“I know that, my child, but we are not always as strong as our inclinations–the spirit is one thing and the flesh another. Now, I want to appoint you a mission–you are a good girl, and your pleasure is in doing good. Supposing you would favor me by doing good at my request?”
Honor started a little, and looked enquiringly into his face.
“You know you have only to tell me your wish, dear Mr. Rayne. I wish I could have anticipated it; but as that could not be, I pray you tell me immediately. What can I do for you worth the asking?”
“I want you to promise me that you will begin right away to work your influence over Guy.” The color rose to her cheeks, and the smile faded out of her eyes and mouth. “This, mind, is a profound secret, Guy has neither father nor mother–he has no home, nor no real friends. I, like the rest, have spoiled him but God has sent me you in time. I know that my dead sister would rebuke me severely were she to see her boy, my charge, so reckless and so dissipated. But I fancy it is not so much my fault–my influence could never change him much.–I want you, for my sake, to try yours. You have only to meet him often, and talk with him. If he has eyes at all he must see in our practical life all the theories he has heard preached to him so often. Show him in all the indirect ways you can, how foolish and frivolous are the ways of society to-day. He is a clever boy, and susceptible, and your trouble will not be lost. Come, now, will you promise me only to try, for my sake?”
“How you exaggerate the capacity of a weak woman,” she said a little sadly, then, after a moment’s pause, she continued–“It is no trifling mission you appoint to me, Mr. Rayne; it is full of responsibilities. But there!” and she clapped her little hand firmly into his, “That means my strongest resolution–I will do my best You can ask no more.”
“God bless you” the old man murmured slowly, squeezing the slender fingers tenderly between both his hands, “I am sure you will never regret it.”
No other word was spoken. Henry Rayne had left the room, and Honor stood there alone–stood with folded hands and dreamy eyes–thinking. What a strange request this had been! How was she going to fulfil her promise without betraying the real impulse that had spurred her to make it? How was she going to work her way into his confidence, and yet guard her own? Oh, if this were a task for Mr. Rayne’s sake only, how easily she would convert it into a pleasure–but she had promised, that cancelled all her misgivings. She would do it now, if it were in woman’s power, she would make it her duty, and with a resolute will and an anxious heart, surely the accomplishment would not prove too hard–“Only–if I had not seen my want supplied in him–if I had not recognized in him the hero of my life’s dream. Oh, Guy! What a joy it will be to me if I can teach you to come to me, turning your back upon gaiety, and pleasure, and temptation, to sit by my side, when the voice of a more powerful tempter is stifling mine. What joy for me then!–but no, I am wrong!–it is not my gratification I have been sent to seek; this is a mere duty. If I had loathed you at this moment, my duty is still the same. Just now, it is not _your_ sake nor _mine_–it is Henry Rayne’s.”
The door opened slowly and the croaky voice of the old male servant broke upon her reverie.
“Beg pardon Miss, but dinner is served.”
Heroically she stowed away her emotions, the old pleasant smile stole back into its home, and with a beaming face and cheerful step she passed into the dining-room.
CHAPTER VI.
“Oh the snow, the beautiful snow
Filling the sky and the earth below.’
“It will be a stormy night I think,” Honor says, shrugging her pretty shoulders behind the window-blind she is just lowering, “I wish I had the stout brawny arms of a man to-night….”
“Around your waist?” says a voice from behind her, and, suiting the action to the word, some one encircles her slender waist with “stout brawny arms.”
“Guy! I have told you in plain English that I will not allow you to take such freedom with me. _This_ time, I say, ‘_Je vous difends sirieusementde mettre vos bras…._'”
“Oh! that’s enough, by Jove, you’d drive a fellow crazy if he’d listen to you long enough, with your recitals on maidenly propriety. Now, there’s Miss Bella Dash–many a season’s belle–just chuckles with delight when I get this broad cloth sleeve fairly around her blue satin basque”
“Oh! I dare say! but society gives ‘poetical licences’ to her adopted children, which outside of her pale would be simply atrocious. If Bella Dash saw your coat sleeve around Betsy, the house-maid’s basque, it would mean another thing altogether, though Betsy’s eyes are as fine as Miss Bella’s any day. Besides, you must have learned by now that the ‘Bella Dash’s’ of Ottawa society to-day are _nothing_ to me. My sympathy for _my_ sex goes out to the whole species and when I offer it to individuals, I exclude the ‘Miss Dash’s’ that make the ‘_tableaux vivants_’ of the modern drawing-room.”
“By Jove! that is a fine speech Honor; now see here between you and me (I might also add the only two sensible people in Ottawa) what do you think would become of us young enthusiastic fellows if all the ‘girls’ stood on their high-heeled dignity like you? Why of course the monasteries and lunatic asylums would have more to do, and by and by, the lunatic asylum would have it all; but destiny is not so cruel a tyrant as you, so she makes your haughty kind the exception and not the rule.”
Honor laughed, a low curious laugh, and said “Then she is very kind to _me_ to have made me realize soon enough how much too worthy I am to be any man’s pastime, a toy for him to play with until the paint is rubbed off–then to be flung aside for something new. If that is all Bella Dash and her prototypes, are worth in your estimation, it is no wonder they are proud, and no wonder they hold their heads high enough to sniff the air over the heads of girls, who, were you to use their names as you do Miss Dash’s, would level you to the ground.”
“My most supreme stand-offish friend, I hope sincerely you won’t preach any of these theories around our gay little city. Why, the young ladies here are just a jolly crowd, who don’t transmogrify their whole faces because a fellow likes to spoon now and then to kill time. By Jove! you’d spoil the fun for the winter, and as soon as spring came the whole male element of Ottawa City would ‘make’ for the fresh pastures of the North-West.”
“That is a worthy declaration Mr. Elersly, I must say. I hope you are aware that in speaking thus, you risk the good opinion of your respectable sensible friends–if you have any–outside of this house. It is cold so near the window, let me pass please. I prefer a seat by the fire to this stupid argument here in the window recess.”
The mischievous smile died out of Guy’s handsome face, as he looked earnestly into the beautiful eyes of the girl standing by him.
“Oh yes, of course” said he, with a sigh, “anything is stupid in _my_ company, although I come to you when I’m in good spirits for sympathy, as well as when I’m ‘blue’ for consolation: you always find it dull and stupid, and you don’t hesitate to tell me either. If I bore you so dreadfully, I’ll be off.”
Honor looked up suddenly; she stretched out her hand and laid it on his shoulder; her voice was changed and earnest as she said. “Stay Guy, and we’ll talk it over in a friendly way. There are two seats by the grate, and I will be very amiable–I promise you.”
There was a moment of hesitation–temptation–both ways for Guy. At last he looked up, saying: “I’m really sorry, Honor, but I made an engagement for eight o’clock, and I’ve only ten minutes to walk over half a mile; so we’ll have to postpone our little ‘_veillee_.'”
She turned from him and looked into the fire “Very well,” she answered quietly, “the night is stormy, but I suppose you don’t mind that.”
“Not much,” a fellow has to humour the weather for the weather won’t humour him.
“But by Jove! its eight o’clock,” said Guy, looking at his watch, “and I’ll be puckering my patrician brow to invent an excuse for this delay. So ‘ta-ta.'”
“Good night,” Honor said in a low voice, extending her hand as Guy approached the fire to light his cigar. Another moment, and the young girl was alone with her thoughts.
We might stop here and wonder at the mysterious conventionality that is influencing all our lives now-a-days. It is not a deception, and yet its consequences are often the same. Here was a striking instance of its existence. It might have been noticed from the beginning of the last interview that Honor and Guy had grown somewhat more familiar with one another. It was Mr. Rayne’s doings, for had he not interfered, the same cold mysterious distance would still have been between them; but there was no sacrifice too great where he was concerned, and it was purely for his sake the young people dispensed with the formality of their early acquaintance. And yet, how superficial this familiarity was on both sides! Just now, look at them–read their thoughts–see their hearts.
Guy closed the front door with a heavy bang and went out into the street troubled. He was talking to himself: “Such a farce, by Jove! one would think she was a little sister, by the way I try to speak, and if she only knew how I struggle to suffocate the passion that rises within me, when she looks up so earnestly out of her big dreaming eyes; it is sheer folly and I’ll go mad if it must continue–and yet–if uncle ever suspected my love he would separate us then and there. But it is dangerous dust I am flinging in his eyes by being free and easy with her in this way. In a little while more I won’t be able to trust myself, and God help me then. Confound those Teazle girls, only for their invitation I would have stayed with Honor to-night, but a fellow belongs to every one in this city before himself, and I can’t expect to escape”
“Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun.”
By this time he was mounting the steps of his boarding-house, and he flung the butt of his cigar violently at a gaunt spare cat that just ventured its pinched countenance from under the verandah. As he turned the latch-key, he was indulging in a strain of “In the gloaming, oh! my darling” as though he were the happiest of living creatures.
For some moments after Guy left his uncle’s house Honor sat motionless reading the coals. She was troubled: Mr. Rayne expected her to be able to entice his nephew away from these never ending parties of pleasure, and she could not. If she did not care for him quite so much, her task would indeed be easier, indifference spurs on so to a task that is mere duty. How miserable she was, here, all alone, on his account, while he, where was he spending these moments fraught with so much anxiety for her?
At this juncture Mr. Rayne bustled in and, somewhat surprised to find his little girl alone, he took the seat Honor had placed for Guy, and settled himself for a comfortable fireside chat.
CHAPTER VII.
“The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men: A thousand hearts beat happily: and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage-bell.” –_Byron_.
Let us now contrast the two pictures which present themselves to the imagination on this stormy winter evening. One is quiet, usual, familiar; the other is noisy, glittering, but also familiar. One is the drawing-room in Mr. Rayne’s comfortable house, with the gaslight falling gently over the silent room–it is not turned very high. Mr. Rayne is dozing in an arm-chair. His hands are folded across his breast, and his limbs are extended at full length–he is dreaming. Honor is seated at the piano, stealing her slender fingers over the ivory keys. It is a low, rippling strain–_Valse des Soupirs_–such as fairies might bring from their magic touch. ‘Tis the music of her own heart–the sound of her sighs, and she plays on softly, heedlessly. She is lost in the ecstacy of her own reverie.
We turn to the other side of the picture. Noisy strains of dance music, merry peals of laughter, little snatches of society gossip, beaming faces, silk and lace and flimsy loveliness, bouquets and gloves, trains, handkerchiefs, fans and flirtation, all in a sweet confusion. This is Ottawa at its best, as every one allows when the Misses Teazle throw aside their family portals for their annual ball. Every one is there– married and single, young and old, homely and pretty, rich and–(no! not rich and poor), the rich only, the powerful only, the most influential papas and the best-dressed mammas that Ottawa can afford, and the “juveniles” get in on pa’s and ma’s qualifications. It is the first private ball since the opening of Parliament, and every one feels very fresh for pleasure. The Misses Teazle themselves look charming (what hostesses ever did not in Ottawa?) and the rest vie with one another.
We are somewhat confused on our entrance into the brilliant room, but some glaring objects attract our attention, thereby kindly taking that look of vacant bewilderment out of our eyes. We have often wondered what the scene was like inside those closed shutters, and here we are now, transported all at once to the very midst of the interesting proceedings.
There is a group near the door that we readily take in, in our first sweeping glance round the room. Mrs. Mountainhead, a lady prodigiously inclined to embonpoint, looking exceedingly warm and uncomfortable, is the central figure. Her two daughters and their attendant cavaliers are also there. But it is plain to see that Mrs. Mountainhead does not enjoy the ball. She stands in holy awe of her aristocratic daughters, who are just “fresh” from a very modern boarding-school. Every word she utters has an accompanying look thrown either to the short-sighted full- complexioned eldest daughter or to the slim, unprepossessing younger one, seeking approval from their responsive glances. And, after all, poor Mamma Mountainhead, in her ruby velvet and Chantilly lace, has, by far, more brains of her own–if she could get a license to use them– than either of her daughters have ever admitted within the limits of their well-frizzed heads. But who is the apparently devoted admirer of Miss Gerty Mountainhead, who is leaning over her chair from behind, with the top of his aquiline nose in ridiculous proximity to her very red face? Who but Mr. Guy Elersley? There he is, whispering all kinds of nothings into the blushing, susceptible ear of dear Miss Gerty, never heeding the thought of the lonely girl at the piano in the quiet home of his uncle.
Then there is a silvery laugh, and you hear the words–“Well, between the Racquet court and the skating rink, and calls, and going out, what do you think I could ever do? Why, the day is not half long enough as it is.”
“Surely not, Miss Dash,” a deep voice makes answer in a tone of quiet amusement, “you must be dreadfully worried in trying to make things harmonize. You are so tired at night that half the morning must go for repose, and then–“
Here the speakers moved on and it was seen that Bella Dash was happy on the arm of a wealthy bachelor who was fast becoming interesting to all female friends, mamas and daughters. It is easy to see at a glance that every one is fooling every one else, and the male element in the room is absorbing all the real fun.
With the exception of a few newly-appointed civil servants who have “made their calls” and run an account at the tailors, the other gentlemen are mostly well-versed in the drawing-room slang and will certainly not bore their fair partners by discussing anything outside of Rideau Hall, or the other fashionable and interesting haunts of gay winter festivities. These gallant knights are easily distinguished looking around the ball room with half-closed eyes (they are mostly short-sighted), or parading their audible element through the room with such a lazy drawl–beautifully substituting the _r’s_ with a perfectly Italianized “aw.”
Among these indispensables, were Jack Fairmay, Willie Airey and a great many more of our “Sparks Street” elegants. How much better they look on a freezing afternoon with their noses blue and their fur caps pulled comfortably down over their ears, than in the painfully proper looking long-tailed broad cloth and white kids, exactions of society’s absolute laws.
All the blondes and brunettes of Centre Town and Upper Town and Sandy Hill, all the “tony” Post Office clerks, all the young, flourishing, embryo and genuine lawyers, doctors, engineers, rich lumber merchants, and civil servants, _ad infinitum_ were there.
What a gay picture! What an interesting sight! Who would not love Ottawa for its self-made gouty papas and its fat, airy, comfortable mamas? Think of the wonderful influence of these thoroughly Christian women on the sphere in which they shine. Even in this one gathering can we not realize how the improvements and customs of the day cast their benign influence over a mighty world, through the rising generation. Those dear pretty pink and white dimpled darlings done up in “illusion” and silks, how happy it makes one feel only to look at them! This must be the nature of the remarks, Guy and another male friend exchange in the bay window. Let us draw nearer.
“You’re wrong, Bob my dear,” Guy is saying, “I agree with you they do look like fish-hooks strung in a row, but I heard Miss Nellie Teazle tell Mrs. John Prim, that that was the ‘Montagu’ style; so excuse me for contradicting you.”
“Oh! don’t mention it, the name almost redeems the folly of the thing. By the way Elersley, you have been ‘going it’ in rather a pronounced way with Miss Mountainhead to-night. Is it too soon to be the first to congratulate?”
“Oh Lord!” Guy smothers the exclamation under his heavy moustache. “You might try the names of all the dear ones in succession on me. They’re just immensely jolly, you know, but I never heard of a young Ottawaite in his sane sober senses, go choose his future wife in a ballroom.”
Just here, Miss Dash comes up and throws a coquettish look at Guy through the opening in the curtains. He nods a temporary good-bye to his companion and goes off to claim the next waltz which Miss Dash has promised him, and, oh Guy! naughty boy! if he is not saying over the identical pretty nothings to Miss Bella, that are yet filling the heart of Miss Mountainhead. with a delicious souvenir of him.
In another corner of the room Bob Apley is “spooning” most suggestively with the same Miss MacArgent whose “fish-hooks” he has just been ridiculing so mercilessly. This of course is pardonable according to the world’s wise indulgent maxims, especially when we consider that Miss MacArgent’s father’s income, daily, is almost identical with the amount of dollars and cents that find their way to the pockets of the impecunious Bob in a whole year.
Besides Emily is rather a good-looking specimen of the “foreign” belles that winter in Ottawa, and some one even said last winter that one of the Governor-General’s Aides-de Camp and she–oh! we all know how the green-eyed monster tortured the hearts of the poor belles of countless seasons, when they saw their indisputable rights usurped by a comparative stranger. The two Misses Begg, for instance, who have been twenty-five and twenty-six respectively for the last eight years, waiting for the turn in their lives, that will never come, have cause for bitter complaint. The same faces are here that are ever on exhibition as the champion tennis player, the champion skater, another an unrivalled waltzer, and some more distinguished vocalists and instrumental performers. These grow wearisome once the novelty wears off. There is nothing in them besides the foam that blows away after a little and leaves no trace of its once august presence.
We will make our adieus gladly to the affected civil servants, the young embryo professionals, the rich independent bachelors, the corpulent papas and mamas, the famous tennis, skating, singing, dancing and playing heroines, and go joyfully back to the snug little parlor of Henry Rayne, where sits the only one sensible girl we have seen to-night.
She has ceased playing, and is now sitting by a low table with her lovely head bent earnestly over a lap full of wool-work. The little clock goes ticking on through the noiseless moments that come and go and still her busy fingers ply hurriedly through the stitches. At last it is ten o’clock and instinctively she rises, puts away her wools and needle, and goes over to the chair which yet supports the sleeping figure of Henry Rayne.
“Good night, Grandpapa,” she says softly in his ear.
He hears the low sweet whisper. Her voice would penetrate the depth of death itself for him, he fancies. She said “Grandpapa.” She only calls him that when she is sad, whenever a sense of bitter loneliness fills her heart, making her miss a kind mother and her dear handsome father most.
He opens his eyes instantly and raises his hand to draw the pretty bowed head closer still to his.
“Good-night, my dear little child. How stupid of me to have dozed here all night leaving you by yourself.”
“Don’t fret, Grandpa dear, I love your company, and all that, but remember I am never less alone than when alone, and an evening by myself is never lost to me.”
“No, my pretty one, but you must grow tired some day thinking so incessantly, I must try and distract you; it is dreadful of me to keep you housed up, so secluded, when there is so much for your youth and beauty to enjoy outside. May be I’m responsible for many a sigh you’ve heaved lately, but it never struck me you see, my pretty darling, that our sentiments and sympathies run so widely apart, it is not very surprising if an old prosy bachelor should forget to ferret out the pleasures of youth, to bestow them on a fair young beautiful thing like you,”
“Oh-ho, now dear old Grandpa, you have been sleeping and dreaming of somebody you are mistaking for me. Don’t fret for not spoiling me more than you do. I am pampered enough dear knows. Good-night, I am sleepy too, and I think a night’s rest would not be detrimental to either of us, eh grandfather?” and kissing him tenderly on both cheeks, she skipped out through the open doorway and ran up to her own little room.
CHAPTER VIII.
Grace was in all her steps
Heaven in her eye
In every gesture, dignity and love. –_Milton._
There was no nonsense about Honor Edgeworth. Anyone should like her. There may have been traits in her character that would elicit no sympathy from some, but they either forget the extraordinary circumstances that influenced her young life, or else they are prejudiced against such individuals as she, whose eyes are widely opened to all the existing follies and extravagances of her species.
Honor would have grown up and bloomed to ornament a far fairer land than Canada, her too enthusiastic nature would have been infinitely better developed in another world, but it is useless to sit down and mourn over the “might have beens” that are always such a loss to us, because we see them, devoid of all the disadvantages realization brings to bear on our own sad experience.
Honor was not even one of those exceptionable women created, not out of the slime of the earth, but conceived in the romantic mind of some extravagant novelist, and brought into the world by his magic pen. No indeed, she had certainly a beautiful face, almost a faultless face, but how many have cursed the day when first they knew their own beauty! How many look back over pages and pages of awful crimes and shameful deeds, and the index page, the starting point, is their beautiful face. So do not be too hasty in envying the physical perfection or loveliness of others. Rejoice that you have it not; the want of it must be your salvation. Know well that if it is not yours, it is because the possession and consciousness thereof would lead you to evil, and it is one of those things for which God has his own wise ends.
Perhaps if Honor had mixed with the feminine world more intimately she would not be the standard of maidenly modesty and reserve that she was in her nineteenth year; but in her there was an utter absence of that self-sufficiency and loudness that is painfully prominent now-a-days in the very city we inhabit. And yet in all her meekness and mildness if you by look or word injured the extreme sense of delicacy that was the under current of all her movements, then–she reared her aristocratic chin high in the air and looked down upon you in such scorn and anger, as wounded innocence alone can assume. One curl of that splendid lip, one flash from that cold grey eye and you did not take long to feel how basely you had lowered yourself, and that a pardon craved on your knees could scarce half atone for the offence.
What a loss to the social world that women of her stamp are not more plentiful! What on earth else can redress social evils if not the redeeming influence of good Christian determined women? Why should they not hold the key to the good impulses, the moral treasures of mankind as well as they wind themselves into the evil nature by enticing the susceptible, dealing out gratification to the willing, and dragging souls blindfolded into an irremediable eternity?
Physiognomists tell us, if we can not observe it for ourselves, that there exists not only that universal difference among things, which makes genus, species, classes, etc., but that even among individuals there is no perfect resemblance found. There are the general prominent traits that serve to classify them, but perhaps there is more difference among the individuals of a species, when examined minutely, than there would be between individuals of a different genus.
This is so true of the human species, which is difficult to judge individually on account of the incessant mysterious hidden workings of that ever active faculty of the soul, which manifests itself so differently to other eyes through actions and words of greater or less import.
This is a digression, but, it came from contemplating the singular beauty of one woman’s soul, among the tarnished multitude of victims to that social levity and those superficial virtues that society honors, and with which our modern fashionable women persuade themselves they are doing marvels in the world of good.
If I make a paragon of Honor Edgeworth, it is because I can defy any broad-minded, unprejudiced critic to find a single grievous fault in her character.
Besides the ordinary cultivation of her mind in all its faculties, Honor had another and a nobler ambition. She had acquired all the requisite knowledge to fit her for any station in life, from that of a nursery governess to that of the highest lady in the land. Her learning was not a smattering of this and that–a few words of German, a great deal too many of her own tongue, a well-studied enthusiasm for Tennyson and Longfellow, and may be now and then a word for the “Lake” school poets. Who has not met in their long or short run of experience with the modern graduate who “perfectly idolized” Tennyson or Byron, who “raved” about Shelley’s poetical mysticism, or who was “fairly enchanted” with Goethe’s deep romanticism. In some of her peculiar phases she even reckons as items of her illimitable knowledge selections from her “favorites” among the French romantics, or the realistic school may be more to her taste. She rolls up her eyes for Mozart and Beethoven and Gottschalk, but her heart thumps for Offenbach, Lamothe or Strauss. To make herself “interesting” in society she has “burned the midnight oil” over “David Copperfield,” “Dombey and Son,” “Jane Eyre,” “East Lynne,” “Endymion” and other popular volumes as they gain fame. She can sing snatches from all the finest operas, in Italian, German or French. She can dance the Boston and Rush Polka with unrivalled grace, she can flirt and affect the most becoming airs, she never misses a _matinee_ or evening performance at the Grand Opera House; she can do the “grape-vine” exquisitely on her silver-plated skates, and can toss the tennis ball with wonderful dexterity.
All this relates to the effects of the superficial cultivation that our women are getting in this century. A mind polished so that the “rough” cannot manifest itself, a little veneering of knowledge and showy accomplishments, but a heart, alas!–ignored and neglected; the source of all womanly perfection blocked up and destroyed–that is the sacrifice that will alone appease the world in its most sensual phase of to-day, the sacrifice complete and universal of women’s hearts. Ah! how soon they nourish the briers and thistles of cold indifference and unchristian feeling. In opposition to this sad spectacle I come back to Honor Edgeworth by her bedside, on her knees, at her evening prayer. Here is a woman who has moulded her heart according to the law of Christ. “Be ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Here is a woman who is learned, wise and simple, gay, light-hearted and pious, confiding and discreet, one who can redeem the loss of many because temptation assailed her and left her the victor.
Long after Honor lay sleeping peacefully, her pink cheeks buried in the soft pillows, Mr. Rayne sat thinking in the armchair below. It was growing painfully evident to him that his darling _protegee_ was now budding into all the fullness and maturity of womanhood, and had she been his own daughter he would have introduced her formally into society by now. This was what troubled him. He did not relish the idea of sending this fair delicate morsel out among the chills and dangers of a cold world. And yet, if influenced by this good intention, he deprived her of the seeming advantages that active life in society affords, and if in later years she would reproach him as the cause of some misfortune or other, what would these probably groundless fears avail him in his defence? She was old enough to know danger, and she had spoken to him already of the world as though her experience of it was great and sufficient. Perhaps all she needed for a final confirmation of her opinions of the degradation of that same world was a trial of it. And should he wrong her by depriving her of it through a false motive?
Whatever way he turned the argument it looked like a dilemma. He should either send her “out” or not. If he pursued the former course, the advantages were six, the disadvantages half-a-dozen. If the latter, the advantages were twelve, the disadvantages a dozen, so that he found himself almost unequal to the solution of the problem.
Bye-and-bye however, he resolved to come to some conclusion, and thus by getting angry with himself, he narrowed the two inclinations into one, and that assumed the shape of a final decision to give her the same chances as Ottawa’s other comfortable daughters.
Once his resolution was made, matters grew easy. He would write to a widowed cousin who was living a seceded life in Western Ontario, inducing her to share his home, and the responsibility that weighed upon him of giving his adopted child her due.
This lady had mourned her departed husband in solitary seclusion for nigh eight years, and it struck Mr. Rayne on this eventful evening that may be she would find pleasure in a change.
Thus was Honor’s destiny slowly deciding itself in the troubled mind of her benefactor while she lay blissfully unconcious, fast asleep among a heap of downy pillows, with one fair hand thrown carelessly over her head and a little stray curl or two nestling on her warm flushed brow.
Satisfied with his final judgment, Mr. Rayne called for a light and escorted himself to the downy arms of his comfortable bed, and when we next take a peep–for of course we’ve not intruded for the few moments he was saying his prayers–he is snoring the snore of the truly heavy sleeper, and his big good-natured face scarcely discernible among night-cap, pillows and sheets, easily convinces one of the indisputable quiescence of the mind’s consciousness in slumber.
Is it not almost equivalent to the acomplishment of the deed itself when we have fallen asleep the night before with the resolution of performing it on the morrow? Is not the wrong almost redressed when we have promised our selves to right it at any cost on the morrow? Is not the thought itself equal to the vow if we know that with the morning’s sun we shall rise to make it in reality? One feels all the satisfaction of a deed accomplished in anticipation, and God be thanked for this, for how many weary souls must have made their last night on earth endurable, by the peace of mind that such resolutions infallibly bring.
This explains the comfort and utter heedlessness of Mr Rayne’s slumber after such a miserable time as he passed arguing against himself in his drawing-room. He had vowed that he would broach the tender subject to Honor the very next day, and thus free himself from any more hours of self-reproach.
CHAPTER IX.
“They say the maxim is not new,
That good and evil mixed must be
In every thing this world can show.”
–_Patty_
The next morning dawned a calm, mild day. The snow was knee-deep on the ground and covered the housetops with a thick soft mantle. On how many utterly different scenes the stray sunbeams rested that winter morning. Nearly all the heroines of Miss Teazle’s ball were sunk in heavy, tired slumber, in rooms strewn with laces and flowers and other fragments of last night’s dissipation. The poor over-exerted mammas are neither able to rise nor to sleep, and their pitiably puckered brows and sour looking faces would excite the sympathy of the most cynical misanthrope.
And yet, perhaps if not reminded, some readers would be tasteless enough to overlook the noble sacrifice these mothers were making of the comfort of their lives in order to “chaperone” their stylish daughters to all the haunts of pleasure. These poor fashionable women must indeed drain life’s cup of bitterness to the dregs, if we can judge from the worldly girl’s soliloquy.
Who rigs herself in satins light,
And goes to parties every night,
To chaperone her daughters bright? My mother
Who eats late suppers to her grief,
Of jellied turkeys and roast beef, And finds no dyspeptic relief
My mother
Who tries to talk with pompous air,
And saturates with dye her hair,
To gratify her daughters fair?
My mother
Who snubs our neighbor Mrs. Bell,
In poorer days we knew so well,
And tales of woe did often tell?
My mother
Who calls at Ridleau and all round,
Where rank and titles do abound,
And boasts of cousins newly found? My mother
Who fears to bow to poorer kin,
For fear her daughters will begin
To growl and scold as though ’twere sin! My mother.
I give the intelligent reader ten minutes to pause and moralize after digestion.
I anticipate the look of stupid wonder that must necessarily envelope the face. If there is so much in individual influence in the lower circle, what can one expect from the multitude that must submit to a thousand other decrees coming imperatively from the infallible (?) lips of society herself? How can we do otherwise than substitute for truth and simplicity, deception and affectation? What else can we do but fail to recognise one another in the characters we are forced to assume? Is it surprising that good and wise men from their corners of seclusion call the world degenerate, and wonder at the persistent wrong-doing of those who are the work of such merciful hands? Strange to say, most of us know, or pretend to know, that life is all deception; that the world itself, and those who belong to it are essentially, almost necessarily, selfish; that the goodness and charity which circulate at rare intervals are only the superfluidities of comfort, proceeding from no generous impulse whatever. It is not dealt out at the sacrifice of a crust of bread. It is given so that it may not be left.
Oh, the weakness of humanity after nineteen centuries of fortification! Oh, the despicable degradation of a race conceived in an Eternal Mind, created by an Infinite Hand, redeemed by the voluntary sacrifice of a God, and sanctified by the Spirit that pervades the universe!
Knowing this, realizing this, as most of us do, why do we not make a move towards independence? Not the independence of the State, that gratifies the paltry ambition of thousands, not that social independence whose meaning has of late been so shamefully misapplied, not even the individual independence that satisfies many. These are but names. I mean that independence that leaves one unfettered by one’s self, that makes one victor over one’s own evil tendencies and impulses–for man has no enemy so cunning as himself. If he cannot conquer his own inclinations to error, how is he going to subdue them in others?
If we are slaves, mentally and morally to our sensual selves–if we raise the material element above the spiritual within us, we then lose the right of opinion on good or evil, for a man that is passion’s slave is the mouth-piece of evil, and an active agent of the enemy of mankind! If we open our volumes of literature, every page bears a reflection of some kind on these things.
For instance, see what a great writer says, speaking of the deception in life:
“I am weary
Of the bewildering masquerade of life– Where strangers walk as friends and friends as strangers, Where whispers overhead betray false hearts; And through the mazes of the crowd we chase Some form of loveliness that smiles and beckons. And cheats us with fair words, to leave us A mockery and a jest, maddened, confused– Not knowing friend from foe.”
Every one who chooses to think at all has a thought in common on the question. In a biography of George Eliot, Hutton speaks of the manners of good society as “a kind of social costume or disguise which is in fact much more effective in concealing how much of depth ordinary characters have, and in restraining the expression of universal human instincts and feelings, than in hiding individualities the distinguishing inclinations, talents, bias and tastes of those who assume them. After all, what we care chiefly to know of men and women is not so much their special bias or tastes as the general depths and mass of the human nature that is in them–the breadth and power of their life, its comprehensiveness of grasp, its tenacity of instinct, its capacity for love and its need for trust.”
I fear we will never find this among the leading men and women of our day. Great minds, like George Eliot’s, when they wish to spend their genius in written books, will leave the lighted hall where refinement and _bon-ton_ hold their nightly revels, and will descend to the huts of laborers and mechanics that form one distinct phase of English life. Like Charlotte Bronte, and some others, she seeks substance for her work in a true, open character, and that is rarely found among the educated classes, who learn from books to unlearn the lessons of nature.
We will now leave the “lollipop” darlings of material nature and pass on out of their dishevelled untidy rooms, leaving their painted faces and powdered heads to spin out the late morning among the blankets,–and seek gratification elsewhere. It is breakfast-time in Henry Rayne’s house and the curling steam rises in graceful clouds from the hot tasty dishes that Mrs. Potts concocts with so much art. Honor, Nanette and Mr. Rayne are as usual the only participants of the wholesome things. Honor has just come in, fresh and rosy, all smiles as she steps up to Mr. Rayne’s chair with a cheery good-morning. Then kneeling beside her guardian, and looking into his kindly face, she says shyly:
“I have something to tell you all, a surprise, and don’t begin breakfast before you know it. If I were not a little orphan this morning, I would let it pass likely, but having only you and Nanette I must tell you, that you may not spare your kind wishes for me. To-day is my twentieth birthday!”
Mr. Rayne rose instantly to his feet and his eyes looked suspiciously moist as he kissed her tenderly on the brow. Then Honor turned to Nanette, but the poor woman was weeping mournfully in her blue handkerchief.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” she was saying, “to have forgotten your birthday above everything else, and your dear kind father when he gave you to me, a tiny thing in my arms, said, ‘she will be a year the 24th February, don’t ever forget the day,’ and there it slipped from me this time and I never thought of it.”
Honor flung her arms round the old creature’s neck and drowned her reproaches in a volley of kisses.
“Don’t mind that Nanny dear, say you wish me a good Christian life for the next year and you will have done your duty.”
“God grant it you, my pretty child.”
“Amen,” answered Mr. Rayne’s deep voice as he left the room.
Honor looked up surprised, but in a few moments her guardian returned with a morocco jewel case in his hands. He placed it in hers, saying, “My you live to wear it out in goodness and virtue, and may God spare you from the snares of this wicked world.”
With trembling fingers Honor opened the little box which revealed to view a spangling collection of diamonds. It was an oval locket, profusely set with diamonds with her initials turned artfully on the surface. Inside were the miniature pictures of her father and mother. She laid down the costly gift and went over to her benefactor with tear-dimmed eyes. She put both her slender arms around his neck and pressed one long fervent kiss upon the old man’s brow.
“Are you determined, dear Mr. Rayne, to put me under an everlasting obligation to you? Are you not satisfied with bestowing those tokens that I might in time repay by constant love and care, without forcing such a splendid gift as this on me? Really your kindness begins to make me uncomfortable, for it is amounting to a debt I can never repay. And where did you get these dear, dear pictures, and how did you have it ready and all for my birthday?”
“Well, my dear, say we sit down and I’ll answer all your questions to the music of knives and forks. I have had a miniature likeness of your father in my possession for many years, and it had often struck me, if I could but procure one of your mother’s too, how it would please me to have them set together in a locket for you. The other day I was taken nicely out of my dilemma by finding an old-fashioned locket of yours by the fire in the library. I borrowed it for the short space of a few days until I had copies taken from it, and then Nanette kindly slipped it back into your jewel-case for me. I then ordered the little receptacle that you have admired so much and I only received the whole last night. Strangely enough too, that it should have come just in time. I would have given it to you immediately anyway, because of something I am going to discuss with you in the library after breakfast.”
Honor was still looking intently down at the open case beside her plate when he finished the last sentence, but she looked up suddenly as he ceased, with a glance of eager inquiry in her eyes.
“It may startle you, Honor, or may not, but we’ll see to that.”
A little more rattling of plates and cutlery, a few more clouds of steam from the rich coffee, a series of disconnected gay sentences and ejaculations and the meal was over. The grave tones of Mr. Rayne’s voice filled the room in a prayer of thanksgiving, and with the last echo of the “Amen,” Honor and her guardian came out from the dining-room into the library arm in arm.
CHAPTER X.
“Her life, I said
Will be a volume wherein I have read But the first chapters, and no longer see To read the rest of the dear history.”
–_Longfellow_
Honor had just taken up her crocheting and was plying her needle busily when Mr Rayne drew his heavy leathern chair opposite to the fire and began:
“Well, my dear little girl, here you are a young woman all at once on my hands, and to me you are yet the childish little thing you were three years ago in the railway carriage at the Manchester Depot. But the world won’t see things to suit a short-sighted old bachelor like me, and according to that omnipotent, omniscient world, it is now my duty to introduce you into society, to bring you ‘out’ into Ottawa life, that you may make a display of all the accomplishments which fortune has bestowed upon you. I will introduce you to a world that will not hesitate in appreciating all the physical, mental, and moral beauty, you may choose to display in it. My duty will then be completed for another while. Now what is your opinion on it? You will have Mrs. D’Alberg, my widowed cousin from Guelph, to chaperone you, you have ‘carte blanche’ as regards toilet expenditure, and my house is open and at your service henceforth.”
All along a smile of slow astonishment had been creeping over Honor’s beautiful face, but instead of any showy enthusiasm either way, as Mr. Rayne had certainly expected, she straightened out the rosette of lace work on her knee and clapped it with her little palm. Then drawing a long breath she said:
“So! it has come to this. Well, my dear Mr. Rayne, if my position in your house exacts an _entree_ into society, I most willingly go forth to it, though had you never spoken of it, it had never entered my mind. I am prejudiced, it is true, against society, but I defy its influence over me. Every woman owes her mite to the social world, and consequently I owe mine, so as soon as you wish it Mr. Rayne, I am yours to command.”
She had scarcely finished the words when the door was flung open and the words and air of “I’ll live for love or die” filled the room. He was just continuing “I’ll live for lo–“
“O pardon, a hundred thousand times, Miss Edgeworth and uncle, I didn’t really think the room was inhabited at such an early hour in the morning, but the fact that it is, only enchants me all the more, I assure you.”
“Well, well, Guy, you are a ‘case.’ How are you this morning? Have you breakfasted?”
“Well, uncle, I thank you; and to your second kind query, I respectfully beg to inform you that I helped to clear away Mrs. Best’s table this morning very perceptibly. Not that I had any particular relish for her compositions–which were yesterday’s lunch and last night’s dinner done over _a la Francay_–Rooshan-hash-up! but then a fellow by natural instinct owes himself the indispensable duty of eating his breakfast, and as a slave to duty, I, this morning, about an hour ago, ate my breakfast.”
“Well, for goodness sake! as a duty to your fellow-creatures talk sense. Here, sit down,” Mr. Rayne continued, rising himself, “I must excuse myself for half-an-hour. I’ve not had a look at the _Citizen_ yet, and I must be off soon to official duties.”
Guy Elersley was well satisfied to be a substitute in Mr. Rayne’s vacant chair. He had not laid himself out for such good luck when he turned into his uncle’s on this eventful morning, so his appreciation was consequently all the more vivid.
“You’re bright and early, Honor, for a young lady on a winter morning,” he said, as he drew his chair towards the fire.
“Not unusually so for Honor Edgeworth–and that means a young lady, doesn’t it?”
“That’s right; snub a fellow right and left when he forgets to isolate you from the whole living, breathing creation. Then you are not bright and early–will that do?”
“My dear Mr. Elersley,” said Honor, in a provokingly placid way, “don’t exert yourself so violently in contradicting your own free, unextracted observations. You can amuse me in a dozen other different ways as well.”
“Oh, bother! Come now, Honor, leave off that ice water business, and give a fellow a word of welcome after being out in the cold. Put away that bundle of thread you’re fooling with there this half-hour. You have not taken your eyes from off it yet, nor spoken a decent word since I came in.”
“Oh, dear!” said Honor, drawing a feigned sigh, “I suppose when a child’s spoiled it’s spoiled, that’s all, and you must humor it.” “Now,” folding up her work, “what have you to say worth the trouble you’ve given me?”
“Oh nothing I could tell you would be that in your opinion. I was at a big ‘shine’ last night at Miss Teazle’s, and feasted my eyes on all Ottawa has to show in the way of female loveliness.”
“And you have come to spend the gush of your emotions consequent to such a feast on me, have you?”
“No, Honor, I have not. I did see deuced pretty girls, but the emotion, as you call it, vanished as I handed the last fair bundle of shawls into her carriage. While the light burns, you know, the moth hangs around it, but when the flame goes out, spent in a weary flicker, after ‘braving it’ for a whole night, the moth goes to roost, when he has not been singed, or otherwise personally damaged without insurance. Well, what are you thinking of now? when you cross your arms, bury your gaze in the fire and strike your slipper with such measured beat on the fender, I know you’re not paying much attention to what I am saying.”
She drew a long breath as though no answer were required, and then in a quiet, low tone she said,
“Guy, do not talk in that light way of any woman. I know what you men have long accustomed yourselves to believe–that woman was made purposely for your pleasure; ‘Man for God only, _she_ for God in him,’–but, all the same that does not exact the ratification of Heaven. If my sisters of Ottawa society, with whom you one moment amuse yourself, and the next amuse your listeners with a recital of their follies, are weak enough to seek to gratify you and your kind, ’tis not that such a weakness is a natural inheritance, for every woman who realizes her true worth, knows what a grand mission is before her, and consequently crushes such an absurd theory as fashionable women are brought up to believe from their infancy. Perhaps I am too sensitive on this point, if such a thing could be, but it is the awful wrong which is being done to our sex that fires my indignation thus. And then there are those poor deluded ‘ornamental women’ who sanction that outrage on their own dignity by sitting with folded hands, taking in all the nonsense which is dealt out to them when they should gather up their skirts and shrink away from you as their inveterate enemies. False faces lead them astray, but there are others who see behind them.”
“Yes, by Jove! And you are one who can see through the hair of a fellow’s head. Well, Honor, it’s plain to see, that you and I cannot agree. There’s an involuntary performance of ‘rhyme’ for you, excuse me for so doing, but I could not withhold it. I said that we don’t agree, and it is true. You are quite too tremendously proper for me, and I am just too ‘galoptiously’ awful for you. So begin to maul that wool over again, and I’ll go to my respectable office in the respectable Eastern Block, and there I am sure of finding half-a-dozen eager friends with their pens behind their ears wheeled around on their office stools, quite ready to hear all the ‘news’ that you reject with such dignity.”
“Then go. Sow your seed in fertile ground; but if you speak so lightly of any woman in presence of an office full of men, as you do to me, I cry,–shame on you and your listeners.”
She had taken the soft bundle of crochet work in her lap again, and as she bent her indignant face over its intricate stitches, Guy could not help acknowledging to himself, that this was the fairest vision man had ever beheld. How was it that her name never crossed his lips in fun? He would have torn the tongue from its roots before uttering hers in jest. He stood at the door, with the knob in his hand, trying to extract one word of earnest friendship from her, but the serious frown never relaxed itself on her brow, and her mouth was set and stern. He could not stand this. He thought if it was only any other girl–any of Miss Teazle’s heroines, he could pooh-pooh it so easily, but Honor was not one of them at all–his heart told him that. He left his place at the door and was at her side instantly. She looked quietly up and said nothing. He felt as though the words would not come, and the wee small voice said “another time,” so he merely reassumed his old way, and said:
“Good morning, Honor. Don’t send a fellow off in the blues. Come now, smile just the least little bit and speed me away with a charitable word.” Then the sweet red lips parted, and looking up from her work, she said:
“I absolve you, Guy. Good morning.”
“Well, I’ll make hay while the sun shines, and be off, for if I delay a minute I shall have a dozen more pardons to ask. By, bye!”
He closed the door and was gone, but though his hurried steps brought him further and further away from the form he loved, yet his thoughts were of her, his heart beat for her, and his memory dwelt upon each little word she had spoken.
Honor sat as most of us do very often in our lives, with the same smile on her face which had absolved Guy at parting. If we meet a friend and are pleased, the smile of recognition lingers on our faces long after he has passed. If we have heard a pleasant word, the gratification is evident on our countenances, long after the words have died; and the same with unpleasant or sorrowful things. I suppose our memory is necessarily a slow faculty, and only revives the expression of our emotion just as that caused by the first experience is dying away. Any one could tell by Honor’s face, that she was thinking of pleasant things. Thence we may know it was no ‘clairvoyant’ tendency on the part of Mr. Rayne, that on entering the room the ne moment, he exclaimed:
“So you’re spinning your threads in the sunlight, my pet, are you?”
Honor started–“Sunlight? Yes, I think the sun will be up presently.”
“Oh, you distracted child! I am talking of the sunlight of your thoughts.” Here both joined in a hearty laugh, and Mr. Rayne having thrown aside the well dissected _Citizen_, re-deposited himself in the arm-chair by Honor’s side. He came too to make hay while the sun shone, and the smile on Honor’s face indicated that much.
“You see, that fellow Guy interrupted us just in the beginning of our discourse–but perhaps it was just as well, for something has since happened that throws a new light on the subject. With this morning’s mail came a document from Turin to me, from your father’s bankers, Honor. It seems from the copy of an original letter written by your father, that he wished to test my friendship by holding me responsible for his daughter’s welfare and comfort, and he therefore apparently represented you to me as entirely dependent on my bounty. Even as such, it was an immense gratification to me to take you, and at the risk of all I own nou I could not let you go, but it seems your diplomatic father–and my best friend–had arranged it so, that if, after a short period, I had performed the duties of a true friend towards you, supplying you with the necessary comforts and wants out of my own pocket, that on your birthday at the end of that time, which is to-day, this document should be forarded to me. The surprising and intensely gratifying news concerns only you, it makes not the slightest matter to me,” and so speaking, he handed her the least formidable looking letter of a pile of correspondence. She read it with dilated eyes and confused look generally, and laid it down only with this difference actually to her, that she had in her own realization, in one short moment been suddenly transformed from Mr. Rayne’s dependent waif into a richly endowed heiress, independent and free. A small change indeed for Honor Edgeworth. It had not power to chisel in finer style the features of her handsome face, nor the power to direct into her heart a purer, holier or more worthy sense of duty than already reigned there. No, it could make her no better. Hers was not a nature susceptible to the ready influences of evil, and so she experienced none of that material delight which generally is the result of such a change for the world’s ordinary ones. The only gratification it afforded her was, that now she could repay Mr. Rayne for his untiring kindness, she could deck Nanette in “decent” attire, and give such little alms as she longed to distribute with Mr. Rayne’s money. She folded the letter carefully back into its primitive creases and handed it to Mr. Rayne, saying,
“I thought I should have had to repay your unlimited kindness to me by love, sincerity and gratitude alone; and though this would have been an easy debt to liquidate, so far as my sentiments went, yet, it seems Providence has not tired of heaping favors upon my head, and I can add to my other offering this new found treasure. But I think, Mr Rayne, had this gold mine never opened beneath our feet, we would still be the same to one another, I know”–and as she spoke she rose and threw herself into the old man’s arms–“you, who have been both parents to me when I was alone and penniless, who surrounded me with comforts and luxuries, cannot now be cold to me because I no longer need to be dependent. You have made your home and your kind watchfulness a necessity to me, now will you not let us be the same as ever with one another? I do not want to be a rich heiress if I must thereby cease to be ‘your own Honor,’ and ‘your own favorite.'”
The old man’s eyes were wet with tears. He pressed the girlish figure close to him and kissed the fair, flushed cheek.
“We will speak no more of it, darling,” he said, “let it be as though nothing had happened, only you must no longer hesitate to accept the many little favors that, up to this, you persistently refused– henceforth _I_ am _yours_ to command when you want something. But, about your _debut_ child, I want you to consult some one else on that matter, for you must be as fine to look at as all the rest. You can be ready as soon as you please, for Mrs D’Alberg will be here shortly, I requested an immediate answer.”
Honor looked thoughtfully into the fire. “This is all so strange,” she said, “but Destiny is Destiny, I suppose, and Fate is Fate.”
CHAPTER XI.
“A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow–morn.”
–Coleridge
“Well, I did not think this at the very worst,” Mr. Rayne said over a newly received letter to Honor. “Here’s the long expected news from Guelph, and my cousin says she would find it so convenient for you to go up, just for a week and she would come back with you. There are so many things for her to settle, and besides you would see a little bit of life in the meantime. Now, how in the world are we going to live without sunshine or daylight for a week, eh?”
“Oh, Mr. Rayne, you spoil me! But, does Mrs. D’Alberg really want me to go to her? If it is not very far away, and you have no particular objection, I think I’d rather like to go.”
“Of course you would,” echoed the generous words of Henry Rayne, “and why would’nt you? I am too selfish to live. It will make a nice little trip and you’ll feel all the more refreshed when you get back. But, think of how soon you must go–to-morrow morning at the latest, I tell you. So, now be active, my dear. Run and tell Nanette to get your things ready, and I’ll drop a note to Guy to come and make himself useful.”
Honor bounded off under the influence of the first experience of a new anticipation–that of shifting the scenes, for no matter how short an act. She was going among new faces for a little while. What a break in the monotony of her present quiet life.
When the hastily written note reached Guy’s boarding-house, he was absent. It was as a rule rather hard to find Guy when he was wanting; but, I doubt if he ever regretted his absence more than be did on this particular night. I would not care to shock my innocent readers unnecessarily by telling the hours that brought Guy Elersley to his room that night, nor the circumstances that caused him to dream such frightful things through his broken slumber. Some of them either from having been there before or from close observation could suspect one of Guy’s worst failings at the sight of his dim sleepy eyes, his straggling cravat and half-buttoned coat, as well as by the thick utterances he hummed to himself, intended no doubt for the familiar strains of his favorite “Warrior Bold” or “In the Gloaming,” but, nevertheless differing from them as much as they resembled them.
Oh, Guy! who, among your high-toned lady friends on Sparks Street to-morrow will recognize in you the fast midnight rambler, that the pale winter moon and the cold silent stars see in you to-night? You, the brilliant one of Ottawa’s best drawing-rooms, ejaculating all the hard words you know, because you can’t open the door with a lead pencil, nor find the handle on the wrong side. How well you have learned the art of veneering your character! Is it then such a breach of Christian charity to discuss on open pages, Guy Elersley by daylight, and Guy Elersley by lamplight? Any one given to moralizing, may surely ask the ladies of Ottawa, if they have ever stopped to think those simple things over. If all their acknowledged purity, dignity and womanly attraction were worth no more than to lay them within the ready grasp of the sons of this century of materialism! Do they never realize how infinitely superior they are to the men of their own days, and do they ever treat them with the contempt and indifference that are at best their due? If such were indeed the case, woman would be more independent in her social standing than she is to-day, but, I blush to say it–there are those among Ottawa’s fair ones, who are flattered by the attentions and compliments of such as live these two lives of daylight and lamp-light;–flattered that an arm should encircle their waists in the dance, which is unworthy of cleaning the shoes they wear, or sweeping the ground they tread,–flattered by the attentions and flighty words falling from lips across whose threshold comes the foul breath of sin and dissipation. Such is the dignity of the youth of our century; such is the brazen insolence which causes them to establish themselves as the social equals of well bred women.
Oh, for the long sought day of woman’s emancipation, when she will be free, in her own right, to scorn from the pedestal of her superiority, the audacity of the man who shows himself by daylight to the world to be that high society exacts from him, but whose superficial virtues set with the evening sun, leaving in their temporary dwelling place, the craving of material nature to be gratified. Such are the heroes of our popular novels, such are the heroes of our actual society, such are our male relatives, and yet women seem to be satisfied that things should remain thus. If every woman would determine within herself to accomplish the whole or part of the grand mission that is at the mercy of her own hands, how soon would we have cause to rejoice and thank Providence for the great reformation in morals which must be a necessary consequence of such a determination?
Perhaps it is wandering too far away from a simple recital, and giving more than its real depth to the tenor of our Ottawa society, to indulge in this strain. If it be just as pleasant, we will return to Guy who has gained admission by this time. He goes over to the table that stands opposite his bedroom door. He has left matches and lamp convenient, and proceeds to light them. The first thing which attracted his stupid glance was the note in his uncle’s handwriting, lying conspicuously on the white linen cover. But this was, after Guy’s nightly carousing–the most usual thing in the world, and with a word that signified how secondary his uncle’s note was, beside the attempt to reach the bed, he pushed it carelessly aside and proceeded to get himself out of his clothes as well as his nervous limbs permitted him. We may be a “little hard” on Guy’s species _selon_ the current ideas of justice. We know that many are addressed through Guy Elersley, and this indirect way is adopted of telling them how far below the mark of feminine appreciation they fall in attempting to throw dust in our eyes. As if every circumstance of the times was not calculated to impress more firmly upon us how unworthy the world is becoming of us. We may hold out our hands one to another, for there is none else worthy to give the responsive grasp. Young men of the nineteenth century, be assured that because you are tolerated in society, and because ladies deign to blend their lives in a measure with yours, it does not follow that they approve of the masques you are wearing, and which deceive yourselves far more than they do others. On the contrary, it foretells the advent of the day of our freedom, for, in the performance of our respective social duties towards you, we make the last acts of humiliation to complete the sacrifice before the reward is given us. Of course, if we met Guy Elersley to-morrow morning, the fetters of society would force us to feign an utter ignorance of such a mode of living among our gentlemen friends. We must take it for granted that from sunset till sunrise, Guy was not “sleeping the sleep of the Bacchanal,” and we need not fear that _he_ will betray himself.
With aching head and parched lips, Guy Elersley opened his eyes on the tell-tale surroundings of his room the morning after “the night before.” With the first break of sleep in the quivering of his lashes memory was at work. So long as she remains a faithful servant at all, her mission is waylaying us early and late. From the confused state of things around him, Guy gathered that he must have reached his resting place under difficulties, his feet reposed luxuriantly on the downy pillows, while his poor head was resting on the spare end of Mrs Best’s second worst mattress. That his vest lay in an unpretending heap on the floor, from which his watch had rolled resignedly into an old slipper, did not disconcert him so much as his having left his new gaiters where the household puppy conveniently got at them destroying any possibility of a future reunion of their parts.
If a man ever wishes to repent of his yesterdays, let him contemplate them all over during his waking hours in the morning. Then, indeed, is his time. He becomes ashamed before the monotonous rose-bushes that speck the wall, and as his wandering orbs scan the picture-nails and the cobwebs in search of distraction, he will realize the necessity of amendment more fully than the eloquence of a multitude could paint it. It was the weariness of this new realization that caused Guy to stretch out his hand for his uncle’s neglected note of last night, seeking as he thought, something therein that need not remind a fellow of what he knew “deuced” well already. As his glance fell on the page, his brow contracted into a slow puzzled look, and as he finished the last word he started up. It was now after nine o’clock and Honor was far on her journey. The note was dated 5 p.m. He would have received it time enough if he had not squandered away his hours from his room, but now she was gone and there was no excuse he could offer to satisfy himself.
It is necessary that we should part from some friends to know how much we love them, and this necessity visited Guy in its most cruel phase. Poor fellow!–After all, he was so much the victim of circumstances. The consciousness of his own weakness only made him weaker, and his knowledge of the infidelity and inconsistency in his character only caused him to resist, as useless, impulses towards stability and firmness. Now he regretted with his whole soul that he had not come home like any christian, at a proper bed-time, then he would have learned the news soon enough to have bade her good-bye. Even if he had read it when he saw it for the first time, the news it bore would have dispelled the mist that other influences had gathered around his senses. What could he do now? He must make the best of a very bad case and go immediately to his uncle’s house where he expected to hear some tidings of the girl he loved.
If any man ever looked thoroughly disgusted with himself in his life, Guy Elersley surely did, on this eventful morning, as he sauntered along from his boarding-house to Mr. Rayne’s. His sentiments were most likely those that form an item of the very smallest experience, when its victim is forced to realize that he has made a very unwilling sacrifice voluntarily; that he himself is the remote, proximate, direct and indirect cause of his own misfortune. Still, this was the only room for hope left in Guy. So long as a man condemns himself before his own tribunal, making of his inner self the truthful witness and impartial judge, those interested in his spiritual welfare may know that there is yet a lingering susceptibility, to a better influence than that which caused him to do wrong. That such a susceptibility does yet flicker in the hearts of Ottawa’s young sons, I have reason to hope; for there is an impulse in some of us that leads us into the minds and souls of one another, there to deposit a judgment or a sympathy, or whatever our nature suggests at sight of our neighbor’s failings. In obeying such an impulse one can easily peer through the conventional veil which screens such phases of human character under the meaningless appellations of “Blues,” or “Indisposition.” They are truly the visible effect of a secret hidden cause, which is sometimes brought to the surface by the magnetic power of one who has studied human faces and characters. So, _en passant_, it may be as well to kindly suggest to such “blue” friends that it were often better to lay bare the veritable cause of such a gloomy feeling, for those before whom they wear the veil are surely persons whose opinion they esteem or whose judgment they fear, and if so they are not so easily blinded as one would think, their deception only serves to render them still more odious. Yet there is no blame to Guy for having gone on his way this morning in such a mood. When he met Miss Dash at the first crossing it was the most natural thing in the world for him to say, “this ‘dyspeptic’ feeling causes it all,” when she stared in open-eyed wonder at his worn out face and variegated eyes. It was breakfast-time when he closed his uncle’s door after him, and he was sure to obtain _tete-a-tete_ alone with the old man, now that Honor was gone, but he did not think the picture would have changed, into such a sad one as presented itself to his eyes when he opened the door of the breakfast-room. Mr. Rayne was sitting moodily in his chair, staring vacantly at his untasted meal, with his hands folded listlessly before him. At the sound of a voice he smiled and started, but on seeing the intruder the brightness died out again, and he only said, “Good-morning, my boy,” in a very quiet tone.
“So you are all alone once more, uncle,” said Guy, trying to make the best attempt he could under the circumstances, “Honor’s flight was rather sudden, wasn’t it?”
“Too sudden to secure your services when they were needed, I think.”
“Well, yes, uncle, I was not in when your note came, and only saw it this morning for the first time, when it was too late to do anything, but I am really sorry. Will she not be back in a day or two?”
“I hope so. I hope so,” Mr. Rayne answered, more to himself than to Guy. “I had grown quite accustomed to the darling.”
“Yes, so had I,” said Guy, under his moustache, “but” (aloud) “the little trip will make quite a change for her, and the time won’t be long until her return.”
A few more very laconic remarks followed, and then Guy began to think it was rather stupid, and in consequence made a move towards the door. This made matters a little brighter, for Mr. Rayne became more animated, and turning his chair towards the receding figure of his nephew, said,
“Hold on a minute, Guy, I want you before you go,” and to lessen the moments of waiting, he raised his cup and drank it at one long draught, then he rose and led Guy into the cosy library opposite.
Whenever Mr. Rayne was about to impose any new duty on his nephew, he assumed a stern air that showed a tendency towards the imperative, rather than the interrogative. He had never said, “Guy, will you do this or that,” it was always, “Guy, I wish you to do this–you must do such a thing for me,” and accustomed to the like from his early youth, Guy never sought to hesitate, or dispute his uncle’s will in anything. Whenever Mr. Rayne pushed his glasses up on his forehead and began by saying, “I am getting old and work is no longer light,” Guy recognised the _avant-coureur_ of some new duty devolving upon him, and this was a phase of this morning’s experience.
“I wish copies made of all these documents, Guy,” said his uncle in a business tone, while one hand rested on a prosy looking heap of legal forms, “and as it is serious work I cannot leave it out of my possession, so you must come in during your spare hours, now that Honor is away, and help me to write them over; it will keep us both busy during her absence, and leave us free on her return. I will expect you this evening before tea, and to make matters more convenient for all hands, I wish you to remain here until Honor’s return. You may occupy the spare room, and time will not be quite so dull as otherwise.”
“Very well, uncle,” said Guy; but oh! what a hornble misery crept into his heart at the mention of such a thing. Visions of all the most outrageous difficulties possible, in the career of a fast young man, rose before his mind, and the consciousness of his lack of courage caused a shudder to pass through his frame. It must have been apparent, that Mr. Rayne entertained suspicions of this “boy,” and resolved to stand between him and immediate danger if he could. This might have been Guy’s salvation, if his eyes had not been blinded by the delusive flattery of the world to which he belonged. He only bowed under it as the most weighty of his crosses, and trusted to that fate that often shields the wrong-doer from observation, to turn the tables in his favor.
It was painfully evident to Guy this morning, that his uncle was in very stern humor, and that nothing but square dealing on his own part could sustain even the trembling balance that existed between them. One word, one little wrong deed now, and Guy fancied the fertile looking future realizing itself to him in that awful destitution which haunts the average civil servant, who has no pillar of pedigree to sustain him. It was the hardest policy of his life, to gather all his visible deeds under the approval of his good uncle, and yet he tried to bear these things patiently as one might a kick from the King. He saw a fair vision among the “to be’s,” if he behaved himself, and is not such an aim as that, the only one in the sunset of the nineteenth century?
Feeling “all over,” as he thought, he left his uncle’s house that morning filled with a firmer conviction than ever, that he was one of the world’s unfortunates. Try as hard as we will, it is tough work living up to other people’s principles, for now and then the most clever of us fail to interpret them aright and accordingly commit a fault.
It seemed rather cruel to poor Guy, as he sauntered along towards his office, that the plans he had so easily made for the next fortnight’s distraction, should be frustrated thus in a moment. It is so “deuced” hard for a conceited sensitive fellow to bear the taunts of his more free and independent companions, when he is forced to decline their invitation to “come along.” It is not natural that a man, able to stand his ground against evil counsellors, showing himself morally superior to them, should then fear their insolent remarks, or their unchristian judgment. We know it, each one for himself, that when we jibe or ridicule a good impulse in another, it is evidence of our weakness and incapacity to experience the same feeling ourselves, and it is the momentary hatred of envy that suggests a taunt or a mocking word on the firm resolution of our companion. But unless the conscience of youth be not obliterated now while it is so weak, the world fears there can be no other such chance again, and what else can hush its “wee small voice,” like the ring of sarcasm or the jeering of brave cowards?
Guy’s was one of those pliable souls that bent under every influence alike. How then, could he endure the scorn of “the boys” when he must tell them that his spare moments were already occupied? He began to miss Honor already, because one word from her would have spurred him on to duty; but, like his fate, she must be away when he needed her most. What must she have thought of his absence at the hour of her departure? She would, no doubt, accept it as an indisputable proof of his indifference to her, and this scalded his sensitive nature more than anything.
Accompanied by these refreshing cogitations, Guy reached his comfortable office, but oh “how painfully plain an index to his troubled soul was his worried face.” All day he stumbled over office stools, spilt ink, made countless mistakes in his calculations, and, as a consequence, smashed pens and used unsparingly all those little monosyllables that seem to grow spontaneously on the tongue’s end of an enraged man. His difficulties were beginning in earnest; he had consented to join a party of merry-makers to drive to Aylmer that night, and he could see no possible outlet through which he might escape. He had thought of seeing some of the “fellows” at four o’clock, and of telling them in some off-hand way of his change of determination; but even this little gratification was denied him, for emerging from his office door, the first one he came across was Mr. Rayne. There was that hopeless resignation, which dire necessity forces, in the very tone of Guy’s voice as he addressed his uncle, but now, whether he would or not he must yield. Every circumstance showed him plainly how fettered he really was, although his spirit yearned to belong in gain as well as m name, to that band of “Acephah” that walked the streets of Ottawa, free men under their unpaid-for ulsters and seal caps. No wonder the conversation between Guy and his uncle consisted of a series of laconic monosyllables. The one was drinking the bitter dregs of life’s awful difficulties; the other absent-minded and sad, thinking of the dear absent one who held within her hands the happiness of his life.
Who would have interpreted these things on this bright sunny afternoon as Mr. Rayne and his nephew walked side by side along Sparks Street, through the gay, bustling crowd of pedestrians and sleighs? The young ladies went home and told one another that they had met Guy Elersley, and that he looked “just splendid,” whilst all the time his brain was on fire from trying to solve his dilemma.
They were reaching Mr. Rayne’s house, and Guy, accumulating all the moral courage of his soul, resolved to do the worst. He would go willingly to work and try to find a pleasure in honest labor for Honor’s sake. He was realizing, in spite of himself, the truth that had dawned on “Adam Bede,” that “all passion becomes strength when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot, in the labor of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still creative activity of our thought.” Had he only but had the whisper of encouragement from any one he esteemed while in this vacillating mood, that would indeed have been a turning point in his career, but it seemed that a good impulse for Guy Elersley vaticinated infallibly an evil action. The fact that he had tried to vanquish himself by going willingly and deliberately to work, only waylaid him with numberless enticing temptations, alluring him on to the forbidden pleasures upon which he had turned his back. What is there so resistless and so fatally fascinating in those pastimes which are indulged in after nightfall by our young men? Is it the staunch proof that it seems to be, of the entire annihilation of conscience? Is it so certainly the spiritual death that it seems to be?–and if so, what sad, sad wreck! Is there no one whose influence can lead those stray sheep back to the fold? No mother, no sister, no lady love to plead as a woman’s eloquence alone can plead, in behalf of that fair young soul exposed to every danger? Is there no volume among that superb collection of books open to all Ottawaites, that would not satisfy you, young foolish souls, by your midnight coals, burning your midnight oils, if you must needs burn both? What advantage is there in facing every peril of the material and spiritual darkness, that you must make a daily habit thereof? Is not this the case, that you never entered upon such a course of life alone? Some one was there who beckoned you on his way. Some one pooh-poohed your scruples, and smoothed down with false words the obstacles that your conscience raised. You never left your father’s house alone to squander the hours of midnight’s sacred silence in wrong doing Then I hope you will never forget the debt of gratitude you must owe to such a counsellor and friend.
Then comes
“The tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.”
At first you were a little unfortunate, may be. If you could not reach home without elbowing some one’s pane of glass, or getting into a scrape of a more or less serious nature, you were helped out of all trouble by those steadfast allies who contributed gladly towards making your deception a masterpiece of its kind.
After such reflections one is inclined to pity rather than condemn the weakness to which Guy Elersley resigned himself such a voluntary victim.
When he entered the library in his uncle’s house, he began to be comforted by his luxurious surroundings, the same bright fire burned that Honor loved to see and the easy chairs and soft rich carpet suggested satisfaction to the most discontented. A few minutes of fussy preparations and the gloomy twain were immersed in dry business. Apart from the monotonous scratching of their hurried pens there was but an occassional short remark uttered until the welcome sound of the tea-bell broke the spell of sullenness that had fallen on both.
After a short but comparatively lively intermission they returned to their papers and re-attacked them diligently. Poor Guy’s heart was beginning to thump. It would soon be eight o’clock, and it seemed to him in spite of all good arguments to the contrary that “a promise was a promise,” and that by staying in to-night he was breaking one almost unnecessarily. The minute hand on the electro-plated clock was fast wending its way towards the half hour after seven, and as his eyes followed its quick movement he felt a hurried palpitation accompany every second on its flight to eternity.
Suddenly Mr. Rayne laid down his pen and rested his bald head in his hands. Guy looked up surprised, and as he did so, his uncle rose from his seat saying. “I have another attack of neuralgia to-night, Guy, and cannot continue this work as I expected. Try, however, to finish these single copies for me to-night. I must retire; I am really unable to endure these pains any longer without rest.”
“Indeed uncle, I am very sorry for that,” Guy said, but I fear that though it was “_malgre lui_,” still there lurked the faintest sense of intense gratification in his heart on hearing these words. “You certainly will be better in bed uncle, will I help you upstairs.”
“Thank you, I’m not so weak as that. Remain here and finish those for me, they will be needed to-morrow and must be ready.”
With these words he turned to leave the room, but just as though through inspiration, he stood with the half-open door behind him and said in a stern imperative tone,–
“Guy, mind you do not go out this evening; when you are tired writing you will find plenty of distraction indoors, do you hear?”
“I do, sir,” Guy answered coldly, and then the old man closed the door and went up-stairs leaving his distracted nephew in the wildest of moods.
CHAPTER XII.
For a sweet voice had whispered hope to me. Had through my darkness shed a kindly ray: It said “The past is fixed immutably,
Yet there is comfort in the coming day.” –_Household Words_
It was a cold stormy blustering day. The fierce north wind was moaning and wailing in piteous shrieks around the corners, and through the bare swaying branches of the tall elms. It was a dreary scene to look upon from a car window, and yet it was rather a cheerful face that peered through the tiny panes into the stormy surroundings outside. Honor was thinking deeply, a medley of sad and pleasant things, and she smiled and grew pensive alternately. She had thought of Guy, and of how pleasant it would be after all to have him there beside her, but she did not trust herself far into the subject. The doubtful halo that encircled all Guy’s latest actions towards her was not the sweetest of memories, and yet this lovely girl would not whisper even to her own most secret soul, the words, “I love him.” It was so girl-like for her to cherish that secret, and yet not acknowledge it to herself as a secret. She loved to rehearse to herself in silence every look and word and action of Guy’s. She pondered wearily over the _ennui_ of the hours, when he was not by her, and she longed so much to question herself about the sudden blushes and heart-beatings, when she recognized his step in the hall, or heard his deep voice greet her at the door. She knew that his little book with the scribbled verse from “Led Astray” was very often in her hands when he was not there, and yet when the “little voice” asked “Is it love?” She hid her face in her hands and said, “Oh no.”
All these things she reviewed at leisure on this cold wintry morning, as she was being borne swiftly on to her destination. She could scarcely get accustomed to the idea that she was the same Honor Edgeworth, that had come a short time ago, alone and friendless to Mr. Rayne’s house. And as she sped on leaving each dancing drifting snow-flake far behind, she became tangled up again in the web of fanciful reflections that had so often led her far far away into those transcendental regions of thought where Venus, and Cupid, and Calliope, and other sister muses bask in filmy clouds of golden maze. Here she realized among her ideal heroes and heroines, life as she wished it to be. Perhaps this was why her inclinations were just a little skeptical when she viewed life in its matter-of-fact phases.
Honor was started from her reverie by a loud long shriek from the engine, and seeing the other passengers gather up their fragments of baggage she followed suit. A few moments more and they were ushered into the depot at Guelph. All the usual bustle, talk and confusion characteristic of railway stations were noticeable here. Omnibus drivers shouted in _crescendo_ the names of their respective hotels. Poor Honor scarcely knew what to do. Cries of “Royal Hotel,” “Windsor House,” “Sleigh Miss,” deafened her ears on all sides, but great was her relief when a prim middle-aged lady accompanied by a half bashful youth stepped up to her smilingly and said:
“My dear I think you are my guest. Miss Edgeworth?”
“That is my name,” Honor said, and then the prim lady handed Honor a card inscribed “Mde. Jean d’Alberg.”
They became friends immediately and no wonder under the circumstances. Circumstances have so much to do with the turn and tide of our busy lives. We can make a friend of the most hideous creature in an hour of dire necessity.
Honor was just thinking she might have fared so much worse than come across a lady such as Madame d’Alberg proved to be. To look at her one could read the evidences of worldliness in her face. This woman had graced many a drawing-room as Senator d’Alberg’s wife, and when the session time called her to the capital many a fair-haired damsel of eighteen summers had envied the fine face and faultless figure, that had captivated even the fastidious nature of the dignified Senator.
To-day, although somewhat older, the ordinary critic and observer could still detect no flaw of age or tendency to fade in the sparkling black eyes and fair delicate complexion. As Honor saw almost at a first glance, this woman’s theory of life began and ended in “self.” Not so much as to exclude any impulse towards sympathy or generosity. By no means–if there remained anything, after one had satisfied one’s own wants, then let that surplus go to the less fortunate, according to the owners impulse whether limited or great.
In matters less material Madame d’Alberg took as director the great authority of Shakspeare, and none can tell how many countless times she justified herself by repeating in the most suasory tone this little extract from Hamlet:
“This above all to thine own self be true And it must follow as the night the day Thou cans’t not then be false to any man.”
This was an end worth attaining surely, and so easily won as by being fair with one’s self.
Honor and her new friend chatted gaily all the way. The awkward youth had received instructions about the baggage. Thus freed from all inconvenience and responsibility, these two became as conversant and as communicative as if they had known each other for years.
Let it not shock the scrupulous reader to know that, in point of fact, Madame d’Alberg did not really care a straw for either Henry Rayne or his beautiful _protegee_, only insomuch as their existence was conducive to her own personal welfare. It was no effort whatever for her, to love in that subdued sort of way in which we are expected by the Church to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” To be amiable and agreeable to all was by far more convenient to her than to play the _role_ of a grumbler, and so long as she could count on her smiles being worth their representatives in substance to her, her countenance was fairly suffused therewith and her purse or her mouth open for the proceeds. Such women generally live easily–die easily enough too, and scarcely ever leave a memory of any sort behind them.
The first points of criticism that suggested themselves to this world-bred woman on seeing Honor were such as never entered the head of any other acquaintance the girl made before or after Madame d’Alberg’s. This lady, physiognomist from tact and experience, sought to learn from the expression and features of Honor’s countenance, whether their hidden depths held any of that diplomacy and finesse that are the inevitable characteristics of society’s most brilliant graduates. Not that it would have mattered one iota to this indifferent creature, for she never interested herself particularly in anyone, but if certain latent tendencies in this girl could actually be brought to the surface so as to sympathize with her own, would it not be as well for them to join hands and share the spoils? As yet, however, she thought there was no telling, she must wait and see.
The drive from the depot was short, and to Honor’s great delight the merry sleigh-bells stopped jingling as they drew up to the neatest and cosiest looking cottage imaginable. The first greeting on entering was the sight of a roaring fire and the next the intensely gratifying welcome of cups steaming at the end of a neat but well-spread table.
Honor’s own room reminded her somewhat of the one in Ottawa, except that the idea of exquisite comfort was more pronounced in everything here. In this respect Honor found Madame d’Alberg different from that other class of society women whose ideas of self-gratification are far subservient to the requisites of _bon-ton_ and fashion, and who endure heroically the discomfort of the latest absurdities in articles of toilet and street wear.
This was the only point in which Jean d’Alberg did not acknowledge the tyrannical yoke of society. Anything that tended to exclude the supreme ease and comfort of her home was discarded by her, and no one ever dared to find any fault therein.
After a hearty luncheon by the grate fire, Honor and Madame d’Alberg drew up their chairs closer to the fender and began to talk familiarly. The wind still whistled and shrieked around the street corners; little blinding atoms of snow drifted violently in the air, and it made one freeze just to watch the muffled pedestrians as they sped along with their heads bowed against the sleet and wind, holding their half-frozen ears, stamping their feet or pinching the ends of their blue noses.
“The day is too stormy for outdoor amusements, my dear,” said Jean d’Alberg, as she poked the fire, “so I must try to distract you as much as possible in the house.”
“That will be an easy matter if you like,” said Honor, “do but leave me lost in these spacious cushions, before that cheerful fire, and I can prophesy the treat that is in store for me.”
Mde. d’Alberg smiled slowly. She turned and took from a small wicker basket near her a bundle of misty looking thread and lace, and with her needle in one hand and the end of her thread between her teeth, she said,
“Whether you know it or not, my dear, you have given me a big peep into your character by that much of an assertion.”
Honor looked suddenly up. She was beginning to feel a little nervous with this cool, calculating, all-seeing woman. But not to show what she felt, she sank back imperceptibly among the cushions, and answered, with an effort at in difference,
“I hope I betray my good symptoms first, at least to strangers who are inclined to judge from appearances.”
The elder lady looked interested. Her face wore a half-pleasing, half-teasing expression, but like Honor she was seeking to veneer the real truth under assumed veils at the same time that she was dying to draw out the latent phases of her companion’s nature.
“The word ‘good,'” she said, stitching rapidly, “is such a mysterious one, and has in these days of general improvement, secured for itself a relative meaning which benefits as many as it injures, and particularly, as regards one’s personal virtues or defects, which are many or few according to the disposition of the speaker towards the one spoken of. Nevertheless I must tell you that your tendency to dreaminess, and your exalted ideas of sentiment, are what mostly constitute the modern young lady. Take those elements out of human life, and one-third of our fiction volumes crumble on the shelf. Society limps into retirement, for her most prominent limbs have been amputated. The curtain must drop for good on the stage, for there is no other part for actors to play in the nineteenth century. Our streets would be almost desolate, except for fussy businessmen and market women, and those dear few privileged ones, who have the priceless reputation of being _sans coeur_.”
Honor grew deeply interested. She had not expected to find such a woman as this. Mr. Rayne had spoken of her as one does of any superannuated person or thing that is always on hand if wanted. It was such a long time since she had indulged in any such abstract conversations, that it was with renewed delight she hailed her turn to speak.
“I think it only fair,” said she, looking straight into the fire, “that I should take my turn at interpreting you.”
“By all means, my dear; what have you found worth finding?”
“Well, I think,” said Honor, speaking slowly and emphatically, “that fifteen or twenty years ago you could not have spoken those words, for I recognize, as far as a limited observation and a small experience allow me, the ruin of a heart full of sentiment, under the new structure that you present to the world to-day, and I also think that at that time you must have felt a superfluity of emotion. Your craving was for trust, for confidence and love, and the cynicism of your words now means something like sour grapes. Don’t be offended, dear Madame d’Alberg, the thoughts suggest themselves. If you do not despise sentiment and romance, because they did not yield you what you sought from them, then I throw up my perception as faulty, and my judgment as something worse.”
She had not moved her eyes from their fixed gaze on the coals, but as no answer came from her companion, she looked across in expectation. The work lay still in her lap, but her face had grown dreamy and sad. The sudden silence woke her, and she turned to meet Honor’s steadfast gaze. The thin compressed lips parted slightly in a nervous motion, and Honor thought she could see a struggle for ascendancy in the workings of the usually calm face. Suddenly, a tear dropped from each downcast lid, and then the die was cast. Jean d’Alberg drew her chair closer to the young girl, and clasped her hands over her pile of work; then, looking straight at the fire, she began–
“Whatever power has inspired you, you have touched a spring over which the cobwebs of wilful neglect have lain during twenty years. It must be because you are so good and pure, that the truth, such as I am striving to hide, is so plain to you. You have uttered the secret of my life in the simple words you spoke. Twenty years ago, I was a young and beautiful girl, with a heart as full of susceptibilities and a mind as full of ambition as any one of you to-day. My face was beautiful, and I knew it; my figure was faultless, I knew that too. But vanity never entered into my heart for a moment. I had a dream that kept such trifling thoughts away. I wanted to endear myself to some one. I wanted to make some one so utterly dependent on me, that a separation should be almost death to him. Where I got this crazy longing I could not tell exactly, but it seized me like a mania. I felt that such must be my fate, or a lifelong of misery instead. While I was in the heat of this emotion my father told me to prepare myself, that I was to appear with him at the grand military ball of the season. This was the great event of the year in our town, for a detachment of British troops always stayed over for the occasion. The girls of the old country, at that time, were different from what they are now on this continent. Most of us had, as a rule, those conservative fathers, whose ideas of maidenly propriety had been handed down to them from unknown ages, and from constant preaching on the subject, I, like most others, grew into their way of thinking, but I did not, all the same, ever censure an impulsive girl who, by gratifying her own caprice, violated these stern views of her father’s.”
It was getting dark in the little sitting room. At this point of her story Jean d’Alberg rose, and going over towards the window that faced the west she rolled up the blind to let in the last wintry rays of the setting sun. Then, coming back, she rang for the maid to bring more coals, for the fire was dying out.
CHAPTER XIII.
“Alas, how easily things go wrong,
A sigh too much or a kiss too long, And there comes a mist and a blinding rain, And life is never the same again.”
–_George McDonald_
When all was comfortably arranged once more, Jean d’Alberg resumed her seat and her story:
“The eventful night of the ball came at last, and I know not what nervous presentiment caused me to fasten my palest crush roses in my hair, and to take from their old resting place the diamonds set in heavy gold, that my maternal grandmother had worn ages before. I knew full well, as I leaned on the arm of my tall, dignified father that night, that he recognized in me more strongly than ever, the likeness to his dead wife, my mother. The only feeling of pride that visited me was when I knew that my father was proud of me as his daughter and his dead wife’s living image. My father was an officer in the –th regiment and, as a matter of course, I was to be treated with more than ordinary courtesy. When we entered the ballroom at the lower end I could hear suppressed whispers on all sides. It was my first appearance in any public place, and even if I had not been there, all eyes would have been riveted on my handsome father, who looked the embodiment of manliness and nobility in his regimentals. Perhaps it was the haughty tone of his voice, when he introduced his ‘daughter’ to the hostess of the evening, that caused them to look upon me with no little wonder. Any way I became painfully conscious that we were isolated, as it were, from all the others, and the blush of confusion and excitement that suffused my face, was, as they told me afterwards, my finest feature. I had scarcely finished paying my respects to the hostess, when my father was surrounded by friends who greeted him earnestly, yet distantly. To each of these I was presented in turn, and agreed to dance once with each of them.
“But I had not yet ceased to feel that nervous presentiment that had haunted me all the evening. Suddenly, the low, sweet strains of a waltz vibrated through the room, and gay, laughing couples wheeled off into its dizzy maze. Among my many partners, none had secured the first waltz and I was beginning to congratulate myself that I could take a good view of everything and everybody before commencing my first dance. While I was scanning the room–‘
Here a large coal fell into the ashes causing both ladies to start. Madame d’Alberg poked the glowing embers into a cheerful blaze, and moved closer to the work-table, and as her fingers traced imaginary patterns on its surface, she resumed her story in the same sad monotonous voice.
“I said I raised my eyes to scan the room, but as I did so the blush faded quickly out of my face, and a cold shiver crept through me. I felt for the first time the sensation which all persons experience at some interval in their lives. It was the same as when we know without looking, that someone is watching our movements, the same that causes us to _feel_ the approach of someone, though we may have been persuaded that such a one was far away. I felt that I was being stared at, and following a sudden impulse, I looked towards the shaded recess of a large window, and there I saw the tall figure of a man dressed in uniform, with medals and stars upon his breast; his eyes, the largest, deepest, and most passionate blue I have ever seen, were riveted upon me. As soon as he perceived that I was conscious of his attention he left the recess, and though my eyes did not follow him, I felt that his every step brought him closer to where we stood. At last my heart seemed to give one great leap, for I heard him address my father in a low sad voice full of meaning and pathos. The next instant I was bowing at the sound of both our names, to the handsome stranger. The first glances we exchanged must have told a tale, for I read in the limitless depths of his sad blue eyes, all that mysterious, silent pain that entreats and commands a woman’s sympathy; he in his turn must have seen in mine the ready response to the calm pleading of his own.
“I cannot remember the first words that passed between us. It was the mute language of soul speaking unto soul that had charmed me, and the next thing I realized was, that we had glided in with the laughing throng of merry dancers, among them, but not of them.
“Our steps suited exactly, and as fate would have it, the music was the dreamiest and most suggestive I had ever heard. We never spoke a word, but he must have felt my heart throbbing against his breast, like a captive bird, struggling for its freedom. For once, when all was excitement and pleasure, he pressed my hand ever so little, and I felt his warm breath very near my flushed cheek. All the emotion that had ever rested latent within me, struggled through the fetters that moment, and I felt that now I loved, madly and hopelessly, and that as it had all been born of a second, so might one other second break my heart.
“While such reflections chased one another through my confused brain, my partner led me mechanically into the long narrow conservatory to the left. Outlines of rich and delicately fragrant plants were visible in the soft hazy light that pervaded the spot, and we were near enough to the ball room to hear the subdued strains of orchestra music that yet filled the air. I dared not trust myself to silence, so I said, trying to assume the most indifferent tone.
“‘How pleasant it is in here!’
“I’ll never forget the distracted far-away look in his eyes as he answered in that dangerously, low, sweet voice.
“‘Pleasant? Yes, when the heart is young and untried, all that is beautiful touches it with pleasure, but the heart that is withered and dead, gets its sweetest pain from the very same source.’
“To say I did not understand him would not be quite true. We English girls, who have lived with stern fathers, and with no mother for the best part of our lives, seem to learn by intuition, the saddest phases of a life’s experience. We personify the heroes of our old books, until the worst of written fates, become as natural to us as though such had been items of our own existence. And so I knew immediately, that this man’s life had been blighted bitterly. Some awful storm cloud had shaded the sunniest portion of his life, and the memory of that affliction would cast an immortal gloom over the rest.
“After he had uttered those strange words he looked calmly into my face. What could I do? I had too often persuaded myself that a woman is the weakest of all things, under the influence of a first love I could summon no moral courage now to my assistance, and, childlike, I thought this great, sad looking man would never betray to another how efficaciously he had worked his influence over me. Yielding to these resistless impulses, I drew a little closer to his stalwart form, and then he took my hand in both of his, and I could not help showing what all the passion of a lifetime was, when concentrated into one awful moment of existence. I only looked up into those full dreamy eyes, and said, ‘Why are you so sad?’
“There must have been in those few words, eloquence enough to teach even his heart the truth, for he rose, and stooping over me, he said in a voice that sounded like a sigh, ‘I am sad for the same reason that you will cause others to be some day, if not more careful and land. Do not sadden and ruin as worthy a heart as mine.’ Then before I realized my position, there was but the memory in my heart of his lips having touched mine, followed by the feeling of secret dread and horror, that sprung from the awe in which I stood, of my father. I woke suddenly from the listless apathy that came over me. I looked up with all the emotion of fear, excitement and love visible in my face, looked to find the pale angry countenance of my father before me, with all the insulted dignity and slighted authority he felt, pictured therein.
“He did not say much just then. He trusted to the power of his look to wither the heart within me. He told me sternly, to procure my wraps, that I must leave immediately, we could pass out unnoticed by the side door. In a few moments we were in our carriage, rolling in solemn silence along the road that led to our homestead. My father spoke not a word, and I could not imagine any fate ill enough to befall me, before his wrath would subside. I planned no excuses; I promised myself not to vacillate in any way when accused, I knew that neither attempt would blind my rigid parent for an instant. When we reached our home, my father with all his usual courtesy, helped me to dismount, and gathering my superfluous wraps himself, he gave me his arm and led me into the house. But all this only foreboded the determination, changeless and cruel, that comes from the cold deliberate anger of a just, stern man. When I reached my room, I heard the bell rung for Donnelly, our old housekeeper, and then my heart quaked in earnest with its fearful presentiment. I could not stand it any longer, so I stole down stairs, dressed as I was in my white brocaded ball-dress, and hid myself behind the folding-doors that stood half open between the drawing-room, which was in darkness, and my father’s study, where a single gas-jet was lighting. I had scarcely gathered in my skirts in breathless terror, when I heard the cold, sonorous voice of my father speaking in low grave tones. Our faithful old housekeeper standing by him, looked scared and white. I strained my ears to overhear the conversation, but failed to do so. Only as the old servant passed out I heard her say, ‘It is not for me to dictate sir, but I hope you’ll think better of this before it is too late–for her dead mother’s sake.’
“I was mortified beyond expression. A servant was pleading for me, before my own father, and he refusing to listen! No wonder I felt the blood rushing hotly to my face. No wonder that I was too proud to wait quietly there for him to punish me at will. He had been severe and exacting all his life, but there was a limit to his authority. The very worst possible anticipations crowded into my brain, when I saw the tears falling unrestrained from poor Donnelly’s eyes, as she turned to leave the man with whom all remonstrance was vain. I stole out from my hiding-place again, and on reaching the hall I saw the bundle of shawls my father had carried in for me. A sudden impulse inspired me, I wrapped myself in their woollen folds as best I could, I turned the great bolts of the front door noiselessly, and went out into the cold, chilly starlight, without a friend or a home, shivering, and not having where to lay my head.”
Here she paused, and the intense malice and scorn that sparkled in her fine black eyes almost frightened Honor Edgeworth. When she resumed her story, her tone was more calm and subdued.
“I walked on,” she continued, “until my feet and hands were numb with cold. The north-east wind pierced its bitterness through my bared breast; I pulled the shawl tighter around me, clutching as I did so, a circlet of diamonds, that would have purchased all the comforts in the land for me, and yet I was alone and freezing. He was comfortable and warm, whose cruelty had driven me into the street, and yet I was his own flesh and blood. He could listen to the wailing of the winter wind, and know that it was the pitiful cry of his child–his daughter, and yet remain unmoved. It was then I missed the tender solicitude of a mother,