Now, as the young men carried him down the lane, he knew every tree he passed, and that he was nearing Honor, step by step. He desired to see her, yet feared her reproachful eye.
Oliver Luxmire had returned home before Kate came from the dance, and had eaten his supper, and gone to bed. Her father had been a cause of distress to Honor of late. He said, indeed, no more about Taverner’s suit, but he could not forget it, and he was continually grumbling over the difficulties of his position, his poverty, the hardships of his having to be a carrier, when he ought to be a gentleman, and might be a squire if certain persons would put out a little finger to help him to his rights.
His careless good humour had given place to peevish discontent. By nature he was kind and considerate, but his disappointment had, at least temporarily, embittered his mood. He threw out oblique reproaches which hurt Honor, for she felt that they were aimed at her. He complained that times were altered, children were without filial affection, they begrudged their parents the repose that was their due in the evening of their days. He was getting on in years, and was forced to slave for the support of a family, when his family—at least the elder of them—ought to be maintaining him. He wished that the Thrustle were as deep as the Tamar, and he would throw himself in and so end his sorrows. His children—his ungrateful children—must not be surprised if some day he did not return. There was no saying, on occasions, when a waterspout broke, the Thrustle was so full of water that a man might drown himself in it.
In vain did Honor attempt to turn his thoughts into pleasanter channels. He found a morbid pleasure in being absorbed in the contemplation of his sores. He became churlish towards Honor and refused to be cheered. She had fine speeches on her tongue, but he was a man who preferred deeds to words. A girl of words and not of deeds was like a garden full of weeds. When the weeds began to grow, like the heavens thick with snow, when the snow began to fall—and so on—and so on—he had forgotten the rest of the jingle.
Now for the first time, dimly, was Honor conscious of a moral resemblance between her father and Charles. What Charles had become, her father might become. The elements of character were in germ in him that had developed in the son. As likenesses in a family come out at unexpected moments, that had never before been noticed, so was it with the psychical features of these two. Honor saw Charles in her father, and the sight distressed her.