Book: Honor Edgeworth

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"Oh! dear Mr. Rayne!" sobbed the girl, "do not, pray do not speak like
that, you are so low-spirited to-day. You will be quite well yet, you
are strong enough to battle with a little illness. Don't say you are
going to leave me so willingly--such a thing would break my heart," and
bowing her head on her folded arms, she wept silently and bitterly.

After a moment of painful pause, Henry Rayne raised the drooped head and
said in a tender, loving accent,

"We are distressing one another, my darling, run away now, and distract
yourself elsewhere. I have much to think about." Honor turned to do as
she was bid, but she had barely reached the door when she heard the
feeble voice of her guardian calling her back. When she stood before him
again, his eyes wore a pensive, distracted look, and his voice was
wonderfully serious, as he asked,

"Honor, do you love me now, think you, just as you would have loved your
own father, had he lived?"

Clasping her hands in an attitude of thoughtful attention, she answered,

"Have you had any reason to doubt it, my more than father?--have I, in
word or deed, ever caused the slightest shade of disappointment to
darken your brow, that you deem this question necessary?"

"Tis none of these, my little one," he answered tenderly, "but your
words reassure me, and I like to hear you say them"--then changing his
tone suddenly, to one of pleading enquiry, he asked. "If I were to wish
you to do me a great favor, Honor, which involved the sacrifice of your
own feelings, and the risk of your future happiness, but that, I did so,
merely on account of my great love for you, do you think, you could be
so unselfish, so grand, as to slight every other consideration for mine,
and grant me my wild wish?"

With a little wistful, puzzled look on her face, she answered "There is
no word of binding promise, that it is possible for my lips to utter,
nor no deed bespoken before its committal, by your request or command,
that you may not consider, as wholly yours beforehand, for the
confidence that you have deserved I should place in you, assures me,
that you will ask nothing of me, which is not thoroughly consistent with
my welfare and happiness."

"What a noble creature you are!" the old man exclaimed faintly, then
turning, and looking her tenderly in the face, he said "I understand,
then, that very soon, when I make a request of you, you will not deny me
the extreme gratification of giving my request due consideration?"

Impulsively, frankly, innocently, Honor thrust her little hands into
those of her guardian, and smiling half sadly, said "A promise is a
promise--there is mine."



CHAPTER XXXVIII.


"Hark! the word by Christmas spoken,
Let the sword of wrath be broken,
Let the wrath of battle cease,
Christmas hath no word but--Peace"

Christmas day was unusually gloomy at Mr Rayne's this year, but it was
quite a voluntary stillness, that reigned there; no one felt gay, or
happy, while the loved master of the house was so low. Jean d'Alberg
stole around in velvet slippers, and the others scarcely moved at all,
as for Honor, she lived in the _boudoir_ below stairs lying awake on the
cosy lounge, dreaming all sorts of day dreams, while she awaited the end
of this painful interruption in their domestic happiness.

The sky was slightly overcast with soft, gray clouds, but the day was
fine, and Honor watched the happier passers-by, through the large window
opposite, with a lazy, aimless interest.

Vivian did not come at all, as might have been expected, in fact the day
was one of the most unusual, that had ever been passed within the walls
of this cheerful home.

Circumstances mould our lives so strangely and capriciously, that we are
ever doing things, which in after moments surprise ourselves those
unplanned, unplotted, spontaneous deeds of ours that spring from the
natural source of action, directly as it is influenced by some passing
circumstance of moment! These are where the true character is betrayed,
and the mind and heart laid bare, in their most genuine state.
Afterwards, when everything is past and done, we can judge of ourselves
at will, we can regret the golden opportunities, we so foolishly
squandered, or we can wonder at the strength and magnanimity, that we
had unconsciously displayed in the hour of trial. Only, we know, that
such little moments of an existence have but one passage through time,
and their foot-prints are indelible, on that well-trodden shore, be
they, then pleasant or bitter, to think upon, they must hold their place
in our memory, but once, and forever, there is no going back over the
mistaken path; the weak steps that have faltered and staggered where
they should have been firm and strong, may act as melancholy guides, for
the future, but their own deformity is as immortal as the spirit.

This period of Honor Edgeworth's life, fully exemplified these strange
theories, as she lay, during the long, dreary hours of these anxious
days, peering, with the eyes of her soul, into the dark and mystic
realms of the unrealized. There are moments when we seem to coax stern
destiny, into a lively confidence, and in one passing glimpse, she shows
us many closely-written pages of the "to be."

Experience comes to us in a reverie, or in a dream, and we raise
ourselves up from that couch, in a stupid wonder, but our hair has
turned white, hard lines mark the once smooth features, we are sadder,
wiser, more cautious men, but I doubt if it has made us any better. The
halo of golden sunlight that hope sheds over the future, has a holier
influence over our present life, than the shadows of suspicion and
distrust, with which anticipations of evil and darkness, cloud the vista
of coming years.

For a young girl, the possible phases that life may assume is one long
mystery and dread. She knows that while she sits in patience and
quietude, her destiny is being surely and irrevocably woven by other
hands. She will have no bread to earn, no battle to brave, no struggle
to conquer, the thorns and briars on the path far ahead are trampled by
other feet, and plucked by other hands, and when the miles have been
cleared and trodden, the unknown laborer comes forth from his obscurity,
and humbly asks her to arise from her quiet nook, to shake off the
inactivity of her maidenhood, and to tread the beaten path with him.

After this, if a stray obstacle comes in the way, there are two pairs of
hands to gather, two pair of feet to trample whatever obstructs the
smoothness of their onward path, each growing stronger and more willing
for the others sake, 'till they reach the tedious journey's end, content
and happy.

All this Honor tried to see clearly and impartially. It had pleased
destiny to send back him whom she loved more than all the world besides,
and to send him back unaltered, except that he was handsomer, truer, and
more devoted than ever.

The precious secret, that she had guarded for so long, and with such a
jealous care, had been coaxed from its hiding-place over the threshold
of her lips, and henceforth life meant something vastly different from
what it had hitherto been. She had died, as it were, to her old self,
she would be re-created to that life of holy mysteries, henceforth a
double mission awaited her, double hopes, double fears, those little
untried hands--and she raised them before her--must work two shares in
the task of life, but there was no discouragement in the thought. Those
who have loved as earnestly as she did, will understand why, for there
is a secret courage, and a secret strength, for those who have learned
to cherish the image of another, and to work out another's welfare.

There is a fortitude born on the altar-step, whereon the wedded pair has
knelt, to speak the marriage vows, that none but the wedded can know,
that none but souls bound together in a holy wedlock can understand, the
fortitude that endures in the breast of a woman, through all the fierce
struggles of her married life, that dies only with the last long sigh of
relief at the hour of physical death, that is unquenched by the ashes of
misery and woe that fall on its flickering flame, from time to time, the
fortitude that thrives on sacrifice and endurance, and which if governed
by christian motives, becomes a pass-port for the tried soul, before
Heaven's far-off gate.

Honor felt beforehand, that the active life which lay untouched in the
future for her, was to be sweeter, and happier far, than the passive
existence of her girlhood. Matrimony, in her eyes, was a state of such
sublime responsibilities, that she could spare her thoughts to no other
consideration during these dreary hours of anxious solitude.

She spent her whole days in sketching the hereafter, just as she would
have it. Already she was planning her wifely duties, and asking herself
how she should learn to be always as interesting and as dear to her
husband as she was to her lover. She invented modes of amusement and
distraction, that would make home cheerful and fascinating for him,
resolving within herself, that, if it lay in woman's power, to attract
and bind a man's heart to his fireside, in preference to the old haunts
of his pleasures, she would do it.

Two days of close, concentrated, uninterrupted thought, did not leave
Honor unchanged. Her face grew serious in its beauty, her step was
slower, her conversation less gay, and the distraction of visiting a
sick-room, caused no happy re-action to her pensiveness.

It was now the twenty-seventh of December, a wet, rainy, raw day, fine,
straight lines of persistent rain fell with a dreary drip on the snow's
hard crust, pedestrians with their frozen umbrellas, slipped and slid
along in ill-humor; shop-girls and others, who were out from sheer
necessity, sped along with smileless faces, and frozen ulster-tails,
sulking as they jerked from one icy elevation to another in the flooded
slippery walk, and raising their upper lips in ungraceful curves, as
their straightened curls stood out in painful stiffness, or fell in wet,
clinging bits over their eyes.

Honor shuddered, and shrugged her shoulders as she turned away from the
window, and threw herself into a large chair beside the lounge whereon
was the sleeping form of her invalid guardian. The girls' face wore a
look of dread and anxiety, something of painful impatience hovered
around her mouth, and her eyes looked tired and sad, as she laid her
head languidly back among the cushions.

"How long he sleeps!" she murmured anxiously, "I don't like this
listlessness that has come over him lately; he dozes now all the time."
Then springing quietly up, she stole over to the low couch, and stooped
down beside the sleeping figure, she rested her chin thoughtfully in her
hand and looked earnestly and lovingly into his face. The eyes were only
half closed, the breathing was loud and labored, now and then the lips
moved convulsively, as if in an effort to speak. Something so unnatural
and so forboding dwelt on his kind, dear features, that a racking pain
seized the girl's heart as she looked, her throat filled up, and hot,
blinding tears welled into her eyes.

What is there sadder or more painful, than the quiet, tearful vigils
that some dear one keeps by the sick bed of the unconscious invalid.
With scalding tears in her eyes, and a burning misery in her heart, the
sorrowful mother stoops over the doomed form of her sleeping child,
gently chafing the fevered hands, tenderly cooling the flushed and
fevered brow; softly pressing the trembling lips on the clammy cheek of
her darling, driving back her agony with a heroic cruelty, lest a sob or
a sigh, or a falling tear disturb the quiet slumber of the little one
she loves. A mother and her child, a wife and her husband are never
drawn so closely together, one never seems so truly a part of the other,
as during a moment like this. It seems her baby has never looked so
fair, so faultless in its mother's eyes, as when 'tis viewed through the
blinding tears, that its sufferings and illness have brought into those
searching eyes. A husband's follies and trifling neglects are never so
generously forgiven and forgotten, as when, on bended knee, the wife he
has loved peers greedily, devouringly into the shadowy face, when
clouded by suffering and pain and so it is through all the grades of
binding love we never know how dear our parent, brother, sister, friend
or lover is, until we have watched the weakened forms struggling with
some dread disease, the filmy eyes are then so full of mute appeal, the
faint accents of the poor weak voice thrill our hearts with sympathy and
love, the pressure of the feeble hand is most powerful in drawing us
back, soul to soul, and heart to heart, as though neither of us had ever
done such a very human thing, as to wrong one another. Honor tried to
think, while she watched through her tears, what it would be to live,
without this precious friend forever nigh, to guide and comfort her. In
all the days of their happiness together, they had never spoken of the
time when a separation must come the farthest flight her fancy ever
took, into the distant future, still found her existence blended with
Henry Rayne's. To her, he was now no older, no weaker than he was that
day, long ago, when first she laid her eyes upon him; and now the
horrible possibility of a cruel separation, thrust itself between her
tears and the quiet unconscious face before her.

While she watched, sunk in a melancholy reverie, the bell of the hall
door gave a great ring, which startled her suddenly, it also awoke the
sleeper who looked vacantly into the tear-stained face, and smiled
sadly. Honor got on her knees, and looked anxiously at the worn features
"How do you feel, my dearest?" she said with an effort to be calm, "Any
better?"

"I shall soon be better than I ever was before," he answered quietly,
but so seriously that Honor suspected the terrible meaning of his words.

"Don't you feel at all livelier or stronger?" she asked in a despairing
tone. "You know you were so down-hearted yesterday. Do say you feel a
little relieved?" But before he could answer, Fitts appeared in the
doorway, with the letters and packages of the morning delivery. Two were
for Honor, and all the rest were Henry Rayne's. She had only given a
careless glance at hers, but that sufficed to make her heart beat a
great deal faster, and her eyes to sparkle suspiciously. Stooping over
the figure of the invalid, she kissed the heated brow gently, and went
out, leaving him with his important correspondence. She stole down to
the library and gathered herself into a great easy chair, and then,
drawing her letters deliberately from her pocket, she broke their seals
and straightened out their creases. One was a delicate little note from
a girl-friend, which, at any other time, would have been a pleasant
distraction, but which was now refolded and replaced in its dainty
envelope, unappreciated and uncared for. The other--oh, the other! with
its dear familiar outlines, looking almost lovingly into her eyes--"My
darling Honor," just as his voice pronounced it. Her hands trembled
slightly while they held the quivering sheet, from which she read in
silent rapture. When she had finished, and looked at it, and examined it
over and over again, she dropped her hands carelessly in her lap and
said half aloud.

"What _is_ the mystery in all this? I must write and tell him when we
expect Vivian again. This is queer! but then Guy knows best--oh yes! Guy
surely knows best."

Towards five o'clock of this same afternoon Vivian Standish was
announced by Fitts. To every ones surprise, Mr. Rayne admitted him to
his presence, though he was feeling more debilitated and ill than usual,
and what was more astonishing still, they remained for upwards of two
hours closeted in close conversation. They never raised their voices nor
made themselves heard during the whole interview, but talked steadily
and quietly all the while. Finally Madame d'Alberg, thinking the
exertion too much for her patient, bustled into the room and intimated
as much to Vivian in the mildest possible terms.

As she expected, Henry Rayne was much weakened by the effort and refused
to speak or take any nourishment for the rest of the afternoon. He dozed
lazily and languidly until nine o'clock, and then waking somewhat
refreshed, he turned towards Jean d'Alberg, who sat knitting by his
side, and smiled pleasantly.

"I hope I see you in a better humor than before, you dear old bear," she
said quizzingly. "I thought you would eat me up a while ago for bringing
you a bowl of rich broth"

"I suppose I do bore you at times, Jean," he said penitently.

"Well, I should say you did," she sighed in mock heroism, "why, you are
the crossest, and crankiest and sulkiest patient it was ever a woman's
misfortune to nurse. Come now--I am going to dose you with this beef
tea, just for refusing me awhile ago." Her quick blustering way always
amused and aroused him, and he yielded more easily to her than to the
others, but her hand was somewhat nervous to-day as she administered the
nourishing liquid. She, too, saw the ominous shadows of a serious change
in the pale, wasted face.

"Why, you are as feeble almost as myself!" he tried to exclaim, "see how
your hand shakes."

"It is that knitting," she answered distractedly, "but I must finish
those silk stockings for Honor's New Year's gift, so I hurry them up
while I can sit in here alone."

"For Honor, eh!" he said so pathetically, that the words moved her. "I
believe you love her too, Jean?"

"Indeed I do, Henry, she is half my life to me now."

"Thank God," he said, falling back on the pillows, "she will not be so
utterly alone when I--" but he turned his face to the wall and stifled
the terrible word.

Jean shuddered. Suddenly he turned back again, and looking very
earnestly at the motherly woman beside him, he began:

"You will be good and generous to her all her life, will you not, Jean?
Spare her all the pain and care and trouble you can, poor little one,
she cannot bear much, cherish her always as you do to-day and she will
not be ungrateful. Remember that she was all I had in life: property,
riches and fame were as naught to me, except inasmuch as they were
conducive to her welfare. And now that I must give them all up--"

"Whatever can you mean, Henry Rayne, talking such nonsense; it is a
shame, you are the very one will bury us all yet."

He shook his head feebly. "No Jean, I will never see the spring-time,"
he said sadly. "Life is dear to me," he continued, "I would not now
renounce it if I need not, but there is an Almighty will to whose power
the mightiest mortal must yield without complaint. I have tasted life's
bitter and sweet for three-score years and more, and I must not grumble
now when I am called to leave down my weapons and tools. Other hands
must tackle the unfinished task, my share is completed."

"You are depressed in spirits to-day," said Jean d'Alberg consolingly,
"the sun has gone down, and the darkness always makes you feel blue, but
to-morrow you will have abandoned these gloomy reflections."

"I will never abandon them now, until they be realised facts to me," he
interrupted wearily--then in a low soliloquy he rambled on, "oh, Honor,
Honor! it is only you who beckon me back from the road to eternity, and
poor weak mortal that I am, I sigh for you, in preference to the bright
promises of a land, where I can benefit you more than I ever could
here;" then addressing Jean again, he said, "will you tell Honor that I
will speak a few serious words with her in the morning--you can tell her
too, for fear she would be surprised, that Vivian will be present at the
time."

"I will Henry," Jean d'Alberg answered quietly, rising to prepare the
invalid's drinks. As the darkness crept down over the cold, dark
streets, Mr Rayne swallowed his evening remedies and retired for the
night.

As soon as her charge was snugly gathered into bed, Jean d'Alberg,
leaving Fitts in his dressing-room, went quietly in search of Honor. She
found her sitting on a low stool, before the grate in the sitting-room,
with her elbows resting on her knees and her head buried in both hands.
stealing behind her she drew back the bowed head, and looked into the
girl's eyes.

"Tears!" she said in amazement, "why are you in tears, my darling?"

"Don't think me weak and foolish, dear aunt Jean," Honor said, trying to
laugh it off, "but I was thinking if Mr. Rayne, as I sat here alone, and
with the thoughts, the tears came."

Jean looked more serious, than Honor had hoped to see her as she said.

"Well, my dear, trouble comes to the best of us, some time in life. If
you hadn't it now, you would have it later, and it makes a less painful
and durable impression on the heart while it is young."

"But, dear aunt Jean," faltered the girl, looking imploringly into the
elder woman's face, "do you really think that Mr. Rayne is _seriously_
ill, I mean--" and as the tears flooded her eyes, Jean d'Alberg kissed
her fondly and answered,

"My dear little girl, he is in God's hands, could he be in better?
Whatever is best for him, that kind Father will give to him, let us hope
and pray--I have just come to you with a message from him--"

"Oh! what is it?" Honor interrupted eagerly.

"He merely said, that he wanted to speak a few words to you in the
morning," she said unpretendingly, then going towards the door, she
looked over her shoulder, and added, in such an artful, careless tone,
"and Vivian Standish will be there too, I understand."

The light in the room was dim and subdued, or Jean d'Alberg would have
noticed a strange expression flit across Honor's face at the mention of
this news, but the turned down light protected her.

Jean d'Alberg had undergone a wonderful transformation since the day on
which she took up her residence in Henry Rayne's house. A little
susceptibility was yet flickering, at that time, in the heart that had
grown so hardened and selfish, and she had brought it to a spot, where
such lingering propensities were easily fanned by every passing
circumstance, fanned and fed, until the broad flame was forced to burst
out afresh, and consume the harshness and bitterness that had once dwelt
with them. Her former virtues budded now anew into a second childhood,
adorning her advancing years with gentle, lovable, womanly attributes,
that endeared her to every one she knew, and rendered her indispensable
to Honor who had learned to find in her all the qualities of a kind,
good mother.

Thinking this message that she had just brought Honor needed
consideration, Aunt Jean very properly made a trifling excuse to leave
the room, much to the distracted girl's relief and satisfaction.

"So--the hour has come," she thought bitterly, when she was left alone,
"he has appealed to the only one for whose sake he knows I would lay
down my very life" and out of this bitter reflection, the meaning of the
strange interview she had held with her guardian so shortly before
rushed upon her in an entirely new light. _Now_ she knew what Mr Rayne
meant by the "favor," which involved the sacrifice of personal feeling
and inclination. Yes, _now_ she recognized herself the dupe of the man
she had so proudly rejected still, in all the bitterness of her
reflection she had not felt one reproach against Henry Rayne suggest
itself within her. She knew him too well now, to suspect anything else
than that in some way he too was tangled in deceptive webs. If a promise
from her lips was spoken at his request, she knew that the motive within
his heart was nothing, if not her personal happiness, her future
welfare, or her gratification for the moment. Still, all that could not
cancel the obstinate fact now so bare before her, that in giving her
word to her guardian at the time it was sought, she had given the lie to
her own heart, and had signed the death warrant of her own most sanguine
hopes. Now she must leave her destiny to chance. She would keep her
promise--aye, to the very letter--if nothing happened before this
terrible to-morrow, she would lay her life at the feet of her
benefactor, to dispose of it as he deemed best. Guy Elersley was the man
she loved, the only being in the whole wide world that influenced her
life, but if it were her fate to be the victim of deception then with
the mightiest strength of a womans will will she would cast his image
out of her heart forever. She would live for the man she loathed, a life
of voluntary martyrdom. The struggle would benefit her in any case. If
it were too violent an exertion for her moral nature, it would, in its
pitiless mercy relieve her of her burden of life, and fold her weak
hands over her broken heart forever. If, on the contrary, her moral and
physical strength held bravely out to the painful end, the struggle
would cease after the crisis, and leave her unburdened, unfettered,
hardened, cynical, cold, selfish, but unsusceptible, and incapable of
ever being influenced again by any sentiment or passion, and this
terrible experience promised, in any case to visit her but once in her
whole lifetime.

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