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A Modern Chronicle — Complete

by Winston Churchill · English · Gutenberg #5382 · 945,188 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Modern Chronicle — Complete

Author: Winston Churchill


        
Release date: October 19, 2004 [eBook #5382]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5382

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN CHRONICLE — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill



CONTENTS

     BOOK I.

     Volume 1.
     I.     WHAT'S IN HEREDITY?
     II.    PERDITA RECALLED
     III.   CONCERNING PROVIDENCE
     IV.    OF TEMPERAMENT
     V.     IN WHICH PROVIDENCE BEEPS FAITH
     VI.    HONORA HAS A GLIMPSE OF THE WORLD

     Volume 2.
     VII.   THE OLYMPIAN ORDER
     VIII.  A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS
     IX.    IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES
     X.     IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON
     XI.    WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
     XII.   WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT


     BOOK II.      Volume 3.
     I.     SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE
     II.    “STAFFORD PARK”
      III.   THE GREAT UNATTACHED
     IV.    THE NEW DOCTRINE
     V.     QUICKSANDS
     VI.    GAD AND MENI.      Volume 4.
     VII.   OF CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS
     VIII.  OF MENTAL PROCESSES-FEMININE AND INSOLUBLE
     IX.    INTRODUCING A REVOLUTIONIZING VEHICLE
     X.     ON THE ART OF LION TAMING
     XI.    CONTAINING SOME REVELATIONS


     BOOK III.      Volume 5.
     I.    ASCENDI
     II.   THE PATH OF PHILANTHROPY
     III.  VINELAND
     IV.   THE VIKING
     V.    THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

     Volume 6.
     VI.    CLIO, OR THALIA?
     VII    “LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS”
      VIII.  IN WHICH THE LAW BETRAYS A HEART
     IX.    WYLIE STREET
     X.     THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

     Volume 7.
     XI.    IN WHICH IT IS ALL DONE OVER AGAIN
     XII.   THE ENTRANCE INTO EDEN
     XIII.  OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE GATES.
     XIV.   CONTAINING PHILOSOPHY FROM MR. GRAINGER
     XV.    THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY

     Volume 8.
     XVI.   IN WHICH A MIRROR IS HELD UP
     XVII.  THE RENEWAL OF AN ANCIENT HOSPITALITY
     XVIII. IN WHICH MR. ERWIN SEES PARIS




A MODERN CHRONICLE




CHAPTER I. WHAT'S IN HEREDITY

Honora Leffingwell is the original name of our heroine. She was born in
the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, at Nice, in France, and she
spent the early years of her life in St. Louis, a somewhat conservative
old city on the banks of the Mississippi River. Her father was Randolph
Leffingwell, and he died in the early flower of his manhood, while
filling with a grace that many remember the post of United States Consul
at Nice. As a linguist he was a phenomenon, and his photograph in the
tortoise-shell frame proves indubitably, to anyone acquainted with the
fashions of 1870, that he was a master of that subtlest of all arts,
dress. He had gentle blood in his veins, which came from Virginia
through Kentucky in a coach and six, and he was the equal in appearance
and manners of any duke who lingered beside classic seas.

Honora has often pictured to herself a gay villa set high above the
curving shore, the amethyst depths shading into emerald, laced with
milk-white foam, the vivid colours of the town, the gay costumes; the
excursions, the dinner-parties presided over by the immaculate young
consul in three languages, and the guests chosen from the haute noblesse
of Europe. Such was the vision in her youthful mind, added to by degrees
as she grew into young-ladyhood and surreptitiously became familiar
with the writings of Ouida and the Duchess, and other literature of an
educating cosmopolitan nature.

Honora's biography should undoubtedly contain a sketch of Mrs. Randolph
Leffingwell. Beauty and dash and a knowledge of how to seat a table seem
to have been the lady's chief characteristics; the only daughter of
a carefully dressed and carefully, preserved widower, likewise a
linguist,--whose super-refined tastes and the limited straits to which
he, the remaining scion of an old Southern family, had been reduced by a
gentlemanly contempt for money, led him 'to choose Paris rather than
New York as a place of residence. One of the occasional and carefully
planned trips to the Riviera proved fatal to the beautiful but reckless
Myrtle Allison. She, who might have chosen counts or dukes from the
Tagus to the Danube, or even crossed the Channel; took the dashing
but impecunious American consul, with a faith in his future that was
sublime. Without going over too carefully the upward path which led to
the post of their country's representative at the court of St. James,
neither had the slightest doubt that Randolph Leffingwell would tread
it.

It is needless to dwell upon the chagrin of Honora's maternal
grandfather, Howard Allison Esquire, over this turn of affairs, this
unexpected bouleversement, as he spoke of it in private to his friends
in his Parisian club. For many years he had watched the personal
attractions of his daughter grow, and a brougham and certain other
delights not to be mentioned had gradually become, in his mind,
synonymous with old age. The brougham would have on its panels the
Allison crest, and his distinguished (and titled) son-in-law would drop
in occasionally at the little apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann.
Alas, for visions, for legitimate hopes shattered forever! On the day
that Randolph Leffingwell led Miss Allison down the aisle of the English
church the vision of the brougham and the other delights faded. Howard
Allison went back to his club.

Three years later, while on an excursion with Sir Nicholas Baker and a
merry party on the Italian aide, the horses behind which Mr. and Mrs.
Leffingwell were driving with their host ran away, and in the flight
managed to precipitate the vehicle, and themselves, down the side of one
of the numerous deep valleys of the streams seeking the Mediterranean.
Thus, by a singular caprice of destiny Honors was deprived of both her
parents at a period which--some chose to believe--was the height of
their combined glories. Randolph Leffingwell lived long enough to be
taken back to Nice, and to consign his infant daughter and sundry other
unsolved problems to his brother Tom.

Brother Tom--or Uncle Tom, as we must call him with Honora--cheerfully
accepted the charge. For his legacies in life had been chiefly
blessings in disguise. He was paying teller of the Prairie Bank, and the
thermometer registered something above 90 deg. Fahrenheit on the July
morning when he stood behind his wicket reading a letter from Howard
Allison, Esquire, relative to his niece. Mr. Leffingwell was at this
period of his life forty-eight, but the habit he had acquired of
assuming responsibilities and burdens seemed to have had the effect of
making his age indefinite. He was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, his
mustache and hair already turning; his eyebrows were a trifle bushy, and
his eyes reminded men of one eternal and highly prized quality--honesty.
They were blue grey. Ordinarily they shed a light which sent people
away from his window the happier without knowing why; but they had been
known, on rare occasions, to flash on dishonesty and fraud like the
lightnings of the Lord. Mr. Isham, the president of the bank, coined a
phrase about him. He said that Thomas Leffingwell was constitutionally
honest.

Although he had not risen above the position of paying teller, Thomas
Leffingwell had a unique place in the city of his birth; and the esteem
in which he was held by capitalists and clerks proves that character
counts for something. On his father's failure and death he had entered
the Prairie Bank, at eighteen, and never left it. If he had owned it,
he could not have been treated by the customers with more respect. The
city, save for a few notable exceptions, like Mr. Isham, called him Mr.
Leffingwell, but behind his back often spoke of him as Tom.

On the particular hot morning in question, as he stood in his seersucker
coat reading the unquestionably pompous letter of Mr. Allison announcing
that his niece was on the high seas, he returned the greetings of his
friends with his usual kindness and cheer. In an adjoining compartment a
long-legged boy of fourteen was busily stamping letters.

“Peter,” said Mr. Leffingwell, “go ask Mr. Isham if I may see him.”

It is advisable to remember the boy's name. It was Peter Erwin, and
he was a favourite in the bank, where he had been introduced by Mr.
Leffingwell himself. He was an orphan and lived with his grandmother,
an impoverished old lady with good blood in her veins who boarded in
Graham's Row, on Olive Street. Suffice it to add, at this time, that he
worshipped Mr. Leffingwell, and that he was back in a twinkling with the
information that Mr. Isham was awaiting him.

The president was seated at his desk. In spite of the thermometer
he gave no appearance of discomfort in his frock-coat. He had scant,
sandy-grey whiskers, a tightly closed and smooth-shaven upper lip, a
nose with-a decided ridge, and rather small but penetrating eyes in
which the blue pigment had been used sparingly. His habitual mode of
speech was both brief and sharp, but people remarked that he modified it
a little for Tom Leffingwell.

“Come in, Tom,” he said. “Anything the matter?”

“Mr. Isham, I want a week off, to go to New York.”

The request, from Tom Leffingwell, took Mr. Isham's breath. One of the
bank president's characteristics was an extreme interest in the private
affairs of those who came within his zone of influence and especially
when these affairs evinced any irregularity.

“Randolph again?” he asked quickly.

Tom walked to the window, and stood looking out into the street. His
voice shook as he answered:

“Ten days ago I learned that my brother was dead, Mr. Isham.”

The president glanced at the broad back of his teller. Mr. Isham's voice
was firm, his face certainly betrayed no feeling, but a flitting gleam
of satisfaction might have been seen in his eye.

“Of course, Tom, you may go,” he answered.

Thus came to pass an event in the lives of Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary, that
journey to New York (their first) of two nights and two days to fetch
Honora. We need not dwell upon all that befell them. The first view of
the Hudson, the first whiff of the salt air on this unwonted holiday,
the sights of this crowded city of wealth,--all were tempered by the
thought of the child coming into their lives. They were standing on
the pier when the windows were crimson in the early light, and at
nine o'clock on that summer's morning the Albania was docked, and the
passengers came crowding down the gang-plank. Prosperous tourists, most
of them, with servants and stewards carrying bags of English design and
checked steamer rugs; and at last a ruddy-faced bonne with streamers
and a bundle of ribbons and laces--Honora--Honora, aged eighteen months,
gazing at a subjugated world.

“What a beautiful child! exclaimed a woman on the pier.”

Was it instinct or premonition that led them to accost the bonne?

“Oui, Leffingwell!” she cried, gazing at them in some perplexity. Three
children of various sizes clung to her skirts, and a younger nurse
carried a golden-haired little girl of Honora's age. A lady and
gentleman followed. The lady was beginning to look matronly, and no
second glance was required to perceive that she was a person of opinion
and character. Mr. Holt was smaller than his wife, neat in dress and
unobtrusive in appearance. In the rich Mrs. Holt, the friend of the
Randolph Leffingwells, Aunt Mary was prepared to find a more vapidly
fashionable personage, and had schooled herself forthwith.

“You are Mrs. Thomas Leffingwell?” she asked. “Well, I am relieved.” The
lady's eyes, travelling rapidly over Aunt Mary's sober bonnet and brooch
and gown, made it appear that these features in Honora's future guardian
gave her the relief in question. “Honora, this is your aunt.”

Honora smiled from amidst the laces, and Aunt Mary, only too ready to
capitulate, surrendered. She held out her arms. Tears welled up in the
Frenchwoman's eyes as she abandoned her charge.

“Pauvre mignonne!” she cried.

But Mrs. Holt rebuked the nurse sharply, in French,--a language with
which neither Aunt Mary nor Uncle Tom was familiar. Fortunately,
perhaps. Mrs. Holt's remark was to the effect that Honora was going to a
sensible home.

“Hortense loves her better than my own children,” said that lady.

Honora seemed quite content in the arms of Aunt Mary, who was gazing
so earnestly into the child's face that she did not at first hear Mrs.
Holt's invitation to take breakfast with them on Madison Avenue, and
then she declined politely. While grossing on the steamer, Mrs. Holt had
decided quite clearly in her mind just what she was going to say to the
child's future guardian, but there was something in Aunt Mary's voice
and manner which made these remarks seem unnecessary--although Mrs. Holt
was secretly disappointed not to deliver them.

“It was fortunate that we happened to, be in Nice at the time,” she said
with the evident feeling that some explanation was due. “I did not
know poor Mrs. Randolph Leffingwell very--very intimately, or Mr.
Leffingwell. It was such a sudden--such a terrible affair. But Mr. Holt
and I were only too glad to do what we could.”

“We feel very grateful to you,” said Aunt Mary, quietly.

Mrs. Holt looked at her with a still more distinct approval, being
tolerably sure that Mrs. Thomas Leffingwell understood. She had cleared
her skirts of any possible implication of intimacy with the late Mrs.
Randolph, and done so with a master touch.

In the meantime Honora had passed to Uncle Tom. After securing the
little trunk, and settling certain matters with Mr. Holt, they said
good-by to her late kind protectors, and started off for the nearest
street-cars, Honora pulling Uncle Tom's mustache. More than one
pedestrian paused to look back at the tall man carrying the beautiful
child, bedecked like a young princess, and more than one passenger in
the street cars smiled at them both.




CHAPTER II. PERDITA RECALLED

Saint Louis, or that part of it which is called by dealers in real
estate the choice residence section, grew westward. And Uncle Tom might
be said to have been in the vanguard of the movement. In the days before
Honora was born he had built his little house on what had been a farm on
the Olive Street Road, at the crest of the second ridge from the river.
Up this ridge, with clanking traces, toiled the horse-cars that carried
Uncle Tom downtown to the bank and Aunt Mary to market.

Fleeing westward, likewise, from the smoke, friends of Uncle Tom's and
Aunt Mary's gradually surrounded them--building, as a rule, the high
Victorian mansions in favour at that period, which were placed in the
centre of commodious yards. For the friends of Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary
were for the most part rich, and belonged, as did they, to the older
families of the city. Mr. Dwyer's house, with its picture gallery, was
across the street.

In the midst of such imposing company the little dwelling which became
the home of our heroine sat well back in a plot that might almost be
called a garden. In summer its white wooden front was nearly hidden by
the quivering leaves of two tall pear trees. On the other side of the
brick walk, and near the iron fence, was an elm and a flower bed that
was Uncle Tom's pride and the admiration of the neighbourhood. Honora
has but to shut her eyes to see it aflame with tulips at Eastertide. The
eastern wall of the house was a mass of Virginia creeper, and beneath
that another flower bed, and still another in the back-yard behind
the lattice fence covered with cucumber vine. There were, besides, two
maples and two apricot trees, relics of the farm, and of blessed memory.
Such apricots! Visions of hot summer evenings come back, with Uncle Tom,
in his seersucker coat, with his green watering-pot, bending over the
beds, and Aunt Mary seated upright in her chair, looking up from her
knitting with a loving eye.

Behind the lattice, on these summer evenings, stands the militant figure
of that old retainer, Bridget the cook, her stout arms akimbo, ready to
engage in vigorous banter should Honora deign to approach.

“Whisht, 'Nora darlint, it's a young lady yell be soon, and the beaux
a-comin' 'round!” she would cry, and throw back her head and laugh until
the tears were in her eyes.

And the princess, a slim figure in an immaculate linen frock with red
ribbons which Aunt Mary had copied from Longstreth's London catalogue,
would reply with dignity:

“Bridget, I wish you would try to remember that my name is Honora.”

Another spasm of laughter from Bridget.

“Listen to that now!” she would cry to another ancient retainer, Mary
Ann, the housemaid, whose kitchen chair was tilted up against the side
of the woodshed. “It'll be Miss Honora next, and George Hanbury here
to-day with his eye through a knothole in the fence, out of his head for
a sight of ye.”

George Hanbury was Honora's cousin, and she did not deem his admiration
a subject fit for discussion with Bridget.

“Sure,” declared Mary Ann, “it's the air of a princess the child has.”

That she should be thought a princess did not appear at all remarkable
to Honora at twelve years of age. Perdita may have had such dreams.
She had been born, she knew, in some wondrous land by the shores of the
summer seas, not at all like St. Louis, and friends and relatives
had not hesitated to remark in her hearing that she resembled--her
father,--that handsome father who surely must have been a prince, whose
before-mentioned photograph in the tortoise-shell frame was on the
bureau in her little room. So far as Randolph Leffingwell was concerned,
photography had not been invented for nothing. Other records of him
remained which Honora had likewise seen: one end of a rose-covered
villa--which Honora thought was a wing of his palace; a coach and
four he was driving, and which had chanced to belong to an Englishman,
although the photograph gave no evidence of this ownership. Neither
Aunt Mary nor Uncle Tom had ever sought--for reasons perhaps obvious--to
correct the child's impression of an extraordinary paternity.

Aunt Mary was a Puritan of Southern ancestry, and her father had been a
Presbyterian minister, Uncle Tom was a member of the vestry of a church
still under Puritan influences. As a consequence for Honora, there were
Sunday afternoons--periods when the imaginative faculty, in which she
was by no means lacking, was given full play. She would sit by the
hour in the swing Uncle Tom had hung for her under the maple near the
lattice, while castles rose on distant heights against blue skies. There
was her real home, in a balconied chamber that overlooked mile upon mile
of rustling forest in the valley; and when the wind blew, the sound of
it was like the sea. Honora did not remember the sea, but its music was
often in her ears.

She would be aroused from these dreams of greatness by the appearance of
old Catherine, her nurse, on the side porch, reminding her that it
was time to wash for supper. No princess could have had a more humble
tiring-woman than Catherine.

Honora cannot be unduly blamed. When she reached the “little house
under the hill” (as Catherine called the chamber beneath the eaves), she
beheld reflected in the mirror an image like a tall, white flower that
might indeed have belonged to a princess. Her hair, the colour of
burnt sienna, fell evenly to her shoulders; her features even then had
regularity and hauteur; her legs, in their black silk stockings, were
straight; and the simple white lawn frock made the best of a slender
figure. Those frocks of Honora's were a continual source of wonder and
sometimes of envy--to Aunt Mary's friends; who returned from the seaside
in the autumn, after a week among the fashions in Boston or New York,
to find Honora in the latest models, and better dressed than their own
children. Aunt Mary made no secret of the methods by which these seeming
miracles were performed, and showed Cousin Eleanor Hanbury the fashion
plates in the English periodicals. Cousin Eleanor sighed.

“Mary, you are wonderful,” she would say. “Honora's clothes are
better-looking than those I buy in the East, at such fabulous prices,
from Cavendish.”

Indeed, no woman was ever farther removed from personal vanity than Aunt
Mary. She looked like a little Quakeress. Her silvered hair was parted
in the middle and had, in spite of palpable efforts towards tightness
and repression, a perceptible ripple in it. Grey was her only concession
to colour, and her gowns and bonnets were of a primness which belonged
to the past. Repression, or perhaps compression, was her note, for the
energy confined within her little body was a thing to have astounded
scientists: And Honora grew to womanhood and reflection before she had.
guessed or considered that her aunt was possessed of intense emotions
which had no outlet. Her features were regular, her shy eye had the
clearness of a forest pool. She believed in predestination, which is
to say that she was a fatalist; and while she steadfastly continued to
regard this world as a place of sorrow and trials, she concerned herself
very little about her participation in a future life. Old Dr. Ewing, the
rector of St. Anne's, while conceding that no better or more charitable
woman existed, found it so exceedingly difficult to talk to her, on the
subject of religion that he had never tried it but once.

Such was Aunt Mary. The true student of human nature should not find it
surprising that she spoiled Honora and strove--at what secret expense,
care, and self-denial to Uncle Tom and herself, none will ever know--to
adorn the child that she might appear creditably among companions whose
parents were more fortunate in this world's goods; that she denied
herself to educate Honora as these other children were educated. Nor is
it astonishing that she should not have understood the highly complex
organism of the young lady we have chosen for our heroine, who was
shaken, at the age of thirteen, by unfulfilled longings.

Very early in life Honora learned to dread the summer, when one by one
the families of her friends departed until the city itself seemed a
remote and distant place from what it had been in the spring and
winter. The great houses were closed and blinded, and in the evening the
servants who had been left behind chattered on the front steps. Honora
could not bear the sound of the trains that drifted across the night,
and the sight of the trunks piled in the Hanburys' hall, in Wayland
Square, always filled her with a sickening longing. Would the day ever
come when she, too, would depart for the bright places of the earth?
Sometimes, when she looked in the mirror, she was filled with a fierce
belief in a destiny to sit in the high seats, to receive homage and
dispense bounties, to discourse with great intellects, to know London
and Paris and the marts and centres of the world as her father had. To
escape--only to escape from the prison walls of a humdrum existence, and
to soar!

Let us, if we can, reconstruct an August day when all (or nearly all)
of Honora's small friends were gone eastward to the mountains or the
seaside. In “the little house under the hill,” the surface of which was
a hot slate roof, Honora would awake about seven o'clock to find old
Catherine bending over her in a dun-coloured calico dress, with the
light fiercely beating against the closed shutters that braved it so
unflinchingly throughout the day.

“The birds are before ye, Miss Honora, honey, and your uncle waterin'
his roses this half-hour.”

Uncle Tom was indeed an early riser. As Honora dressed (Catherine
assisting as at a ceremony), she could see him, in his seersucker coat,
bending tenderly over his beds; he lived enveloped in a peace which has
since struck wonder to Honora's soul. She lingered in her dressing, even
in those days, falling into reveries from which Catherine gently and
deferentially aroused her; and Uncle Tom would be carving the beefsteak
and Aunt Mary pouring the coffee when she finally arrived in the dining
room to nibble at one of Bridget's unforgettable rolls or hot biscuits.
Uncle Tom had his joke, and at quarter-past eight precisely he would
kiss Aunt Mary and walk to the corner to wait for the ambling horse-car
that was to take him to the bank. Sometimes Honora went to the corner
with him, and he waved her good-by from the platform as he felt in his
pocket for the nickel that was to pay his fare.

When Honora returned, Aunt Mary had donned her apron, and was
industriously aiding Mary Ann to wash the dishes and maintain the
customary high polish on her husband's share of the Leffingwell silver
which, standing on the side table, shot hither and thither rays of green
light that filtered through the shutters into the darkened room. The
child partook of Aunt Mary's pride in that silver, made for a Kentucky
great-grandfather Leffingwell by a famous Philadelphia silversmith
three-quarters of a century before. Honora sighed.

“What's the matter, Honora?” asked Aunt Mary, without pausing in her
vigorous rubbing.

“The Leffingwells used to be great once upon a time, didn't they, Aunt
Mary?”

“Your Uncle Tom,” answered Aunt Mary, quietly, “is the greatest man I
know, child.”

“And my father must have been a great man, too,” cried Honora, “to have
been a consul and drive coaches.”

Aunt Mary was silent. She was not a person who spoke easily on difficult
subjects.

“Why don't you ever talk to me about my father, Aunt Mary? Uncle Tom
does.”

“I didn't know your father, Honora.”

“But you have seen him?”

“Yes,” said Aunt Mary, dipping her cloth into the whiting; “I saw him at
my wedding. But he was very, young.”

“What was he like?” Honora demanded. “He was very handsome, wasn't he?”

“Yes, child.”

“And he had ambition, didn't he, Aunt Mary?”

Aunt Mary paused. Her eyes were troubled as she looked at Honora, whose
head was thrown back.

“What kind of ambition do you mean, Honora?”

“Oh,” cried Honora, “to be great and rich and powerful, and to be
somebody.”

“Who has been putting such things in your head, my dear?”

“No one, Aunt Mary. Only, if I were a man, I shouldn't rest until I
became great.”

Alas, that Aunt Mary, with all her will, should have such limited powers
of expression! She resumed her scrubbing of the silver before she spoke.

“To do one's duty, to accept cheerfully and like a Christian the
responsibilities and burdens of life, is the highest form of greatness,
my child. Your Uncle Tom has had many things to trouble him; he has
always worked for others, and not for himself. And he is respected and
loved by all who know him.”

“Yes, I know, Aunt Mary. But--”

“But what, Honora?”

“Then why isn't he rich, as my father was?”

“Your father wasn't rich, my dear,” said Aunt Mary, sadly.

“Why, Aunt Mary!” Honora exclaimed, “he lived in a beautiful house, and
owned horses. Isn't that being rich?”

Poor Aunt Mary!

“Honora,” she answered, “there are some things you are too young to
understand. But try to remember, my dear, that happiness doesn't consist
in being rich.”

“But I have often heard you say that you wished you were rich, Aunt
Mary, and had nice things, and a picture gallery like Mr. Dwyer.”

“I should like to have beautiful pictures, Honora.”

“I don't like Mr. Dwyer,” declared Honora, abruptly.

“You mustn't say that, Honora,” was Aunt Mary's reproof. “Mr. Dwyer
is an upright, public-spirited man, and he thinks a great deal of your
Uncle Tom.”

“I can't help it, Aunt Mary,” said Honora. “I think he enjoys
being--well, being able to do things for a man like Uncle Tom.”

Neither Aunt Mary nor Honora guessed what a subtle criticism this was
of Mr. Dwyer. Aunt Mary was troubled and puzzled; and she began to
speculate (not for the first time) why the Lord had given a person with
so little imagination a child like Honora to bring up in the straight
and narrow path.

“When I go on Sunday afternoons with Uncle Tom to see Mr. Dwyer's
pictures,” Honora persisted, “I always feel that he is so glad to have
what other people haven't or he wouldn't have any one to show them to.”

Aunt Mary shook her head. Once she had given her loyal friendship, such
faults as this became as nothing.

“And when” said Honora, “when Mrs. Dwyer has dinner-parties for
celebrated people who come here, why does she invite you in to see the
table?”

“Out of kindness, Honora. Mrs. Dwyer knows that I enjoy looking at
beautiful things.”

“Why doesn't she invite you to the dinners?” asked Honora, hotly. “Our
family is just as good as Mrs. Dwyer's.”

The extent of Aunt Mary's distress was not apparent.

“You are talking nonsense, my child,” she said. “All my friends know
that I am not a person who can entertain distinguished people, and that
I do not go out, and that I haven't the money to buy evening dresses.
And even if I had,” she added, “I haven't a pretty neck, so it's just as
well.”

A philosophy distinctly Aunt Mary's.

Uncle Tom, after he had listened without comment that evening to her
account of this conversation, was of the opinion that to take Honora
to task for her fancies would be waste of breath; that they would right
themselves as she grew up.

“I'm afraid it's inheritance, Tom,” said Aunt Mary, at last. “And if
so, it ought to be counteracted. We've seen other signs of it. You
know Honora has little or no idea of the value of money--or of its
ownership.”

“She sees little enough of it,” Uncle Tom remarked with a smile.

“Tom.”

“Well.”

“Sometimes I think I've done wrong not to dress her more simply. I'm
afraid it's given the child a taste for--for self-adornment.”

“I once had a fond belief that all women possessed such a taste,” said
Uncle Tom, with a quizzical look at his own exception. “To tell you the
truth, I never classed it as a fault.”

“Then I don't see why you married me,” said Aunt Mary--a periodical
remark of hers. “But, Tom, I do wish her to appear as well as the other
children, and (Aunt Mary actually blushed) the child has good looks.”

“Why don't you go as far as old Catherine, and call her a princess?” he
asked.

“Do you want me to ruin her utterly?” exclaimed Aunt Mary.

Uncle Tom put his hands on his wife's shoulders and looked down into her
face, and smiled again. Although she held herself very straight, the top
of her head was very little above the level of his chin.

“It strikes me that you are entitled to some little indulgence in life,
Mary,” he said.

One of the curious contradictions of Aunt Mary's character was a never
dying interest, which held no taint of envy, in the doings of people
more fortunate than herself. In the long summer days, after her silver
was cleaned and her housekeeping and marketing finished, she read in the
book-club periodicals of royal marriages, embassy balls, of great town
and country houses and their owners at home and abroad. And she knew,
by means of a correspondence with Cousin Eleanor Hanbury and other
intimates, the kind of cottages in which her friends sojourned at the
seashore or in the mountains; how many rooms they had, and how many
servants, and very often who the servants were; she was likewise
informed on the climate, and the ease with which it was possible to
obtain fresh vegetables. And to all of this information Uncle Tom would
listen, smiling but genuinely interested, while he carved at dinner.

One evening, when Uncle Tom had gone to play piquet with Mr. Isham, who
was ill, Honora further surprised her aunt by exclaiming: “How can you
talk of things other people have and not want them, Aunt Mary?”

“Why should I desire what I cannot have, my dear? I take such pleasure
out of my friends' possessions as I can.”

“But you want to go to the seashore, I know you do. I've heard you say
so,” Honora protested.

“I should like to see the open ocean before I die,” admitted Aunt Mary,
unexpectedly. “I saw New York harbour once, when we went to meet you.
And I know how the salt water smells--which is as much, perhaps, as I
have the right to hope for. But I have often thought it would be nice to
sit for a whole summer by the sea and listen to the waves dashing upon
the beach, like those in the Chase picture in Mr. Dwyer's gallery.”

Aunt Mary little guessed the unspeakable rebellion aroused in Honora by
this acknowledgment of being fatally circumscribed. Wouldn't Uncle Tom
ever be rich?

Aunt Mary shook her head--she saw no prospect of it.

But other men, who were not half so good as Uncle Tom, got rich.

Uncle Tom was not the kind of man who cared for riches. He was content
to do his duty in that sphere where God had placed him.

Poor Aunt Mary. Honora never asked her uncle such questions: to do so
never occurred to her. At peace with all men, he gave of his best to
children, and Honora remained a child. Next to his flowers, walking was
Uncle Tom's chief recreation, and from the time she could be guided by
the hand she went with him. His very presence had the gift of dispelling
longings, even in the young; the gift of compelling delight in simple
things. Of a Sunday afternoon, if the heat were not too great, he would
take Honora to the wild park that stretches westward of the city, and
something of the depth and intensity of his pleasure in the birds,
the forest, and the wild flowers would communicate itself to her. She
learned all unconsciously (by suggestion, as it were) to take delight in
them; a delight that was to last her lifetime, a never failing resource
to which she was to turn again and again. In winter, they went to the
botanical gardens or the Zoo. Uncle Tom had a passion for animals, and
Mr. Isham, who was a director, gave him a pass through the gates. The
keepers knew him, and spoke to him with kindly respect. Nay, it seemed
to Honora that the very animals knew him, and offered themselves
ingratiatingly to be stroked by one whom they recognized as friend.
Jaded horses in the street lifted their noses; stray, homeless cats
rubbed against his legs, and vagrant dogs looked up at him trustfully
with wagging tails.

Yet his goodness, as Emerson would have said, had some edge to it.
Honora had seen the light of anger in his blue eye--a divine ray. Once
he had chastised her for telling Aunt Mary a lie (she could not have
lied to him) and Honora had never forgotten it. The anger of such a man
had indeed some element in it of the divine; terrible, not in volume,
but in righteous intensity. And when it had passed there was no occasion
for future warning. The memory of it lingered.




CHAPTER III. CONCERNING PROVIDENCE

What quality was it in Honora that compelled Bridget to stop her ironing
on Tuesdays in order to make hot waffles for a young woman who was late
to breakfast? Bridget, who would have filled the kitchen with righteous
wrath if Aunt Mary had transgressed the rules of the house, which were
like the laws of the Medes and Persians! And in Honora's early youth
Mary Ann, the housemaid, spent more than one painful evening writing
home for cockle shells and other articles to propitiate our princess,
who rewarded her with a winning smile and a kiss, which invariably
melted the honest girl into tears. The Queen of Scots never had a more
devoted chamber woman than old Catherine,--who would have gone to the
stake with a smile to save her little lady a single childish ill, and
who spent her savings, until severely taken to task by Aunt Mary,
upon objects for which a casual wish had been expressed. The saints
themselves must at times have been aweary from hearing Honora's name.

Not to speak of Christmas! Christmas in the little house was one wild
delirium of joy. The night before the festival was, to all outward
appearances, an ordinary evening, when Uncle Tom sat by the fire in his
slippers, as usual, scouting the idea that there would be any Christmas
at all. Aunt Mary sewed, and talked with maddening calmness of the news
of the day; but for Honora the air was charged with coming events of
the first magnitude. The very furniture of the little sitting-room had
a different air, the room itself wore a mysterious aspect, and the
cannel-coal fire seemed to give forth a special quality of unearthly
light.

“Is to-morrow Christmas?” Uncle Tom would exclaim. “Bless me! Honora, I
am so glad you reminded me.”

“Now, Uncle Tom, you knew it was Christmas all the time!”

“Kiss your uncle good night, Honora, and go right to sleep, dear,”--from
Aunt Mary.

The unconscious irony in that command of Aunt Mary's!--to go right to
sleep! Many times was a head lifted from a small pillow, straining after
the meaning of the squeaky noises that came up from below! Not Santa
Claus. Honora's belief in him had merged into a blind faith in a larger
and even more benevolent, if material providence: the kind of providence
which Mr. Meredith depicts, and which was to say to Beauchamp: “Here's
your marquise;” a particular providence which, at the proper time, gave
Uncle Tom money, and commanded, with a smile, “Buy this for Honora--she
wants it.” All-sufficient reason! Soul-satisfying philosophy, to which
Honora was to cling for many years of life. It is amazing how much
can be wrung from a reluctant world by the mere belief in this kind of
providence.

Sleep came at last, in the darkest of the hours. And still in the
dark hours a stirring, a delicious sensation preceding reason, and the
consciousness of a figure stealing about the room. Honora sat up in bed,
shivering with cold and delight.

“Is it awake ye are, darlint, and it but four o'clock the morn!”

“What are you doing, Cathy?”

“Musha, it's to Mass I'm going, to ask the Mother of God to give ye many
happy Christmases the like of this, Miss Honora.” And Catherine's arms
were about her.

“Oh, it's Christmas, Cathy, isn't it? How could I have forgotten it!”

“Now go to sleep, honey. Your aunt and uncle wouldn't like it at all at
all if ye was to make noise in the middle of the night--and it's little
better it is.”

Sleep! A despised waste of time in childhood. Catherine went to Mass,
and after an eternity, the grey December light began to sift through
the shutters, and human endurance had reached its limit. Honora, still
shivering, seized a fleecy wrapper (the handiwork of Aunt Mary)
and crept, a diminutive ghost, down the creaking stairway to the
sitting-room. A sitting-room which now was not a sitting-room, but
for to-day a place of magic. As though by a prearranged salute of the
gods,--at Honora's entrance the fire burst through the thick blanket
of fine coal which Uncle Tom had laid before going to bed, and with a
little gasp of joy that was almost pain, she paused on the threshold.
That one flash, like Pizarro's first sunrise over Peru, gilded the edge
of infinite possibilities.

Needless to enumerate them. The whole world, as we know, was in a
conspiracy to spoil Honora. The Dwyers, the Cartwrights, the Haydens,
the Brices, the Ishams, and I know not how many others had sent their
tributes, and Honora's second cousins, the Hanburys, from the family
mansion behind the stately elms of Wayland Square--of which something
anon. A miniature mahogany desk, a prayer-book and hymnal which the
Dwyers had brought home from New York, endless volumes of a more secular
and (to Honora) entrancing nature; roller skates; skates for real ice,
when it should appear in the form of sleet on the sidewalks; a sled;
humbler gifts from Bridget, Mary Ann, and Catherine, and a wonderful
coat, with hat to match, of a certain dark green velvet. When Aunt Mary
appeared, an hour or so later, Honora was surveying her magnificence in
the glass.

“Oh, Aunt Mary!” she cried, with her arms tightly locked around her
aunt's neck, “how lovely! Did you send all the way to New York for it?”

“No, Honora,” said her aunt, “it didn't come from New York.” Aunt Mary
did not explain that this coat had been her one engrossing occupation
for six weeks, at such times when Honora was out or tucked away safely
in bed.

Perhaps Honora's face fell a little. Aunt Mary scanned it rather
anxiously.

“Does that cause you to like it any less, Honora?” she asked.

“Aunt Mary!” exclaimed Honora, in a tone of reproval. And added after a
little, “I suppose Mademoiselle made it.”

“Does it make any difference who made it, Honora?”

“Oh, no indeed, Aunt Mary. May I wear it to Cousin Eleanor's to-day?”

“I gave it to you to wear, Honora.”

Not in Honora's memory was there a Christmas breakfast during which
Peter Erwin did not appear, bringing gifts. Peter Erwin, of whom we
caught a glimpse doing an errand for Uncle Tom in the bank. With the
complacency of the sun Honora was wont to regard this most constant of
her satellites. Her awakening powers of observation had discovered
him in bondage, and in bondage he had been ever since: for their
acquaintance had begun on the first Sunday afternoon after Honora's
arrival in St. Louis at the age of eighteen months. It will be
remembered that Honora was even then a coquette, and as she sat in her
new baby-carriage under the pear tree, flirted outrageously with Peter,
who stood on one foot from embarrassment.

“Why, Peter,” Uncle Tom had said slyly, “why don't you kiss her?”

That kiss had been Peter's seal of service. And he became, on Sunday
afternoons, a sort of understudy for Catherine. He took an amazing
delight in wheeling Honora up and down the yard, and up and down the
sidewalk. Brunhilde or Queen Elizabeth never wielded a power more
absolute, nor had an adorer more satisfactory; and of all his remarkable
talents, none were more conspicuous than his abilities to tell a story
and to choose a present. Emancipated from the perambulator, Honora
would watch for him at the window, and toddle to the gate to meet him, a
gentleman-in-waiting whose zeal, however arduous, never flagged.

On this particular Christmas morning, when she heard the gate slam,
Honora sprang up from the table to don her green velvet coat. Poor
Peter! As though his subjugation could be more complete!

“It's the postman,” suggested Uncle Tom, wickedly.

“It's Peter!” cried Honora, triumphantly, from the hall as she flunk
open the door, letting in a breath of cold Christmas air out of the
sunlight.

It was Peter, but a Peter who has changed some since perambulator
days,--just as Honora has changed some. A Peter who, instead of
fourteen, is six and twenty; a full-fledged lawyer, in the office of
that most celebrated of St. Louis practitioners, Judge Stephen Brice.
For the Peter Erwins of this world are queer creatures, and move rapidly
without appearing to the Honoras to move at all. A great many things
have happened to Peter since he had been a messenger boy in the bank.

Needless to say, Uncle Tom had taken an interest in him. And, according
to Peter, this fact accounted for all the good fortune which had
followed. Shortly before the news came of his brother's death, Uncle Tom
had discovered that the boy who did his errands so willingly was going
to night school, and was the grandson of a gentleman who had fought with
credit in the Mexican War, and died in misfortune: the grandmother
was Peter's only living relative. Through Uncle Tom, Mr. Isham became
interested, and Judge Brice. There was a certain scholarship in the
Washington University which Peter obtained, and he worked his way
through the law school afterwards.

A simple story, of which many a duplicate could be found in this country
of ours. In the course of the dozen years or so of its unravelling the
grandmother had died, and Peter had become, to all intents and purposes,
a member of Uncle Tom's family. A place was set for him at Sunday
dinner; and, if he did not appear, at Sunday tea. Sometimes at both. And
here he was, as usual, on Christmas morning, his arms so full that he
had had to push open the gate with his foot.

“Well, well, well, well!” he said, stopping short on the doorstep and
surveying our velvet-clad princess, “I've come to the wrong house.”

The princess stuck her finger into her cheek.

“Don't be silly, Peter!” she said; “and Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas!” he replied, edging sidewise in at the door and
depositing his parcels on the mahogany horsehair sofa. He chose one, and
seized the princess--velvet coat and all!--in his arms and kissed her.
When he released her, there remained in her hand a morocco-bound diary,
marked with her monogram, and destined to contain high matters.

“How could you know what I wanted, Peter?” she exclaimed, after she had
divested it of the tissue paper, holly, and red ribbon in which he had
so carefully wrapped it. For it is a royal trait to thank with the same
graciousness and warmth the donors of the humblest and the greatest
offerings.

There was a paper-knife for Uncle Tom, and a workbasket for Aunt Mary,
and a dress apiece for Catherine, Bridget, and Mary Ann, none of whom
Peter ever forgot. Although the smoke was even at that period beginning
to creep westward, the sun poured through the lace curtains into the
little dining-room and danced on the silver coffeepot as Aunt Mary
poured out Peter's cup, and the blue china breakfast plates were bluer
than ever because it was Christmas. The humblest of familiar articles
took on the air of a present. And after breakfast, while Aunt Mary
occupied herself with that immemorial institution,--which was to
lure hitherwards so many prominent citizens of St. Louis during the
day,--eggnogg, Peter surveyed the offerings which transformed the
sitting-room. The table had been pushed back against the bookcases,
the chairs knew not their time-honoured places, and white paper and red
ribbon littered the floor. Uncle Tom, relegated to a corner, pretended
to read his newspaper, while Honora flitted from Peter's knees to
his, or sat cross-legged on the hearth-rug investigating a bottomless
stocking.

“What in the world are we going to do with all these things?” said
Peter.

“We?” cried Honora.

“When we get married, I mean,” said Peter, smiling at Uncle Tom. “Let's
see!” and he began counting on his fingers, which were long but very
strong--so strong that Honora could never loosen even one of them when
they gripped her. “One--two--three--eight Christmases before you are
twenty-one. We'll have enough things to set us up in housekeeping. Or
perhaps you'd rather get married when you are eighteen?”

“I've always told you I wasn't going to marry you, Peter,” said Honora,
with decision.

“Why by not?” He always asked that question.

Honora sighed.

“I'll make a good husband,” said Peter; “I'll promise. Ugly men are
always good husbands.”

“I didn't say you were ugly,” declared the ever considerate Honora.

“Only my nose is too big,” he quoted; “and I am too long one way and not
wide enough.”

“You have a certain air of distinction in spite of it,” said Honora.

Uncle Tom's newspaper began to shake, and he read more industriously
than ever.

“You've been reading--novels!” said Peter, in a terrible judicial voice.

Honora flushed guiltily, and resumed her inspection of the stocking.
Miss Rossiter, a maiden lady of somewhat romantic tendencies, was
librarian of the Book Club that year. And as a result a book called
“Harold's Quest,” by an author who shall be nameless, had come to the
house. And it was Harold who had had “a certain air of distinction.”

“It isn't very kind of you to make fun of me when I pay you a
compliment,” replied Honora, with dignity.

“I was naturally put out,” he declared gravely, “because you said you
wouldn't marry me. But I don't intend to give up. No man who is worth
his salt ever gives up.”

“You are old enough to get married now,” said Honora, still considerate.

“But I am not rich enough,” said Peter; “and besides, I want you.”

One of the first entries in the morocco diary--which had a lock and key
to it--was a description of Honora's future husband. We cannot violate
the lock, nor steal the key from under her pillow. But this much, alas,
may be said with discretion, that he bore no resemblance to Peter Erwin.
It may be guessed, however, that he contained something of Harold, and
more of Randolph Leffingwell; and that he did not live in St. Louis.

An event of Christmas, after church, was the dinner of which Uncle Tom
and Aunt Mary and Honora partook with Cousin Eleanor Hanbury, who had
been a Leffingwell, and was a first cousin of Honora's father. Honora
loved the atmosphere of the massive, yellow stone house in Wayland
Square, with its tall polished mahogany doors and thick carpets, with
its deferential darky servants, some of whom had been the slaves of her
great uncle. To Honora, gifted with imagination, the house had an odour
all its own; a rich, clean odour significant, in later life, of wealth
and luxury and spotless housekeeping. And she knew it from top to
bottom. The spacious upper floor, which in ordinary dwellings would have
been an attic, was the realm of young George and his sisters, Edith and
Mary (Aunt Mary's namesake). Rainy Saturdays, all too brief, Honora had
passed there, when the big dolls' house in the playroom became the scene
of domestic dramas which Edith rehearsed after she went to bed, although
Mary took them more calmly. In his tenderer years, Honora even fired
George, and riots occurred which took the combined efforts of Cousin
Eleanor and Mammy Lucy to quell. It may be remarked, in passing, that
Cousin Eleanor looked with suspicion upon this imaginative gift of
Honora's, and had several serious conversations with Aunt Mary on the
subject.

It was true, in a measure, that Honora quickened to life everything she
touched, and her arrival in Wayland Square was invariably greeted
with shouts of joy. There was no doll on which she had not bestowed a
history, and by dint of her insistence their pasts clung to them with
all the reality of a fate not by any means to be lived down. If George
rode the huge rocking-horse, he was Paul Revere, or some equally
historic figure, and sometimes, to Edith's terror, he was compelled to
assume the role of Bluebeard, when Honora submitted to decapitation with
a fortitude amounting to stoicism. Hide and seek was altogether too tame
for her, a stake of life and death, or imprisonment or treasure, being
a necessity. And many times was Edith extracted from the recesses of the
cellar in a condition bordering on hysterics, the day ending tamely with
a Bible story or a selection from “Little Women” read by Cousin Eleanor.

In autumn, and again in spring and early summer before the annual
departure of the Hanbury family for the sea, the pleasant yard with its
wide shade trees and its shrubbery was a land of enchantment threatened
by a genie. Black Bias, the family coachman, polishing the fat carriage
horses in the stable yard, was the genie; and George the intrepid knight
who, spurred by Honora, would dash in and pinch Bias in a part of his
anatomy which the honest darky had never seen. An ideal genie, for he
could assume an astonishing fierceness at will.

“I'll git you yit, Marse George!”

Had it not been for Honora, her cousins would have found the paradise in
which they lived a commonplace spot, and indeed they never could
realize its tremendous possibilities in her absence. What would the
Mediterranean Sea and its adjoining countries be to us unless the
wanderings of Ulysses and AEneas had made them real? And what would
Cousin Eleanor's yard have been without Honora? Whatever there was of
romance and folklore in Uncle Tom's library Honora had extracted at an
early age, and with astonishing ease had avoided that which was dry and
uninteresting. The result was a nomenclature for Aunt Eleanor's yard, in
which there was even a terra incognita wherefrom venturesome travellers
never returned, but were transformed into wild beasts or monkeys.

Although they acknowledged her leadership, Edith and Mary were sorry for
Honora, for they knew that if her father had lived she would have had a
house and garden like theirs, only larger, and beside a blue sea where
it was warm always. Honora had told them so, and colour was lent to her
assertions by the fact that their mother, when they repeated this to
her, only smiled sadly, and brushed her eyes with her handkerchief. She
was even more beautiful when she did so, Edith told her,--a remark which
caused Mrs. Hanbury to scan her younger daughter closely; it smacked of
Honora.

“Was Cousin Randolph handsome?” Edith demanded. Mrs. Hanbury started, so
vividly there arose before her eyes a brave and dashing figure, clad in
grey English cloth, walking by her side on a sunny autumn morning in the
Rue de la Paix. Well she remembered that trip abroad with her mother,
Randolph's aunt, and how attentive he was, and showed them the best
restaurants in which to dine. He had only been in France a short time,
but his knowledge of restaurants and the world in general had been
amazing, and his acquaintances legion. He had a way, which there was no
resisting, of taking people by storm.

“Yes, dear,” answered Mrs. Hanbury, absently, when the child repeated
the question, “he was very handsome.”

“Honora says he would have been President,” put in George. “Of course
I don't believe it. She said they lived in a palace by the sea in the
south of France, with gardens and fountains and a lot of things like
that, and princesses and princes and eunuchs--”

“And what!” exclaimed Mrs. Hanbury, aghast.

“I know,” said George, contemptuously, “she got that out of the Arabian
Nights.” But this suspicion did not prevent him, the next time Honora
regaled them with more adventures of the palace by the summer seas,
from listening with a rapt attention. No two tales were ever alike. His
admiration for Honora did not wane, but increased. It differed from that
of his sisters, however, in being a tribute to her creative faculties,
while Edith's breathless faith pictured her cousin as having passed
through as many adventures as Queen Esther. George paid her a
characteristic compliment, but chivalrously drew her aside to bestow it.
He was not one to mince matters.

“You're a wonder, Honora,” he said. “If I could lie like that, I
wouldn't want a pony.”

He was forced to draw back a little from the heat of the conflagration
he had kindled.

“George Hanbury,” she cried, “don't you ever speak to me again! Never!
Do you understand?”

It was thus that George, at some cost, had made a considerable discovery
which, for the moment, shook even his scepticism. Honora believed it all
herself.

Cousin Eleanor Hanbury was a person, or personage, who took a deep
and abiding interest in her fellow-beings, and the old clothes of the
Hanbury family went unerringly to the needy whose figures most
resembled those of the original owners. For Mrs. Hanbury had a wide but
comparatively unknown charity list. She was, secretly, one of the many
providence which Honora accepted collectively, although it is by no
means certain whether Honora, at this period, would have thanked her
cousin for tuition at Miss Farmer's school, and for her daily tasks at
French and music concerning which Aunt Mary was so particular. On the
memorable Christmas morning when, arrayed in green velvet, she arrived
with her aunt and uncle for dinner in Wayland Square, Cousin Eleanor
drew Aunt Mary into her bedroom and shut the door, and handed her a
sealed envelope. Without opening it, but guessing with much accuracy its
contents, Aunt Mary handed it back.

“You are doing too much, Eleanor,” she said.

Mrs. Hanbury was likewise a direct person.

“I will, take it back on one condition, Mary. If you will tell me that
Tom has finished paying Randolph's debts.”

Mrs. Leffingwell was silent.

“I thought not,” said Mrs. Hanbury. “Now Randolph was my own cousin, and
I insist.”

Aunt Mary turned over the envelope, and there followed a few moments'
silence, broken only by the distant clamour of tin horns and other
musical instruments of the season.

“I sometimes think, Mary, that Honora is a little like Randolph,
and-Mrs. Randolph. Of course, I did not know her.”

“Neither did I,” said Aunt Mary.

“Mary,” said Mrs. Hanbury, again, “I realize how you worked to make the
child that velvet coat. Do you think you ought to dress her that way?”

“I don't see why she shouldn't be as well dressed as the children of my
friends, Eleanor.”

Mrs. Hanbury laid her hand impulsively on Aunt Mary's.

“No child I know of dresses half as well,” said Mrs. Hanbury. “The
trouble you take--”

“Is rewarded,” said Aunt Mary.

“Yes,” Mrs. Hanbury agreed. “If my own daughters were half as good
looking, I should be content. And Honora has an air of race. Oh, Mary,
can't you see? I am only thinking of the child's future.”

“Do you expect me to take down all my mirrors, Eleanor? If she has good
looks,” said Aunt Mary, “she has not learned it from my lips.”

It was true: Even Aunt Mary's enemies, and she had some, could not
accuse her of the weakness of flattery. So Mrs. Hanbury smiled, and
dropped the subject.




CHAPTER IV. OF TEMPERAMENT

We have the word of Mr. Cyrus Meeker that Honora did not have to learn
to dance. The art came to her naturally. Of Mr. Cyrus Meeker, whose
mustaches, at the age of five and sixty, are waxed as tight as ever, and
whose little legs to-day are as nimble as of yore. He has a memory like
Mr. Gladstone's, and can give you a social history of the city that is
well worth your time and attention. He will tell you how, for instance,
he was kicked by the august feet of Mr. George Hanbury on the occasion
of his first lesson to that distinguished young gentleman; and how,
although Mr. Meeker's shins were sore, he pleaded nobly for Mr. George,
who was sent home in the carriage by himself,--a punishment, by the way,
which Mr. George desired above all things.

This celebrated incident occurred in the new ballroom at the top of the
new house of young Mrs. Hayden, where the meetings of the dancing class
were held weekly. Today the soot, like the ashes of Vesuvius, spouting
from ten thousand soft-coal craters, has buried that house and the whole
district fathoms deep in social obscurity. And beautiful Mrs. Hayden
what has become of her? And Lucy Hayden, that doll-like darling of the
gods?

All this belongs, however, to another history, which may some day be
written. This one is Honora's, and must be got on with, for it is to be
a chronicle of lightning changes. Happy we if we can follow Honora, and
we must be prepared to make many friends and drop them in the process.

Shortly after Mrs. Hayden had built that palatial house (which had a
high fence around its grounds and a driveway leading to a porte-cochere)
and had given her initial ball, the dancing class began. It was on a
blue afternoon in late November that Aunt Mary and Honora, with Cousin
Eleanor and the two girls, and George sulking in a corner of the
carriage, were driven through the gates behind Bias and the fat horses
of the Hanburys.

Honora has a vivid remembrance of the impression the house made on
her, with its polished floors and spacious rooms filled with a new
and mysterious and altogether inspiring fashion of things. Mrs. Hayden
represented the outposts in the days of Richardson and Davenport--had
Honora but known it. This great house was all so different from anything
she (and many others in the city) had ever seen. And she stood gazing
into the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in
a rapture which her aunt and cousins were far from guessing.

“Come, Honora,” said her aunt. “What's the matter, dear?”

How could she explain to Aunt Mary that the sight of beautiful things
gave her a sort of pain--when she did not yet know it herself? There was
the massive stairway, for instance, which they ascended, softly lighted
by a great leaded window of stained glass on the first landing; and
the spacious bedrooms with their shining brass beds and lace spreads
(another innovation which Honora resolved to adopt when she married);
and at last, far above all, its deep-set windows looking out above
the trees towards the park a mile to the westward, the ballroom,--the
ballroom, with its mirrors and high chandeliers, and chairs of gilt and
blue set against the walls, all of which made no impression whatever
upon George and Mary and Edith, but gave Honora a thrill. No wonder that
she learned to dance quickly under such an inspiration!

And how pretty Mrs. Hayden looked as she came forward to greet them and
kissed Honora! She had been Virginia Grey, and scarce had had a gown to
her back when she had married the elderly Duncan Hayden, who had built
her this house and presented her with a checkbook,--a check-book which
Virginia believed to be like the widow's cruse of oil-unfailing. Alas,
those days of picnics and balls; of dinners at that recent innovation,
the club; of theatre-parties and excursions to baseball games between
the young men in Mrs. Hayden's train (and all young men were) who played
at Harvard or Yale or Princeton; those days were too care-free to have
endured.

“Aunt Mary,” asked Honora, when they were home again in the lamplight
of the little sitting-room, “why was it that Mr. Meeker was so polite to
Cousin Eleanor, and asked her about my dancing instead of you?”

Aunt Mary smiled.

“Because, Honora,” she said, “because I am a person of no importance in
Mr. Meeker's eyes.”

“If I were a man,” cried Honora, fiercely, “I should never rest until I
had made enough money to make Mr. Meeker wriggle.”

“Honora, come here,” said her aunt, gazing in troubled surprise at the
tense little figure by the mantel. “I don't know what could have put
such things into your head, my child. Money isn't everything. In times
of real trouble it cannot save one.”

“But it can save one from humiliation!” exclaimed Honora, unexpectedly.
Another sign of a peculiar precociousness, at fourteen, with which Aunt
Mary was finding herself unable to cope. “I would rather be killed than
humiliated by Mr. Meeker.”

Whereupon she flew out of the room and upstairs, where old Catherine, in
dismay, found her sobbing a little later.

Poor Aunt Mary! Few people guessed the spirit which was bound up in her,
aching to extend its sympathy and not knowing how, save by an unswerving
and undemonstrative devotion. Her words of comfort were as few as her
silent deeds were many.

But Honora continued to go to the dancing class, where she treated Mr.
Meeker with a hauteur that astonished him, amused Virginia Hayden, and
perplexed Cousin Eleanor. Mr. Meeker's cringing soul responded, and in
a month Honora was the leading spirit of the class, led the marches, and
was pointed out by the little dancing master as all that a lady should
be in deportment and bearing.

This treatment, which succeeded so well in Mr. Meeker's case, Honora had
previously applied to others of his sex. Like most people with a future,
she began young. Of late, for instance, Mr. George Hanbury had shown
a tendency to regard her as his personal property; for George had a
high-handed way with him,--boys being an enigma to his mother. Even in
those days he had a bullet head and a red face and square shoulders, and
was rather undersized for his age--which was Honora's.

Needless to say, George did not approve of the dancing class; and let it
be known, both by words and deeds, that he was there under protest.
Nor did he regard with favour Honora's triumphal progress, but sat in a
corner with several congenial spirits whose feelings ranged from scorn
to despair, commenting in loud whispers upon those of his sex to whom
the terpsichorean art came more naturally. Upon one Algernon Cartwright,
for example, whose striking likeness to the Van Dyck portrait of a young
king had been more than once commented upon by his elders, and whose
velveteen suits enhanced the resemblance. Algernon, by the way, was
the favourite male pupil of Mr. Meeker; and, on occasions, Algernon and
Honora were called upon to give exhibitions for the others, the sight of
which filled George with contemptuous rage. Algernon danced altogether
too much with Honora,--so George informed his cousin.

The simple result of George's protests was to make Honora dance with
Algernon the more, evincing, even at this period of her career, a
commendable determination to resent dictation. George should have lived
in the Middle Ages, when the spirit of modern American womanhood was as
yet unborn. Once he contrived, by main force, to drag her out into the
hall.

“George,” she said, “perhaps, if you'd let me alone perhaps I'd like you
better.”

“Perhaps,” he retorted fiercely, “if you wouldn't make a fool of
yourself with those mother's darlings, I'd like you better.”

“George,” said Honora, “learn to dance.”

“Never!” he cried, but she was gone. While hovering around the door he
heard Mrs. Hayden's voice.

“Unless I am tremendously mistaken, my dear,” that lady was remarking
to Mrs. Dwyer, whose daughter Emily's future millions were powerless to
compel youths of fourteen to dance with her, although she is now happily
married, “unless I am mistaken, Honora will have a career. The child
will be a raving beauty. And she has to perfection the art of managing
men.”

“As her father had the art of managing women,” said Mrs. Dwyer. “Dear
me, how well I remember Randolph! I would have followed him to--to
Cheyenne.”

Mrs. Hayden laughed. “He never would have gone to Cheyenne, I imagine,”
 she said.

“He never looked at me, and I have reason to be profoundly thankful for
it,” said Mrs. Dwyer.

Virginia Hayden bit her lip. She remembered a saying of Mrs. Brice,
“Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted.”

“They say that poor Tom Leffingwell has not yet finished paying his
debts,” continued Mrs. Dwyer, “although his uncle, Eleanor Hanbury's
father, cancelled what Randolph had had from him in his will. It was
twenty-five thousand dollars. James Hanbury, you remember, had him
appointed consul at Nice. Randolph Leffingwell gave the impression of
conferring a favour when he borrowed money. I cannot understand why he
married that penniless and empty-headed beauty.”

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Hayden, “it was because of his ability to borrow
money that he felt he could afford to.”

The eyes of the two ladies unconsciously followed Honora about the room.

“I never knew a better or a more honest woman than Mary Leffingwell, but
I tremble for her. She is utterly incapable of managing that child. If
Honora is a complicated mechanism now, what will she be at twenty? She
has elements in her which poor Mary never dreamed of. I overheard her
with Emily, and she talks like a grown-up person.”

Mrs. Hayden's dimples deepened.

“Better than some grown-up women,” she said. “She sat in my room while
I dressed the other afternoon. Mrs. Leffingwell had sent her with a
note about that French governess. And, by the way, she speaks French as
though she had lived in Paris.”

Little Mrs. Dwyer raised her hands in protest.

“It doesn't seem natural, somehow. It doesn't seem exactly--moral, my
dear.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Hayden. “Mrs. Leffingwell is only giving the child
the advantages which her companions have--Emily has French, hasn't she?”

“But Emily can't speak it--that way,” said Mrs. Dwyer. “I don't blame
Mary Leffingwell. She thinks she is doing her duty, but it has always
seemed to me that Honora was one of those children who would better have
been brought up on bread and butter and jam.”

“Honora would only have eaten the jam,” said Mrs. Hayden. “But I love
her.”

“I, too, am fond of the child, but I tremble for her. I am afraid she
has that terrible thing which is called temperament.”

George Hanbury made a second heroic rush, and dragged Honora out once
more.

“What is this disease you've got?” he demanded.

“Disease?” she cried; “I haven't any disease.”

“Mrs Dwyer says you have temperament, and that it is a terrible thing.”

Honora stopped him in a corner.

“Because people like Mrs. Dwyer haven't got it,” she declared, with a
warmth which George found inexplicable.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“You'll never know, either, George,” she answered; “it's soul.”

“Soul!” he repeated; “I have one, and its immortal,” he added promptly.

In the summer, that season of desolation for Honora, when George Hanbury
and Algernon Cartwright and other young gentlemen were at the seashore
learning to sail boats and to play tennis, Peter Erwin came to his own.
Nearly every evening after dinner, while the light was still lingering
under the shade trees of the street, and Aunt Mary still placidly
sewing in the wicker chair on the lawn, and Uncle Tom making the tour
of flowers with his watering pot, the gate would slam, and Peter's tall
form appear.

It never occurred to Honora that had it not been for Peter those
evenings would have been even less bearable than they were. To sit
indoors with a light and read in a St. Louis midsummer was not to be
thought of. Peter played backgammon with her on the front steps, and
later on--chess. Sometimes they went for a walk as far as Grand Avenue.
And sometimes when Honora grew older--she was permitted to go with him
to Uhrig's Cave. Those were memorable occasions indeed!

What Saint Louisan of the last generation does not remember Uhrig's
Cave? nor look without regret upon the thing which has replaced it,
called a Coliseum? The very name, Uhrig's Cave, sent a shiver of delight
down one's spine, and many were the conjectures one made as to what
might be enclosed in that half a block of impassible brick wall, over
which the great trees stretched their branches. Honora, from comparative
infancy, had her own theory, which so possessed the mind of Edith
Hanbury that she would not look at the wall when they passed in the
carriage. It was a still and sombre place by day; and sometimes, if you
listened, you could hear the whisperings of the forty thieves on the
other side of the wall. But no one had ever dared to cry “Open, Sesame!”
 at the great wooden gates.

At night, in the warm season, when well brought up children were at home
or at the seashore, strange things were said to happen at Uhrig's Cave.

Honora was a tall slip of a girl of sixteen before it was given her to
know these mysteries, and the Ali Baba theory a thing of the past. Other
theories had replaced it. Nevertheless she clung tightly to Peter's arm
as they walked down Locust Street and came in sight of the wall. Above
it, and under the big trees, shone a thousand glittering lights: there
was a crowd at the gate, and instead of saying, “Open, Sesame,” Peter
slipped two bright fifty-cent pieces to the red-faced German ticketman,
and in they went.

First and most astounding of disillusions of passing childhood, it was
not a cave at all! And yet the word “disillusion” does not apply. It
was, after all, the most enchanting and exciting of spots, to make one's
eye shine and one's heart beat. Under the trees were hundreds of tables
surrounded by hovering ministering angels in white, and if you were
German, they brought you beer; if American, ice-cream. Beyond the tables
was a stage, with footlights already set and orchestra tuning up, and a
curtain on which was represented a gentleman making decorous love to a
lady beside a fountain. As in a dream, Honora followed Peter to a table,
and he handed her a programme.

“Oh, Peter,” she cried, “it's going to be 'Pinafore'!”

Honora's eyes shone like stars, and elderly people at the neighbouring
tables turned more than once to smile at her that evening. And Peter
turned more than once and smiled too. But Honora did not consider Peter.
He was merely Providence in one of many disguises, and Providence is
accepted by his beneficiaries as a matter of fact.

The rapture of a young lady of temperament is a difficult thing to
picture. The bird may feel it as he soars, on a bright August morning,
high above amber cliffs jutting out into indigo seas; the novelist may
feel it when the four walls of his room magically disappear and
the profound secrets of the universe are on the point of revealing
themselves. Honora gazed, and listened, and lost herself. She was no
longer in Uhrig's Cave, but in the great world, her soul a-quiver with
harmonies.

“Pinafore,” although a comic opera, held something tragic for Honora,
and opened the flood-gates to dizzy sensations which she did not
understand. How little Peter, who drummed on the table to the tune of:

       “Give three cheers and one cheer more
        For the hearty captain of the Pinafore,”

imagined what was going on beside him! There were two factors in his
pleasure; he liked the music, and he enjoyed the delight of Honora.

What is Peter? Let us cease looking at him through Honora's eyes and
taking him like daily bread, to be eaten and not thought about. From
one point of view, he is twenty-nine and elderly, with a sense of humour
unsuspected by young persons of temperament. Strive as we will, we have
only been able to see him in his role of Providence, or of the piper.
Has he no existence, no purpose in life outside of that perpetual
gentleman in waiting? If so, Honora has never considered it.

After the finale had been sung and the curtain dropped for the last
time, Honora sighed and walked out of the garden as one in a trance.
Once in a while, as he found a way for them through the crowd, Peter
glanced down at her, and something like a smile tugged at the corners
of a decidedly masculine mouth, and lit up his eyes. Suddenly, at Locust
Street, under the lamp, she stopped and surveyed him. She saw a very
real, very human individual, clad in a dark nondescript suit of clothes
which had been bought ready-made, and plainly without the bestowal of
much thought, on Fifth Street. The fact that they were a comparative
fit was in itself a tribute to the enterprise of the Excelsior Clothing
Company, for Honora's observation that he was too long one way had
been just. He was too tall, his shoulders were too high, his nose too
prominent, his eyes too deep-set; and he wore a straw hat with the brim
turned up.

To Honora his appearance was as familiar as the picture of the Pope
which had always stood on Catherine's bureau. But to-night, by grace of
some added power of vision, she saw him with new and critical eyes. She
was surprised to discover that he was possessed of a quality with
which she had never associated him--youth. Not to put it too
strongly--comparative youth.

“Peter,” she demanded, “why do you dress like that?”

“Like what?” he said.

Honora seized the lapel of his coat.

“Like that,” she repeated. “Do you know, if you wore different clothes,
you might almost be distinguished looking. Don't laugh. I think it's
horrid of you always to laugh when I tell you things for your own good.”

“It was the idea of being almost distinguished looking that--that gave
me a shock,” he assured her repentantly.

“You should dress on a different principle,” she insisted.

Peter appeared dazed.

“I couldn't do that,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because--because I don't dress on any principle now.”

“Yes, you do,” said Honora, firmly. “You dress on the principle of
the wild beasts and fishes. It's all in our natural history at Miss
Farmer's. The crab is the colour of the seaweed, and the deer of the
thicket. It's a device of nature for the protection of weak things.”

Peter drew himself up proudly.

“I have always understood, Miss Leffingwell, that the king of beasts was
somewhere near the shade of the jungle.”

Honora laughed in spite of this apparent refutation of her theory of his
apparel, and shook her head.

“Do be serious, Peter. You'd make much more of an impression on people
if you wore clothes that had--well, a little more distinction.”

“What's the use of making an impression if you can't follow it up?” he
said.

“You can,” she declared. “I never thought of it until to-night, but you
must have a great deal in you to have risen all the way from an errand
boy in the bank to a lawyer.”

“Look out!” he cautioned her; “I shall become insupportably conceited.”

“A little more conceit wouldn't hurt you,” said Honora, critically.
“You'll forgive me, Peter, if I tell you from time to time what I think.
It's for your own good.”

“I try to realize that,” replied Peter, humbly. “How do you wish me to
dress--like Mr. Rossiter?”

The picture evoked of Peter arrayed like Mr. Harland Rossiter, who had
sent flowers to two generations and was preparing to send more to a
third, was irresistible. Every city, hamlet, and village has its Harland
Rossiter. He need not be explained. But Honora soon became grave again.

“No, but you ought to dress as though you were somebody, and different
from the ordinary man on the street.”

“But I'm not,” objected Peter.

“Oh,” cried Honora, “don't you want to be? I can't understand any man
not wanting to be. If I were a man, I wouldn't stay here a day longer
than I had to.”

Peter was silent as they went in at the gate and opened the door, for on
this festive occasion they were provided with a latchkey. He turned up
the light in the hall to behold a transformation quite as wonderful as
any contained in the “Arabian Nights” or Keightley's “Fairy Mythology.”
 This was not the Honora with whom he had left the house scarce three
hours before! The cambric dress, to be sure, was still no longer than
the tops of her ankles and the hair still hung in a heavy braid down her
back. These were positively all that remained of the original Honora,
and the change had occurred in the incredibly brief space required for
the production of the opera “Pinafore.” This Honora was a woman in a
strange and disturbing state of exaltation, whose eyes beheld a vision.
And Peter, although he had been the subject of her conversation, well
knew that he was not included in the vision. He smiled a little as
he looked at her. It is becoming apparent that he is one of those
unfortunate unimaginative beings incapable of great illusions.

“You're not going!” she exclaimed.

He glanced significantly at the hall clock.

“Why, it's long after bedtime, Honora.”

“I don't want to go to bed. I feel like talking,” she declared. “Come,
let's sit on the steps awhile. If you go home, I shan't go to sleep for
hours, Peter.”

“And what would Aunt Mary say to me?” he inquired.

“Oh, she wouldn't care. She wouldn't even know it.”

He shook his head, still smiling.

“I'd never be allowed to take you to Uhrig's Cave, or anywhere else,
again,” he replied. “I'll come to-morrow evening, and you can talk to me
then.”

“I shan't feel like it then,” she said in a tone that implied his
opportunity was now or never. But seeing him still obdurate, with
startling suddenness she flung her arms mound his neck--a method which
at times had succeeded marvellously--and pleaded coaxingly: “Only a
quarter of an hour, Peter. I've got so many things to say, and I know I
shall forget them by to-morrow.”

It was a night of wonders. To her astonishment the hitherto pliant
Peter, who only existed in order to do her will, became transformed
into a brusque masculine creature which she did not recognize. With a
movement that was almost rough he released himself and fled, calling
back a “good night” to her out of the darkness. He did not even wait
to assist her in the process of locking up. Honora, profoundly puzzled,
stood for a while in the doorway gazing out into the night. When at
length she turned, she had forgotten him entirely.

It was true that she did not sleep for hours, and on awaking the next
morning another phenomenon awaited her. The “little house under the
hill” was immeasurably shrunken. Poor Aunt Mary, who did not understand
that a performance of “Pinafore” could give birth to the unfulfilled
longings which result in the creation of high things, spoke to Uncle Tom
a week later concerning an astonishing and apparently abnormal access of
industry.

“She's been reading all day long, Tom, or else shut up in her room,
where Catherine tells me she is writing. I'm afraid Eleanor Hanbury is
right when she says I don't understand the child. And yet she is the
same to me as though she were my own.”

It was true that Honora was writing, and that the door was shut, and
that she did not feel the heat. In one of the bookcases she had chanced
upon that immortal biography of Dr. Johnson, and upon the letters of
another prodigy of her own sex, Madame d'Arblay, whose romantic debut
as an authoress was inspiration in itself. Honora actually quivered when
she read of Dr. Johnson's first conversation with Miss Burney. To write
a book of the existence of which even one's own family did not know, to
publish it under a nom de plume, and to awake one day to fetes and fame
would be indeed to live!

Unfortunately Honora's novel no longer exists, or the world might have
discovered a second Evelina. A regard for truth compels the statement
that it was never finished. But what rapture while the fever lasted!
Merely to take up the pen was to pass magically through marble portals
into the great world itself.

The Sir Charles Grandison of this novel was, needless to say, not Peter
Erwin. He was none other than Mr. Randolph Leffingwell, under a very
thin disguise.




CHAPTER V. IN WHICH PROVIDENCE BEEPS FAITH

Two more years have gone by, limping in the summer and flying in the
winter, two more years of conquests. For our heroine appears to be
one of the daughters of Helen, born to make trouble for warriors and
others--and even for innocent bystanders like Peter Erwin. Peter was
debarred from entering those brilliant lists in which apparel played
so great a part. George Hanbury, Guy Rossiter, Algernon Cartwright,
Eliphalet Hopper Dwyer--familiarly known as “Hoppy”--and other young
gentlemen whose names are now but memories, each had his brief day of
triumph. Arrayed like Solomon in wonderful clothes from the mysterious
and luxurious East, they returned at Christmas-tide and Easter from
college to break lances over Honora. Let us say it boldly--she was like
that: she had the world-old knack of sowing discord and despair in the
souls of young men. She was--as those who had known that fascinating
gentleman were not slow to remark--Randolph Leffingwell over again.

During the festival seasons, Uncle Tom averred, they wore out the latch
on the front gate. If their families possessed horses to spare, they
took Honora driving in Forest Park; they escorted her to those anomalous
dances peculiar to their innocent age, which are neither children's
parties nor full-fledged balls; their presents, while of no intrinsic
value--as one young gentleman said in a presentation speech--had an
enormous, if shy, significance.

“What a beautiful ring you are wearing, Honora,” Uncle Tom remarked
slyly one April morning at breakfast; “let me see it.”

Honora blushed, and hid her hand under the table-cloth.

And the ring-suffice it to say that her little finger was exactly
insertable in a ten-cent piece from which everything had been removed
but the milling: removed with infinite loving patience by Mr. Rossiter,
and at the expense of much history and philosophy and other less
important things, in his college bedroom at New Haven. Honora wore it
for a whole week; a triumph indeed for Mr. Rossiter; when it was placed
in a box in Honora's bedroom, which contained other gifts--not all from
him--and many letters, in the writing of which learning had likewise
suffered. The immediate cause of the putting away of this ring was said
to be the renowned Clinton Howe, who was on the Harvard football eleven,
and who visited Mr. George Hanbury that Easter. Fortunate indeed the
tailor who was called upon to practise his art on an Adonis like Mr.
Howe, and it was remarked that he scarcely left Honora's side at the
garden party and dance which Mrs. Dwyer gave in honour of the returning
heroes, on the Monday of Easter week.

This festival, on which we should like to linger, but cannot, took
place at the new Dwyer residence. For six months the Victorian mansion
opposite Uncle Tom's house had been sightless, with blue blinds drawn
down inside the plate glass windows. And the yellow stone itself was
not so yellow as it once had been, but had now the appearance of soiled
manilla wrapping paper, with black streaks here and there where the soot
had run. The new Dwyer house was of grey stone, Georgian and palatial,
with a picture-gallery twice the size of the old one; a magnificent and
fitting pioneer in a new city of palaces.

Westward the star of Empire--away from the smoke. The Dwyer mansion,
with its lawns and gardens and heavily balustraded terrace, faced the
park that stretched away like a private estate to the south and west.
That same park with its huge trees and black forests that was Ultima
Thule in Honora's childhood; in the open places there had been real
farms and hayricks which she used to slide down with Peter while Uncle
Tom looked for wild flowers in the fields. It had been separated from
the city in those days by an endless country road, like a Via Claudia
stretching towards mysterious Germanian forests, and it was deemed a
feat for Peter to ride thither on his big-wheeled bicycle. Forest
Park was the country, and all that the country represented in Honora's
childhood. For Uncle Tom on a summer's day to hire a surrey at
Braintree's Livery Stable and drive thither was like--to what shall that
bliss be compared in these days when we go to Europe with indifference?

And now Lindell Road--the Via Claudia of long, ago--had become Lindell
Boulevard, with granitoid sidewalks. And the dreary fields through
which it had formerly run were bristling with new houses in no sense
Victorian, and which were the first stirrings of a national sense of the
artistic. The old horse-cars with the clanging chains had disappeared,
and you could take an electric to within a block of the imposing grille
that surrounded the Dwyer grounds. Westward the star!

Fading fast was the glory of that bright new district on top of the
second hill from the river where Uncle Tom was a pioneer. Soot had
killed the pear trees, the apricots behind the lattice fence had
withered away; asphalt and soot were slowly sapping the vitality of the
maples on the sidewalk; and sometimes Uncle Tom's roses looked as though
they might advantageously be given a coat of paint, like those in Alice
in Wonderland. Honora should have lived in the Dwyers' mansion-people
who are capable of judging said so. People who saw her at the garden
party said she had the air of belonging in such surroundings much more
than Emily, whom even budding womanhood had not made beautiful. And
Eliphalet Hopper Dwyer, if his actions meant anything, would have
welcomed her to that house, or built her another twice as fine, had she
deigned to give him the least encouragement.

Cinderella! This was what she facetiously called herself one July
morning of that summer she was eighteen.

Cinderella in more senses than one, for never had the city seemed
more dirty or more deserted, or indeed, more stifling. Winter and its
festivities were a dream laid away in moth balls. Surely Cinderella's
life had held no greater contrasts! To this day the odour of matting
brings back to Honora the sense of closed shutters; of a stifling south
wind stirring their slats at noonday; the vision of Aunt Mary, cool and
placid in a cambric sacque, sewing by the window in the upper hall, and
the sound of fruit venders crying in the street, or of ragmen in the
alley--“Rags, bottles, old iron!” What memories of endless, burning,
lonely days come rushing back with those words!

When the sun had sufficiently heated the bricks of the surrounding
houses in order that he might not be forgotten during the night, he
slowly departed. If Honora took her book under the maple tree in the
yard, she was confronted with that hideous wooden sign “To Let” on the
Dwyer's iron fence opposite, and the grass behind it was unkempt and
overgrown with weeds. Aunt Mary took an unceasing and (to Honora's mind)
morbid interest in the future of that house.

“I suppose it will be a boarding-house,” she would say, “it's much too
large for poor people to rent, and only poor people are coming into this
district now.”

“Oh, Aunt Mary!”

“Well, my dear, why should we complain? We are poor, and it is
appropriate that we should live among the poor. Sometimes I think it is
a pity that you should have been thrown all your life with rich people,
my child. I am afraid it has made you discontented. It is no disgrace to
be poor. We ought to be thankful that we have everything we need.”

Honora put down her sewing. For she had learned to sew--Aunt Mary
had insisted upon that, as well as French. She laid her hand upon her
aunt's.

“I am thankful,” she said, and her aunt little guessed the intensity of
the emotion she was seeking to control, or imagined the hidden
fires. “But sometimes--sometimes I try to forget that we are poor.
Perhaps--some day we shall not be.”

It seemed to Honora that Aunt Mary derived a real pleasure from the
contradiction of this hope. She shook her head vigorously.

“We shall always be, my child. Your Uncle Tom is getting old, and he has
always been too honest to make a great deal of money. And besides,” she
added, “he has not that kind of ability.”

Uncle Tom might be getting old, but he seemed to Honora to be of the
same age as in her childhood. Some people never grow old, and Uncle Tom
was one of these. Fifteen years before he had been promoted to be the
cashier of the Prairie Bank, and he was the cashier to-day. He had the
same quiet smile, the same quiet humour, the same calm acceptance of
life. He seemed to bear no grudge even against that ever advancing
enemy, the soot, which made it increasingly difficult for him to raise
his flowers. Those which would still grow he washed tenderly night and
morning with his watering-pot. The greatest wonders are not at the ends
of the earth, but near us. It was to take many years for our heroine to
realize this.

Strong faith alone could have withstood the continued contact with such
a determined fatalism as Aunt Mary's, and yet it is interesting to note
that Honora's belief in her providence never wavered. A prince was to
come who was to bear her away from the ragmen and the boarding-houses
and the soot: and incidentally and in spite of herself, Aunt Mary was
to come too, and Uncle Tom. And sometimes when she sat reading of an
evening under the maple, her book would fall to her lap and the advent
of this personage become so real a thing that she bounded when the gate
slammed--to find that it was only Peter.

It was preposterous, of course, that Peter should be a prince in
disguise. Peter who, despite her efforts to teach him distinction in
dress, insisted upon wearing the same kind of clothes. A mild kind of
providence, Peter, whose modest functions were not unlike those of the
third horse which used to be hitched on to the street car at the foot
of the Seventeenth-Street hill: it was Peter's task to help pull Honora
through the interminable summers. Uhrig's Cave was an old story now:
mysteries were no longer to be expected in St. Louis. There was a great
panorama--or something to that effect--in the wilderness at the end of
one of the new electric lines, where they sometimes went to behold the
White Squadron of the new United States Navy engaged in battle with
mimic forts on a mimic sea, on the very site where the country place
of Madame Clement had been. The mimic sea, surrounded by wooden stands
filled with common people eating peanuts and popcorn, was none other
than Madame Clement's pond, which Honora remembered as a spot of
enchantment. And they went out in the open cars with these same people,
who stared at Honora as though she had got in by mistake, but always
politely gave her a seat. And Peter thanked them. Sometimes he fell into
conversations with them, and it was noticeable that they nearly
always shook hands with him at parting. Honora did not approve of this
familiarity.

“But they may be clients some day,” he argued--a frivolous answer to
which she never deigned to reply.

Just as one used to take for granted that third horse which pulled the
car uphill, so Peter was taken for granted. He might have been on the
highroad to a renown like that of Chief Justice Marshall, and Honora had
been none the wiser.

“Well, Peter,” said Uncle Tom at dinner one evening of that memorable
summer, when Aunt Mary was helping the blackberries, and incidentally
deploring that she did not live in the country, because of the cream one
got there, “I saw Judge Brice in the bank to-day, and he tells me you
covered yourself with glory in that iron foundry suit.”

“The Judge must have his little joke, Mr. Leffingwell,” replied Peter,
but he reddened nevertheless.

Honora thought winning an iron foundry suit a strange way to cover one's
self with glory. It was not, at any rate, her idea of glory. What were
lawyers for, if not to win suits? And Peter was a lawyer.

“In five years,” said Uncle Tom, “the firm will be 'Brice and Erwin'.
You mark my words. And by that time,” he added, with a twinkle in his
eye, “you'll be ready to marry Honora.”

“Tom,” reproved Aunt Mary, gently, “you oughtn't to say such things.”

This time there was no doubt about Peter's blush. He fairly burned.
Honora looked at him and laughed.

“Peter is meant for an old bachelor,” she said.

“If he remains a bachelor,” said Uncle Tom, “he'll be the greatest waste
of good material I know of. And if you succeed in getting him, Honora,
you'll be the luckiest young woman of my acquaintance.”

“Tom,” said Aunt Mary, “it was all very well to talk that way when
Honora was a child. But now--she may not wish to marry Peter. And Peter
may not wish to marry her.”

Even Peter joined in the laughter at this literal and characteristic
statement of the case.

“It's more than likely,” said Honora, wickedly. “He hasn't kissed me for
two years.”

“Why, Peter,” said Uncle Tom, “you act as though it were warm to-night.
It was only seventy when we came in to dinner.”

“Take me out to the park,” commanded Honora.

“Tom,” said Aunt Mary, as she stood on the step and watched them cross
the street, “I wish the child would marry him. Not now, of course,” she
added hastily,--a little frightened by her own admission, “but later.
Sometimes I worry over her future. She needs a strong and sensible man.
I don't understand Honora. I never did. I always told you so. Sometimes
I think she may be capable of doing something foolish like--like
Randolph.”

Uncle Tom patted his wife on the shoulder.

“Don't borrow trouble, Mary,” he said, smiling a little. “The child is
only full of spirits. But she has a good heart. It is only human that
she should want things that we cannot give her.”

“I wish,” said Aunt Mary, “that she were not quite so good-looking.”

Uncle Tom laughed. “You needn't tell me you're not proud of it,” he
declared.

“And I have given her,” she continued, “a taste for dress.”

“I think, my dear,” said her husband, “that there were others who
contributed to that.”

“It was my own vanity. I should have combated the tendency in her,” said
Aunt Mary.

“If you had dressed Honora in calico, you could not have changed her,”
 replied Uncle Tom, with conviction.

In the meantime Honora and Peter had mounted the electric car, and were
speeding westward. They had a seat to themselves, the very first one
on the “grip”--that survival of the days of cable cars. Honora's eyes
brightened as she held on to her hat, and the stray wisps of hair about
her neck stirred in the breeze.

“Oh, I wish we would never stop, until we came to the Pacific Ocean!”
 she exclaimed.

“Would you be content to stop then?” he asked. He had a trick of looking
downward with a quizzical expression in his dark grey eyes.

“No,” said Honora. “I should want to go on and see everything in the
world worth seeing. Sometimes I feel positively as though I should die
if I had to stay here in St. Louis.”

“You probably would die--eventually,” said Peter.

Honora was justifiably irritated.

“I could shake you, Peter!”

He laughed.

“I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good,” he answered.

“If I were a man,” she proclaimed, “I shouldn't stay here. I'd go to New
York--I'd be somebody--I'd make a national reputation for myself.”

“I believe you would,” said Peter sadly, but with a glance of
admiration.

“That's the worst of being a woman--we have to sit still until something
happens to us.”

“What would you like to happen?” he asked, curiously. And there was a
note in his voice which she, intent upon her thoughts, did not remark.

“Oh, I don't know,” she said; “anything--anything to get out of this rut
and be something in the world. It's dreadful to feel that one has power
and not be able to use it.”

The car stopped at the terminal. Thanks to the early hour of Aunt Mary's
dinner, the western sky was still aglow with the sunset over the forests
as they walked past the closed grille of the Dwyer mansion into the
park. Children rolled on the grass, while mothers and fathers, tired
out from the heat and labour of a city day, sat on the benches. Peter
stooped down and lifted a small boy, painfully thin, who had fallen,
weeping, on the gravel walk. He took his handkerchief and wiped the
scratch on the child's forehead.

“There, there!” he said, smiling, “it's all right now. We must expect a
few tumbles.”

The child looked at him, and suddenly smiled through his tears.

The father appeared, a red-headed Irishman.

“Thank you, Mr. Erwin; I'm sure it's very kind of you, sir, to bother
with him,” he said gratefully. “It's that thin he is with the heat, I
take him out for a bit of country air.”

“Why, Tim, it's you, is it?” said Peter. “He's the janitor of our
building down town,” he explained to Honora, who had remained a silent
witness to this simple scene. She had been, in spite of herself,
impressed by it, and by the mingled respect and affection in the
janitor's manner towards Peter. It was so with every one to whom he
spoke. They walked on in silence for a few moments, into a path leading
to a lake, which had stolen the flaming green-gold of the sky.

“I suppose,” said Honora, slowly, “it would be better for me to wish to
be contented where I am, as you are. But it's no use trying, I can't.”

Peter was not a preacher.

“Oh,” he said, “there are lots of things I want.”

“What?” demanded Honora, interested. For she had never conceived of him
as having any desires whatever.

“I want a house like Mr. Dwyer's,” he declared, pointing at the distant
imposing roof line against the fading eastern sky.

Honora laughed. The idea of Peter wishing such a house was indeed
ridiculous. Then she became grave again.

“There are times when you seem to forget that I have at last grown up,
Peter. You never will talk over serious things with me.”

“What are serious things?” asked Peter.

“Well,” said Honora vaguely, “ambitions, and what one is going to make
of themselves in life. And then you make fun of me by saying you want
Mr. Dwyer's house.” She laughed again. “I can't imagine you in that
house!”

“Why not?” he asked, stopping beside the pond and thrusting his hands
in his pockets. He looked very solemn, but she knew he was smiling
inwardly.

“Why--because I can't,” she said, and hesitated. The question had forced
her to think about Peter. “I can't imagine you living all alone in all
that luxury. It isn't like you.”

“Why I all alone?” asked Peter.

“Don't--Don't be ridiculous,” she said; “you wouldn't build a house
like that, even if you were twice as rich as Mr. Dwyer. You know
you wouldn't. And you're not the marrying kind,” she added, with the
superior knowledge of eighteen.

“I'm waiting for you, Honora,” he announced.

“You know I love you, Peter,”--so she tempered her reply, for Honora's
feelings were tender. What man, even Peter, would not have married her
if he could? Of course he was in earnest, despite his bantering tone,
“but I never could--marry you.”

“Not even if I were to offer you a house like Mr. Dwyer's?” he said.
A remark which betrayed--although not to her--his knowledge of certain
earthly strains in his goddess.

The colours faded from the water, and it blackened.

As they walked on side by side in the twilight, a consciousness of
repressed masculine force, of reserve power, which she had never before
felt about Peter Erwin, invaded her; and she was seized with a strange
uneasiness. Ridiculous was the thought (which she lost no time in
rejecting) that pointed out the true road to happiness in marrying such
a man as he. In the gathering darkness she slipped her hand through his
arm.

“I wish I could marry you, Peter,” she said.

He was fain to take what comfort he could from this expression of
good-will. If he was not the Prince Charming of her dreams, she would
have liked him to be. A little reflection on his part ought to have
shown him the absurdity of the Prince Charming having been there all the
time, and in ready-made clothes. And he, too, may have had dreams. We
are not concerned with them.

       ............................

If we listen to the still, small voice of realism, intense longing is
always followed by disappointment. Nothing should have happened that
summer, and Providence should not have come disguised as the postman.
It was a sultry day in early September-which is to say that it was
comparatively cool--a blue day, with occasional great drops of rain
spattering on the brick walk. And Honora was reclining on the hall
sofa, reading about Mr. Ibbetson and his duchess, when she perceived the
postman's grey uniform and smiling face on the far side of the screen
door. He greeted her cordially, and gave her a single letter for Aunt
Mary, and she carried it unsuspectingly upstairs.

“It's from Cousin Eleanor,” Honora volunteered.

Aunt Mary laid down her sewing, smoothed the ruffles of her sacque,
adjusted her spectacles, opened the envelope, and began to read.
Presently the letter fell to her lap, and she wiped her glasses and
glanced at Honora, who was deep in her book once more. And in Honora's
brain, as she read, was ringing the refrain of the prisoner:

            “Orleans, Beaugency!
             Notre Dame de Clery!
               Vendome! Vendome!
             Quel chagrin, quel ennui
             De compter toute la nuit
               Les heures, les heures!”.

The verse appealed to Honora strangely; just as it had appealed to
Ibbetson. Was she not, too, a prisoner. And how often, during the summer
days and nights, had she listened to the chimes of the Pilgrim Church
near by?

            “One, two, three, four!
             One, two, three, four!”

After Uncle Tom had watered his flowers that evening, Aunt Mary followed
him upstairs and locked the door of their room behind her. Silently she
put the letter in his hand. Here is one paragraph of it:

   “I have never asked to take the child from you in the summer,
   because she has always been in perfect health, and I know how lonely
   you would have been without her, my dear Mary. But it seems to me
   that a winter at Sutcliffe, with my girls, would do her a world of
   good just now. I need not point out to you that Honora is, to say
   the least, remarkably good looking, and that she has developed very
   rapidly. And she has, in spite of the strict training you have
   given her, certain ideas and ambitions which seem to me, I am sorry
   to say, more or less prevalent among young American women these
   days. You know it is only because I love her that I am so frank.
   Miss Turner's influence will, in my opinion, do much to counteract
   these tendencies.”

Uncle Tom folded the letter, and handed it back to his wife.

“I feel that we ought not to refuse, Tom. And I am afraid Eleanor is
right.”

“Well, Mary, we've had her for seventeen years. We ought to be willing
to spare her for--how many months?”

“Nine,” said Aunt Mary, promptly. She had counted them. “And Eleanor
says she will be home for two weeks at Christmas. Seventeen years! It
seems only yesterday when we brought her home, Tom. It was just about
this time of day, and she was asleep in your arms, and Bridget opened
the door for us.” Aunt Mary looked out of the window. “And do you
remember how she used to play under the maple there, with her dolls?”

Uncle Tom produced a very large handkerchief, and blew his nose.

“There, there, Mary,” he said, “nine months, and two weeks out at
Christmas. Nine months in eighteen years.”

“I suppose we ought to be very thankful,” said Aunt Mary. “But, Tom, the
time is coming soon--”

“Tut tut,” exclaimed Uncle Tom. He turned, and his eyes beheld a work of
art. Nothing less than a porcelain plate, hung in brackets on the wall,
decorated by Honora at the age of ten with wild roses, and presented
with much ceremony on an anniversary morning. He pretended not to notice
it, but Aunt Mary's eyes were too quick. She seized a photograph on her
bureau, a photograph of Honora in a little white frock with a red sash.

“It was the year that was taken, Tom.”

He nodded. The scene at the breakfast table came back to him, and the
sight of Catherine standing respectfully in the hall, and of Honora, in
the red sash, making the courtesy the old woman had taught her.

Honora recalled afterwards that Uncle Tom joked even more than usual
that evening at dinner. But it was Aunt Mary who asked her, at length,
how she would like to go to boarding-school. Such was the matter-of-fact
manner in which the portentous news was announced.

“To boarding-school, Aunt Mary?”

Her aunt poured out her uncle's after-dinner coffee.

“I've spilled some, my dear. Get another saucer for your uncle.”

Honora went mechanically to the china closet, her heart thumping. She
did not stop to reflect that it was the rarest of occurrences for Aunt
Mary to spill the coffee.

“Your Cousin Eleanor has invited you to go this winter with Edith and
Mary to Sutcliffe.”

Sutcliffe! No need to tell Honora what Sutcliffe was--her cousins had
talked of little else during the past winter; and shown, if the truth be
told, just a little commiseration for Honora. Sutcliffe was not only a
famous girls' school, Sutcliffe was the world--that world which, since
her earliest remembrances, she had been longing to see and know. In a
desperate attempt to realize what had happened to her, she found herself
staring hard at the open china closet, at Aunt Mary's best gold dinner
set resting on the pink lace paper that had been changed only last week.
That dinner set, somehow, was always an augury of festival--when, on
the rare occasions Aunt Mary entertained, the little dining room was
transformed by it and the Leffingwell silver into a glorified and
altogether unrecognizable state, in which any miracle seemed possible.

Honora pushed back her chair.

Her lips were parted.

“Oh, Aunt Mary, is it really true that I am going?” she said.

“Why,” said Uncle Tom, “what zeal for learning!”

“My dear,” said Aunt Mary, who, you may be sure, knew all about that
school before Cousin Eleanor's letter came, “Miss Turner insists upon
hard work, and the discipline is very strict.”

“No young men,” added Uncle Tom.

“That,” declared Aunt Mary, “is certainly an advantage.”

“And no chocolate cake, and bed at ten o'clock,” said Uncle Tom.

Honora, dazed, only half heard them. She laughed at Uncle Tom because
she always had, but tears were shining in her eyes. Young men and
chocolate cake! What were these privations compared to that magic word
Change? Suddenly she rose, and flung her arms about Uncle Tom's neck
and kissed his rough cheek, and then embraced Aunt Mary. They would be
lonely.

“Aunt Mary, I can't bear to leave you--but I do so want to go! And it
won't be for long--will it? Only until next spring.”

“Until next summer, I believe,” replied Aunt Mary, gently; “June is a
summer month-isn't it, Tom?”

“It will be a summer month without question next year,” answered Uncle
Tom, enigmatically.

It has been remarked that that day was sultry, and a fine rain was now
washing Uncle Tom's flowers for him. It was he who had applied that term
“washing” since the era of ultra-soot. Incredible as it may seem, life
proceeded as on any other of a thousand rainy nights. The lamps
were lighted in the sitting-room, Uncle Tom unfolded his gardening
periodical, and Aunt Mary her embroidery. The gate slammed, with its
more subdued, rainy-weather sound.

“It's Peter,” said Honora, flying downstairs. And she caught him,
astonished, as he was folding his umbrella on the step. “Oh, Peter,
if you tried until to-morrow morning, you never could guess what has
happened.”

He stood for a moment, motionless, staring at her, a tall figure,
careless of the rain.

“You are going away,” he said.

“How did you guess it?” she exclaimed in surprise. “Yes--to
boarding-school. To Sutcliffe, on the Hudson, with Edith and Mary.
Aren't you glad? You look as though you had seen a ghost.”

“Do I?” said Peter.

“Don't stand there in the rain,” commanded Honora; “come into the
parlour, and I'll tell you all about it.”

He came in. She took the umbrella from him, and put it in the rack.

“Why don't you congratulate me?” she demanded.

“You'll never come back,” said Peter.

“What a horrid thing to say! Of course I shall come back. I shall come
back next June, and you'll be at the station to meet me.”

“And--what will Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary do--without you?”

“Oh,” said Honora, “I shall miss them dreadfully. And I shall miss you,
Peter.”

“Very much?” he asked, looking down at her with such a queer expression.
And his voice, too, sounded queer. He was trying to smile.

Suddenly Honora realized that he was suffering, and she felt the pangs
of contrition. She could not remember the time when she had been away
from Peter, and it was natural that he should be stricken at the news.
Peter, who was the complement of all who loved and served her, of Aunt
Mary and Uncle Tom and Catherine, and who somehow embodied them all.
Peter, the eternally dependable.

She found it natural that the light should be temporarily removed from
his firmament while she should be at boarding-school, and yet in the
tenderness of her heart she pitied him. She put her hands impulsively
upon his shoulders as he stood looking at her with that queer expression
which he believed to be a smile.

“Peter, you dear old thing, indeed I shall miss you! I don't know what I
shall do without you, and I'll write to you every single week.”

Gently he disengaged her arms. They were standing under that which, for
courtesy's sake, had always been called the chandelier. It was in the
centre of the parlour, and Uncle Tom always covered it with holly and
mistletoe at Christmas.

“Why do you say I'll never come back?” asked Honora. “Of course I shall
come back, and live here all the rest of my life.”

Peter shook his head slowly. He had recovered something of his customary
quizzical manner.

“The East is a strange country,” he said. “The first thing we know
you'll be marrying one of those people we read about, with more millions
than there are cars on the Olive Street line.”

Honora was a little indignant.

“I wish you wouldn't talk so, Peter,” she said. “In the first place, I
shan't see any but girls at Sutcliffe. I could only see you for a few
minutes once a week if you were there. And in the second place, it isn't
exactly--Well--dignified to compare the East and the West the way you
do, and speak about people who are very rich and live there as though
they were different from the people we know here. Comparisons, as
Shakespeare said, are odorous.”

“Honora,” he declared, still shaking his head, “you're a fraud, but I
can't help loving you.”

For a long time that night Honora lay in bed staring into the darkness,
and trying to realize what had happened. She heard the whistling and the
puffing of the trains in the cinder-covered valley to the southward, but
the quality of these sounds had changed. They were music now.




CHAPTER VI. HONORA HAS A GLIMPSE OF THE WORLD

It is simply impossible to give any adequate notion of the industry of
the days that followed. No sooner was Uncle Tom out of the house in the
morning than Anne Rory marched into the sitting-room and took command,
and turned it, into a dressmaking establishment. Anne Rory, who deserves
more than a passing mention, one of the institutions of Honora's youth,
who sewed for the first families, and knew much more about them than Mr.
Meeker, the dancing-master. If you enjoyed her confidence,--as Aunt
Mary did,--she would tell you of her own accord who gave their servants
enough to eat, and who didn't. Anne Rory was a sort of inquisition
all by herself, and would have made a valuable chief of police. The
reputations of certain elderly gentlemen of wealth might have remained
to this day intact had it not been for her; she had a heaven-sent knack
of discovering peccadilloes. Anne Rory knew the gentlemen by sight, and
the gentlemen did not know Anne Rory. Uncle Tom she held to be somewhere
in the calendar of the saints.

There is not time, alas, to linger over Anne Rory or the new histories
which she whispered to Aunt Mary when Honora was out of the room. At
last the eventful day of departure arrived. Honora's new trunk--her
first--was packed by Aunt Mary's own hands, the dainty clothes and the
dresses folded in tissue paper, while old Catherine stood sniffing by.
After dinner--sign of a great occasion--a carriage came from Braintree's
Livery Stable, and Uncle Tom held the horses while the driver carried
out the trunk and strapped it on. Catherine, Mary Ann, and Bridget, all
weeping, were kissed good-by, and off they went through the dusk to the
station. Not the old Union Depot, with its wooden sheds, where Honora
had gone so often to see the Hanburys off, that grimy gateway to the
fairer regions of the earth. This new station, of brick and stone and
glass and tiles, would hold an army corps with ease. And when they
alighted at the carriage entrance, a tall figure came forward out of the
shadow. It was Peter, and he had a package under his arm. Peter
checked Honora's trunk, and Peter had got the permission--through Judge
Brice--which enabled them all to pass through the grille and down the
long walk beside which the train was standing.

They entered that hitherto mysterious conveyance, a sleeping-car,
and spoke to old Mrs. Stanley, who was going East to see her married
daughter, and who had gladly agreed to take charge of Honora. Afterwards
they stood on the platform, but in spite of the valiant efforts of Uncle
Tom and Peter, conversation was a mockery.

“Honora,” said Aunt Mary, “don't forget that your trunk key is in the
little pocket on the left side of your bag.”

“No, Aunt Mary.”

“And your little New Testament at the bottom. And your lunch is arranged
in three packages. And don't forget to ask Cousin Eleanor about the
walking shoes, and to give her my note.”

Cries reverberated under the great glass dome, and trains pulled out
with deafening roars. Honora had a strange feeling, as of pressure from
within, that caused her to take deep breaths of the smoky air. She but
half heard what was being said to her: she wished that the train would
go, and at the same time she had a sudden, surprising, and fierce
longing to stay. She had been able to eat scarcely a mouthful of that
festal dinner which Bridget had spent the afternoon in preparing,
comprised wholly of forbidden dishes of her childhood, for which Bridget
and Aunt Mary were justly famed. Such is the irony of life. Visions
of one of Aunt Mary's rare lunch-parties and of a small girl peeping
covetously through a crack in the dining-room door, and of the gold
china set, rose before her. But she could not eat.

“Bread and jam and tea at Miss Turner's,” Uncle Tom had said, and she
had tried to smile at him.

And now they were standing on the platform, and the train might start at
any moment.

“I trust you won't get like the New Yorkers, Honora,” said Aunt Mary.
“Do you remember how stiff they were, Tom?” She was still in the habit
of referring to that memorable trip when they had brought Honora home.
“And they say now that they hold their heads higher than ever.”

“That,” said Uncle Tom, gravely, “is a local disease, and comes from
staring at the tall buildings.”

“Uncle Tom!”

Peter presented the parcel under his arm. It was a box of candy, and
very heavy, on which much thought had been spent.

“They are some of the things you like,” he said, when he had returned
from putting it in the berth.

“How good of you, Peter! I shall never be able to eat all that.”

“I hope there is a doctor on the train,” said Uncle Tom.

“Yassah,” answered the black porter, who had been listening with evident
relish, “right good doctah--Doctah Lov'ring.”

Even Aunt Mary laughed.

“Peter,” asked Honora, “can't you get Judge Brice to send you on to New
York this winter on law business? Then you could come up to Sutcliffe to
see me.”

“I'm afraid of Miss Turner,” declared Peter.

“Oh, she wouldn't mind you,” exclaimed Honora. “I could say you were an
uncle. It would be almost true. And perhaps she would let you take me
down to New York for a matinee.”

“And how about my ready-made clothes?” he said, looking down at her. He
had never forgotten that.

Honora laughed.

“You don't seem a bit sorry that I'm going,” she replied, a little
breathlessly. “You know I'd be glad to see you, if you were in rags.”

“All aboard!” cried the porter, grinning sympathetically.

Honora threw her arms around Aunt Mary and clung to her. How small and
frail she was! Somehow Honora had never realized it in all her life
before.

“Good-by, darling, and remember to put on your thick clothes on the cool
days, and write when you get to New York.”

Then it was Uncle Tom's turn. He gave her his usual vigorous hug and
kiss.

“It won't be long until Christmas,” he whispered, and was gone, helping
Aunt Mary off the train, which had begun to move.

Peter remained a moment.

“Good-by, Honora. I'll write to you often and let you know how they are.
And perhaps--you'll send me a letter once in a while.”

“Oh, Peter, I will,” she cried. “I can't bear to leave you--I didn't
think it would be so hard--”

He held out his hand, but she ignored it. Before he realized what had
happened to him she had drawn his face to hers, kissed it, and was
pushing him off the train. Then she watched from the platform the three
receding figures in the yellow smoky light until the car slipped
out from under the roof into the blackness of the night. Some faint,
premonitory divination of what they represented of immutable love in a
changing, heedless, selfish world came to her; rocks to which one might
cling, successful or failing, happy or unhappy. For unconsciously she
thought of them, all three, as one, a human trinity in which her faith
had never been betrayed. She felt a warm moisture on her cheeks, and
realized that she was crying with the first real sorrow of her life.

She was leaving them--for what? Honora did not know. There had been
nothing imperative in Cousin Eleanor's letter. She need not have gone
if she had not wished. Something within herself, she felt, was impelling
her. And it is curious to relate that, in her mind, going to school had
little or nothing to do with her journey. She had the feeling of faring
forth into the world, and she had known all along that it was destined
she should. What was the cause of this longing to break the fetters and
fly away? fetters of love, they seemed to her now--and were. And the
world which she had seen afar, filled with sunlit palaces, seemed very
dark and dreary to her to-night.

“The lady's asking for you, Miss,” said the porter.

She made a heroic attempt to talk to Mrs. Stanley. But at the sight
of Peter's candy, when she opened it, she was blinded once more. Dear
Peter! That box was eloquent with the care with which he had studied
her slightest desires and caprices. Marrons glaces, and Langtrys, and
certain chocolates which had received the stamp of her approval--and she
could not so much as eat one! The porter made the berths. And there had
been a time when she had asked nothing more of fate than to travel in a
sleeping-car! Far into the night she lay wide awake, dry-eyed, watching
the lamp-lit streets of the little towns they passed, or staring at the
cornfields and pastures in the darkness; thinking of the home she had
left, perhaps forever, and wondering whether they were sleeping there;
picturing them to-morrow at breakfast without her, and Uncle Tom leaving
for the bank, Aunt Mary going through the silent rooms alone, and
dear old Catherine haunting the little chamber where she had slept for
seventeen years--almost her lifetime. A hundred vivid scenes of her
childhood came back, and familiar objects oddly intruded themselves; the
red and green lambrequin on the parlour mantel--a present many years ago
from Cousin Eleanor; the what-not, with its funny curly legs, and the
bare spot near the lock on the door of the cake closet in the dining
room!

Youth, however, has its recuperative powers. The next day the excitement
of the journey held her, the sight of new cities and a new countryside.
But when she tried to eat the lunch Aunt Mary had so carefully put
up, new memories assailed her, and she went with Mrs. Stanley into the
dining car. The September dusk was made lurid by belching steel-furnaces
that reddened the heavens; and later, when she went to bed, sharp air
and towering contours told her of the mountains. Mountains which her
great-grandfather had crossed on horse back, with that very family
silver in his saddle-bags which shone on Aunt Mary's table. And
then--she awoke with the light shining in her face, and barely had time
to dress before the conductor was calling out “Jersey City.”

Once more the morning, and with it new and wonderful sensations that
dispelled her sorrows; the ferry, the olive-green river rolling in the
morning sun, alive with dodging, hurrying craft, each bent upon its
destination with an energy, relentlessness, and selfishness of purpose
that fascinated Honora. Each, with its shrill, protesting whistle,
seemed to say: “My business is the most important. Make way for me.” And
yet, through them all, towering, stately, imperturbable, a great ocean
steamer glided slowly towards the bay, by very might and majesty holding
her way serene and undisturbed, on a nobler errand. Honora thrilled as
she gazed, as though at last her dream were coming true, and she felt
within her the pulse of the world's artery. That irksome sense of
spectatorship seemed to fly, and she was part and parcel now of the
great, moving things, with sure pinions with which to soar. Standing
rapt upon the forward deck of the ferry, she saw herself, not an atom,
but one whose going and coming was a thing of consequence. It seemed
but a simple step to the deck of that steamer when she, too, would be
travelling to the other side of the world, and the journey one of the
small incidents of life.

The ferry bumped into its slip, the windlasses sang loudly as they took
up the chains, the gates folded back, and Honora was forced with the
crowd along the bridge-like passage to the right. Suddenly she saw
Cousin Eleanor and the girls awaiting her.

“Honora,” said Edith, when the greetings were over and they were all
four in the carriage, which was making its way slowly across the dirty
and irregularly paved open space to a narrow street that opened between
two saloons, “Honora, you don't mean to say that Anne Rory made that
street dress? Mother, I believe it's better-looking than the one I got
at Bremer's.”

“It's very simple,”, said Honora.

“And she looks fairly radiant,” cried Edith, seizing her cousin's hand.
“It's quite wonderful, Honora; nobody would ever guess that you were
from the West, and that you had spent the whole summer in St. Louis.”

Cousin Eleanor smiled a little as she contemplated Honora, who sat,
fascinated, gazing out of the window at novel scenes. There was a
colour in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. They had reached Madison
Square. Madison Square, on a bright morning in late September, seen for
the first time by an ambitious young lady who had never been out of
St. Louis! The trimly appointed vehicles, the high-stepping horses, the
glittering shops, the well-dressed women and well-groomed men--all had
an esprit de corps which she found inspiring. On such a morning,
and amidst such a scene, she felt that there was no limit to the
possibilities of life.

Until this year, Cousin Eleanor had been a conservative in the matter of
hotels, when she had yielded to Edith's entreaties to go to one of the
“new ones.” Hotels, indeed, that revolutionized transient existence.
This one, on the Avenue, had a giant in a long blue livery coat who
opened their carriage door, and a hall in yellow and black onyx, and
maids and valets. After breakfast, when Honora sat down to write to Aunt
Mary, she described the suite of rooms in which they lived,--the brass
beds, the electric night lamps, the mahogany French furniture, the
heavy carpets, and even the white-tiled bathroom. There was a marvellous
arrangement in the walls with which Edith was never tired of playing,
a circular plate covered with legends of every conceivable want, from a
newspaper to a needle and thread and a Scotch whiskey highball.

At breakfast, more stimulants--of a mental nature, of course. Solomon in
all his glory had never broken eggs in such a dining room. It had onyx
pillars, too, and gilt furniture, and table after table of the whitest
napery stretched from one end of it to the other. The glass and silver
was all of a special pattern, and an obsequious waiter handed Honora
a menu in a silver frame, with a handle. One side of the menu was in
English, and the other in French. All around them were well-dressed,
well-fed, prosperous-looking people, talking and laughing in subdued
tones as they ate. And Honora had a strange feeling of being one
of them, of being as rich and prosperous as they, of coming into a
long-deferred inheritance.

The mad excitement of that day in New York is a faint memory now, so
much has Honora lived since then. We descendants of rigid Puritans, of
pioneer tobacco-planters and frontiersmen, take naturally to a luxury
such as the world has never seen--as our right. We have abolished kings,
in order that as many of us as possible may abide in palaces. In one day
Honora forgot the seventeen years spent in the “little house under the
hill,” as though these had never been. Cousin Eleanor, with a delightful
sense of wrong-doing, yielded to the temptation to adorn her; and the
saleswomen, who knew Mrs. Hanbury, made indiscreet-remarks. Such a
figure and such a face, and just enough of height! Two new gowns were
ordered, to be tried on at Sutcliffe, and as many hats, and an ulster,
and heaven knows what else. Memory fails.

In the evening they went to a new comic opera, and it is the music of
that which brings back the day most vividly to Honora's mind.

In the morning they took an early train to Sutcliffe Manors, on the
Hudson. It is an historic place. First of all, after leaving the
station, you climb through the little town clinging to the hillside; and
Honora was struck by the quaint houses and shops which had been places
of barter before the Revolution. The age of things appealed to her. It
was a brilliant day at the very end of September, the air sharp, and
here and there a creeper had been struck crimson. Beyond the town, on
the slopes, were other new sights to stimulate the imagination: country
houses--not merely houses in the country, but mansions--enticingly
hidden among great trees in a way to whet Honora's curiosity as she
pictured to herself the blissful quality of the life which their owners
must lead. Long, curving driveways led up to the houses from occasional
lodges; and once, as though to complete the impression, a young man
and two women, superbly mounted, came trotting out of one of these
driveways, talking and laughing gayly. Honora took a good look at the
man. He was not handsome, but had, in fact, a distinguished and haunting
ugliness. The girls were straight-featured and conventional to the last
degree.

Presently they came to the avenue of elms that led up to the long, low
buildings of the school.

Little more will be necessary, in the brief account of Honora's life at
boarding-school, than to add an humble word of praise on the excellence
of Miss Turner's establishment. That lady, needless to say, did not
advertise in the magazines, or issue a prospectus. Parents were more
or less in the situation of the candidates who desired the honour and
privilege of whitewashing Tom Sawyer's fence. If you were a parent,
and were allowed to confide your daughter to Miss Turner, instead of
demanding a prospectus, you gave thanks to heaven, and spoke about it to
your friends.

The life of the young ladies, of course, was regulated on the strictest
principles. Early rising, prayers, breakfast, studies; the daily walk,
rain or shine, under the watchful convoy of Miss Hood, the girls in
columns of twos; tennis on the school court, or skating on the school
pond. Cotton Mather himself could not have disapproved of the Sundays,
nor of the discourse of the elderly Doctor Moale (which you heard if you
were not a Presbyterian), although the reverend gentleman was distinctly
Anglican in appearance and manners. Sometimes Honora felt devout, and
would follow the service with the utmost attention. Her religion came
in waves. On the Sundays when the heathen prevailed she studied the
congregation, grew to distinguish the local country families; and, if
the truth must be told, watched for several Sundays for that ugly
yet handsome young man whom she had seen on horseback. But he never
appeared, and presently she forgot him.

Had there been a prospectus (which is ridiculous!), the great secret of
Miss Turner's school could not very well have been mentioned in it. The
English language, it is to be feared, is not quite flexible enough to
mention this secret with delicacy. Did Honora know it? Who can say?
Self-respecting young ladies do not talk about such things, and Honora
was nothing if not self-respecting.

               “SUTCLIFFE MANORS, October 15th.

   “DEAREST AUNT MARY: As I wrote you, I continue to miss you and Uncle
   Tom dreadfully,--and dear old Peter, too; and Cathy and Bridget and
   Mary Ann. And I hate to get up at seven o'clock. And Miss Hood,
   who takes us out walking and teaches us composition, is such a
   ridiculously strict old maid--you would laugh at her. And the
   Sundays are terrible. Miss Turner makes us read the Bible for a
   whole hour in the afternoon, and reads to us in the evening. And
   Uncle Tom was right when he said we should have nothing but jam and
   bread and butter for supper: oh, yes, and cold meat. I am always
   ravenously hungry. I count the days until Christmas, when I shall
   have some really good things to eat again. And of course I cannot
   wait to see you all.

   “I do not mean to give you the impression that I am not happy here,
   and I never can be thankful enough to dear Cousin Eleanor for
   sending me. Some of the girls are most attractive. Among others,
   I have become great friends with Ethel Wing, who is tall and blond
   and good-looking; and her clothes, though simple, are beautiful.
   To hear her imitate Miss Turner or Miss Hood or Dr. Moale is almost
   as much fun as going to the theatre. You must have heard of her
   father--he is the Mr. Wing who owns all the railroads and other
   things, and they have a house in Newport and another in New York,
   and a country place and a yacht.

   “I like Sarah Wycliffe very much. She was brought up abroad, and we
   lead the French class together. Her father has a house in Paris,
   which they only use for a month or so in the year: an hotel, as the
   French call it. And then there is Maude Capron, from Philadelphia,
   whose father is Secretary of War. I have now to go to my class in
   English composition, but I will write to you again on Saturday.

                    “Your loving niece,

                            “HONORA.”

The Christmas holidays came, and went by like mileposts from the window
of an express train. There was a Glee Club: there were dances,
and private theatricals in Mrs. Dwyer's new house, in which it was
imperative that Honora should take part. There was no such thing as
getting up for breakfast, and once she did not see Uncle Tom for
two whole days. He asked her where she was staying. It was the first
Christmas she remembered spending without Peter. His present appeared,
but perhaps it was fortunate, on the whole, that he was in Texas, trying
a case. It seemed almost no time at all before she was at the station
again, clinging to Aunt Mary: but now the separation was not so hard,
and she had Edith and Mary for company, and George, a dignified and
responsible sophomore at Harvard.

Owing to the sudden withdrawal from school of little Louise Simpson, the
Cincinnati girl who had shared her room during the first term, Honora
had a new room-mate after the holidays, Susan Holt. Susan was not
beautiful, but she was good. Her nose turned up, her hair Honora
described as a negative colour, and she wore it in defiance of all
prevailing modes. If you looked very hard at Susan (which few people
ever did), you saw that she had remarkable blue eyes: they were the eyes
of a saint. She was neither tall nor short, and her complexion was not
all that it might have been. In brief, Susan was one of those girls
who go through a whole term at boarding--school without any particular
notice from the more brilliant Honoras and Ethel Wings.

In some respects, Susan was an ideal room-mate. She read the Bible every
night and morning, and she wrote many letters home. Her ruling passion,
next to religion, was order, and she took it upon herself to arrange
Honora's bureau drawers. It is needless to say that Honora accepted
these ministrations and that she found Susan's admiration an entirely
natural sentiment. Susan was self-effacing, and she enjoyed listening to
Honora's views on all topics.

Susan, like Peter, was taken for granted. She came from somewhere, and
after school was over, she would go somewhere. She lived in New York,
Honora knew, and beyond that was not curious. We never know when we are
entertaining an angel unawares. One evening, early in May, when she went
up to prepare for supper she found Susan sitting in the window reading
a letter, and on the floor beside her was a photograph. Honora picked
it up. It was the picture of a large country house with many chimneys,
taken across a wide green lawn.

“Susan, what's this?”

Susan looked up.

“Oh, it's Silverdale. My brother Joshua took it.”

“Silverdale?” repeated Honora.

“It's our place in the country,” Susan replied. “The family moved up
last week. You see, the trees are just beginning to bud.”

Honora was silent a moment, gazing at the picture.

“It's very beautiful, isn't it? You never told me about it.”

“Didn't I?” said Susan. “I think of it very often. It has always seemed
much more like home to me than our house in New York, and I love it
better than any spot I know.”

Honora gazed at Susan, who had resumed her reading.

“And you are going there when school is over.”

“Oh, yes,” said Susan; “I can hardly wait.” Suddenly she put down her
letter, and looked at Honora.

“And you,” she asked, “where are you going?”

“I don't know. Perhaps--perhaps I shall go to the sea for a while with
my cousins.”

It was foolish, it was wrong. But for the life of her Honora could not
say she was going to spend the long hot summer in St. Louis. The thought
of it had haunted her for weeks: and sometimes, when the other girls
were discussing their plans, she had left them abruptly. And now she was
aware that Susan's blue eyes were fixed upon her, and that they had a
strange and penetrating quality she had never noticed before: a certain
tenderness, an understanding that made Honora redden and turn.

“I wish,” said Susan, slowly, “that you would come and stay awhile with
me. Your home is so far away, and I don't know when I shall see you
again.”

“Oh, Susan,” she murmured, “it's awfully good of you, but I'm afraid--I
couldn't.”

She walked to the window, and stood looking out for a moment at the
budding trees. Her heart was beating faster, and she was strangely
uncomfortable.

“I really don't expect to go to the sea, Susan,” she said. “You see,
my aunt and uncle are all alone in St. Louis, and I ought to go back to
them. If--if my father had lived, it might have been different. He died,
and my mother, when I was little more than a year old.”

Susan was all sympathy. She slipped her hand into Honora's.

“Where did he live?” she asked.

“Abroad,” answered Honora. “He was consul at Nice, and had a villa
there when he died. And people said he had an unusually brilliant
career before him. My aunt and uncle brought me up, and my cousin, Mrs.
Hanbury, Edith's mother, and Mary's, sent me here to school.”

Honora breathed easier after this confession, but it was long before
sleep came to her that night. She wondered what it would be like to
visit at a great country house such as Silverdale, what it would be like
to live in one. It seemed a strange and cruel piece of irony on the part
of the fates that Susan, instead of Honora, should have been chosen
for such a life: Susan, who would have been quite as happy spending her
summers in St. Louis, and taking excursions in the electric cars: Susan,
who had never experienced that dreadful, vacuum-like feeling, who had no
ambitious craving to be satisfied. Mingled with her flushes of affection
for Susan was a certain queer feeling of contempt, of which Honora was
ashamed.

Nevertheless, in the days that followed, a certain metamorphosis
seemed to have taken place in Susan. She was still the same modest,
self-effacing, helpful roommate, but in Honora's eyes she had
changed--Honora could no longer separate her image from the vision
of Silverdale. And, if the naked truth must be told, it was due to
Silverdale that Susan owes the honour of her first mention in those
descriptive letters from Sutcliffe, which Aunt Mary has kept to this
day.

Four days later Susan had a letter from her mother containing an
astonishing discovery. There could be no mistake,--Mrs. Holt had brought
Honora to this country as a baby.

“Why, Susan,” cried Honora, “you must have been the other baby.”

“But you were the beautiful one,” replied Susan, generously. “I have
often heard mother tell about it, and how every one on the ship noticed
you, and how Hortense cried when your aunt and uncle took you away. And
to think we have been rooming together all these months and did not know
that we were really--old friends.

“And Honora, mother says you must come to Silverdale to pay us a
visit when school closes. She wants to see you. I think,” added Susan,
smiling, “I think she feels responsible, for you. She says that you must
give me your aunts address, and that she will write to her.”

“Oh, I'd so like to go, Susan. And I don't think Aunt Mary would
object---for a little while.”

Honora lost no time in writing the letter asking for permission, and
it was not until after she had posted it that she felt a sudden, sharp
regret as she thought of them in their loneliness. But the postponement
of her homecoming would only be for a fortnight at best. And she had
seen so little!

In due time Aunt Mary's letter arrived. There was no mention of
loneliness in it, only of joy that Honora was to have the opportunity to
visit such a place as Silverdale. Aunt Mary, it seems, had seen pictures
of it long ago in a magazine of the book club, in an article concerning
one of Mrs. Holt's charities--a model home for indiscreet young women.
At the end of the year, Aunt Mary added, she had bought the number of
the magazine, because of her natural interest in Mrs. Holt on Honora's
account. Honora cried a little over that letter, but her determination
to go to Silverdale was unshaken.

June came at last, and the end of school. The subject of Miss Turner's
annual talk was worldliness. Miss Turner saw signs, she regretted to
say, of a lowering in the ideals of American women: of a restlessness,
of a desire for what was a false consideration and recognition; for
power. Some of her own pupils, alas! were not free from this fault.
Ethel Wing, who was next to Honora, nudged her and laughed, and passed
her some of Maillard's chocolates, which she had in her pocket. Woman's
place, continued Miss Turner, was the home, and she hoped they would
all make good wives. She had done her best to prepare them to be
such. Independence, they would find, was only relative: no one had it
completely. And she hoped that none of her scholars would ever descend
to that base competition to outdo one's neighbours, so characteristic of
the country to-day.

The friends, and even the enemies, were kissed good-by, with pledges of
eternal friendship. Cousin Eleanor Hanbury came for Edith and Mary, and
hoped Honora would enjoy herself at Silverdale. Dear Cousin Eleanor!
Her heart was large, and her charity unpretentious. She slipped into
Honora's fingers, as she embraced her, a silver-purse with some gold
coins in it, and bade her not to forget to write home very often.

“You know what pleasure it will give them, my dear,” she said, as she
stepped on the train for New York.

“And I am going home soon, Cousin Eleanor,” replied Honora, with a
little touch of homesickness in her voice.

“I know, dear,” said Mrs. Hanbury. But there was a peculiar, almost
wistful expression on her face as she kissed Honora again, as of one who
assents to a fiction in order to humour a child.

As the train pulled out, Ethel Wing waved to her from the midst of a
group of girls on the wide rear platform of the last car. It was Mr.
Wing's private car, and was going to Newport.

“Be good, Honora!” she cried.




Volume 2.




CHAPTER VII. THE OLYMPIAN ORDER

Lying back in the chair of the Pullman and gazing over the wide Hudson
shining in the afternoon sun, Honora's imagination ran riot until the
seeming possibilities of life became infinite. At every click of the
rails she was drawing nearer to that great world of which she had
dreamed, a world of country houses inhabited by an Olympian order. To be
sure, Susan, who sat reading in the chair behind her, was but a humble
representative of that order--but Providence sometimes makes use of such
instruments. The picture of the tall and brilliant Ethel Wing standing
behind the brass rail of the platform of the car was continually
recurring to Honora as emblematic: of Ethel, in a blue tailor-made
gown trimmed with buff braid, and which fitted her slender figure with
military exactness. Her hair, the colour of the yellowest of gold, in
the manner of its finish seemed somehow to give the impression of that
metal; and the militant effect of the costume had been heightened by
a small colonial cocked hat. If the truth be told, Honora had secretly
idealized Miss Wing, and had found her insouciance, frankness, and
tendency to ridicule delightful. Militant--that was indeed Ethel's
note--militant and positive.

“You're not going home with Susan!” she had exclaimed, making a little
face when Honora had told her. “They say that Silverdale is as slow as
a nunnery--and you're on your knees all the time. You ought to have come
to Newport with me.”

It was characteristic of Miss Wing that she seemed to have taken no
account of the fact that she had neglected to issue this alluring
invitation. Life at Silverdale slow! How could it be slow amidst such
beauty and magnificence?

The train was stopping at a new little station on which hung the legend,
in gold letters, “Sutton.” The sun was well on his journey towards the
western hills. Susan had touched her on the shoulder.

“Here we are, Honora,” she said, and added, with an unusual tremor in
her voice, “at last!”

On the far side of the platform a yellow, two-seated wagon was waiting,
and away they drove through the village, with its old houses and its
sleepy streets and its orchards, and its ancient tavern dating from
stage-coach days. Just outside of it, on the tree-dotted slope of a long
hill, was a modern brick building, exceedingly practical in appearance,
surrounded by spacious grounds enclosed in a paling fence. That, Susan
said, was the Sutton Home.

“Your mother's charity?”

A light came into the girl's eyes.

“So you have heard of it? Yes, it is the thing that interests mother
more than anything else in the world.”

“Oh,” said Honora, “I hope she will let me go through it.”

“I'm sure she will want to take you there to-morrow,” answered Susan,
and she smiled.

The road wound upwards, by the valley of a brook, through the hills, now
wooded, now spread with pastures that shone golden green in the evening
light, the herds gathering at the gate-bars. Presently they came to a
gothic-looking stone building, with a mediaeval bridge thrown across
the stream in front of it, and massive gates flung open. As they passed,
Honora had a glimpse of a blue driveway under the arch of the forest.
An elderly woman looked out at them through the open half of a leaded
lattice.

“That's the Chamberlin estate,” Susan volunteered. “Mr. Chamberlin has
built a castle on the top of that hill.”

Honora caught her breath.

“Are many of the places here like that?” she asked. Susan laughed.

“Some people don't think the place is very--appropriate,” she contented
herself with replying.

A little later, as they climbed higher, other houses could be discerned
dotted about the country-side, nearly all of them varied expressions
of the passion for a new architecture which seemed to possess the rich.
Most of them were in conspicuous positions, and surrounded by wide
acres. Each, to Honora, was an inspiration.

“I had no idea there were so many people here,” she said.

“I'm afraid Sutton is becoming fashionable,” answered Susan.

“And don't you want it to?” asked Honora.

“It was very nice before,” said Susan, quietly.

Honora was silent. They turned in between two simple stone pillars that
divided a low wall, overhung from the inside by shrubbery growing under
the forest. Susan seized her friend's hand and pressed it.

“I'm always so glad to get back here,” she whispered. “I hope you'll
like it.”

Honora returned the pressure.

The grey road forked, and forked again. Suddenly the forest came to an
end in a sort of premeditated tangle of wild garden, and across a wide
lawn the great house loomed against the western sky. Its architecture
was of the '60's and '70's, with a wide porte-cochere that sheltered
the high entrance doors. These were both flung open, a butler and two
footmen were standing impassively beside them, and a neat maid within.
Honora climbed the steps as in a dream, followed Susan through a hall
with a black-walnut, fretted staircase, and where she caught a glimpse
of two huge Chinese vases, to a porch on the other side of the house
spread with wicker chairs and tables. Out of a group of people at the
farther end of this porch arose an elderly lady, who came forward and
clasped Susan in her arms.

“And is this Honora? How do you do, my dear? I had the pleasure of
knowing you when you were much younger.”

Honora, too, was gathered to that ample bosom. Released, she beheld a
lady in a mauve satin gown, at the throat of which a cameo brooch
was fastened. Mrs. Holt's face left no room for conjecture as to the
character of its possessor. Her hair, of a silvering blend, parted in
the middle, fitted tightly to her head. She wore earrings. In short, her
appearance was in every way suggestive of momentum, of a force which the
wise would respect.

“Where are you, Joshua?” she said. “This is the baby we brought from
Nice. Come and tell me whether you would recognize her.”

Mr. Holt released his--daughter. He had a mild blue eye, white
mutton-chop whiskers, and very thin hands, and his tweed suit was
decidedly the worse for wear.

“I can't say that I should, Elvira,” he replied; “although it is not
hard to believe that such a beautiful baby should, prove to be such
a--er--good-looking young woman.”

“I've always felt very grateful to you for bringing me back,” said
Honora.

“Tut, tut, child,” said Mrs. Holt; “there was no one else to do it. And
be careful how you pay young women compliments, Joshua. They grow
vain enough. By the way, my dear, what ever became of your maternal
grandfather, old Mr. Allison--wasn't that his name?”

“He died when I was very young,” replied Honora.

“He was too fond of the good things of this life,” said Mrs. Holt.

“My dear Elvira!” her husband protested.

“I can't help it, he was,” retorted that lady. “I am a judge of human
nature, and I was relieved, I can tell you, my dear” (to Honora), “when
I saw your uncle and aunt on the wharf that morning. I knew that I had
confided you to good hands.”

“They have done everything for me, Mrs. Holt,” said Honora.

The good lady patted her approvingly on the shoulder.

“I'm sure of it, my dear,” she said. “And I am glad to see you
appreciate it. And now you must renew your acquaintance with the
family.”

A sister and a brother, Honora had already learned from Susan, had died
since she had crossed the ocean with them. Robert and Joshua, Junior,
remained. Both were heavyset, with rather stern faces, both had
close-cropped, tan-coloured mustaches and wide jaws, with blue eyes
like Susan's. Both were, with women at least, what the French would call
difficult--Robert less so than Joshua. They greeted Honora reservedly
and--she could not help feeling--a little suspiciously. And their
appearance was something of a shock to her; they did not, somehow, “go
with the house,” and they dressed even more carelessly than Peter Erwin.
This was particularly true of Joshua, whose low, turned-down collar
revealed a porous, brick-red, and extremely virile neck, and whose
clothes were creased at the knees and across the back.

As for their wives, Mrs. Joshua was a merry, brown-eyed little lady
already inclining to stoutness, and Honora felt at home with her at
once. Mrs. Robert was tall and thin, with an olive face and dark eyes
which gave the impression of an uncomfortable penetration. She was
dressed simply in a shirtwaist and a dark skirt, but Honora thought her
striking looking.

The grandchildren, playing on and off the porch, seemed legion, and they
were besieging Susan. In reality there were seven of them, of all sizes
and sexes, from the third Joshua with a tennis-bat to the youngest who
was weeping at being sent to bed, and holding on to her Aunt Susan with
desperation. When Honora had greeted them all, and kissed some of them,
she was informed that there were two more upstairs, safely tucked away
in cribs.

“I'm sure you love children, don't you?” said Mrs. Joshua. She spoke
impulsively, and yet with a kind of childlike shyness.

“I adore them,” exclaimed Honora.

A trellised arbour (which some years later would have been called a
pergola) led from the porch up the hill to an old-fashioned summer-house
on the crest. And thither, presently, Susan led Honora for a view of
the distant western hills silhouetted in black against a flaming western
sky, before escorting her to her room. The vastness of the house, the
width of the staircase, and the size of the second-story hall impressed
our heroine.

“I'll send a maid to you later, dear,” Susan said. “If you care to lie
down for half an hour, no one will disturb you. And I hope you will be
comfortable.”

Comfortable! When the door had closed, Honora glanced around her and
sighed, “comfort” seemed such a strangely inadequate word. She was
reminded of the illustrations she had seen of English country houses.
The bed alone would almost have filled her little room at home. On the
farther side, in an alcove, was a huge dressing-table; a fire was laid
in the grate of the marble mantel, the curtains in the bay window were
tightly drawn, and near by was a lounge with a reading-light. A huge
mahogany wardrobe occupied one corner; in another stood a pier glass,
and in another, near the lounge, was a small bookcase filled with
books. Honora looked over them curiously. “Robert Elsmere” and a life
of Christ, “Mr. Isaacs,” a book of sermons by an eminent clergyman,
“Innocents Abroad,” Hare's “Walks in Rome,” “When a Man's Single,” by
Barrie, a book of meditations, and “Organized Charities for Women.”

Adjoining the bedroom was a bathroom in proportion, evidently all her
own,--with a huge porcelain tub and a table set with toilet bottles
containing liquids of various colours.

Dreamily, Honora slipped on the new dressing-gown Aunt Mary had made for
her, and took a book out of the bookcase. It was the volume of sermons.
But she could not read: she was forever looking about the room, and
thinking of the family she had met downstairs. Of course, when one lived
in a house like this, one could afford to dress and act as one liked.
She was aroused from her reflections by the soft but penetrating notes
of a Japanese gong, followed by a gentle knock on the door and the
entrance of an elderly maid, who informed her it was time to dress for
dinner.

“If you'll excuse me, Miss,” said that hitherto silent individual when
the operation was completed, “you do look lovely.”

Honora, secretly, was of that opinion too as she surveyed herself in the
long glass. The simple summer silk, of a deep and glowing pink, rivalled
the colour in her cheeks, and contrasted with the dark and shining
masses of her hair; and on her neck glistened a little pendant of her
mother's jewels, which Aunt Mary, with Cousin Eleanor's assistance, had
had set in New York. Honora's figure was that of a woman of five and
twenty: her neck was a slender column, her head well set, and the look
of race, which had been hers since childhood, was at nineteen more
accentuated. All this she saw, and went down the stairs in a kind of
exultation. And when on the threshold of the drawing-room she paused,
the conversation suddenly ceased. Mr. Holt and his sons got up somewhat
precipitately, and Mrs. Holt came forward to meet her.

“I hope you weren't waiting for me,” said Honora, timidly.

“No indeed, my dear,” said Mrs. Holt. Tucking Honora's hand under her
arm, she led the way majestically to the dining-room, a large apartment
with a dimly lighted conservatory at the farther end, presided over by
the decorous butler and his assistants. A huge chandelier with prisms
hung over the flowers at the centre of the table, which sparkled with
glass and silver, while dishes of vermilion and yellow fruits relieved
the whiteness of the cloth. Honora found herself beside Mr. Holt, who
looked more shrivelled than ever in his evening clothes. And she was
about to address him when, with a movement as though to forestall her,
he leaned forward convulsively and began a mumbling grace.

The dinner itself was more like a ceremony than a meal, and as it
proceeded, Honora found it increasingly difficult to rid herself of a
curious feeling of being on probation.

Joshua, who sat on her other side and ate prodigiously, scarcely
addressed a word to her; but she gathered from his remarks to his father
and brother that he was interested in cows. And Mr. Holt was almost
exclusively occupied in slowly masticating the special dishes which the
butler impressively laid before him. He asked her a few questions about
Miss Turner's school, but it was not until she had admired the mass
of peonies in the centre of the table that his eyes brightened, and he
smiled.

“You like flowers?” he asked.

“I love them,” slid Honora.

“I am the gardener here,” he said. “You must see my garden, Miss
Leffingwell. I am in it by half-past six every morning, rain or shine.”

Honora looked up, and surprised Mrs. Robert's eyes fixed on her with
the same strange expression she had noticed on her arrival. And for some
senseless reason, she flushed.

The conversation was chiefly carried on by kindly little Mrs. Joshua and
by Mrs. Holt, who seemed at once to preside and to dominate. She praised
Honora's gown, but left a lingering impression that she thought her
overdressed, without definitely saying so. And she made innumerable--and
often embarrassing--inquiries about Honora's aunt and uncle, and her
life in St. Louis, and her friends there, and how she had happened to go
to Sutcliffe to school. Sometimes Honora blushed, but she answered them
all good-naturedly. And when at length the meal had marched sedately
down to the fruit, Mrs. Holt rose and drew Honora out of the dining
room.

“It is a little hard on you, my dear,” she said, “to give you so
much family on your arrival. But there are some other people coming
to-morrow, when it will be gayer, I hope, for you and Susan.”

“It is so good of you and Susan to want me, Mrs. Holt,” replied Honora,
“I am enjoying it so much. I have never been in a big country house
like this, and I am glad there is no one else here. I have heard my aunt
speak of you so often, and tell how kind you were to take charge of me,
that I have always hoped to know you sometime or other. And it seems
the strangest of coincidences that I should have roomed with Susan at
Sutcliffe.”

“Susan has grown very fond of you,” said Mrs. Holt, graciously. “We are
very glad to have you, my dear, and I must own that I had a curiosity to
see you again. Your aunt struck me as a good and sensible woman, and it
was a positive relief to know that you were to be confided to her care.”
 Mrs. Holt, however, shook her head and regarded Honora, and her next
remark might have been taken as a clew to her thoughts. “But we are not
very gay at Silverdale, Honora.”

Honora's quick intuition detected the implication of a frivolity which
even her sensible aunt had not been able to eradicate.

“Oh, Mrs. Holt,” she cried, “I shall be so happy here, just seeing
things and being among you. And I am so interested in the little bit I
have seen already. I caught a glimpse of your girls' home on my way from
the station. I hope you will take me there.”

Mrs. Holt gave her a quick look, but beheld in Honora's clear eyes only
eagerness and ingenuousness.

The change in the elderly lady's own expression, and incidentally in the
atmosphere which enveloped her, was remarkable.

“Would you really like to go, my dear?”

“Oh, yes indeed,” cried Honora. “You see, I have heard so much of it,
and I should like to write my aunt about it. She is interested in the
work you are doing, and she has kept a magazine with an article in it,
and a picture of the institution.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed the lady, now visibly pleased. “It is a very modest
little work, my dear. I had no idea that--out in St. Louis--that the
beams of my little candle had carried so far. Indeed you shall see it,
Honora. We will go down the first thing in the morning.”

Mrs. Robert, who had been sitting on the other side of the room, rose
abruptly and came towards them. There was something very like a smile
on her face,--although it wasn't really a smile--as she bent over and
kissed her mother-in-law on the cheek.

“I am glad to hear you are interested in--charities, Miss Leffingwell,”
 she said.

Honora's face grew warm.

“I have not so far had very much to do with them, I am afraid,” she
answered.

“How should she?” demanded Mrs. Holt. “Gwendolen, you're not going up
already?”

“I have some letters to write,” said Mrs. Robert.

“Gwen has helped me immeasurably,” said Mrs. Holt, looking after the
tall figure of her daughter-in-law, “but she has a curious, reserved
character. You have to know her, my dear. She is not at all like Susan,
for instance.”

Honora awoke the next morning to a melody, and lay for some minutes in
a delicious semi-consciousness, wondering where she was. Presently she
discovered that the notes were those of a bird on a tree immediately
outside of her window--a tree of wonderful perfection, the lower
branches of which swept the ground. Other symmetrical trees, of many
varieties, dotted a velvet lawn, which formed a great natural terrace
above the forested valley of Silver Brook. On the grass, dew-drenched
cobwebs gleamed in the early sun, and the breeze that stirred the
curtains was charged with the damp, fresh odours of the morning. Voices
caught her ear, and two figures appeared in the distance. One she
recognized as Mr. Holt, and the other was evidently a gardener. The gilt
clock on the mantel pointed to a quarter of seven.

It is far too late in this history to pretend that Honora was, by
preference, an early riser, and therefore it must have been the
excitement caused by her surroundings that made her bathe and dress
with alacrity that morning. A housemaid was dusting the stairs as she
descended into the empty hall. She crossed the lawn, took a path through
the trees that bordered it, and came suddenly upon an old-fashioned
garden in all the freshness of its early morning colour. In one of the
winding paths she stopped with a little exclamation. Mr. Holt rose from
his knees in front of her, where he had been digging industriously with
a trowel. His greeting, when contrasted with his comparative taciturnity
at dinner the night before, was almost effusive--and a little pathetic.

“My dear young lady,” he exclaimed, “up so early?” He held up
forbiddingly a mould-covered palm. “I can't shake hands with you.”

Honora laughed.

“I couldn't resist the temptation to see your garden,” she said.

A gentle light gleamed in his blue eyes, and he paused before a trellis
of June roses. With his gardening knife he cut three of them, and held
them gallantly against her white gown. Her sensitive colour responded as
she thanked him, and she pinned them deftly at her waist.

“You like gardens?” he said.

“I was brought up with them,” she answered; “I mean,” she corrected
herself swiftly, “in a very modest way. My uncle is passionately fond of
flowers, and he makes our little yard bloom with them all summer. But of
course,” Honora added, “I've never seen anything like this.”

“It has been a life work,” answered Mr. Holt, proudly, “and yet I feel
as though I had not yet begun. Come, I will show you the peonies--they
are at their best--before I go in and make myself respectable for
breakfast.”

Ten minutes later, as they approached the house in amicable and even
lively conversation, they beheld Susan and Mrs. Robert standing on the
steps under the porte-cochere, watching them.

“Why, Honora,” cried Susan, “how energetic you are! I actually had a
shock when I went to your room and found you'd gone. I'll have to write
Miss Turner.”

“Don't,” pleaded Honora; “you see, I had every inducement to get up.”

“She has been well occupied,” put in Mr. Holt. “She has been admiring my
garden.”

“Indeed I have,” said Honora.

“Oh, then, you have won father's heart!” cried Susan. Gwendolen Holt
smiled. Her eyes were fixed upon the roses in Honora's belt.

“Good morning, Miss Leffingwell,” she said, simply.

Mr. Holt having removed the loam from his hands, the whole family,
excepting Joshua, Junior, and including an indefinite number of
children, and Carroll, the dignified butler, and Martha, the elderly
maid, trooped into the library for prayers. Mr. Holt sat down before
a teak-wood table at the end of the room, on which reposed a great,
morocco-covered Bible. Adjusting his spectacles, he read, in a mild but
impressive voice, a chapter of Matthew, while Mrs. Joshua tried to
quiet her youngest. Honora sat staring at a figure on the carpet,
uncomfortably aware that Mrs. Robert was still studying her. Mr. Holt
closed the Bible reverently, and announced a prayer, whereupon the
family knelt upon the floor and leaned their elbows on the seats of
their chairs. Honora did likewise, wondering at the facility with which
Mr. Holt worded his appeal, and at the number of things he found to pray
for. Her knees had begun to ache before he had finished.

At breakfast such a cheerful spirit prevailed that Honora began almost
to feel at home. Even Robert indulged occasionally in raillery.

“Where in the world is Josh?” asked Mrs. Holt, after they were seated.

“I forgot to tell you, mother,” little Mrs. Joshua chirped up, “that he
got up at an unearthly hour, and went over to Grafton to look at a cow.”

“A cow!” sighed Mrs. Holt. “Oh, dear, I might have known it. You must
understand, Honora, that every member of the Holt family has a hobby.
Joshua's is Jerseys.”

“I'm sure I should adore them if I lived in the country,” Honora
declared.

“If you and Joshua would only take that Sylvester farm, and build
a house, Annie,” said Mr. Holt, munching the dried bread which was
specially prepared for him, “I should be completely happy. Then,” he
added, turning to Honora, “I should have both my sons settled on the
place. Robert and Gwen are sensible in building.”

“It's cheaper to live with you, granddad,” laughed Mrs. Joshua. “Josh
says if we do that, he has more money to buy cows.”

At this moment a footman entered, and presented Mrs. Holt with some mail
on a silver tray.

“The Vicomte de Toqueville is coming this afternoon, Joshua,” she
announced, reading rapidly from a sheet on which was visible a large
crown. “He landed in New York last week, and writes to know if I could
have him.”

“Another of mother's menagerie,” remarked Robert.

“I don't think that's nice of you, Robert,” said his mother. “The
Vicomte was very kind to your father and me in Paris, and invited us to
his chateau in Provence.”

Robert was sceptical.

“Are you sure he had one?” he insisted.

Even Mr. Holt laughed.

“Robert,” said his mother, “I wish Gwen could induce you to travel more.
Perhaps you would learn that all foreigners aren't fortune-hunters.”

“I've had an opportunity to observe the ones who come over here, mother.”

“I won't have a prospective guest discussed,” Mrs. Holt declared, with
finality. “Joshua, you remember my telling you last spring that Martha
Spence's son called on me?” she asked. “He is in business with a man
named Dallam, I believe, and making a great deal of money for a young
man. He is just a year younger than you, Robert.”

“Do you mean that fat, tow-headed boy that used to come up here and eat
melons and ride my pony?” inquired Robert. “Howard Spence?”

Mrs. Holt smiled.

“He isn't fat any longer, Robert. Indeed, he's quite good-looking. Since
his mother died, I had lost trace of him. But I found a photograph of
hers when I was clearing up my desk some months ago, and sent it to him,
and he came to thank me. I forgot to tell you that I invited him for a
fortnight any time he chose, and he has just written to ask if he may
come now. I regret to say that he's on the Stock Exchange--but I was
very fond of his mother. It doesn't seem to me quite a legitimate
business.”

“Why!” exclaimed little Mrs. Joshua, unexpectedly, “I'm given to
understand that the Stock Exchange is quite aristocratic in these days.”

“I'm afraid I am old-fashioned, my dear,” said Mrs. Holt, rising. “It
has always seemed to me little better than a gambling place. Honora, if
you still wish to go to the Girls' Home, I have ordered the carriage in
a quarter of an hour.”




CHAPTER VIII. A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS

Honora's interest in the Institution was so lively, and she asked so
many questions and praised so highly the work with which the indiscreet
young women were occupied that Mrs. Holt patted her hand as they drove
homeward.

“My dear,” she said, “I begin to wish I'd adopted you myself. Perhaps,
later on, we can find a husband for you, and you will marry and settle
down near us here at Silverdale, and then you can help me with the
work.”

“Oh, Mrs. Holt,” she replied, “I should so like to help you, I mean. And
it would be wonderful to live in such a place. And as for marriage, it
seems such a long way off that somehow I never think of it.”

“Naturally,” ejaculated Mrs. Holt, with approval, “a young girl of your
age should not. But, my dear, I am afraid you are destined to have many
admirers. If you had not been so well brought up, and were not naturally
so sensible, I should fear for you.”

“Oh, Mrs. Holt!” exclaimed Honora, deprecatingly, and blushing very
prettily.

“Whatever else I am,” said Mrs. Holt, vigorously, “I am not a flatterer.
I am telling you something for your own good--which you probably know
already.”

Honora was discreetly silent. She thought of the proud and unsusceptible
George Hanbury, whom she had cast down from the tower of his sophomore
dignity with such apparent ease; and of certain gentlemen at home,
young and middle-aged, who had behaved foolishly during the Christmas
holidays.

At lunch both the Roberts and the Joshuas were away.

Afterwards, they romped with the children--she and Susan. They were
shy at first, especially the third Joshua, but Honora captivated him
by playing two sets of tennis in the broiling sun, at the end of which
exercise he regarded her with a new-born admiration in his eyes. He was
thirteen.

“I didn't think you were that kind at all,” he said.

“What kind did you think I was?” asked Honora, passing her arm around
his shoulder as they walked towards the house.

The boy grew scarlet.

“Oh, I didn't think you--you could play tennis,” he stammered.

Honora stopped, and seized his chin and tilted his face upward.

“Now, Joshua,” she said, “look at me and say that over again.”

“Well,” he replied desperately, “I thought you wouldn't want to get all
mussed up and hot.”

“That's better,” said Honora. “You thought I was vain, didn't you?”

“But I don't think so any more,” he avowed passionately. “I think you're
a trump. And we'll play again to-morrow, won't we?”

“We'll play any day you like,” she declared.

It is unfair to suppose that the arrival of a real vicomte and of
a young, good-looking, and successful member of the New York Stock
Exchange were responsible for Honora's appearance, an hour later, in the
embroidered linen gown which Cousin Eleanor had given her that
spring. Tea was already in progress on the porch, and if a hush in the
conversation and the scraping of chairs is any sign of a sensation, this
happened when our heroine appeared in the doorway. And Mrs. Holt, in the
act of lifting the hot-water kettle; put it down again. Whether or not
there was approval in the lady's delft-blue eye, Honora could not
have said. The Vicomte, with the graceful facility of his race, had
differentiated himself from the group and stood before her. As soon
as the words of introduction were pronounced, he made a bow that was a
tribute in itself, exaggerated in its respect.

“It is a pleasure, Mademoiselle,” he murmured, but his eyes were more
eloquent.

A description of him in his own language leaped into Honora's mind, so
much did he appear to have walked out of one of the many yellow-backed
novels she had read. He was not tall, but beautifully made, and his coat
was quite absurdly cut in at the waist; his mustache was en-croc, and
its points resembled those of the Spanish bayonets in the conservatory:
he might have been three and thirty, and he was what the novels
described as 'un peu fane' which means that he had seen the world: his
eyes were extraordinarily bright, black, and impenetrable.

A greater contrast to the Vicomte than Mr. Howard Spence would have
been difficult to find. He was Honora's first glimpse of Finance, of the
powers that travelled in private cars and despatched ships across the
ocean. And in our modern mythology, he might have stood for the god
of Prosperity. Prosperity is pink, and so was Mr. Spence, in two
places,--his smooth-shaven cheeks and his shirt. His flesh had a certain
firmness, but he was not stout; he was merely well fed, as Prosperity
should be. His features were comparatively regular, his mustache a
light brown, his eyes hazel. The fact that he came from that mysterious
metropolis, the heart of which is Wall Street, not only excused but
legitimized the pink shirt and the neatly knotted green tie, the
pepper-and-salt check suit that was loose and at the same time
well-fitting, and the jewelled ring on his plump little finger. On the
whole, Mr. Spence was not only prepossessing, but he contrived to give
Honora, as she shook his hand, the impression of being brought a step
nearer to the national source of power. Unlike the Vicomte, he did not
appear to have been instantly and mortally wounded upon her arrival on
the scene, but his greeting was flattering, and he remained by her side
instead of returning to that of Mrs. Robert.

“When did you come up?” he asked.

“Only yesterday,” answered Honora.

“New York,” said Mr. Spence, producing a gold cigarette case on which
his monogram was largely and somewhat elaborately engraved, “New York
is played out this time of year--isn't it? I dropped in at Sherry's last
night for dinner, and there weren't thirty people there.”

Honora had heard of Sherry's as a restaurant where one dined fabulously,
and she tried to imagine the cosmopolitan and blissful existence which
permitted “dropping in at” such a place. Moreover, Mr. Spence was
plainly under the impression that she too “came up” from New York, and
it was impossible not to be a little pleased.

“It must be a relief to get into the country,” she ventured.

Mr. Spence glanced around him expressively, and then looked at her with
a slight smile. The action and the smile--to which she could not refrain
from responding--seemed to establish a tacit understanding between them.
It was natural that he should look upon Silverdale as a slow place, and
there was something delicious in his taking, for granted that she shared
this opinion. She wondered a little wickedly what he would say when he
knew the truth about her, and this was the birth of a resolution that
his interest should not flag.

“Oh, I can stand the country when it is properly inhabited,” he said,
and their eyes met in laughter.

“How many inhabitants do you require?” she asked.

“Well,” he said brazenly, “the right kind of inhabitant is worth a
thousand of the wrong kind. It is a good rule in business, when you come
across a gilt-edged security, to make a specialty of it.”

Honora found the compliment somewhat singular. But she was prepared to
forgive New York a few sins in the matter of commercial slang: New York,
which evidently dressed as it liked, and talked as it liked. But not
knowing any more of a gilt-edged security than that it was something to
Mr. Spence's taste, a retort was out of the question. Then, as though
she were doomed that day to complicity, her eyes chanced to encounter an
appealing glance from the Vicomte, who was searching with the courage
of despair for an English word, which his hostess awaited in stoical
silence. He was trying to give his impressions of Silverdale, in
comparison to country places abroad, while Mrs. Robert regarded
him enigmatically, and Susan sympathetically. Honora had an almost
irresistible desire to laugh.

“Ah, Madame,” he cried, still looking at Honora, “will you have the
kindness to permit me to walk about ever so little?”

“Certainly, Vicomte, and I will go with you. Get my parasol, Susan.
Perhaps you would like to come, too, Howard,” she added to Mr. Spence;
“it has been so long since you were here, and we have made many
changes.”

“And you, Mademoiselle,” said the Vicomte to Honora, “you will come--yes?
You are interested in landscape?”

“I love the country,” said Honora.

“It is a pleasure to have a guest who is so appreciative,” said Mrs.
Holt. “Miss Leffingwell was up at seven this morning, and in the garden
with my husband.”

“At seven!” exclaimed the Vicomte; “you American young ladies are
wonderful. For example--” and he was about to approach her to enlarge
on this congenial theme when Susan arrived with the parasol, which Mrs.
Holt put in his hands.

“We'll begin, I think, with the view from the summer house,” she said.
“And I will show you how our famous American landscape architect, Mr.
Olmstead, has treated the slope.”

There was something humorous, and a little pathetic in the contrasted
figures of the Vicomte and their hostess crossing the lawn in front of
them. Mr. Spence paused a moment to light his cigarette, and he seemed
to derive infinite pleasure from this juxtaposition.

“Got left,--didn't he?” he said.

To this observation there was, obviously, no answer.

“I'm not very strong on foreigners,” he declared. “An American is good
enough for me. And there's something about that fellow which would make
me a little slow in trusting him with a woman I cared for.”

“If you are beginning to worry over Mrs. Holt,” said Honora, “we'd
better walk a little faster.”

Mr. Spence's delight at this sally was so unrestrained as to cause the
couple ahead to turn. The Vicomte's expression was reproachful.

“Where's Susan?” asked Mrs. Holt.

“I think she must have gone in the house,” Honora answered.

“You two seem to be having a very good time.”

“Oh, we're hitting it off fairly well,” said Mr. Spence, no doubt for
the benefit of the Vicomte. And he added in a confidential tone, “Aren't
we?”

“Not on the subject of the Vicomte,” she replied promptly. “I like him.
I like French people.”

“What!” he exclaimed, halting in his steps, “you don't take that man
seriously?”

“I haven't known him long enough to take him seriously,” said Honora.

“There's a blindness about women,” he declared, “that's
incomprehensible. They'll invest in almost any old thing if the
certificates are beautifully engraved. If you were a man, you wouldn't
trust that Frenchman to give you change for five dollars.”

“French people,” proclaimed Honora, “have a light touch of which we
Americans are incapable. We do not know how to relax.”

“A light touch!” cried Mr. Spence, delightedly, “that about describes
the Vicomte.”

“I'm sure you do him an injustice,” said Honora.

“We'll see,” said Mr. Spence. “Mrs. Holt is always picking up queer
people like that. She's noted for it.” He turned to her. “How did you
happen to come here?”

“I came with Susan,” she replied, amusedly, “from boarding-school at
Sutcliffe.”

“From boarding-school!”

She rather enjoyed his surprise.

“You don't mean to say you are Susan's age?”

“How old did you think I was?” she asked.

“Older than Susan,” he said surveying her.

“No, I'm a mere child, I'm nineteen.”

“But I thought--” he began, and paused and lighted another cigarette.

Her eyes lighted mischievously.

“You thought that I had been out several years, and that I'd seen a good
deal of the world, and that I lived in New York, and that it was strange
you didn't know me. But New York is such an enormous place I suppose one
can't know everybody there.”

“And--where do you come from, if I may ask?” he said.

“St. Louis. I was brought to this country before I was two years old,
from France. Mrs. Holt brought me. And I have never been out of St.
Louis since, except to go to Sutcliffe. There you have my history. Mrs.
Holt would probably have told it to you, if I hadn't.”

“And Mrs. Holt brought you to this country?”

Honora explained, not without a certain enjoyment.

“And how do you happen to be here?” she demanded. “Are you a member
of--of the menagerie?”

He had the habit of throwing back his head when he laughed. This, of
course, was a thing to laugh over, and now he deemed it audacity. Five
minutes before he might have given it another name there is no use in
saying that the recital of Honora's biography had not made a difference
with Mr. Howard Pence, and that he was not a little mortified at
his mistake. What he had supposed her to be must remain a matter of
conjecture. He was, however, by no means aware how thoroughly this
unknown and inexperienced young woman had read his thoughts in her
regard. And if the truth be told, he was on the whole relieved that she
was nobody. He was just an ordinary man, provided with no sixth sense or
premonitory small voice to warn him that masculine creatures are often
in real danger at the moment when they feel most secure.

It is certain that his manner changed, and during the rest of the walk
she listened demurely when he talked about Wall Street, with casual
references to the powers that be. It was evident that Mr. Howard Spence
was one who had his fingers on the pulse of affairs. Ambition leaped in
him.

They reached the house in advance of Mrs. Holt and the Vicomte, and
Honora went to her room.

At dinner, save for a little matter of a casual remark when Mr. Holt had
assumed the curved attitude in which he asked grace, Mr. Spence had a
veritable triumph. Self-confidence was a quality which Honora admired.
He was undaunted by Mrs. Holt, and advised Mrs. Robert, if she had
any pin-money, to buy New York Central; and he predicted an era of
prosperity which would be unexampled in the annals of the country. Among
other powers, he quoted the father of Honora's schoolmate, Mr. James
Wing, as authority for this prophecy. He sat next to Susan, who
maintained her usual maidenly silence, but Honora, from time to time,
and as though by accident, caught his eye. Even Mr. Holt, when not
munching his dried bread, was tempted to make some inquiries about the
market.

“So far as I am concerned,” Mrs. Holt announced suddenly, “nothing can
convince me that it is not gambling.”

“My dear Elvira!” protested Mr. Holt.

“I can't help it,” said that lady, stoutly; “I'm old-fashioned, I
suppose. But it seems to me like legalized gambling.”

Mr. Spence took this somewhat severe arraignment of his career in
admirable good nature. And if these be such a thing as an implied wink,
Honora received one as he proceeded to explain what he was pleased to
call the bona-fide nature of the transactions of Dallam and Spence.

A discussion ensued in which, to her surprise, even the ordinarily
taciturn Joshua took a part, and maintained that the buying and selling
of blooded stock was equally gambling. To this his father laughingly
agreed. The Vicomte, who sat on Mrs. Holt's right, and who apparently
was determined not to suffer a total eclipse without a struggle,
gallantly and unexpectedly came to his hostess' rescue, though she
treated him as a doubtful ally. This was because he declared with
engaging frankness that in France the young men of his monde had a
jeunesse: he, who spoke to them, had gambled; everybody gambled in
France, where it was regarded as an innocent amusement. He had friends
on the Bourse, and he could see no difference in principle between
betting on the red at Monte Carlo and the rise and fall of the shares of
la Compagnie des Metaux, for example. After completing his argument,
he glanced triumphantly about the table, until his restless black
eyes encountered Honora's, seemingly seeking a verdict. She smiled
impartially.

The subject of finance lasted through the dinner, and the Vicomte
proclaimed himself amazed with the evidences of wealth which confronted
him on every side in this marvellous country. And once, when he was at a
loss for a word, Honora astonished and enchanted him by supplying it.

“Ah, Mademoiselle,” he exclaimed, “I was sure when I first beheld you
that you spoke my language! And with such an accent!”

“I have studied it all my life, Vicomte,” she said, modestly, “and I had
the honour to be born in your country. I have always wished to see it
again.”

Monsieur de Toqueville ventured the fervent hope that her wish might
soon be gratified, but not before he returned to France. He expressed
himself in French, and in a few moments she found herself deep in a
discussion with him in that tongue. While she talked, her veins seemed
filled with fire; and she was dimly and automatically aware of the
disturbance about her, as though she were creating a magnetic storm that
interfered with all other communication. Mr. Holt's nightly bezique,
which he played with Susan, did not seem to be going as well as usual,
and elsewhere conversation was a palpable pretence. Mr. Spence, who
was attempting to entertain the two daughters-in-law, was clearly
distrait--if his glances meant anything. Robert and Joshua had not
appeared, and Mrs. Holt, at the far end of the room under the lamp,
regarded Honora from time to time over the edge of the evening
newspaper.

In his capacity as a student of American manners, an unsuspected
if scattered knowledge on Honora's part of that portion of French
literature included between Theophile Gautier and Gyp at once dumfounded
and delighted the Vicomte de Toqueville. And he was curious to know
whether, amongst American young ladies, Miss Leffingwell was the
exception or the rule. Those eyes of his, which had paid to his hostess
a tender respect, snapped when they spoke to our heroine, and presently
he boldly abandoned literature to declare that the fates alone had sent
her to Silverdale at the time of his visit.

It was at this interesting juncture that Mrs. Holt rattled her newspaper
a little louder than usual, arose majestically, and addressed Mrs.
Joshua.

“Annie, perhaps you will play for us,” she said, as she crossed the
room, and added to Honora: “I had no idea you spoke French so well, my
dear. What have you and Monsieur de Toqueville been talking about?”

It was the Vicomte who, springing to his feet, replied nimbly:
“Mademoiselle has been teaching me much of the customs of your country.”

“And what,” inquired Mrs. Holt, “have you been teaching Mademoiselle?”

The Vicomte laughed and shrugged his shoulders expressively.

“Ah, Madame, I wish I were qualified to be her teacher. The education of
American young ladies is truly extraordinary.”

“I was about to tell Monsieur de Toqueville,” put in Honora, wickedly,
“that he must see your Institution as soon as possible, and the work
your girls are doing.”

“Madame,” said the Vicomte, after a scarcely perceptible pause, “I await
my opportunity and your kindness.”

“I will take you to-morrow,” said Mrs. Holt.

At this instant a sound closely resembling a sneeze caused them to turn.
Mr. Spence, with his handkerchief to his mouth, had his back turned to
them, and was studiously regarding the bookcases.

After Honora had gone upstairs for the night she opened her door in
response to a knock, to find Mrs. Holt on the threshold.

“My dear,” said that lady, “I feel that I must say a word to you. I
suppose you realize that you are attractive to men.”

“Oh, Mrs. Holt.”

“You're no fool, my dear, and it goes without saying that you-do realize
it--in the most innocent way, of course. But you have had no experience
in life. Mind you, I don't say that the Vicomte de Toqueville isn't very
much of a gentleman, but the French ideas about the relations of young
men and young women are quite different and, I regret to say, less
innocent than ours. I have no reason to believe that the Vicomte has
come to this country to--to mend his fortunes. I know nothing about his
property. But my sense of responsibility towards you has led me to tell
him that you have no dot, for you somehow manage to give the impression
of a young woman of fortune. Not purposely, my dear--I did not mean
that.” Mrs. Holt tapped gently Honora's flaming cheek. “I merely felt
it my duty to drop you a word of warning against Monsieur de
Toqueville--because he is a Frenchman.”

“But, Mrs. Holt, I had no idea of--of falling in love with him,”
 protested Honora, as soon as she could get her breath. He seemed so
kind--and so interested in everything.

“I dare say,” said Mrs. Holt, dryly. “And I have always been led to
believe that that is the most dangerous sort. I am sure, Honora, after
what I have said, you will give him no encouragement.”

“Oh, Mrs. Holt,” cried Honora again, “I shouldn't think of such a
thing!”

“I am sure of it, Honora, now that you are forewarned. And your
suggestion to take him to the Institution was not a bad one. I meant to
do so anyway, and I think it will be good for him. Good night, my dear.”

After the good lady bad gone, Honora stood for some moments motionless.
Then she turned out the light.




CHAPTER IX. IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES

Mr. Robert Holt, Honora learned at breakfast, had two bobbies. She had
never heard of what is called Forestry, and had always believed the
wood of her country to be inexhaustible. It had never occurred to her
to think of a wild forest as an example of nature's extravagance, and
so flattering was her attention while Robert explained the primary
principles of caring for trees that he actually offered to show her one
of the tracts on the estate which he was treating. He could not,--he
regretted to say, take her that morning.

His other hobby was golf. He was president of the Sutton Golf Club,
and had arranged to play a match with Mr. Spence. This gentleman, it
appeared, was likewise an enthusiast, and had brought to Silverdale a
leather bag filled with sticks.

“Won't you come, too, Miss Leffingwell?” he said, as he took a second
cup of coffee.

Somewhat to the astonishment of the Holt family, Robert seconded the
invitation.

“I'll bet, Robert,” said Mr. Spence, gallantly, “that Miss Leffingwell
can put it over both of us.”

“Indeed, I can't play at all,” exclaimed Honora in confusion. “And I
shouldn't think of spoiling your match. And besides, I am going to drive
with Susan.”

“We can go another day, Honora,” said Susan.

But Honora would not hear of it.

“Come over with me this afternoon, then,” suggested Mr. Spence, “and
I'll give you a lesson.”

She thanked him gratefully.

“But it won't be much fun for you, I'm afraid,” she added, as they left
the dining room.

“Don't worry about me,” he answered cheerfully. He was dressed in a
checked golf costume, and wore a pink shirt of a new pattern. And he
stood in front of her in the hall, glowing from his night's sleep,
evidently in a high state of amusement.

“What's the matter?” she demanded.

“You did for the Vicomte all right,” he said. “I'd give a good deal to
see him going through the Institution.”

“It wouldn't have hurt you, either,” she retorted, and started up the
stairs. Once she glanced back and saw him looking after her.

At the far end of the second story hall she perceived the Vicomte, who
had not appeared at breakfast, coming out of his room. She paused with
her hand on the walnut post and laughed a little, so ludicrous was his
expression as he approached her.

“Ah, Mademoiselle, que vous etes mechante!” he exclaimed. “But I forgive
you, if you will not go off with that stock-broker. It must be that I
see the Home sometime, and if I go now it is over. I forgive you. It is
in the Bible that we must forgive our neighbour--how many times?”

“Seventy times seven,” said Honora.

“But I make a condition,” said the Vicomte, “that my neighbour shall
be a woman, and young and beautiful. Then I care not how many times.
Mademoiselle, if you would but have your portrait painted as you are,
with your hand on the post, by Sargent or Carolus Duran, there would be
some noise in the Salon.”

“Is that you, Vicomte?” came a voice from the foot of the stairs--Mrs.
Holt's voice.

“I come this instant, Madame,” he replied, looking over the banisters,
and added: “malheureux que je suis! Perhaps, when I return, you will
show me a little of the garden.”

The duty of exhibiting to guests the sights of Silverdale and the
neighbourhood had so often devolved upon Susan, who was methodical, that
she had made out a route, or itinerary, for this purpose. There were
some notes to leave and a sick woman and a child to see, which caused
her to vary it a little that morning; and Honora, who sat in the
sunlight and held the horse, wondered how it would feel to play the lady
bountiful. “I am so glad to have you all to myself for a little while,
Honora,” Susan said to her. “You are so popular that I begin to fear
that I shall have to be unselfish, and share you.”

“Oh, Susan,” she said, “every one has been so kind. And I can't tell you
how much I am enjoying this experience, which I feel I owe to you.”

“I am so happy, dear, that it is giving you pleasure,” said Susan.

“And don't think,” exclaimed Honora, “that you won't see lots of me, for
you will.”

Her heart warmed to Susan, yet she could not but feel a secret pity
for her, as one unable to make the most of her opportunities in the
wonderful neighbourhood in which she lived. As they drove through the
roads and in and out of the well-kept places, everybody they met had a
bow and a smile for her friend--a greeting such as people give to those
for whom they have only good-will. Young men and girls waved their
racquets at her from the tennis-courts; and Honora envied them and
wished that she, too, were a part of the gay life she saw, and were
playing instead of being driven decorously about. She admired the
trim, new houses in which they lived, set upon the slopes of the hills.
Pleasure houses, they seemed to her, built expressly for joys which had
been denied her.

“Do you see much of--of these people, Susan?” she asked.

“Not so much as I'd like,” replied Susan, seriously. “I never seem to
get time. We nearly always have guests at Silverdale, and then there
are so many things one has to attend to. Perhaps you have noticed,” she
added, smiling a little, “that we are very serious and old-fashioned.”

“Oh, no indeed,” protested Honora. “It is such a wonderful experience
for me to be here!”

“Well,” said Susan, “we're having some young people to dinner to-night,
and others next week--that's why I'm leaving these notes. And then we
shall be a little livelier.”

“Really, Susan, you mustn't think that I'm not having a good time. It is
exciting to be in the same house with a real French Vicomte, and I like
Mr. Spence tremendously.”

Her friend was silent.

“Don't you?” demanded Honora.

To her surprise, the usually tolerant Susan did not wholly approve of
Mr. Spence.

“He is a guest, and I ought not to criticise him,” she answered. “But
since you ask me, Honora, I have to be honest. It seems to me that his
ambitions are a little sordid--that he is too intent upon growing rich.”

“But I thought all New Yorkers were that way,” exclaimed Honora, and
added hastily, “except a few, like your family, Susan.”

Susan laughed.

“You should marry a diplomat, my dear,” she said. “After all, perhaps
I am a little harsh. But there is a spirit of selfishness and--and of
vulgarity in modern, fashionable New York which appears to be catching,
like a disease. The worship of financial success seems to be in every
one's blood.”

“It is power,” said Honora.

Susan glanced at her, but Honora did not remark the expression on her
friend's face, so intent was she on the reflections which Susan's words
had aroused. They had reached the far end of the Silverdale domain, and
were driving along the shore of the lake that lay like a sapphire set
amongst the green hills. It was here that the new house of the Robert
Holts was building. Presently they came to Joshua's dairy farm, and
Joshua himself was standing in the doorway of one of his immaculate barn
Honora put her hand on Susan's arm.

“Can't we see the cows?” she asked.

Susan looked surprised.

“I didn't know you were interested in cows, Honora.”

“I am interested in everything,” said Honora: “and I think your brother
is so attractive.”

It was at this moment that Joshua, with his hands in his pockets,
demanded what his sister was doing there.

“Miss Leffingwell wants to look at the cattle, Josh,” called Susan.

“Won't you show them to me, Mr. Holt,” begged Honora. “I'd like so much
to see some really good cattle, and to know a little more about them.”

Joshua appeared incredulous. But, being of the male sex, he did not hide
the fact that he was pleased, “it seems strange to have somebody really
want to see them,” he said. “I tried to get Spence to come back this
way, but the idea didn't seem to appeal to him. Here are some of the
records.”

“Records?” repeated Honora, looking at a mass of typewritten figures on
the wall. “Do you mean to say you keep such an exact account of all the
milk you get?”

Joshua laughed, and explained. She walked by his side over the concrete
paving to the first of the varnished stalls.

“That,” he said, and a certain pride had come into his voice, “is Lady
Guinevere, and those ribbons are the prizes she has taken on both sides
of the water.”

“Isn't she a dear!” exclaimed Honora; “why, she's actually beautiful. I
didn't know cows could be so beautiful.”

“She isn't bad,” admitted Joshua. “Of course the good points in a cow
aren't necessarily features of beauty for instance, these bones here,”
 he added, pointing to the hips.

“But they seem to add, somehow, to the thoroughbred appearance,” Honora
declared.

“That's absolutely true,” replied Joshua,--whereupon he began to talk.
And Honora, still asking questions, followed him from stall to stall.
“There are some more in the pasture,” he said, when they had reached the
end of the second building.

“Oh, couldn't I see them?” she asked.

“Surely,” replied Joshua, with more of alacrity than one would have
believed him capable. “I'll tell Susan to drive on, and you and I will
walk home across the fields, if you like.”

“I should love to,” said Honora.

It was not without astonishment that the rest of the Holt family beheld
them returning together as the gongs were sounding for luncheon. Mrs.
Holt, upon perceiving them, began at once to shake her head and laugh.

“My dear, it can't be that you have captivated Joshua!” she exclaimed,
in a tone that implied the carrying of a stronghold hitherto thought
impregnable.

Honora blushed, whether from victory or embarrassment, or both, it is
impossible to say.

“I'm afraid it's just the other way, Mrs. Holt,” she replied; “Mr. Holt
has captivated me.”

“We'll call it mutual, Miss Leffingwell,” declared Joshua, which was for
him the height of gallantry.

“I only hope he hasn't bored you,” said the good-natured Mrs. Joshua.

“Oh, dear, no,” exclaimed Honora. “I don't see how any one could be
bored looking at such magnificent animals as that Hardicanute.”

It was at this moment that her eyes were drawn, by a seemingly
resistless attraction, to Mrs. Robert's face. Her comment upon this
latest conquest, though unexpressed, was disquieting. And in spite of
herself, Honora blushed again.

At luncheon, in the midst of a general conversation, Mr. Spence made a
remark sotto voce which should, in the ordinary course of events, have
remained a secret.

“Susan,” he said, “your friend Miss Leffingwell is a fascinator. She's
got Robert's scalp, too, and he thought it a pretty good joke because I
offered to teach her to play golf this afternoon.”

It appeared that Susan's eyes could flash indignantly. Perhaps she
resented Mr. Spence's calling her by her first name.

“Honora Leffingwell is the most natural and unspoiled person I know,”
 she said.

There is, undoubtedly, a keen pleasure and an ample reward in teaching
a pupil as apt and as eager to learn as Honora. And Mr. Spence, if he
attempted at all to account for the swiftness with which the hours of
that long afternoon slipped away, may have attributed their flight to
the discovery in himself of hitherto latent talent for instruction. At
the little Casino, he had bought, from the professional in charge of the
course, a lady's driver; and she practised with exemplary patience
the art of carrying one's hands through and of using the wrists in the
stroke.

“Not quite, Miss Leffingwell,” he would say, “but so.”

Honora would try again.

“That's unusually good fo

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