A word, a look, nay even a passing thought flitting across her own pure mind, would send the red blood coursing under her delicate skin. This peculiarity, which formed one of her greatest charms, was a source of constant annoyance and mortification to the young wife. It was so tiresome to betray what otherwise no one would know anything about but herself; so provoking, that John might be guessing now that she was harbouring a wish that was not altogether flattering to his self-love. She was longing, though she would not have told him so for worlds, to go away from Ryde. The strangest feeling of depression--a depression for which she could not in the least degree account--was creeping over her spirits. To analyse her sensations would have been for this young girl simply an impossibility. That the aspect of life and the things of life had, in some inscrutable manner, changed for her, she was, after a vague fashion, aware. There was a shade over her future. An extinguisher seemed, by some invisible hand, to have been placed over the bright point in the horizon, where hope had before shone with such undimmed lustre. Honor was far too untaught in the mysteries of our complex human nature to understand, in even a limited degree, why the sunshine of her life--in spite of John’s love, her matronly dignity, and her new clothes--seemed suddenly to have faded out. How was this young girl, this almost child, to surmise that the number of newly-made wives who go through the like ordeal is legion? Sooner or later, in a greater or in a less degree, the same flagging of the spirits, the same utterly-unexpected and hard-to-be-endured _tædium vitæ_, oppresses the young spirit which had soared, alas, too high, and had dropped to earth so quickly. Time and “habit” may, or may not, according to the idiosyncrasy of the sufferer, produce beneficial results; but who can deny that the condition is a critical one? Who will not be found willing to agree that this probable condition of mind should form matter for serious reflection before the irrevocable words are spoken which bind one woman to one man so long as their lives shall last? There is an easy-to-be-believed-in “flatness,” a flatness very depressing to the female mind, when _the_ one great event--the epoch to which all the daughters of Eve naturally look forward--is past and over, and the wife has _quietly_ to learn whether or not she is “dearer than the bride.” Anticipation--highly raised, and coloured by the wondrous charm inalienable from the unknown--is at an end for ever; and fruition, in nine cases out of ten, makes poor amends for the loss of hope’s gay pleasures, and the absence of the joy which anticipation brings.

But, in addition to this, there were other and peculiar reasons why Honor should be unsettled, at least, if not discontented, in her mind. She had made the discovery that, in more ways than one, that excellent John, of whom before marriage she had comparatively seen so little, was unsuited to her! Beyond a mutual liking to be out of doors, and a decided fondness for dogs and horses, Honor could not perceive that they had a single taste in common. He liked music after a fashion; that is to say, it gave him pleasure to hear her sing a simple ballad, such as “The banks of Allan Water,” or the “Soldier’s Tear”--old-world songs, of which he liked to listen to the words when Honor took especial pains clearly to enunciate them for his benefit. Of modern poetry--of the “whispered balm,” the “music spoken,” which thrilled through Honor’s bright and teeming fancy to her heart--John Beacham was profoundly ignorant. Of Tennyson he knew little, save his name; while of the beauties of Longfellow he was as ignorant as of the scattered pages of the Sibyl’s prophecies.

Now it chanced that this pretty, ambitious Honor, who, pending any positive information concerning her birth, had _thought_ herself into the belief that she was born a “lady,” had arrived at the not wholly irrational conviction that her husband’s literary tastes (for a gentleman) might with advantage be more extended and refined. She was angry with herself for having come to this conclusion. John was so kind and thoughtful, so tender of her feelings, and so unwearied in his efforts to amuse her, that Honor felt quite wicked to have discovered in him even one shortcoming; and the consciousness that she was not so happy as he hoped to see her made the poor child feel positively guilty. That dear, good John! How kindly he had taken her about! What a number of excursions (getting wet through more than once in consequence) he had indulged her in! And if the weather had been but fine, would there have been a single nook, both in the Island and outside it, that the newly-married pair would not, during the passing of those uneventful days, have made acquaintance with?

If the weather had but been fine! Ay, there was the rub; but there also lay, in some sort, the way out of their difficulties.

“I was thinking how unlucky we have been,” Honor said, when the quick blush had faded from her cheek, and the glance of deprecation had been withdrawn. “Not one single fine day have we had since we left Sandyshire! I wonder if it has rained and blown so much at home. O my poor feather!” she murmured piteously (for they were by this time within the narrow entrance of their cottage lodging, and Honor had taken off the little hat with which the wind and spray had been making havoc, and was twirling it with an air of half-comic dismay upon her fingers),--“my poor feather! and such a beauty as it was when it came home from Leigh!”

She was a child still in her love for new toys and the pretty trifles that adorn a woman; and almost a child she looked as she stood there stroking the pheasant’s breast (pheasant-plumage was the last new thing in hat-trimmings that had, at this period, found its way to Leigh), and pouting her rosy lip in simulated sorrow.

John Beacham was eminently “matter-of-fact,” a quality which goes very far towards the making of common sense. He believed Honor to be really fretting over her feather, and he comforted her accordingly.

“Never mind about the hat, Honey,” he said, after pressing his lips on the fresh rounded cheek that was so temptingly at hand. “We’ll go home and get another. Hats and feathers wear twice as long in Sandyshire. The sea air is the deuce and all to pay for spoiling things. What do you say, pet? Shall we see if the weather ain’t better at the Paddocks? This place is all very well, and I’ve been as happy in it--well, as happy as a king, if a king ever is happy, which I’m doubtful of, unless it’s in the honeymoon; but home is home after all, and I--don’t laugh, pet; you’ll feel the same one day yourself--never can manage to feel at home anywhere else.”

“I didn’t laugh at you, John,” Honor said, passing her arm coaxingly within her husband’s. “I was only pleased to be going home. I believe I’m just tired of having nothing to do--you know you always called me a busy little body--and besides, I want you to go back to the pretty beasties you are so fond of. There’s Lady Bell; you can’t deny now, John, that you’re dreadfully wrapped up in Lady Bell! I’ve caught you more than once wondering what the baby would be; and then there’s the something Dove--what do you call her?--the beautiful gray mare with the wicked eye, that--”

“Never mind the mare,” put in John hastily; “and, Honey, mind this, I’m not wrapped up in anything but you. I shall be glad to see the mares again, but if you care to stay--”

“But, John, I don’t care to stay; I would rather, a thousand times, go home; I want to begin my life--our life together--at the Paddocks. And there’s your mother too--your mother must be so lost without you. She said to me the very last thing: ‘Don’t keep John too long away; nothing goes on well without the master’s eye, and time lost isn’t so easy found again.’”

John Beacham laughed. There was his mother all over in those trite sentences. It was so like her, too, to mix up business with the _fade_ sentimentality (as the old woman, had she known the words, would have termed it) of the wedding-day.

“My mother knows tolerably well what she is about,” he said, “and there’s often plenty of wisdom to be picked out of those dry sayings of hers. I’ll be bound now she’s counting the days till we come back; I can see her as plain now as if I was at home” (and John grew quite enthusiastic as the _homely_ prospect rose up before him): “I can see her giving out the yellow soap for the house-cleaning, and keeping the maids up to their duty--ah, she was always a good one for that--and then off to the parlour to dust the ornamental china with her cambric handkerchief. Dear old mother! She mayn’t be one of the tender sort--not what I call a crying kind of woman--but she’s good at heart, though I don’t remember--no, not even when my father died--I can’t say I do, that she what you may call shed tears. She may have done so, of course, and I not know it; but to the best of my belief my mother is just the kind of woman not to.”

It was characteristic of John Beacham, and of his extreme correctness and scrupulosity of speech, that after delivering himself of this interesting family diagnostic, he seemed somewhat uneasy in his mind, and as if not thoroughly satisfied that he had spoken no more than the exact and literal truth. It was characteristic too of his wife, and of a habit which was hers of putting _this_ and _that_ together, that she read to herself (all unwittingly, for the accusation of perusing “character” would have been received by a laugh of incredulity) not only in John’s cautious ways, but in the proof just adduced of her mother-in-law’s lack of tenderness, elements of future discomfort for herself. Visions of this _maîtresse femme_, stern, thrifty, and uncompromising, darkened her mental vision. Ever since her engagement to John, Mrs. Beacham had been, to a certain extent, an object of dread to the quick-witted girl, who felt instinctively that she would never be cordially welcomed, save by its master, to the old farm-house. She saw her now, in her mind’s eye, with that symbolic piece of yellow soap in her bony hands--cold, square-cut, neat, and clean. Very, ay, terribly cold she must be, Honor thought, or she would have wept _sometimes_ in the years that John had known her; Mrs. Beacham must--so decided the April-natured girl, to whom tears and smiles came both so readily--either have been blessed with a very happy life, or with very limited powers of feeling. It was pleasanter on all accounts to attribute the insensibility of her fellow-woman to the former cause; so she said in her gentle acquiescing way:

“Your mother is very fortunate in having known so few troubles; I think, though, that crying or not crying has a great deal to do with people’s constitutions. I cry dreadfully easily: I shall try not, when Mrs. Beacham--I beg your pardon, John--when _mother_ sees me. She would think me such an awful little goose. But about going home, John,” she went on after a pause, during which her husband still continued looking silently at the empty grate; you see, he was so very anxious that Honor should not be led by him to return a day sooner than she felt inclined. “About going home; suppose we write and say we’re coming--_you_ would like it, I know quite well, and I shall be so glad to see the roses in the dear old garden that you are so fond of. They will all be in blossom soon, and then the new greenhouse, and all the pretty new flowers--”

“And the new _pianner_, and _chaiselong_, and sofa table,” John said slily--“you’ve got it all to see, Honey. I’ve had such a pretty sunny room new furnished for you--a room that my mother never used nor cared for. I don’t know how it was,” he continued musingly, “but she certainly never _did_ care for that room. And yet it looks to the south, and opens out upon the garden. Windows down to the ground, you know, and yet not exactly to the ground; for there is a flight, or rather two flights, of old stone steps, that meet together in a sort of little balcony at the top; and the balustrades are iron, all as old as old can be, and covered thick with honeysuckles and roses. Yes, I feel sure that you will like your room, Honey, and be as happy in it, I hope, as a little bird.”

Honor felt sure of it too; it would be so delightful to step out among the pinks and roses in that dear old-fashioned garden at the Paddocks. She had only been there once--once on an occasion that it was not easy to forget, namely, when she had been driven over from Clay’s Farm by John to be inspected and pronounced judgment on by the formidable old lady in the black-silk dress, who watched her with such a keen-eyed scrutiny, calling thereby so many painful blushes to her burning cheeks.

Those days of trial were happily over now. According to John--and Honor placed unbounded confidence in her husband’s judgment--there was no reason for the nameless alarm which had often filled her mind at the idea of sharing the home of John Beacham’s mother. By degrees, and partly moved thereto by the springing trustfulness of youth, the young wife had learned even to think with pleasure of that other inmate of her new home, whose affection she hoped to win, and to whose comfort it was her firm intention to devote herself.

* * * * *

“So that’s all settled,” said John, drawing a long breath, as he thrust his writing-desk from him, and threw up his big muscular arms for what he called a “stretch.” “Leave this at ten; strike across country; after the voyage to Reading, and--yes, that’s exactly it--be home for my mother’s tea at seven. Won’t she be glad to get the letter, that’s all! And sha’n’t I be glad to tell her that I’ve got the sweetest, to say nothing of the prettiest, wife that ever a fellow was blest with?”

“And your mother’ll say you spoil me,” Honor said, while a sigh struggled with a smile for mastery. “You mustn’t be making too much of me, John. You’ll be having me, like little Tommy Clay, crying for I don’t know what, one of these days, if you don’t take care.”

“God bless you, my Irish darling!” exclaimed John enthusiastically, for the slight Celtic accent in which his young wife spoke made her words sound very sweet and winning to his ears. “God bless you! and while I live, and after it pleases Him to take me, may you be as happy, dearest, as you deserve to be!”