Book: Honor Edgeworth

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"I hope you won't think I am intruding," said the person at the door,
"but being quite at home in the house, and having received no answer
when I announced myself, I thought I might admit myself here as usual."

Honor detected an effort in the speaker's voice to refrain from laughing
outright, and did not feel too comfortable at the success of her joke.

"Did you--did you wish to see Mr. Rayne?" she stammered, dragging the
unsightly spectacles off her nose, and throwing them back on the table.

"I certainly expected he was here," the stranger answered mischievously,
"but I had mistaken you for him on coming suddenly in."

Honor felt mortified, while her companion evidently was very much
amused. She looked at him suddenly, her pretty face suffused with
blushes, but on raising her eyes they met his in a quick glance--the
large, passionate gray and the deep, dreamy blue penetrated each other's
depths in an instant--only during one short breath, and then Honor's
fell. She had been about to speak, but the mischief in his look reminded
her of the absurdity of this _recontre_, and she could only turn aside,
and show him by her shaking shoulders that she was forced to laugh.

At last the situation became too ridiculous, and Honor, between
smothered fits of laughter, said,

"If you have made any appointment with Mr. Rayne, he will not detain
you, I know. Be seated; I will enquire if he has yet arrived"

"Do not trouble yourself," her companion answered. "My uncle, Mr. Rayne
makes no ceremony for me, I assure I you. I must only await his
pleasure. But lest I have disturbed you--"

"Not at all," Honor interrupted, "I was only amusing myself."

"We may as well not be strangers," Guy said, courteously advancing
towards Honor, "for we are likely to meet very often henceforward. I am
Mr. Rayne's nephew, his sister's son, and I was the only toy in the big
nursery of his heart until Miss Edgeworth appeared, which young lady I
think I have at present the honor to address."

Honor bowed, and, extending her hand, said in her sweetest voice--

"For Mr. Rayne's sake we must certainly be friends,"--then feeling a
little more at home with her visitor, she continued, "As no one comes in
here unannounced, I ventured to attempt a little disguise this
afternoon. I mistook your knock for some one's of the household, and had
just struck the last attitude of my assumed character when you caught
me--I hope the effect on your nerves was nothing serious," and as she
spoke this in her bewitching confusion Guy felt like taking her up in
his arms, little bundle of blushes and smiles as she looked, and
devouring her, but before he had time for word or action, the door
opened again, and this time Henry Rayne bustled in, glaring in
bewilderment upon them--

"Why! You two young rascals, how did you come together? Here you've
cheated me out of anticipated pleasure by finding one another out behind
my back--this is too bad!" and Mr. Rayne as he spoke looked suspiciously
at each of them.

"Oh, Mr. Rayne," and "Really, uncle," broke simultaneously from their
lips, and then Guy, advancing, explained the interesting circumstances
of their premature introduction.

"Well, it's just as well," Henry Rayne said, laughing, "we are all to be
the one family henceforth, and the sooner it began the better--sit down
Honor--sit down my boy," continued he, drawing chairs towards the fire,
"come Guy, tell us the news, you have nothing else to do but gather it."

It was all over and done, those hands that had been groping in the
darkness for so long, had met at length in one another's clasp. True it
was, that no word had yet betrayed the feeling of either heart, no
action, no sign had been made, and yet each knew full well that they had
met at a threshold which they were both destined to cross, hand in hand.
It was not presumption on either side, but each felt so truly that it
would be easy now to love, that they had met. It seemed as though one
had sought the other for a long tune, and that now they had met never,
never to part.

It will avail us nothing to dwell upon the details that made up the
happy days of Honor Edgeworth's life after her meeting with Guy
Elersley. To those who know what it is to breathe, live, and act under
the soothing influence of a first love, the page would be a superfluous
one, and to those for whom such a blessed phase of life is yet among the
things to be, mine must not be the pen that will spoil the luxury
thereof by anticipating its joy--and again, to the wrinkled brows and
aching hearts for which such a thing lies among the "might have beens,"
oh, I will not surely speak--I see their blinding tears--I hear a long,
mournful sigh--somebody's fate is cursed, somebody's hope is trampled,
somebody's heart is withered and dead! There remain only those who live
their love-days in a holy remembrance, those who, in going backward
through time go

"--hand in hand
With spirits from the shadowland,"

and to those I whisper the words of our poet, and say--

"'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all."

All I will say is, that the sun which set upon the world on the day
when, for the first time, Guy and Honor linked hands, never, since nor
before, went down upon any two creatures who were more thoroughly
satisfied with themselves than were these two.

When Guy left Mr. Rayne's house, the evening was far spent--and such an
evening! If an exclamation point cannot imply its happiness it must
remain a mystery. Long after he had bade his earnest "good-night," Honor
and her guardian sat together over the dying coals and chatted
pleasantly. It was their custom to hold this nightly gossip no matter at
how late an hour their visitors left them.

"And so that is my brave nephew for you," Henry Rayne said, as Honor
stood up and placed her chair against the wall, "How do you like him?"

Like him? If he could have seen her averted face--her eyes--her mouth!

"Don't you ask an opinion a little soon?" she replied, so carelessly,
that the shrewdest observer would be baffled.

"Well, I don't mean to ask you if you're crazy about him, or anything
like that," Mr. Rayne said, half-laughing, "but do you take to him, do
you think you will be _friends_? That's what I'd like to know."

"Oh," she exclaimed, disguising her excitement in a smile of surprise,
"I do not doubt that, at least so far as _I_ am concerned, I have been
friends with more--with less--I mean with more--no, with _less_
intereresting people."

"Gracious! it seems to have puzzled you if you have," Henry Rayne said,
mischievously, as he saw her color and grow impatient with herself, "you
seem at a loss to know on what equality you would put poor Guy's
interest"

"Now, you needn't teaze, just because I'm dreadfully sleepy and can't
talk right; I won't say another word, only--Good-night," and kissing him
brusquely on the cheek, she skipped out of the room.

But the subject had not dropped through with these remarks.

The following day as Honor sat in the library alone, Mr. Rayne bustled
in, and sat down beside her, as he said, to read her some interesting
item from the morning _Citizen_, but instead of leaving her again, Honor
saw that he was lingering in the room purposely. (I wonder if anyone
ever yet loitered around a place pretendingly to no purpose without
immediately betraying that he was full of purpose.) After Henry Rayne
had looked at the titles of several books, and gazed vacantly at the
paintings that decorated the walls, and raised the cover of a massive
ink-stand just to drop it again, he made a bold stroke and began his
subject as though it had only entered his head at that very moment.

"Honor," he said somewhat timidly, "I was going to ask you to do
something, last night, but you left me so suddenly that I had to put it
off."

"Oh, I am so sorry," Honor answered, raising her lace frame to her
mouth, not to hide her face, but only to bite off an obstinate knot of
thread that provoked her. "Is it too late, now?" she queried anxiously,
looking at him.

"Oh, no; it's not too late. It's about Guy."

"Guy?"

"Yes."

"Why, what can _I_ have to do with Guy?"

"Well, I just want you to promise me you will do all you are able. If
you do that, I can almost promise you I will never ask you to do me a
favor again."

The puzzled, asking look in her gray eyes deepened, a curious smile
stole round her lips.

"I need not tell you how strange this is to me," she said slowly, "you
must know that you proposed an enigma which I cannot solve."

"Come here, Honor," Mr. Rayne said seriously. She laid down her work and
went towards him. He was sitting in a velvet arm-chair, and she knelt
beside him, with her white, delicate hands clasped on the ruby
upholstering. He put one arm gently around her, and as he smoothed her
wavy hair with one hand, he asked her earnestly,

"Honor, you know how much good is done in the world by mere contact, do
you not?"

"Of course I do, Mr. Rayne; good and evil alike have been kept
circulating from the beginning by individuals."

"That is so. Well, now, don't you think it is a pity when there is a
very susceptible person, one who would be good if he was led, or who
would be wicked if he was led--don't you think it a pity, I ask, that
such a person as that should go to ruin because there is no good
influence open to him in his life?"

"Undoubtedly," the girl answered seriously. "But Mr. Rayne, no one need
be wicked if he wishes to be good, evil is not forced on us you know."

"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.

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