Honor Edgeworth; Or, Ottawa's Present Tense Part 8

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 pa.s.s 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."

"G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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-fas.h.i.+oned locket of yours by the fire in the library. I borrowed it for the short s.p.a.ce 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns 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 a.s.sure 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 subst.i.tute 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 's.h.i.+ne' 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 G.o.d only, _she_ for G.o.d 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 s.e.x 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 st.i.tches, 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 k.n.o.b in his hand, trying to extract one word of earnest friends.h.i.+p 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 rea.s.sumed 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 s.h.i.+nes, and be off, for if I delay a minute I shall have a dozen more pardons to ask. By, bye!"