: Sink or swim? by Houstoun Mrs Matilda Charlotte - English fiction 19th century

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SINK OR SWIM?

"HE COMES TOO NEAR," ETC.

It was now the middle of May, and during a swiftly-passing fortnight Honor Beacham, continuing her course of semi-deception regarding her father's condition, and entirely concealing from the husband whom she believed to be exclusively absorbed in his own pursuits and interests the fact that her days and nights were spent in one continued round of exciting pleasure, went on her way--if not rejoicing, at least in a condition of such delightful mental inebriation, that she found barely sense or time enough to ask herself the serious question, if the life which she was leading indeed were joy.

Poor John! Could Honor have heard the heavy sigh that broke from his full heart as he closed the letter; could she, above all, have looked into that heart and read its secret sorrows, she could not have doubted of her husband's love; and perhaps, removed from the glamour of Arthur Vavasour's presence, from the mesmeric influence of a passion which was becoming terribly overpowering in its hourly-gathering strength, she might have been again a happy woman in the simple fashion and the humble sphere to which she had been brought up. Such a "chance," however, was not for the foolish, beautiful woman who, with half-tender words from her high-bred adorer lingering on her memory, read the simple letter, which it had cost so much pain to write, in anger and in bitterness. Tossing it on her toilet-table with an impatient jerk, she told herself that John did not care for her. It was nothing to him, she said mentally, whether she stayed away or not; but as she inly spoke the words, the fingers of her little gauntleted hand--she had just returned from riding in the Park--dashed away something very like tears that had gathered on her long lashes and nothing short of the recollection that she was going in a few hours' time to dine at Richmond with Arthur Vavasour and a few other friends of her father's prevented her from indulging in the luxury of a "good cry."

"How smart they are!" Honor whispered in dismay to Arthur, as the two caught a glimpse of the lively sisters from behind the muslin curtain of the first-front drawing-room.

"Don't talk in that way," she said, one of her crimson blushes speaking far more eloquently than her words, while she tried to hide her confusion by carefully drawing on finger after finger of her delicate Paris gloves. "Don't talk in that way; I must talk to these people now. You don't know them, of course?" And rising gracefully, she went through the ceremony of introduction which her father deemed it necessary to perform.

"How glad I am that you remembered the Park," Honor said, as they, the carriages following at a foot's pace, sauntered slowly along the beautiful wooded brow beyond Pembroke Lodge; "I would not have missed this view for the world."

They were together now,--those two who had been better far had the wide seas divided them--those two who could not but have owned that so it was, had any put the question to them in the rare sober moments which nineteen and twenty-one, in the heyday of folly and of love, are blessed with. The rest had strolled away in pairs; so that Arthur could speak as well as look his love into the bewildering eyes of his friend's lovely wife.

Arthur could scarcely repress a sigh as the image of poor neglected Sophy, stretched on her luxurious couch in the gorgeously-furnished back drawing-room in Hyde-park-terrace, presented itself to his mind's eye. "She knows nothing, guesses nothing," he said, with an ineffectual effort at carelessness. "Where ignorance is bliss, you know, it's worse than folly to be wise. I suspect there is a Bluebeard's closet in almost every house, and as long as women don't try to look inside, all goes on smoothly."

Very guilty she felt for a second or two, and humbled and odious, as the consciousness of being a vile deceiver sent a blush to her fair cheek, and checked any answering words that had risen to her tongue. Time, however, for useful reflection was denied her. The sound of her father's voice announcing that it was five o'clock, and that the boats were waiting at the Castle-stairs, effectually interrupted a reverie of a more wholesome description than might, under the circumstances, have been expected; and, re?ntering their respective carriages, the party were soon on their way down the hill so loved by Cockney pleasure-seekers, and so be sung by nature-worshipping poets.

"O, I do so hope he'll win!" she exclaimed enthusiastically; "he is such a wonderfully beautiful creature. And he has a brother who, they think, will be more perfect still;--no, not a brother quite, a half-brother, I think he is; and I used to watch him every day led out to exercise, looking so wild and lovely. He is only a year old, and his name is Faust; and they say he is quite sure to be a Derby horse."

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