Computerized Literature Searching

Research Strategies and Databases

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 Westview Special Studies in
Information Science and
Management
Computerized Literature Searching: Research Strategies and
Databases
Charles L. Gilreath
The computer terminal is well on its way to being as commonplace
as the telephone, and its usefulness to the scholar and scientist is so
great that already computer screens and disks are seen frequently in
academic offices. The value of computers in research is well
established, with vast amounts of data being processed daily by all
sizes of computers. Computers also have had dramatic effects on the
researcher's literature-searching options: Scientists and scholars can
now query enormous databases containing tens of millions of
citations to published literature and can extract bibliographies
tailored to their specific questions. The power and flexibility afforded
the user of information by these literature-searching systems ease
the burden of library work, but in order to use the systems
effectively, it is necessary to understand both their capabilities and
their limitations.
Mr. Gilreath describes the principles underlying online bibliographic
systems, the databases available, and the factors a researcher must
consider in using them. He explores in some depth the relationship
of the structure and terminology of publications in various fields to
the literature-searching process and provides detailed guidelines for
research in the life, health, agricultural, and social sciences,
chemistry, physics, mathematics, geology, meteorology, engineering,
education, psychology, business, law, current affairs, and the
humanities. A glossary of literature-searching terms is included.
 Charles L. Gilreath is head of the Automated Information Retrieval
Service for Texas A&M University Library. He is the author of CAIN
Online User's Guide (1976), AGRICOLA User's Guide (1979), and
"Computerized Data Bases for Bibliographic Research" in Richard
Blanchard's Guide to Sources for Agricultural and Biological Research
(1981).
 Computerized Literature
Searching: Research
Strategies and Databases

Charles L. Gilreath
First published 1984 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published 2018 by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa

business

Copyright © 1984 Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Gilreath, Charles L.
Computerized literature searching.
(Westview special studies in information science and
management)
Includes index.
1. Online bibliographic searching. 2. Machine-readable
bibliographic data. 3. Information retrieval. 4. Research—
Methodology—Data processing. I. Title. II. Series.
Z699.G56 1984 025.5'24 83-23319

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01968-6(hbk)

 Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Basics of Computer Literature Search Systems

Organizing Information
Printed Indexes
Computer Retrieval Systems
Constraints on Computer Systems

2 The Researcher-Search Analyst Partnership

3 Agricultural and Life Sciences

Characteristics and Terminology

Profiling Assistance
Databases

4 Social Sciences and Education

Characteristics and Terminology

Profiling Assistance
Databases

5 Physical Sciences and Engineering

Characteristics and Terminology

Profiling Assistance
Databases

6 Business Literature

Characteristics and Terminology

Profiling Assistance
 Databases
7 Humanities, the Arts, and Architecture

Characteristics and Terminology

Profiling Assistance
Databases
Notes

8 Legal Research

Characteristics and Terminology

Profiling Assistance
Databases

Glossary
Index
 Figures
1-1 Hypothetical search sequence
1-2 Production and transmission of information
1-3 KWIC and KWOC indexes
1-4 Coordinate indexing system using cards
1-5 Steps in the use of a coordinate index
1-6 Permuted title word index from Social Sciences Citation
Index
2-1 Strategy for search on creativity
3-1 MeSH tree structure
3-2 AGRICOLA and BIOSIS code schemes
3-3 BIOSIS citation illustrating the weighting of terms in the
Concept Code field
4-1 Entry from Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors
4-2 Entry from Political Science Thesaurus categorized display
5-1 Partial strategy for retrieving information on properties of
gallium and arsenic compounds
5-2 Alternative strategies for a search on computer techniques
for extraction of square roots
5-3 Citation from Chemical Abstracts, volume 87
5-4 Entry from the Energy Data Base Subject Thesaurus
6-1 Entry from cited reference section of Social Sciences Citation
Index
6-2 Standard Industrial Classification code numbers
6-3 Selection from ABI/INFORM classification scheme
8-1 Comparison of search results between a full text file and
indexing/abstracting service files
 Acknowledgments
First, I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Frederick Praeger,
who sparked the idea of the book during a 1981 visit to Texas A&M
to deliver a lecture on the future of scholarly publishing. At the time
he mused that he might be delivering the funeral oration for that
endeavor. I prefer to think that with men of his enthusiasm around,
we may see, rather than the death of scholarly publishing, an
intelligent transfiguration.
My thanks go also to a talented student assistant, Sohail Bokhari,
for his invaluable assistance with the illustrations.
Finally, my thanks to my wife, Ann, who endured the initial writing
and then proofread the results. The mistakes that remain I claim for
myself.
C.L.G.
 Introduction
To assert that the computer has profoundly affected scholarship is
to understate the case. Indeed, computer technology has opened
avenues of research only dreamed of fifty years ago and but dimly
understood even twenty years ago. The computer's impact on
scholarly communication and library research is of more recent
origin, yet in the past decade computer systems have begun to
reshape at all levels the process of recording, transmitting, storing,
and retrieving information.
As with many advances, the new technology forces the user to
examine old methods, to think critically about those processes and
techniques so long taken for granted. Such is the case with the
computer systems that have been developed to assist in literature
searching. The mechanics of computerized information retrieval
make it relatively easy to pull some relevant citations from databases
such as Sociological Abstracts or Zoological Record, but retrieving
information in the most effective manner requires a thorough
understanding of how information is organized. In the space of a
single volume one cannot, of course, cover comprehensively the
subtle differences in dozens of research fields. It is the goal of this
work, rather, to alert the user of computerized library research
services to potential problem areas and to cause him or her to ask
the right questions in order to achieve the best results.
The user for whom this work is principally intended is the scientist
or advanced student who is generally familiar with research in a
given field but who may not know how to approach the development
of search strategies for using computer literature-searching systems.
Librarians and information specialists who have been called upon to
conduct literature searches in fields unfamiliar to them will, one
hopes, also find aid and comfort in these pages. The focus
throughout has been on the subject matter and the structure of
information in broad fields rather than on the selection or operation
of specific retrieval systems, for which information abounds
elsewhere.
The book is organized into eight sections: two chapters giving a
general overview of computer library research systems and their
capabilities and six others discussing research strategies for broad
areas of research. Each discipline-oriented chapter is divided into
three parts: a discussion of the general characteristics and the
terminology peculiar to that field, a description of profiling aids that
might be employed in constructing a search strategy, and a selective
list of commonly available databases for that field.
 1
The Basics of Computer
Literature Search Systems
In 1946, when the 19,000 tubes of the ENIAC computer began to
glow dimly at the University of Pennsylvania, a new era of
information processing was born. Originally conceived as high-speed
calculating machines to help scientists solve complex equations, the
generations of computers descending from ENIAC have evolved into
powerful general purpose logic machines capable of manipulating
enormous banks of data. The pervasiveness of this technology in
society is nearly impossible to fathom. Today computers touch us in
almost every aspect of our lives, from calculating and printing electric
utility bills to controlling the flow of traffic on city streets, from
recording vital statistics of newborns to editing the text of newspaper
obituary columns. Computer technology has forced us to develop new
skills virtually undreamed of by our great-grandparents and to do
traditional jobs in radically different ways. Like the rest of the world,
libraries have been significantly affected by the computer revolution,
some having joined eagerly and others finding themselves swept
along by the succeeding waves of technological change.
Generally the evolution of automation in research libraries has been
led by those activities most heavily utilizing clerical time, that is, the
purchasing, cataloging, and circulation of books and other library
materials. Automated circulation systems, usually run on in-house or
at least locally owned computers, have relieved both library staff and
patrons of much of the drudgery required for maintaining records of
book circulations. Large national or regional computer systems, such
as those developed and operated by OCLC, Inc., the Research
Libraries Group, and the Washington Library Network, have been
highly successful in speeding the cataloging process for their member
libraries. Using one of these shared cataloging systems, a person
sitting at a computer terminal in Texas can locate cataloging copy for
a book, enter whatever changes are desired to make that record
meet local library standards, order a set of cataloging cards, and
share with member libraries in Kentucky or Rhode Island the fact that
that item is now available for loan in Texas—all in a fraction of the
time it used to take to type a set of cards to file in the local catalog.
Used in their traditional way, circulation and cataloging systems are
essentially behind-the-scenes operations that affect only minimally
the way people use libraries. New developments in the nature of
these record-keeping systems, however, will soon have a dramatic
impact on how information can be retrieved from libraries. In the
next few years it will be possible for patrons of many libraries to go
to a terminal—perhaps even in their homes or offices—and dial up
the library's computer. Once connected, they can query the system
for books on any subject. Having identified the ones they want, they
can determine whether those books are available for checkout. In
some instances, the library users may even be able to request that
the books be held for them until they can get to the library to charge
them out.
Perhaps more dramatic in its potential impact on library research
methods has been the development of computer systems to search
indexes, abstracting services, directories, and other traditional
reference tools. Over the past fifteen years the publishers of indexing
and abstracting services have invested heavily in automation. Entries
for such services are today typically prepared and edited in machine-
readable form. A computer tape is prepared, which is subsequently
used to drive typesetting equipment or to photocompose directly
camera-ready pages for printing. These edited computer tapes have
become an increasingly valuable resource as the basis of large
machine-readable databases. The mere existence of a machine-
readable file does not, of course, have much impact on the retrieval
of information by individuals conducting research. Slow and
inefficient computer programs to search machine-readable files are
no better—and sometimes worse—than manual search techniques.
The mid-1960s, however, saw the development of computer
systems that made possible the fast retrieval and manipulation of
bibliographic information. These systems allowed users to query
bibliographic databases for words and phrases that might appear in
the citations and, in a conversational mode, to modify the results of
the search. Thus it became possible for researchers to go to one of
these systems, pose questions and, based on the results of the
queries, adjust the answers so that they got out of the system a list
of references tailored to their information needs. Because online
systems such as these require such enormous storage capacity, they
are too expensive for most libraries to consider operating locally, but
through subscription to any of a number of computer services that
provide dial-up access to timeshared computing centers, many
libraries can gain access to literally millions of machine-readable
records in order to provide interactive searching of vast stores of
information.
Two of the earliest and most successful computer retrieval systems
are System Development Corporation's (SDC) ORBIT and Lockheed
(now DIALOG) Information Service's DIALOG. Both of these retrieval
packages were developed in the late 1960s under government
contract. SDC developed its ORBIT system to make the National
Library of Medicine's MEDLARS (Medical Literature Automated
Retrieval System) searchable in a conversational mode, while
Lockheed developed the prototype of its DIALOG system as the
RECOΝ (Remote Console) system for NASA. The years since these
early systems began operation have seen the development of many
other retrieval systems throughout the world. By 1982 it was
estimated that there were actually dozens of retrieval systems in
operation providing online access to tens of millions of bibliographic
and factual records.
In operation each retrieval system may look quite different to the
uninitiated observer, but whatever system is used— DIALOG'S, SDC's
or another system from any of the burgeoning number of information
services now in the field— the basic organization and operation is the
same. Figure 1-1 (a hypothetical search sequence) illustrates many of
these features.
In this example the computer system prompts the user each time it
is ready to accept additional commands through the cues for each
statement and the word "USER." Its own responses
Figure 1-1. Hypothetical search sequence

are labelled "PROG." After each system cue, the user enters a part of
the search strategy, in this instance using the commands "FIND,"
"MATCH," "LIMIT," and "PRINT." After each instruction from the user,
the system responds with a number, indicating how many references
in the database meet the requirements of that statement. Thus, the
first response from the system shows that there are 1,500 references
in which either "automobiles" or "cars" appears in the parts of the
reference searched by the computer. The dollar signs in statement 3
are truncation symbols, signaling the system that all words beginning
with the preceding characters are acceptable; thus words with many
possible forms can be searched with minimal keying. The vast
numbers of citations retrieved can be matched against each other in
order to narrow search results to that much smaller number meeting
the various aspects of the search logic. Usually in such a match the
numbers drop dramatically, as in the results of statement 4, which
represents those items in the hypothetical database which should be
on automobile sales forecasts.
Retrieval systems, by one means or another, usually allow users to
manipulate search results in other ways as well, as illustrated by
statement 5, in which the eighteen citations in the previous
statement are limited to those items published in 1981. Once
narrowed sufficiently, the results are sampled by requesting a
printout of selected titles. If the sample is acceptable, the user can
choose to have a full bibliography of the results printed out either
immediately at the terminal while it is still connected to the system or
later at the computer facility and sent through the mail.
The flexibility that these systems provide represents a quantum
leap for the researcher who must use bibliographic reference tools.
Some of the differences between manual and online searches of
literature are obvious; after all, with one, printed volumes are
consulted and with the other, a computer terminal is employed. Other
aspects of this new technology for literature searching are more
subtle, but their impact on the way one carries out a library research
project is significant. The chapters that follow will provide more
detailed discussions of online research methods in specific disciplines,
but it will be useful here to look briefly at the major aspects of both
manual and computerized versions of indexing and abstracting
services.

Organizing Information

Before turning to the more specific problem of how information

retrieval systems are put together, one needs to consider for a
moment the more general issue of information organization. Figure 1-
2 represents one conception of how information is produced and
subsequently organized for retrieval. At one extreme is the author
who has discovered something about reality and, wishing to
communicate with others, writes up the discovery as an article and
submits it for publication. If the article is accepted, it will be edited
and eventually published and distributed to the subscribers of the
journal. A recipient of that journal may then read the article and
make use of its contents right away or, if the information is not
needed immediately, may file the journal away for future reference. A
researcher with an unusually keen memory may be able to come
back directly to that article in the future but will more likely have to
rely on some secondary tool as a memory aid. These secondary tools
can take many forms, ranging from a simple card file on the
researcher's desk to the elaborate multivolume abstracting and
indexing services such as Chemical Abstracts or Zoological Record.
The primary point to be remembered from this illustration is that
communication between authors and readers is highly complex. At
each stage in the flow of information from the author or producer of
the information to the library researcher or user of information there
are several opportunities for the original message to become garbled.
As one progresses along the continuum from author to reader, the
further away from the author's manuscript one proceeds the fewer
become the methods of retrieving information. For example, a journal
editor may have to edit a manuscript severely in order to make it fit
space requirements, and most certainly an indexing or abstracting
service is going to use only a skeletal version of the original article to
point the reader back to the source. The fewer access points a reader
has for retrieving a reference, of course, the greater are the chances
of missing relevant citations in a search

Figure 1-2. Production and transmission of information.

of the literature. The bottom portion of Figure 1-2 shows the types of
access commonly provided at each stage of the information flow.
The author's own title for an article can provide many access
points, provided that care is given in selecting terminology that
accurately reflects the content of the paper. Depending on the journal
for which the article is intended, the author may also provide a brief
abstract and/or a list of keywords that may affect subsequent
retrieval of articles via indexes. Finally, indexers and abstracters
create document surrogates, that is, bibliographic citations that try to
represent in a very brief form the most significant aspects of the
original publication. Indexing citations may include the addition of
keywords from a controlled list of such terms, specially prepared
abstracts, and/or various other codes identifying aspects of the article
such as, subject, publication type (review, theoretical paper, etc.),
language, and so forth.

Printed Indexes

Hierarchical Indexes
Manual literature-searching techniques rely on the structure of
printed retrieval tools. Printed indexes take many forms, but all are
linear devices, that is, all references are arranged in a locked
sequence on the printed page. Most printed indexes are hierarchical,
presenting citations in a logically arranged series of subject headings
and related topical subdivisions. Users of such a work look under
those headings that appear most aptly to describe the area of
investigation. Having located the appropriate heading, they then read
through the titles appearing under that heading to identify the ones
they are interested in using for their research. Hierarchical indexes
are particularly good in providing access to large volumes of literature
under a carefully controlled set of categories, thereby freeing the
user from having to search large numbers of individual, and
sometimes idiosyncratic, terms to locate desirable references. In most
instances, however, such indexes are slow to reflect changes in
terminology. When new research areas emerge, some substantial
period of time is usually required before new entries are introduced
into the list of subject headings of printed hierarchical indexes; so the
user working on a new area of specialization has to seek information
under headings not quite on target for the research topic.

KWIC and KWOC Indexes

 In order to overcome the shortcomings of hierarchical indexes,
other approaches to indexing have been developed. KWIC (keyword-
in-context) and KWOC (keyword-out-of-context) indexes provide
subject access via computerized rotations of keywords and/or title
words. This approach, as shown in Figure 1-3, enables the reader to
search for articles that contain specific words or phrases in the title or
in strings of index terms. The KWIC index also displays terms in such
a way that the user can easily check the context in which the desired
term appears.

Coordinate Indexes
A third type of indexing scheme, adaptable for both card files and
printed retrieval aids, is the coordinate index. It is the indexing
principle, as well, upon which computer literature-searching systems
are based. An index based on coordinate principles first identifies
each bibliographic entry by means of some unique number or letter-
number tag, as shown in Figure 1-4. Indexes are built for each
significant word by listing together document numbers for every item
containing that word. These document number lists that constitute
the index's access points are then filed or printed in alphabetic or
numeric sequence. When users desire to conduct a literature search,
they then consult those portions of the index containing the terms in
which they are interested. By comparing item numbers they are then
led back to those items in the sequential list that are likely to be of
interest. Figure 1-5 illustrates the steps an engineer would go
through to find articles on fatigue in prestressed concrete beams. The
first step would be to look up the term "fatigue" in the index and
copy down the item numbers for the references listed under that
heading. Then numbers in that list must be compared with the
numbers posted to the heading "prestressed concrete." Those
numbers that match then go onto a second list representing those
articles in the index dealing with fatigue in prestressed concrete
structures generally. The search can be narrowed to only those items
dealing specifically with beams, by turning to the item number list for
the heading "beams," comparing numbers, and generating a final list
of tags for those references that should be most relevant to the
engineer's needs. The final step is to turn to the sequential listing of
bibliographic entries, look up the items already identified, and select
specific items to read.
Figure 1-3. KWIC and KWOC indexes.
Figure 1-4. Coordinate indexing system using cards.
Figure 1-5. Steps in the use of a coordinate index.

In addition to the two types of printed indexes illustrated in Figures

1-4 and 1-5, coordinate indexes appear in at least two other physical
forms. Peek-a-boo systems utilize gridded cards with document
numbers represented by punched holes. Coordination of terms is
effected by overlaying cards on a brightly colored board or light table
and relevant items are then identified by the spots of color or light
appearing where holes in the cards align. The fourth type of
coordinate index is the permuted term display, found in works such
as Science Citation Index or Social Sciences Citation Index, both
published by the Institute for Scientific Information. Permuted
indexes display for the reader related word pairs. The example in
Figure 1-6 shows a listing of title words appearing together with the
word "lifelong." Thus an educator interested in the concept of lifelong
learning might want to turn to the sixth, tenth, and eighteenth items
in the list which mention "curriculum," "education," or "learning" in
conjunction with the term "lifelong."
Figure 1-6. Permuted title word index from Social Sciences Citation Index (Philadelphia:
Institute for Scientific Information), 1981.

Computer Retrieval Systems

 Although coordinate indexes in printed form can be extremely
helpful in library research, they quickly lose their usefulness when the
number of items to be indexed exceeds a few hundred or when the
number of terms to be coordinated becomes large. When these limits
are reached, the physical task of comparing large lists of document
tags or manipulating a dozen or more search terms simultaneously is
one that only the hardiest of readers is prepared to undertake.
Computers, on the other hand, are ideally suited for performing these
tasks. It is precisely this set of operations that form the basis of
online retrieval systems in operation today. In a matter of seconds
the computer transcribes hundreds of document tags into the active
workspace of a user and, when instructed, can quickly compare any
set of tags with any number of other sets of tags to identify
references meeting the reader's needs.
Thus with a computer-based retrieval system it becomes easy for a
library researcher to search indexes using a logical profile of a dozen
or more words and phrases that are to be grouped together in
several ways. The product resulting from such a search would very
likely provide not only the relevant citations that the researcher could
have found with a manual search, but also a number of references
that are on target but may have been missed. For example, the
desired terms may have appeared in papers slanted in a different
direction so that the reference would have been indexed under a
heading the reader may not have thought to consult. The power of
the computer to search large volumes of literature rapidly and
thoroughly also makes the task of reviewing literature easy enough
that reseachers may choose to query indexes and abstracts they
would not normally attempt with manual search techniques. The
result is that when used judiciously, the computer as a library
research aid has the power to improve the quality of literature
reviews both by providing more thorough searches through a single
index and by encouraging similar searches through additional
indexes.
Constraints on Computer Systems

The improvements in library research made possible by computer

systems are not without their concomitant costs. The limitations and
drawbacks to computer literature searching fall into the categories of
coverage, economics, and structure. The first two categories are
fairly straightforward problems. Since the technology for building
computerized bibliographic files did not develop until the late sixties,
most of the machine-readable indexing and abstracting files go back
only to the point that their producers adopted computer technology
in their editorial operations. Users of such a system simply have to
decide whether a computer search of the literature for the time
period for which the file is available will fulfill their needs. In some
instances the computer search of current literature may need to be
supplemented with a manual review of older work. On the other
hand, if the topic of interest is quite new, a search covering only the
most recent eight to ten years may be fully adequate.
Insofar as costs are concerned, a researcher's economic situation—
either organizational or personal—may bear on his decision to use a
computer search service. The pricing of computer literature searches
today is typically based on interaction time, the amount of time one's
terminal is physically in connection with the search service computer.
If it takes fifteen minutes for a terminal operator to key in a search
strategy and manipulate the results so that optimal results are
achieved, then a bill for a quarter of an hour's use of the computer
resource will be generated. Hourly rates vary widely, from around $22
per hour for off-peak time use of a file such as the National Library of
Medicine's MEDLINE database to $100 per hour or more for a legal
research file such as WESTLAW. Particularly where hourly connect
charges are high, the user may choose to order delayed printouts of
the results of the search in order to reduce the overall cost of the
search. When such an option is exercised, there is usually an
additional charge per citation or per page printed out. In institutions
where information services are paid for as a part of research
overhead, the actual cost of a computer literature search may not
enter into a researcher's decision-making process. Where all or part
of such a service is charged back to the user—either as a direct
personal charge or a charge to the research budget—cost decisions
may weigh heavily in the choice of method of conducting library
research.
Although time coverage and cost of service bear significantly on
one's decision whether to use a computer search service, they are
factors that can be considered quite separately from the content and
structure of the computer database itself. Either the time span
covered and the potential cost justify conducting a search or they
don't. When one considers the structural limitations of computer
search systems, however, the problem becomes much more complex.
There are the obvious and ever-present limitations arising from the
way a machine can combine terms or the way a particular service has
chosen to create its machine-readable file. There are also a multitude
of terminological and syntactic problems arising from the way
individuals communicate both as professionals in a technical field and
simply as human beings. Developing strategies to overcome the
limitations posed by the elements in this third category presents the
greatest challenge in producing a successful product from a computer
search. Indeed, the development of such strategies will be a
significant theme throughout the discipline-specific chapters that
follow.
 2
The Researcher-Search Analyst
Partnership
Before turning to databases and research strategies for specific
fields of research, we may find it helpful to review how computer
search services have come to be administered in most organizations.
In particular we need to consider the working relationships that
appear to have evolved between researchers and the information
specialists who have become the usual intermediaries for computer
searching of literature.
In the early days of computer literature-retrieval systems there was
a good deal of talk about "end-user" operation of terminals. System
designers felt that engineers, scientists, and others who sought
information in bibliographic sources—that is, the ultimate users of
search results—would be the people who constructed search
strategies and operated the computer terminals. This scenario has
simply not been played out in many organizations as of the early
1980s.
There are a number of reasons why end users have not become
actively involved in computer literature searching to any great extent.
From the researcher's perspective the inhibiting factors fall into three
main categories: system complexity, database complexity, and search
costs. The searching protocols, the instructions required for computer
communications, have changed frequently over the past decade. The
sheer growth in numbers and the structural complexity of many of
the databases requires a great deal of effort by the user of the
system in order to get the best results from a search in the most
efficient manner. The charging system used by most online computer
services, where the cost of service is directly related to the length of
time that the user is physically in connection with the computer, puts
the infrequent user at a disadvantage in that his searches may very
well cost a great deal more than they might simply because he is
slower in using the system. Few scientists are eager to spend their
research money at $60 to $100 per hour to operate a system that
they use only infrequently, especially if an expert in system use,
willing to act as an intermediary, can provide the service at a lower
total cost.
The pattern that has evolved in most organizations is for staff
members in the library or information center to act as the interface
between computer search services and researchers. In the last
decade a new job title has emerged as a result of this intermediary
role; a "search analyst" is an information specialist or librarian with
training in the construction and execution of strategies to retrieve
information via computer. These specialists have accepted this job as
a logical extension of their traditional role as providers of information
from printed resources. Because of their general familiarity with the
content and structure of reference tools and their generally more
expert knowledge of system protocols gained through frequent use,
search analysts at the present time can usually provide more
thorough and cost-effective searches than end users can provide for
themselves through direct searching of files online.
Because most searches today are conducted by intermediaries, a
special partnership has developed between the requesters and the
providers of computer literature searches. Each plays a vital role in
the success of the search. The requester provides the substance of
the inquiry—the question, the limitations, knowledge about the field
to be searched, and terminology current in that field. The search
analyst, usually trained in library or information science, brings to the
process a knowledge about the content and structure of information
retrieval tools, familiarity with indexing vocabularies, and skill in
constructing and executing search strategies online.
In highly specialized research institutions, search analysts may
have extensive subject background in the areas to be searched as
well. In such an organization the end user may need only state the
need for a literature review and the search analyst can complete the
task without further assistance from the requester.
Figure 2-1. Strategy for search on creativity.

More typically, however, the search analyst will not be a specialist in

all areas for which computer searches are needed, and so will need
to rely on the requester for assistance in selection of terms to go into
the strategy or search profile. The researcher will therefore need to
be present during the online session in order to get feedback during
the course of the interaction with the computer. Ideally the
relationship between the search analyst and the end user of
information is a synergistic one, resulting in the best retrieval
possible. The searcher-requester interaction typically has three
distinct phases. During the inquiry phase the requester states the
topic of interest and the search analyst may explain a bit about the
principles, capabilities, and limitations of the literature search system
or systems available to them. During this phase the analyst will help
the requester select the databases most appropriate for the topic.
Once the topic to be searched has been explained and the files to be
searched are selected, the profiling phase begins. As explained in
Chapter 1, coordinate indexing systems are based on the co-
occurrence of strings of characters within specific parts or fields of a
bibliographic citation. The profile is a written outline of character
strings—words, phrases, special codes, etc.—grouped in such a way
as to identify relevant references. Figure 2-1 shows a profile that
might be used to query a psychological database for recent
information on creativity in minority children. It shows that each
major element implicit in the topic (concepts 1, 2, and 3) could be
represented in a citation that would be interesting to the requester by
any of several synonymous terms, either single words or multiword
phrases. The search elements can be words that might show up in
titles or summaries as in the first three concepts, or they can be
other relevant restricters such as the publication dates listed in
concept 4. Terms within each concept listing are considered to be
equally acceptable alternatives, that is, if any one of them appears in
the citation, the requirements of that concept will be satisfied. The
profile indicates that two combinations of the concept groupings are
contemplated. First, all four groups would be intersected with the
goal of finding references to the topic as originally stated. A second
combination of the concepts for creativity, minorities, and date are
also suggested as a check to see what has been written on minority
creativity without specific mention of children. Contingency planning
such as that suggested by the alternative combination of concepts is
a common practice in profile construction since the computer can
"see" only specific character strings. Because of this limitation, a
search strategy defined very narrowly (i.e., all concepts in the original
request must be met) may miss some potentially useful references.
Less restrictive combinations can frequently produce valuable
information, particularly where the volume of literature to be
retrieved is not large to begin with.
Once the profile is completed, the search analyst then logs onto
the computer system and enters the strategy. After the desired
combinations of search elements are made, the analyst usually will
have a sample of the results typed out in order to check the quality of
the answer set, that is, the group of references identified by the
computer as containing the search terms in the combinations
specified. If the sample appears sufficiently relevant to the question,
a printout of the complete list of references can be requested.
However, this straightforward sequence of typing terms, checking
results, and requesting printouts does not always suffice. The search
analyst often must make further modifications to search results
during this third phase of the process. Given the proclivities of
language to take unexpected turns that can confuse communication
in a computerized environment, a sampling of search results may
reveal that a large number of irrelevant references have been
retrieved through the appearance of a word or phrase used in an
unexpected way. For example, a search for information on the
economics of the boating industry may have requested to see
references with, among others, the terms "economy" and "boat" in
them. While these words are clear and precise in the context of the
question being asked, it is altogether possible for the computer to
retrieve a number of articles from a general business database that
contain the terms used metaphorically, such as the title, "The
Elephant in the Boat: The United States and the World Economy."
Even without semantic problems of this sort, numerous problems
of a similar nature are discovered only when a sample of references
is taken during the search session. It is at this point that the
requester can be of invaluable assistance. While some problems of
semantics and metaphorical usage such as the "economic boat" may
have to be accepted, other terminological problems can be effectively
dealt with by a person thoroughly familiar with the problem to which
the information will be applied. Perhaps a high percentage of the
items originally retrieved discuss applications in an area off-target for
the problem being studied. The requester may be able to provide
additional terminology that will enable the search analyst to refine
the answer set so that relevance is increased. In other instances,
where relevance is not a problem but the volume of information is
too great, the requester can easily provide the criteria necessary for
producing a more manageable result—perhaps by providing an
arbitrary number of references or by establishing priorities as to
which aspects of the topic should be emphasized.
 As computer retrieval systems become more "user-friendly," the
pattern of searches being conducted primarily by trained
intermediaries will almost certainly shift to one in which increasing
numbers of scientists and scholars will conduct their own online
literature reviews. But even as those systems evolve, the assistance
available from information specialists can be valuable to the
researcher—whether they act as the intermediary actually retrieving
information online or as a counselor in database selection and profile
construction.
The remaining chapters in this book are designed to assist the end
users of information in two ways. If they are using a mediated
service, that is, one in which the search is profiled and conducted by
a search analyst, it will help them to understand more fully the
databases available in their field of research and to be alert to the
kinds of information the search analyst may need to know in order to
retrieve the best possible results. For the end users who plan to
profile and conduct their own searches, it will serve as an expanded
guide to file selection and database features that they must master in
order to retrieve the most relevant information from the resources
available to them.
 3
Agricultural and Life Sciences

Characteristics and Terminology

Literature resources for the study of agricultural and life sciences

are among the richest and most diverse of any field. They encompass
all major types of publications from patents and technical reports to
monographic treatises and journal articles. The subject matter of
interest to life scientists is equally diverse, covering topics ranging
from improved electrophoretic techniques to population studies of
waterfowl, from the taxonomy of Lepidoptera species to the
epidemiology of Legionnaire's Disease.
In this field, specialties and subspecialties abound to such an
extent that any attempts at disciplinary classification inevitably fail.
For purposes of discussion here the fields usually subsumed by the
following academic departments will be included: Animal Science,
Plant Science, Entomology, Biology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Human
and Veterinary Medicine, Forest Science, Food Science, Soil Science,
and Agronomy. Bibliographic tools for control of the literature in these
fields abound at several levels of specificity. Large, general purpose
abstracting and indexing services such as Biological Abstracts and
Science Citation Index cover the major publications of the life
sciences very broadly, while other services such as Herbage
Abstracts, Microbiology Abstracts, and Reviews of Applied
Entomology cover in more detail the publications of specific
subdisciplines.
With a few notable exceptions, most of the major indexes and
abstracting services can be searched via computer for references
published during the past several years. Given the history of
computer search systems, the time span covered by individual online
versions of these bibliographic services will vary, but the typical
system will cover the literature of the past five to ten years, with a
few services extending coverage back as far as the mid-1960s. Time
coverage will frequently be a factor in a scientist's decision whether
or not to undertake a computer search. If the topic under
investigation is one in which a substantial volume of the relevant
literature has been written in the last decade, then a computer
search can be an effective aid to the library research. New research
areas such as genetic engineering and space medicine will be
particularly well served by computer-searchable systems. Other fields
—many of the plant and animal science specialties, for example—in
which the research output has been relatively steady over a long
period of time will also be well served by computer searching. In this
latter case the researcher may choose to search current literature
online, realizing that although the results will not be a complete
search of the published record, good citations retrieved by the search
will likely have bibliographic references to key papers published in the
past. In this manner a thorough search of the most recent ten years
of literature may yield results that, in effect, give coverage of fifteen
to twenty years of significant research.
In other instances, however, computer searching may not prove to
be of so much value. Taxonomic work, for example, requires
investigations going well beyond the decade or so that computers can
search, and frequently valuable taxonomic information is to be found
in brief notes or professional communications that usually provide no
further bibliographic leads. In fields where the research effort has not
been continuous, the discontinuity may also pose problems for
computer searching. This is particularly true in instances where
substantial work was conducted, say, thirty years ago and then for
some reason discontinued. The researcher who now wants to resume
such a line of investigation will certainly want to review the early
literature, but a computer search will very likely provide little help
unless others who have also renewed their interest in the field have
perhaps published recent reviews of the literature. Illustrative of this
category is much of the work on alternate energy resources, on some
of the crops suitable for marginal lands, and on insect pests or
diseases that tend to pose major problems in rather long cyclic
patterns.
As the disciplines subsumed under the heading of agricultural and
life sciences exhibit wide diversity so do their information resources.
At one extreme are tools such as the National Library of Medicine's
Index Medicus (online called MEDLINE) and Chemical Abstracts
Service's Chemical Abstracts (CA SEARCH online) in which indexing is
controlled through extensive vocabulary tools and thesauri. Because
of the extra effort that these organizations have expended on file
creation and vocabulary control, searchers using these resources can
achieve highly precise results, but they must in turn be willing to
expend extra effort to master the tools available for constructing
effective profiles and to understand the rather complex structure of
some of the bibliographic records. At the other extreme one finds
resources such as the National Agricultural Library's AGRICOLA
database and the Institute for Scientific Information's Science Citation
Index (SCISEARCH) in which heavy reliance is placed on the titles of
references to provide access terminology. Such databases have the
advantage of quickness in preparation of citations in that references
are not delayed for elaborate indexing and abstracting, but searchers
must be aware in choosing to search such files that consistency in
access terminology is no longer available to the degree that it is in a
more heavily indexed resource. They must, therefore, compensate by
adding to their information profile alternative terms that might
appear in the titles of relevant references. For example, in the
MEDLINE system the term "cattle" will be applied to all items in that
database dealing with those animals, but in the SCISEARCH database
users will have to include all possible names for cattle—cow, cows,
calf, calves, steers, etc.
Terminological pitfalls abound in many of the databases,
particularly those covering several disciplines. For example, the
computer database of the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux (CAB)
consists of the machine-readable equivalents of nearly three dozen
different indexing and abstracting publications, ranging in content
from plant breeding to veterinary medicine. Thus, researchers
needing information on digestion in cattle may find articles in their
search output on anaerobic digestion of waste products in cattle
feedlots. Usually the context created by other terms in the search
strategy helps to eliminate the vast majority of irrelevancies or "false
hits," but it is virtually impossible to imagine all possible uses to
which some of the more common words will be put. Narrowly defined
fields with a highly specific vocabulary usually are less prone to this
type of terminological problem than are applied fields in which
concepts are often borrowed from many disciplines. Even the
disciplines with relatively "pure" terminology, however, can present
monumental problems for online searching, particularly when there is
more than one standard method for describing, classifying, or naming
substances and/or phenomena. Consider, for example, the various
ways that a relatively simple compound such as isopropyl alcohol
might be known in the literature of organic chemistry:
Isopropyl Alcohol

2-propanol
Isopropanol
Secondary propyl alcohol
Dimethyl carbinol
Petrohol

Many of the database producers and the online search systems

themselves now provide powerful searching features that can help
overcome a number of the problems. In some instances additional
intellectual effort is expended in creating record elements that will
make easier the task of searching troublesome topics, and in other
cases additional online programs and search aids can sort quickly
through masses of data. The user must, however, bear in mind that
these search features have usually evolved over the recent life of the
databases and may not be available throughout the entire database.
This problem is heightened by the fact that most online versions of
databases are built incrementally from periodically issued update
tapes. As policies and procedures change, the records on the tape
change as well, so that an effective search must take into account
these changes over time.
 An excellent example of this latter sort of problem is exhibited by
the AGRICOLA database of the National Agricultural Library. Over the
course of AGRICOLA's life as a machine readable file beginning in
1970, there have been numerous policy changes within the National
Agricultural Library itself, and into the file have been incorporated
computerized records from other organizations that have had their
own policies in formatting bibliographic records. As a result searchers
of that database not only must know the terminology of the field in
which they are conducting the literature review but also need to be
aware of the history of the database itself. There are, for example, no
fewer than six different major subject category schemes that have
governed the indexing of substantial numbers of bibliographic
citations in the database. Users who are not aware of this fact may
inadvertently use one of the codes, retrieve good results, and think
that they have found all the relevant papers in the database on the
topic, when in fact they have missed dozens of relevant citations that
were coded using one of the other five schemes.
The idiosyncrasies of databases will prove irksome to some,
dismaying to others. Not all the potential problems can be foreseen
by even the most adept search analyst, but time spent in perusing
database documentation and in gaining familiarity with the tools and
techniques outlined in the next section should make the task of
profile construction a good deal easier.

Profiling Assistance

1 Substances
Chemical substances, particularly those in living systems, pose a
number of problems for researchers trying to conduct computer
literature reviews. The amount of assistance available for profile
construction varies widely among databases. The features described
below are indicative of the resources that may be tapped in profiling.
Certainly not all features will be available in every database.
CAS Registry Numbers. In 1965 the Chemical Abstracts Service of
the American Chemical Society began to catalog and assign unique
registry numbers to the substances described or reported in the
literature it indexed. Over the intervening eighteen years this registry
has grown to include more than 5,000,000 substances. Although a
great deal of time continues to be spent devising standard systems of
nomenclature, a great deal of variation continues to exist in the
proper names applied to substances. The registry number provides
the searcher many advantages, but most notable are its uniqueness
and its brevity. A new registry number is assigned to each new
compound reported in chemical literature without respect to any
classification scheme. The numbers are not, therefore, subject to
changing trends in chemical nomenclature. Numbers are changed
from time to time, but these changes are a result of new knowledge
about the nature of the compound and not merely of shifts in naming
conventions. The uniqueness of the numbers increases the probability
that searchers will be able to find all papers on a given compound
without worrying that they have missed references to one of its many
synonyms or have failed to match character-for-character the exact
name of the compound as it appears in the database they are
searching.
The brevity of registry numbers (usually no more than nine or ten
characters, including hyphens) compared to their spelled out
equivalents aids both index producer and database searcher. Because
they are short, registry numbers allow shorter physical bibliographic
records; so more information can be stored in less space. Some
searchers may argue that typing numbers is more exacting work than
typing words, but it is generally true that a registry number can be
entered online more quickly than the equivalent substance name.
Most certainly it represents far less effort to type than does the entry
of all variations that the name of a substance may have. To illustrate,
the entry below shows the name variations associated with the
compound chloroprene:
 Chloroprene

2-chloror-1,3,butadiene
Chlorobutadiene
CBD
2-chloro-1,3,butadiene
Beta chloroprene
2-chlorobuta-l,3 diene
Registry Number: 126-99-8

For those who must find registry numbers for substances, there are
many sources. Among the most valuable printed sources for this
purpose are the following:

Merck Index, 9th ed. (Rahway, N.J.: Merck & Co., 1976). Though
by no means complete, the Merck Index does provide a useful
list of the most common compounds. Entries include molecular
formula, Chemical Abstracts name, synonyms, and structural
diagrams. In a separate appendix Merck also lists CAS registry
numbers for several thousand compounds, which makes this a
convenient single-volume tool to have close to the computer
terminal for profiling help.
Chemical Abstracts Index Guide (Columbus, Ohio: Chemical
Abstracts Service). This guide to the terminology used in
Chemical Abstracts alerts the user to the proper form of chemical
names and provides registry numbers for the substances
indexed.
Toxic Substances Control Act Chemical Substance Inventory
(Washington, D.C.: U. S. Environmental Protection Agency,
1979). This multi-volume inventory provides name, formula, and
CAS registry number indexes to 44,000 chemical substances
known to be in U. S. commerce (production, imports, exports,
etc.). Toxicity is not a criterion for listing in the inventory.
Excluded from the inventory are pesticides, food products,
tobacco products, food additives, drugs, and cosmetics. It does
include "naturally occurring" chemical substances, those
substances in nature that exist in unprocessed form or are
produced by purely manual, mechanical, or gravitational means,
 through dissolution in water, or through the application only of
heat to remove water.

Online sources are also readily available. In most cases the online
nomenclature files are the equivalents of printed tools, but they
provide searching capabilities far beyond printed resources.
Frequently, a scientist needs to find literature on entire classes of
compounds—all substances with one selenium atom plus an alkane
group, for example. The amount of effort that would be required to
find all such compounds would be monumental, but online chemical
dictionaries such as CHEMLINE, CHEMDEX, and CHEMSIS make the
task an easy one. Some systems even provide the automatic
transcription of relevant registry numbers into a search strategy,
thereby avoiding for the terminal operator the burden of typing in
those numbers.
Enzyme Commission Numbers. Like registry numbers, the numbers
created by the Enzyme Commission of the International Union of
Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of
Biochemistry provide a unique method of identifying specific enzymes
without having to type in full names and synonyms for these
compounds. The printed tools most helpful in locating Enzyme
Commission numbers are the following:

Enzyme Nomenclature, 1978, by The Nomenclature Committee

of the International Union of Biochemistry. (New York: Academic
Press, 1979). This volume lists Enzyme Commission numbers,
recommended names, and synonyms for over 2,100 enzymes.
Medical Subject Headings—Supplementary Chemical Records,
1983. (Bethesda, MD: National Library of Medicine, 1983). A
guide to official names, synonyms, and the medical subject
headings employed by indexers for Index Medicus, this volume
also provides CAS registry numbers and Enzyme Commission
numbers for approximately 25,000 compounds.

Established Names. Not every database, of course, has included

unique substance numbers for the compounds it indexes, so those
Another random document with
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 CHAPTER XX.

POOR SOPHY!
“I am so glad they have let me see you, though I am only to speak in a
whisper, and to stay just one half-hour and no more. You darling thing!
How pretty you look in that dear little cap!” And Katie Vavasour, who had
been allowed, as a great favour, to visit her much-loved sister-in-law,
pressed her fresh young lips to the invalid’s forehead, and took her seat
beside the bed preparatory to a “quiet talk.”
“I am glad you came too, dear,” Sophy rejoined. “It is so dull without
Arthur, and he has been gone away so long—many hours, I am sure. What
o’clock is it now? Three, I am sure; and he left me long before twelve.
Where do you think he is?”
“O, I don’t know. Gone somewhere about horses, I daresay,” rejoined
Kate, who was rather glad of Arthur’s absence, since it enabled her to have
Sophy to herself. “But tell me, does he love the baby very much? Does he
often kiss it?”
“No, not often; indeed, I don’t think he ever has; but I shouldn’t mind
that, if he would but come back,” said poor Sophy, whose nerves were weak
(a malady which her young sister-in-law found it hard to understand), and
whose impatience at her husband’s absence was often a little trying to those
about her.
“O, never mind him. There is no use ever in wondering what men are
about,” said unsympathising Kate. “I want to tell you about poor Rhoda. I
am certain she is pining for that stupid Mr. Wallingford. It would not have
been a nice match, of course; but as she liked him, that ought to be enough;
and Rhoda was never strong, and now she looks like a ghost.”
“Poor thing!” murmured Sophy. “But if I remember right, Mr.
Wallingford had straight hair and a long neck, and seemed terribly poky.”
“Exactly; but if Rhoda did not think so, what did it signify?” was Kate’s
somewhat involved rejoinder. “All I know is, that if anything bad happens,
it will be mamma’s fault. O, she is so dreadfully hard and proud and
unfeeling! And she will be worse than ever, if she gets the better of poor
Arthur about the property. O, Sophy! is it not too bad that she should have
things all her own way like this? Do you know, I would give ten years of
my life—”
“To be taken in your old age, of course,” put in Sophy, with something
of her former girlish playfulness.
“O, yes; that of course,” said Kate; “and besides—”
But the current of her confidences was at that moment checked by the
entrance through the adjoining boudoir of Mrs. Vavasour’s maid, who, in a
hesitating voice, made the whispered announcement that a person calling
himself Mr. Beacham was below, and was very anxious to have speech with
one of the family. Both Mr. Duberly and Mr. Vavasour were out of the way,
the woman said, so she had thought it best to come to Miss Catherine about
it.
“I will go down directly,” Kate said; but of this, Sophy, with the caprice
common to invalids, would not hear. She insisted, for some reason best
known to herself, on Mr. Beacham being shown into the boudoir.
“You can see him there, dear,” she said to Kate; “he is a sort of
gentleman you know” (poor, poor John!); “and I shall not be left alone,
which I hate.”
Foreseeing no reason for objecting to her sister-in-law’s wish, Kate gave
the necessary directions, and in a few more moments a man’s strong,
vigorous step was heard treading the Aubusson carpet in Sophy’s “morning-
room.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Vavasour,” John said aloud—he was totally
ignorant of the fact that within earshot lay the sick and nervous wife of the
man he had come to seek, the man against whom he felt as an enemy so
bitter that blood could neither wash out the offence, nor quench the rage
that burnt so madly in his veins—“I beg your pardon, but I require to know
if you will have the goodness to tell me where I am likely to find your
brother, Mr. Arthur Vavasour. The people down below, the servants, seem
too grand to answer questions, so I am driven to the masters for
information. He is not, I suppose, in the house, hiding behind his wife’s
apron-string? He—”
“Hush! For Heaven’s sake speak lower,” said Kate in an eager whisper.
It was so dreadful to think that Sophy might hear, although the rooms were
large and there was no great probability of such a catastrophe, but still the
sound of John’s angry words might reach the ears of Arthur’s wife; and
Kate, girl though she was, could foresee and dread the consequences of
such a terrible calamity. “Speak lower,” she said a little proudly, for there
was a spice of her mother’s hauteur in her veins, and Kate Vavasour chafed
under the familiar brusquerie of one beneath her.
“Speak lower, do you say? And why? Is this man, this base betrayer of—
but I beg your pardon once more. You are a young lady, Miss Vavasour; one
of a class that is protected from insult and wrong by the shield of position
and a great name. A name, forsooth! Why mine was, in its humble way,
respected once; respected till your brother came—your brother, whose
father was my friend—and dragged the honour of my house, my honour—”
and he dealt a savage blow on his broad breast—“in the dust! My wife has
left me,” he groaned out; “that can be no secret now—left me for him,
although I never knew it was so till to-day. It was yesterday I lost her; lost
the poor child I loved so well: and in the evening I inquired for her at her
rascal father’s house, but they could, or perhaps would not tell me anything.
But to-day I went again, and forced them to be more explicit. Then I learnt
how he had, while she was with her father, how he had spent his days, his
evenings, all his time, with Honor. I came here three hours ago, and tried to
learn something of the man’s movements—something which would guide
me to my wife; but all the answer was that he had been out for hours, no
one could tell me where; but the rascal that I spoke to grinned, and hinted of
a lady’s letter till I was almost driven mad; and here I am, hoping that you,
at least, will not—”
He was interrupted by a cry—a cry, feeble it is true, but so piercing and
peculiar in its tone that it haunted his brain afterwards for weeks; then there
was the sound of a heavy fall—a fall which Kate knew, in the twinkling of
an eye, was that of poor Sophy’s lifeless body on the floor. In a moment all
was wild confusion; a very Babel of cries and consternation; and John
Beacham (awakened, when too late, to a sense of the evil which his
intemperate words had wrought) lifted the inanimate form of the poor
young wife in his strong arms, and laid her gently on the bed from which a
fatal curiosity had roused her. Verily in the old tale of Bluebeard there is
much and truthful knowledge of female nature, for to every woman there is
a subtle and terrible attraction in the bloody key; and to know that which it
is well for their peace that they should ignore, has ever been an insatiable
craving amongst the fair daughters of Eve.
 Poor Kate proved herself fully equal to the emergency in which she
found herself. Forgetful of John Beacham’s hasty and passionate
revelations, she could only think of him in the light of an able-bodied man,
ready and willing to do good service to the helpless.
“Try and find her father,” she said imploringly; while the monthly nurse,
who had already despatched a messenger for the physician in attendance,
was endeavouring, with no apparent result, to restore animation to poor
Sophy’s apparently lifeless body. “Try and find Mr. Duberly. Perhaps he
will be at the Union Club; and Arthur, poor Arthur! he ought to be here. Mr.
Beacham,” she continued with imploring eagerness, the thought of her
brother bringing back the memory of the man’s desperate words, “Mr.
Beacham, at such a moment you cannot, will not, think of yourself. You see
what your words have done. Poor, poor Sophy!” And the tears fell in
torrents from her blinded eyes. “You will find Arthur for her. I do not
believe in his wickedness. He may have been foolish, but he loved his wife
and little child; you have been deceived; and it is all a dreadful, dreadful
mistake.”
John shook his head gloomily. He was too convinced of his former
friend’s share in his wife’s flight for any words to alter his convictions. Men
who are habitually unsuspicious are often the most tenacious of a dark idea
when once it has taken root within their breasts; and John’s present belief
was, he then felt assured, for life. But certain although he was of Arthur
Vavasour’s guilt, he could not view, without the bitterest remorse, the wreck
that his untamed passion had wrought in that so lately happy and
prosperous home. There was no need now for Kate to press upon him the
duty of forbearance. God, the Judge of sinners, had taken the task of
retribution into His own hands; for if it were indeed true, as Miss Vavasour
had asserted, that Arthur loved his wife, why, in that pale corse lying
lifeless before him, his own wrongs, the wrongs inflicted by the bereaved
husband, would indeed be fearfully and terribly avenged. Well he knew that
to himself, as the acting cause of that dire catastrophe, poor Sophy’s death
(if, as seemed only too probable, her pale head was never to be raised in life
again) might be traced; and it was with his already heavily-burdened spirit
weighted with another load, that John Beacham, with the purpose of
fulfilling Kate Vavasour’s behest, and endeavouring to seek out poor
Sophy’s father, prepared to leave the house where his presence had been
productive of results as unexpected as they were deplorable. But he was not
destined to go many steps before a fresh call was made upon his patience
and his temper. On the threshold of that splendid mansion, drawing forth
the latch-key with which he had just opened the door, there stood,
confronting the departing visitor, no less important a personage than Arthur
Vavasour himself. On seeing John, he started visibly and turned pale—not
with the pallor of fear, for at that instant very thankful was the younger man
that he had no serious wrongs, as regarded his father’s friend, with which to
reproach himself; but the sight of John Beacham perplexed and startled
him. It was connected, of course, with Honor’s flight from home; and there
existed, undoubtedly, a certain awkwardness in the fact that he, Arthur, was
so much better informed regarding Honor’s whereabouts than was the
husband from whom that misguided young woman ought, in the opinion of
sticklers for marital rights, have had no secrets of any kind whatsoever.
“You here! Beacham, how is this?” Arthur said, holding out a hand
which was not taken; and then the anger of the older man, a moment
controlled by the sight he had just witnessed above-stairs, burst out afresh.
Drawing Arthur Vavasour’s slender form back into the house, and holding
the arm of his enemy with the fixedness of a vice, he said in a voice
tremulous with concentrated passion,
“You ask me, do you, why I am here? What if, in return, I call you
scoundrel, and ask you where you have taken my wife? for you have been
with her; I see it in your face—your white, cowardly face. God, that I
should live to speak so to your father’s son!” And, half-overpowered with
contending emotions, John sank upon a chair that stood in the large empty
hall, and gazed for a moment helplessly upon the young handsome features,
which at that terrible moment reminded him strangely of Cecil Vavasour, of
the man whom in all his life he had most loved and respected.
“John,” Arthur exclaimed, “do not, for God’s sake, talk in this way. I
declare before Heaven that you are mistaken. I swear to you that your wife
—”
“Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?” cried John
impetuously. Poor fellow! he would have caught only too gladly at the
belief that his suspicions were unfounded, and that his still dearly loved
Honor had been foolish only, but not guilty. O no, not guilty! the thought of
that evil was too dreadful to be endured; so he said very eagerly, and with a
touching entreaty in his tone, “Mr. Vavasour, only say—swear it to me by
your father’s memory—that within these three days you have neither seen
nor heard from my wife, and I will thank and bless you to my dying day.”
But Arthur could not, dared not, swear to this. With all his longing, not
only to save Honor, but to console and reassure the excellent man who had
ever treated him with such frank and cordial kindness, he could not take the
oath required of him. He could not, even for the woman whom he loved,
quite drag what he called his honour in the dirt.
The sight of his hesitation was enough, and more than enough, to
confirm the husband’s worst apprehensions; and to what lengths his passion
would have carried him, had not this stormy interview been interrupted, it
would be hard to say. Already John had begun to pour a torrent of
invectives on the young man’s head, when the sight of Kate Vavasour
running, almost flying, down the broad marble staircase, arrested his words.
“Arthur, Arthur!” she screamed, “for the love of Heaven, for poor
Sophy’s sake, come away. She is dying—dead, they think,” she added
distractedly, for, in very truth, she scarcely knew what she said; “and you
have killed her!”
 CHAPTER XXI.

SUSPENSE.
Alas, alas for the young creature that was taken, and for the old man that
was left behind! Kate’s words were only too true; and Sophy, the loved of
many hearts—the wealthy heiress, on whose bright blooming face the
winds of heaven had never been allowed to play too roughly—was
numbered with the dead. She never spoke again, after they laid her upon her
bed by the side of her sleeping infant; and that she died unconscious of the
truth—that the frantic denials poured forth in his agony by Arthur of the
guilt and treachery of which he had been accused, fell upon ears that heard
them not—was, perhaps, the bitterest portion of his punishment. That he
had been accused unjustly, and that he had in reality never what is called
wronged the tender wife who had paid for her jealous curiosity with her life,
was Arthur’s only consolation in his hour of trial and bereavement. He
forgot that his freedom from actual guilt was owing to no virtue on his own
part; forgot that in his heart he had committed the sin the bare accusation of
which, overheard by his poor Sophy, had consigned her to an early grave;
forgot that while she was tender, loving, and true, his heart, ever since he
had led her to the altar, had been bound up in, and wholly occupied by,
another. But if, in his yearning for self-comfort, and in the natural longing
of cowardly mortals to escape from the sharp stings of conscience, Arthur
Vavasour could find consolation in the reflection that he had escaped actual
guilt, there was one who, from the hour when he was first prostrated to the
earth by the intelligence of poor Sophy’s death to the day when his own
sorrows were buried in the grave, could never bring himself to see any
mitigation of Arthur Vavasour’s offence, or any plea for mercy on the
ground that he had not been, in fact, faithless to his marriage-vows. To
describe the grief, the frantic despair it might rather be called, of the father
whose only child was thus, in the bloom of her innocent and happy youth,
torn from his arms and from his love, would be impossible. The blow had,
indeed, fallen with terrible suddenness on the aged head that never, never
again rose erect, as it had done before, with the proud, glad look that
prosperity and domestic content are wont to lend to their possessors. “Old
Dub” (there was such a touching solemnity, a sacredness as it were, thrown
around his undying grief, that the name seemed no longer to suit him, and
died away speedily, as do the nicknames of children when age and wisdom
renders their foolish petits noms inappropriate and absurd), “old Dub” was
never the same man again after he had seen the delicate limbs of his dead
daughter laid out for her burial. It was a touching sight to witness, that of
the gray hairs falling over the white closed eyelids of the corpse, while the
scant tears of age wrung from a father’s agony fell slowly one by one upon
poor Sophy’s marble forehead. At the foot of the bed Arthur, pale almost as
the dead that lay in its dread immovability before him, stood with folded
arms, and with ever and anon a strong shiver shaking him from head to
foot. He felt (it is the nature of his sex and kind) a good deal for himself,
even in those moments of deep grief and self-reproach; and certain
questions would intrude themselves on his mind which were out of place in
the breast of a newly-made widower, and in the chamber of mourning.
Would Mr. Duberly, who knew nothing at present of the share which he
(Arthur) had in poor Sophy’s death,—would he be very hard upon him if,
which was only too probable, he should come to know the truth? Would he
believe in Arthur’s assurances, on his oath, that John Beacham’s visit had
been the act of a madman, an act unjustified by any conduct, any intentions
on Arthur’s part to injure or to wrong him? That the old man, sorrowing
with a grief which would not be comforted, and lamenting over his lost
treasure with “groanings that could not be uttered,” would not so believe,
Arthur more than suspected. Well did he remember the jealous
watchfulness, the unceasing solicitude, with which this doting father had
striven to guard his child from even a transient sorrow; and it was not
difficult to imagine the fury that would rage within his breast when the truth
should be revealed to him that Arthur was, as Kate Vavasour had in her
agony of fear and love exclaimed, his daughter’s murderer!
Meanwhile, these two were not alone in enduring, with such patience as
in the first dark moments of bereavement we can summon to our aid, the
consequences of guilty passions, of deceit, of vanity, and of folly. Watching,
waiting, grieving,—watching and waiting for the friend who came not, and
grieving with bitter tears over her past folly,—Honor sat in the dismal
chamber of that dirty and barely respectable lodging-house—a piteous
sight, indeed, to look upon. As usual, the sense of error had been the result
of mortification and of sorrow. Le remord est né de l’abandon et non pas de
la faute; and if Arthur Vavasour had not been prevented in a manner as yet
undreamt-of by Honor from keeping his engagement with her, and aiding
her in the course which she had faintly marked out for herself, it is probable
that Honor would have been far longer than was actually the case in
arriving at a due and contrite sense of her mistakes. The hours after Arthur’s
departure dragged on very wearily for the imprudent girl who, a prisoner in
that dismal room, began, as the time wore on and she heard nothing either
of or from him, very seriously and repentantly to commune with her own
thoughts. It was then that the mist of prejudice in favour of a class above
her cleared away for ever; then that she no longer craved to be what is
conventionally termed a “lady;” then that she learned (the teaching was a
severe and uncompromising one, but none the less effectual because of the
heavy hand that had been raised in teaching her)—then it was that she
learned the valuable truth that sterling worth is more to be desired than the
outside graces of a soft manner and a flattering tongue, and that the heart of
gold is better than the glitter of a refined and fair appearance. Instead of
inwardly glorying in her near kindred to the well-born, and in lieu of
rejoicing over the fact that she came of a gentle race, and that in her veins
ran the pure Norman blood of the well-descended “Norcotts of
Archerfield,” Honor Beacham would henceforth shrink in shame from the
memory of her parentage, bearing ever before her the unwelcome and
dishonouring truth, that the man to whom she owed the birth on which she
had been weak enough to pride herself was, in very truth, nothing better
than a swindler!
And out of the painful conviction that so it was there grew another, and
if possible a still more harrowing thought—the thought, namely, of the
more than possibility which existed of a life-long separation (the
consequence of her own impatience under what appeared to her now
chastened spirit in the light of very minor grievances) from the husband
whose excellence she was tardily beginning to value as it deserved. It was
true that she had committed no act which must of necessity cause an eternal
breach between them, and equally true was it that she had, previous to her
departure, written a half-protesting, half-apologetic letter—the letter of
which the reader is already cognisant, and which (on such apparently
trifling causes do the most important events of our lives depend) was not
delivered at Pear-tree House till after its owner’s fatal visit to London—it
was true, I repeat, that Honor had written a letter which might, she felt,
eventually soften John’s heart towards her. In it she had explained, as well
as she was able—she could not abuse as heartily as she wished John’s
mother to John himself—but in it she had not disguised the fact that the old
lady’s unkindness was the sole motive cause of her departure; nor had she
hesitated to assure the husband she was leaving that she might, under other
circumstances, have lived happily beneath his roof.
How keenly, as Honor strove to call to mind the only half-remembered
expressions in that hastily-written epistle, did she regret that she had not
endeavoured to fix them more firmly on her memory; for every syllable that
she had written seemed to her of importance now, when wondering to
herself what John was thinking of her, and whether or not she was beyond
the reach of pardon.
Of Mrs. Beacham she had not yet brought herself to think with charity. If
the possibility of a return to the Paddocks lingered for a moment in her
mind, that possibility was rendered so dark and unattractive by the image of
her mother-in-law, that Honor, although beginning to long for reconciliation
with John, turned from it with as much detestation as it was in her gentle
and affectionate nature to feel. Not yet was she thoroughly and effectually
subdued; not yet had the chastening rod of affliction done its perfect work.
Honor still found herself, when the good spirit within was drawing her to an
entire oblivion of her wrongs—to a perfect pardon of the past, and to a self-
effacing sense of her own unworthiness—she still, I say, in spite of her
sometimes conviction that she ought, in deep humility, to entreat
forgiveness of her aged persecutor, shrunk with very natural repugnance
from such an act of self-abasement. The provocations she had received
would rise up in her memory, like evil ghosts that refused to be laid to rest;
while it was as yet, I fear, only in theory that Honor regarded the endurance
of wrong with patience, as one of the first of Christian virtues. The time,
however, came when she not only believed, but demonstrated her faith by
practice, that the great duty of bearing and forbearing may be so gracefully,
as well as rigidly practised, that the fruits of such forbearance can scarcely
fail to be those of mutual affection, confidence, and good-will.
The obtrusive and constant visits of Mrs. Casey did not tend to render
poor Honor better satisfied with her condition. That quick-sighted and not
over-charitable personage had drawn her own conclusions from the
lengthened stay of a young and handsome gentleman in the “second-floor
front,” and those conclusions had not tended to increase her show of respect
for the young lady—the “Miss Blake” who was so beautiful and so
befriended.
When the long day was at last over, and all chance of seeing Arthur till
the following morning was at an end, Honor prepared herself for bed, with
the heaviest heart for company she had ever known. With the impatience of
suspense so common at her age, she asked herself how it was possible to
wear through the hours till morning—the long and lonely hours in which
she had naught to do save to turn and twist, and twist and turn again, the
arguments for and against each possible reason for Arthur’s breach of faith
—the miserable hours during which she would be for ever saying with the
sleepless victim of unrest recorded in Holy Writ: “Would God it were light!
Would God it were the morning!”
But when morning came it brought with it no comfort for the lonely
watcher. The hope which she had nourished that the early post would bring
to her some explanation of the absence of her only friend proved a fruitless
one; for though the sharp tap-tap of the postman’s summons sounded dear
and loud at the door of No. 29, there was no letter, so the little dirty drab of
a servant-girl informed Honor, for her; and again the unhappy and restless
creature, seated before her untempting and scarcely-tasted breakfast, was
forced to summon all her fortitude to endure the scarcely endurable
torments of uncertainty.
 CHAPTER XXII.

JOHN GIVES WAY.

When John Beacham, after his worse than fruitless search after his missing
wife, returned, which he at once did, to the Paddocks, Mrs. Beacham,
though by no means addicted to sudden alarms, was startled by the change
which a few short hours had wrought in his outer man. The soft spring
evening was beginning to draw in, and the scent of the honeysuckle was
filling the air, when the old lady, catching the sound of horse’s hoofs (Tom
Simmons’s thoughtful care for the master whom he loved had prompted
him to have Black Jenny in waiting at Switcham for the chance of John’s
return), laid down the knitting which was her unfailing occupation after
dark, and stood beneath the blossoming woodbine that Honor loved,
waiting to greet her son. He rode forward very slowly—so slowly that Mrs.
Beacham, who had been accustomed for years to the brisk walk, verging on
a trot, at which the best rider in Sandyshire was in the habit of bringing in
his horse, imagined for a moment that it could not be really John who came
at such a lingering, lagging pace towards his home. But if the mother, who
knew his ways so well, thought that the step of her son, or rather that of his
good black steed, was strangely altered, how much greater was the shock of
surprise when, by the failing light, she looked upon John’s careworn face!
Throwing himself in a listless fashion, widely different from his
accustomed energetic movements, from the saddle, he stood by the old
woman’s side beneath the rustic porch, she looking up with sad inquiry (for
the suspense and worry of the last six-and-thirty hours had quelled her
spirit) into her son’s dulled and altered eyes.
“O, John!” she said pitifully, “dear, dear John!” and then turning her
head aside, for the strong-minded old woman scorned her own weakness,
she in secret wiped away the tears which the sight of poor John’s misery
had wrung from her aged eyes.
He put her very gently aside, so gently that none could see the action,
and then striding in with a firm step to his own business-room, he closed
and locked the door. Truly he was in no mood either to endure pity or
submit to the questionings even of the mother who bore him. The return to
his home, to the sight of familiar faces gazing at him with the compassion
which was so hard to bear, had been in itself a severe trial to the proud man,
to whom a good name was a treasure beyond, price, and who could never—
never, as he repeated with a terrible monotony to himself—hold up his head
again. But grievous as these trials were, there was worse, much worse
remaining behind; for the death of that poor young woman, who had so
short a time before been full of life and happiness, lay (indirectly, it is true,
but still it did lie—John never deceived himself on that point) on his own
miserable head; and the weight of that death and the dread of it pursued him
as might the swift footsteps of an avenging spirit, even into the stillness of
his closet. Turn which way he would, all seemed dark around him. Alone
henceforth, and while life should last (for since the evident impossibility on
Arthur Vavasour’s part to deny that he had seen Honor in London, the last
ray of hope as regarded her virtue had been swept away)—alone in his
deserted home—alone with his shame and his disgrace—what wonder was
it that John Beacham, in the silence and solitude of his chamber, should
have given way to a despondency that was twin-brother to despair?
A tap at the door, not a delicate or gentle one, for there were no genteel
and well-trained servants at the Paddocks, roused the master of the house
from the kind of stupor of grief into which he had fallen.
“A letter, please, sir,” said a voice outside—the voice of Hannah, who,
not finding her summons for admittance, promptly answered, had “tried the
door,” and that method of ingress having proved an unsuccessful one, she,
with laudable perseverance, had hit upon another plan for the attainment of
her object.
“A letter, please, sir,” and, in a lower voice at the key-hole, “I think it is
from the young missus.”
The words, as Hannah had anticipated, acted like a charm. In a moment
the door flew open under John’s eager hand, and seizing the letter (it was
the one which Honor had written previous to her departure, and which had
remained ever since its delivery under Hannah’s watchful care), he speedily
succeeded, though the daylight was waning fast, in making himself master
of its contents.
As he read the simple words—very simple they were, and childish, but
each one carrying with it a proof of the writer’s innocence and truth—the
light of hope dawned once more on poor John’s darkened brain, and big
tears of gratitude broke from his wearied eyes. Surprised, worn out both
physically and mentally, for he had been more than thirty hours without rest
or food, he could at first scarcely bring himself to understand the relief
which, nevertheless, he felt was a great and blessed one. Laying his head
down on his folded arms, with one short but fervent ejaculation of
thankfulness hovering on his parched lips, the man whose iron frame had
hitherto seemed almost impervious to fatigue, and proof against the
ordinary ills that flesh is heir to, grew gradually insensible to outer things,
losing all sense whether of joy or sorrow, in the heavy and lethargic slumber
which is too often the precursor of serious illness.
Once and again, treading softly and on tiptoe, the old woman, anxious
and miserable, stole to the side of the motionless figure, wondering at this
unnatural quiet. But Hannah bade her not to worry herself.
“It’s just nothing but being fairly worn out,” she said, “and who’s to
wonder, I should like to know?” she went on defiantly. “A man, if he’s as
strong as Samson, can’t abear being worritted for ever. Any way,” the
worthy creature said to herself, “I’m glad I kept the letter, maybe missus
would have nobbled it; so she might. There’s never no knowing what some
folks is up to;” and Hannah chuckled inwardly, as she set the tea-things in
preparation for the master’s waking.
But neither on that occasion, nor for many a day afterwards, did “the
master,” who was so beloved by all who knew him, join in the daily meals,
the regular partaking of which those who lead a simple life in farmhouses
are wont to consider as absolutely necessary for the sustainment of the vital
principle existing within the human frame. John awoke from the death-like
slumber into which he had fallen with shivering limbs and an aching head;
symptoms which even Mrs. Beacham’s limited experience told her denoted
the commencement of a violent fever; and such in fact it proved. For many
days John’s life was in serious danger; in such danger that the country folk,
coming from miles around to learn news of his condition, lingered about for
hours near the door, expecting—fearing to hear the worst. In such danger,
that the poor old woman, his mother, knew no rest either by night or day,
for at the pillow on which the fevered head lay tossing restlessly, she
listened remorsefully to his delirious ravings, ravings in which were
mingled in strange confusion the names of his lost Honor and of Arthur’s
“murdered” wife.
 CHAPTER XXIII.

HONOR RECEIVES A LETTER.

In the mean while Honor, unconscious of the events that had occurred, and
the calamities which had befallen those in whom she was so deeply
interested, had supported for another weary night and day the suspense
which she found hourly more difficult of endurance. Then the courage that
had hitherto supported her began to flag, and she half resolved—wholly
objectionable as was the plan, and revolting to every feeling of womanly
modesty—to endeavour by inquiry at Arthur’s house to obtain some
information concerning him. That some evil, some sudden accident or
grievous sickness, had overtaken her only friend, Honor could not but
believe; and it was this belief, joined to a certain pride which lingered in her
still (for, after all, Arthur might be simply false), that prevented her from
having recourse to her former plan—namely, that of writing to Arthur at his
house or at his club. To sally forth after dark; to call a cab, and to be driven
to within a few yards of Mr. Duberly’s house; and when there to make a few
insignificant inquiries of the servant which might lead to something like
elucidation of her doubts and fears, seemed a plan not very difficult of
execution; and Honor was still pondering on its expediency when to her
surprise (for she had ceased to expect such consolations) a letter was put
into her hand by Mrs. Casey—a letter, too, which she perceived at once was
from Arthur Vavasour.
Hurrying with her treasure into the inner room, which was her
bedchamber, and utterly regardless of Mrs. Casey’s feelings as a friend and
would-be confidante, Honor tore open the envelope, when the first writing
that met her eye was her own! Casting the note directed by herself
impatiently on one side, she opened another inclosure—one of deeply-
bordered mourning-paper, and read as follows:
 “My dear Honor,—For for the last time I may venture to call you so; I
write you this letter to bid you a last farewell. A heavy blow has fallen on
us all. My poor wife—I did love her, Honor, more than I ever thought—is
dead. It was very sudden. She overheard words—I trust you may never
know from whom—which must have made her think that I was false to her,
for she fell down as one dead, poor girl, and never spoke again. All this
grief and wretchedness, and the sight of poor Mr. Duberly’s misery, and
knowing he must hate me soon, is more than I can bear, so I have resolved
that after the funeral is over I will have an explanation—I mean, that I will
confess everything—about the horse and my debts, and all my horrible
deceptions to the poor old man; and after that, it is my intention to go
abroad, to America or some distant country; and my best hope is that
nobody will ever hear of me again. Writing, as I am, with the poor thing
that I have killed so near me, there are but few words, Honor, that I can dare
to say to you. One wish, one prayer, however, I may breathe, and that prayer
is, that you will go home to John. It is with the hope that you will do so, that
I send you back your own innocent, simple notes, the only ones you ever
wrote to me, and which, but for the help that they may be to you, I would
never, never have parted with. Send them to your husband, dear Honor.
They will convince him, if he is ever so positive, that I was not a liar when I
swore that you were pure as the angels of Heaven from the guilt of which
he dared suspect you. And now, dear Honor, fare you well, and if in the
days to come, when you are happy, as I pray you may be, you should ever
think of these past wretched times again, let there be forgiveness in your
heart for one whose crime towards you has been followed by a punishment
almost too heavy to be borne.”
Twice did Honor Beacham, with eyes blinded by tears, read over this
miserable letter, before the whole and entire sense of it came home to her
understanding. The shock of hearing of the death, under such pitiful
circumstances, of Arthur’s wife, was very great, and the mournful tragedy
stood out in terrible and bold relief from amongst the mist and confusion
which at first (for Honor’s intellects were then not in the clearest possible
condition) seemed to envelope the other portions of Arthur’s letter. But very
soon—too soon for the unhappy woman to whom the clearing up of the
mystery seemed almost the signal for despair—light dawned upon her
bewildered mind, and with a cry of agony, she accused herself aloud as the
wretched cause of the young mother’s untimely end. At that moment, in the
first keen torture of her self-reproach, she would have hailed as an act of
mercy from on high the relief which death, her own death, would have
brought to her. Flinging herself on her knees beside the bed, and burying
her face in its covering, she strove, but strove in vain, to stifle the violent
hysterical sobs that would, in spite of all her efforts, force themselves from
her ice-cold lips. Ah, Heaven! so the poor tortured creature asked herself,
how could she bear the life that was before her—the life burdened with
such a dreadful, dreadful weight of guilt? Verily, to use the concluding
words of Arthur’s letter, her punishment seemed greater than she could bear
—greater by far, in one respect, than that which had overtaken him; for
while her fellow-culprit could take comfort from the thought that he might
have (yet had not) sinned more heavily, she in her despairing humility
exaggerated her guilt, and sorrowed as one that had no hope.

Life, as has been said a thousand times, is made up of contrasts—

healthy, invigorating contrasts sometimes—contrasts which, while they
often jar upon the feelings, and even sometimes tinge with a faint and
humiliating colouring of ridicule the “situations” which they mar, are,
nevertheless, as I said before, highly useful in their way, acting as a mental
douche, the benefit of which may be as lasting as it is immediate. It was
such a shock as this, a trifling one in appearance, yet not altogether without
its use, that roused Honor from the kind of trance of despair into which she
had fallen. The sound of Mrs. Casey’s voice, and the commonplace inquiry
of “Please, miss, is there anything partiklar that you’d like for dinner?”
smote upon Honor’s ear like a summons from a world that she had left, and
in the interests of which she had ceased to have a share. But although this
was the case, and albeit her grief and repentance were as deep and scarcely
less agonising than they had been at first, the necessity of rising from her
knees, of hiding the traces of her agitation, and, more than all, the
obligation under which she lay, both of replying to Mrs. Casey’s well-meant
inquiries, and of baffling as best she might that investigating person’s very
natural curiosity, all these things were, to a certain extent, good for Honor.
That they were beneficial was evidenced by the fact that, after Mrs. Casey
had, with a very dissatisfied look, which increased the always somewhat
repulsive expression of her face, left her lodger to herself, that, to the
landlady’s thinking, very mysterious and unsatisfactory young person felt
far more equal than she had done ten minutes before to the task of thinking,
with some degree of calmness and common sense, not only on the
difficulties and necessities of her present position, but on what manner it
had become her duty at this crisis of her affairs to act.
Perhaps the strongest feeling (next to her own bitter self-reproach) which
she was conscious of entertaining was one of deep compassion for, and
sympathy with poor John’s wholly undeserved sorrows. All that had passed,
and the deeds which had led with such fearful rapidity to fatal and
irretrievable results, appeared in all their miserable distinctness to Honor’s
mind. She could understand now that John, in his eagerness to discover her
whereabouts, had found his way to the house where Arthur lived; and that,
then and there, worked up to unjust suspicion by his mother’s hints and
accusations, he had with the vehemence of unbridled passion uttered the
words which, overheard by Arthur’s wife, had proved a death-blow to that
ill-fated woman. How deeply and how lastingly the remorse of such a deed
(all-unintentional though it was) would crush down the spirit of one of
whose tenderness of heart Honor had had abundant proofs, she did not need
in that unhappy hour to be reminded; while to act to the best of her ability
the part of comforter, to strive with all the means in her power to obtain her
pardon, and to induce her husband to believe her, and to forget the past,
were now the dearest wishes of her heart. But would he—ah! there lay the
one terrible and ever-recurring thought—would he, even after he had read
the letters which “poor” Arthur, with what Honor was still weak enough to
style his “unselfish kindness”—had returned to her—credit the truth that
her worst faults were those of folly, of vanity; her most unpardonable errors
those arising from a quick and rebellious temper? If she could but see him,
Honor sometimes told herself, it would not be very difficult—in defiance of
his mother—to make John judge her rightfully; but though in her more
sanguine moments this was the poor girl’s persuasion, there were other, and
far more frequent occasions when she despaired of forgiveness, and when a
dread of even a chance meeting with her husband made her heart sink
within her for fear.
In this miserable fashion, alternating between hope and depression,
haunted by night as well as by day with the memory of the dead, and with
her heart made every hour sorer by thinking on the living, four more painful
days and nights sped by.
 She had been more than a week an inmate of Mrs. Casey’s house, when
that thrifty personage—who had not yet, as she elegantly termed it, “seen
the colour of Miss Blake’s money”—made her usual afternoon entrée into
her lodger’s sitting-room, with an ominous long-shaped piece of bluish-
white paper in her hand. Mrs. Casey—whose wits were, like those of many
others of her class and kind sharpened by the instincts of self-preservation
necessary for her calling—was surprised on her entrance by a change in her
lodger’s countenance and manner, for which, seeing that Miss Blake had to
the best of her belief, received neither visitor nor letter, the worthy landlady
could by no means account. There was a feverish flush; a light which,
though it was scarcely joy, was wonderfully revivifying in that beautiful
face; and Mrs. Casey, who had entered the room with one of the least tender
of human purposes, felt even her prosaic fancy warm beneath its softening
influence. Nor was the woman’s surprise concerning her mysterious tenant
lessened when the latter said with a faint blush, and hurriedly:
“Mrs. Casey, I was going to ask for you; ah, that is your bill; and,”
glancing at it slightly, “perhaps you will help me to pack up my few things,
for I am going home!”
She said the words, there was no mistaking that, exultingly; and Mrs.
Casey (wondering greatly, for had not this to the end mysterious young
person told her that she had no home?) uttered what was intended to be a
civil congratulation on this apparently altered condition in her affairs. But
Honor heard her not. With a nervous eagerness which permitted of no pause
either for thought or speech, she continued the few and simple preparations
for her departure. Drawing forth her purse, she paid, with an absence of all
prudence, and a degree of submission to exorbitant charges which caused
Mrs. Casey bitterly to regret her own moderation, the “little account” which
that lady obsequiously handed to her, and, when all was ready, she shook
hands nervously with the woman with whom one of the thousand chances
of life had made her acquainted, and whom she was never likely, on this
side the grave, to meet again.
“I wish you good-day, miss, and a pleasant journey,” Mrs. Casey said,
taking her last inquisitorial survey of her late lodger through the open
window of the cab which had been summoned to convey “Miss Blake” to
the station—“and if you should know any friends, gentlemen preferred,
who want a quiet lodging, good attendance, and everything found, perhaps
you’d be good enough to think of No. 29.”
 “Indeed I will,” said Honor, answering the request, as such questions
usually are answered, at random; and in another moment the owner of the
dirty net-cap and incipient moustache returned, the impersonation of baffled
curiosity, into the underground precincts of the “quiet lodging,” while
Honor, Hope having at last come out conqueror over Fear, pursued her way
—a thousand conflicting feelings surging in her breast—towards home!
Home at last, home again, for all that in her husband’s house Honor
expected still to find the unloving woman who had once made that home so
hard to bear. Home again, though John’s anger might still be hot against her,
and though she had her pardon yet to seek. Home once more; for on that
never-to-be-forgotten day Honor had discovered that which changed for her,
in some mysterious way, the entire aspect of her life, had made sure of that
which she fondly hoped would not only make her peace with John, but
would perhaps even soften his mother’s stony heart towards her.
“They can never, never be hard upon me now,” she kept repeating to
herself as visions of a great joy yet to come, a joy that would gild over the
dark and mournful outlines of the past, rose up before her. Visions they
were of a fair child—the peacemaker—a child with tender limbs, rounded
and soft, whose little cheek was pressed to hers, John all the while looking
at them both, the child and her, in wonder and in love.
But, unfortunately for the sustainment of poor Honor’s courage, other
and less agreeable thoughts and anticipations took their place as she drew
nearer and more near to the home that she was gilding with her own fancy’s
rays. At a distance, and buoyed up by the inward consciousness that, in her
humble way, she was blessed among women, it had seemed no such hard
matter to fall at honest John’s feet and cry, “Husband, I have sinned before
thee, and am no more worthy—inasmuch as I have been proud, passionate,
and ungrateful—to be called thy wife:” but as the moment for confession
approached, stern reality usurped the place of fancy, and the task grew to
her thinking very hard indeed to perform. Nor was it rendered easier by the
reception—real or imaginary—which awaited her at Switcham—Switcham,
where, a twelvemonth before, at that self-same hour, she had returned from
her bridal tour in happiness and half in triumph, to her home, and where,
now a disgraced and lonely wanderer, she had to endure as best she might
cold looks and disrespectful stares, from the sight of which she escaped
with eager haste into the first closed carriage that she found in waiting.