Honor Edgeworth; Or, Ottawa's Present Tense Part 26

"May I continue smoking?" he then asked, as coolly as if they had been his first words to her. "If you object, Honor, don't mind saying so. May I at least call you Honor?"

"You overpower me and yourself with such a mult.i.tude of questions," the girl answered languidly, "but since you ask me permissions which I grant a great many others, I will not refuse you.."

"Thank you," he said almost sarcastically, "when we are hungry we take the crust that is flung to us, though the dainty morsel served on a crystal plate satisfies us best. What _is_ the matter to-night, Honor, you seem worried and peevish?"

The sudden change of tone, from the moralizing to that of anxious enquiry, amused Honor.

"I generally seem in that way until I have been in your company for a while," she answered with such a careless, meaningless tone, that he p.r.o.nounced her a hopeless little _sans coeur_ with a sigh, and dropped the subject.

Vivian Standish was plainly courting Mr. Rayne's _protegee_, and a great deal had to be said in consequence. With his carefully learned manners, Standish had worked a successful conspiracy against retribution. He had coolly stowed away any disagreeable souvenirs of his past life, and troubled no more about them. He veneered his whole character with such an engaging mansuetude as served to deceive the most penetrative of those he met, and not even the most suspicious of his Ottawa acquaintances had ever insinuated that a surface so calm and unruffled as his could ever cover a phase of character which could be nocent or even objectionable in the least degree. Some disliked him for reasons they could not define, and had in consequence to refrain from expressing their antipathy. Many were jealous of him, and the majority admired him freely.

He was one of those "clever" men who had taken the trouble to a.n.a.lyze and solve the intricate though simple problem of existence, and to adapt this precious knowledge wisely and carefully to his own especial selfish benefit.

It takes a rogue to understand a rogue, and the reason of Vivian Standish's complete success in playing off his counterfeit manners, was because he had chosen to display them within a circle where shrewd or suspecting observation never found its way. He saw clearly what a field lay open to him in the drawing-room, and the delightful company of Ottawa's _elite_. All he had to do was to introduce himself to this "tony" little city fashionably dressed, and with that self-sufficient reserve that characterizes the "high toned." He registered at the "Russell," and walked Sparks street every afternoon with a haughty step, looking as conceited and interesting as possible. He drank in the local chat with eyes and ears open, before making any uncertain move; then he sought the acquaintance of the fashionable young men of the city--they are easily traced. One has but to run over the list of their aristocratic names on the pages of the visitors' register at Government House, or they are the noted presidents, patrons or members of some "awfully nice" club, "you know!" or they are very well represented in the business books of certain well known tailoring establishments; and if none of these are sufficient, the Court register has a voice now and then whose suasory accents could convince anyone.

But nothing in these discoveries would surprise Vivian Standish, for there was little left savouring of "hard experience" that he had not pa.s.sed through at one time or other of his agitated career. He was no stranger to the secrets of a little city like Ottawa. They are good enough to frighten small boys and women. He, who had plunged into the very heart of the mysteries of life as they are found in the grand metropolises of the whole world, rather interested the comparatively innocent and unsophisticated youth of the Canadian capital, who recognized in him a graduate of that school of experience whose dangerous knowledge was being tasted, as a novelty, yet by them.

Inwardly he smiled at the susceptibilities of the youths he came across; he saw mirrored in them the youth of every other corner and nationality of the globe. Worldling though he was, he was capable of very wise reflections, and was given to moralizing in a sort of way. He never made it a premeditated point to draw any unschooled youth into wrong; he did not seek to make any innocent one the victim of an evil influence, as many do who seem to be very active agents of the Author of Evil himself,--young people who cannot gloat over their own spiritual ruin until they have dragged the foolish, weak souls of unsuspecting victims into the wreck they covet for themselves. He was satisfied to be virtuously discreet among the unsuspecting, and be highly companionable among those who were wiser in folly. He was glad to recognize Elersley in a strange city, and Guy, friendly and hospitable ever, took him into his charge until he had him thoroughly initiated into the ways of his adopted life.

Guy's room was the scene of many a jovial merry-making for successive nights after Vivian's arrival, and if cigar stumps and empty bottles were ever indicative of rollicking bachelor hospitality, they surely told the tale emphatically of Guy, for a very respectable heap of such _restants_ generally made one conspicuous feature of next morning's "cleaning up"

Standish was a jolly fellow, and the others took to him readily; he smoked, drank, jested, or indulged in any other imaginable pastime that was proposed, thus showing himself a complete sympathizer with his new-made friends.

When he stepped into the "feminine" circle, he was equally well received, he was so entirely different in his attractions from the stale _beaux_ that had introduced him to their lady friends. His first words invariably made impression, and everything he said or did was stamped with the quietest, most languid, and yet most thoroughly fascinating style, that victims were ready to fall unsought before him. There was a resistless power in the deep, dreamy look his beautiful eyes constantly affected, and in the unsteady strength of his shapely hand, as it happened, no matter how inadvertently, to touch the dainty fingers of some susceptible belle; and even if his personal advantages failed him completely, there yet remained his most powerful attraction--his voice.

Ottawa girls had never heard such original and such pleasant little nothings as Vivian Standish told them at every moment of his conversation, and the perfect cultivation of the voice that thrilled their blessed little hearts with its resistless accents, induced many a fair and blushing maiden to hand him over her conquered heart, as a pitiable trophy that he had so fairly and yet so mercilessly won.

But Vivian Standish, in coming among the Ottawaites, had not been attracted for the purpose of making such havoc among feminine hearts.

Any man can do that, in any place, and under any circ.u.mstances, if he has a mind to. A woman to him, was a useless and troublesome appendage, after he had kissed the dainty hand that had emptied its substantial treasure into his roomy pockets. Courtesy, like every other quality he had taken the trouble to acquire, had its matter-of-fact mission to perform, towards accomplishing a great part of his mercenary purposes, and hence the sacrifices he so often made cheerfully and admirably for the gratification of some idolized daughter who was sole heiress to a comfortable dozen of thousands.

His lucky genius had not driven him on to Ottawa for nothing, of this he a.s.sured himself emphatically when he found out that Honor Edgeworth was likely to subst.i.tute Guy Elersley in his uncle's favor, and find herself, some day, rolling in wealth that had been sc.r.a.ped together by the hands of those who had not owed her a single debt of grat.i.tude; to his reason such unfair freaks of destiny called loudly for resentment; he claimed a right of monopoly as well as this more fortunate girl, and he meant to exercise it too, though as quietly and noiselessly as possible, he flattered himself, and encouraged his project with the universal male belief, that a few little wild words of sentiment, and marked attentions, suffice to level the trivial fortifications of any woman's heart; his study was to make the right impression on the responsible guardians of his choice, that his appeal, when made, should be encouraged by these all-important voices. In this he attained a splendid success, but his plots and plans were too clever for his own management, and entrapped him in that very place, where he considered himself most strongly fortified.

Henry Rayne, now growing weaker and older, had been as easily influenced by the a.s.sumed manners of this adventurer as was any indiscreet woman; the glitter, to his eyes, now dimmed and obscured by age, was that of the solid metal, and the well-studied phrases and words that came so blandly from the deceptive lips duped the old man pitifully.

Jean d'Alberg herself had caught the contagion, and smiled pleasant greetings to him when he visited at Mr. Rayne's house; there was only Honor who evaded the cunning trap, but even she was blinded a good deal.

Although the eternal fitness of things made it impossible that such ant.i.thetical natures should ever blend in a harmony of any sort, he was still fortunate enough not to produce the discord that would seem to arise very naturally from such an unsympathetic contact.

Honor, without liking Vivian Standish, endured him well enough, and enjoyed his clever conversations very well; she could not guess the fierceness of the moral struggle that was taking place, as he calmly and calculatingly planned her doom. She only felt a little of that repulsion that purity and innocence naturally feel when brought into contact with vice and guilt, for our moral natures have a special instinct of their own, which attracts or repels characters whose influence upon them may be beneficial or injurious, thus often causing us to dislike or distrust persons without any apparent cause.

There was only one extra reason why Honor Edgeworth, above so many others, failed to yield herself a ready victim to the wiles of this fascinating man, and that was because her heart, unlike the generality of those tiresome appendages, was closed to pet.i.tion. She had learned to love once, truly and warmly, and the gay, young, reckless hero whom she had silently but devotedly honored at the secret shrine of her unsullied heart, had suddenly pa.s.sed out of her life, without a sign, or a token, or a word, leaving her to weep over the wasted treasure of sentiment she had so greedily h.o.a.rded up for him alone; not that this caused her to lose her faith in man or vow to live a life of solitary sceptic amendment for having indulged a foolish pa.s.sion in her early days, but because she firmly believed the object of her fond regard to be at heart a worthy one, and because she felt that her happy lively sentiment, becoming spent and weary, had only laid itself obscurely away, to taste the hopeful sweetness of a "love's young dream,"--by and bye, she promised herself, when her "fairy prince" came back, and woke up the sleeping cupid from his bed of sighs, the world would be happier and brighter, and full of pleasure unalloyed forevermore. So in the lonely meanwhile, little words of kind regard, and little deeds of gallant courtesy, seemed to her as only forerunners or harbingers of what was coming to her out of the "to be" from the lips and hands of her absent lover.

Such a way of viewing things naturally influenced this girl's character and brought her back to that distracted existence, that contact with practical life had almost annihilated. Her old meditative propensities stole upon her again, it was nothing new now to see her with folded hands and dreamy eyes that looked vacantly into the s.p.a.ce before them.

A wonderful change was also coming over Henry Rayne; he who had spent a good fifty years of his life in active service for society, now began to feel, like countless others who had gone before him, that after all, the most he could claim as the wages of honest fame and honor, were the cushioned depths of an invalid chair, the first grade, to the narrow bed where he would sleep his eternal sleep.

The old man was growing daily weaker and more childish, having never known any of those influences through life, which become identical with the very existence of those who have tasted them in wedded life, Henry Rayne found himself in the sunset of his years with scarcely a tie to bind him to the world for which he had done so much. There was only Honor, who stood out in relief from the monotonous experience of his life, and invited him to tarry a little longer on the border-line of time; every moment that pa.s.sed into eternity now seemed to bring this girl nearer and nearer to his heart, for it was necessary, that at least in death, he should learn the lesson of sacrifice, that had been so well-spared him through life.

With the first warnings of his decline, Henry Rayne had learned to realize how cold and bitter and cruel a world this world would be to his little _protegee_ when he had left her, and for that reason he occupied himself altogether, in the latter years of his life, in studying and promoting a welfare for this precious charge, that would survive himself for, may be long years of a lonesome life.

With this intimate knowledge of the old man's heart, one can perhaps understand the partiality with which Vivian Standish was received into the home of Henry Rayne, as a constant visitor.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

Oh, to be idle one spring day!

To muse in wood or meadow; Glide down the river 'twixt the play Of sun and trembling shadow.

I'd see all wonders neath the stream, The pebbles and vex'd gra.s.ses; I'd lean across the boat and dream, As each scene slowly pa.s.ses.

--A. L. B

The bright, golden summer days were growing scarcer and scarcer; band nights experiences were fast becoming items of the past--that past which had realized itself so strangely to poor Honor. She had hoped sanguinely, trustingly, and now it seemed that fate would bring her defiant proofs of its iron will in spite of herself.

She had not taken it as a sign of inconstancy, that Guy had never sent the smallest message of encouragement to her, but rather tried to weave it in as a sprig of the laurel crown she daily wove in silent sadness, for her truant lover, when he would return, full of happy explanations, to claim her all his own.

Vivian was as constant and devoted when the leaves began to turn, as when the leaves began to bud. This was perhaps the most intricate plot of his scheming life, but he was proving himself equal to it: he was probing his way slowly and quietly into the well guarded sanctum of Honor Edgeworth's heart, trying to acc.u.mulate every energy of his soul into one eloquent appeal to her obstinate nature.

The gorgeous colors of the western sky were fading dimly one evening, behind the misty mountain tops. It was towards the end of August, a lovely evening, such as comes back to us before the autumn, as a reminder of the closing season.

Vivian Standish, pausing suddenly, rested his oars on the placid water, and contemplated in silence, the figure of Honor Edgeworth, reclining on the cushioned seat of his handsome boat. They had rowed a long way up the ca.n.a.l, and any sentimental readers who have been there, either alone, with only the memory of some dearer one, or still better, in the actual company of some strangely loved acquaintance, will not hesitate, in p.r.o.nouncing this still, cool, shady retreat, one of the most suggestive spots on earth. If anyone's untiring devotion and wildest appeals have not, up to this, made any impression upon the being one loves, the very best remedy is to launch a cosy boat into this very ca.n.a.l, and pull with a mighty strength for four or five miles up from the "deep cut." Soon a sequestered paradise is reached, where the bended boughs interlacing, whisper, in caressing, rustling to each other, over the narrow stream of rippling water below, here pause and wait. There is a hush whose voice is more eloquent than any human appeal. The low gurgling music of the little waves that creep techily over and under the hanging boughs that teaze and obstruct them in their onward pa.s.sage, the crowded leaves, rubbing their swaying heads affectionately together; the gentle wind resting in sighs of relief upon the graceful tree tops, and sending its messages of love from bough to bough, until it spends itself upon the quiet bosom of the waters below; the love-sick birds that woo our beauteous nature in this, her bewitching costume, with their rich and rarest warblings, vie with one another in chanting from their ruffled throats their little tales of ecstasy and love, all teach us clearly, that out in the busy world there is no witchery like this.

In the open sunlight, nature dons her every day attire, but in the shady retreat of these, her chosen spots, she coquettishly arrays herself in most resistless costumes.

While one pauses, leaning on his oars amid such scenes as this, one cannot but feel like flirting very earnestly with nature; the surrounding beauty cannot help reflecting some of its liveliness upon the admirers, and the stray, "tangled" sunbeams that lose one another in the thick foliage cannot but give a new love-light to the eyes that linger thoughtfully upon them. So that the first impulse to admire nature being gratified, each finds a consequent impulse towards natural admiration, creeping into the heart. _She_ looks questioningly into _his_ eyes, and if _he_ knows anything he will respond appropriately, and after that, each finds out that the other is one of the most enhancing elements of the beautiful that they have been contemplating all the while.

To Honor Edgeworth, it was the most delightful treat possible, to drink in the beauty and elegance of such surroundings, to this at least, her heart was never closed--it was easy enough to battle against the hoa.r.s.e voice of temptation in the busy world, but here, all was different, this was a spot created, not for the art and acceptations of conventionality, but for the freedom ahd expansion of the heart and soul.

To lie in a rec.u.mbent att.i.tude and feel the gentle breath of the breeze, playing among her yielding curls, or listen to it, whispering its effective lullaby into her ears, to drink such a long draught of nature's own narcotic, as would steal her away from the world of reality, closing her drowsy lids upon the actual, and unfolding to her in tempting dreams, the realizations of all her exaggerated, but cherished ideals, this was the luxury of living, this made life worth prizing, worth striving for in Honor Edgeworth's eyes.

There are many beside her, who are fond of being nursed into this drowsy state by some such delightful influence. People, there are, who without ever acknowledging their weakness, for such a thing, are often seized with the strangest moods and cravings, a longing for sweet words, or tender caresses, or something correspondingly emotional in the abstract fills them up, they would like to lie lazily by some smouldering fire, on an easy couch, and have some gentle hand to smoothe away the wrinkles from their brows, or some loving voice to whisper suggestive little trifles, into their willing ears: when they see a flood of moonlight filling the earth with its soft stillness, they immediately long to animate the scene by their own presence, but, with some treasured beauty, leaning on one arm, and looking bewitchingly into their love-lit eyes, every emotional sight, sound or feeling, brings to them the possible intensity of a gratified love, the fruits, they _might_ gather from their own sentiment, if they had power to indulge it. This is why we meet so many dreamy, romantic girls, who are ever on the _qui vive_, expecting the hero, with deep eyes and heavy moustaches, that never comes. Girls who see more beauty, and poetry, and romance, in the distant "red light of a cigar" twinkling through the darkness, on some quiet night, than in all the stars of heaven combined; girls who expect that every silent, handsome man, who gives them a pa.s.sing glance (of aimless curiosity) is a wonderful character, just stepped over the threshold of some of Ouida's or The d.u.c.h.ess' volumes, ready to seize them in his steady arms, if they sprain an ankle, or faint over some fright; ready to rescue them from some terrible accident, and then fall violently in love, marry them, but, unlike the book, in reality, "live in miserable wretchedness for ever after."

Such also are those _yearning_ men, who are ever taking flights into the delightful world of the ideal--men, who try, with a pair of plentiful eyes, to conquer "female heartdom," who think to find the "open sesame"

to that valuable depository, by knocking the practical element out of life, and by grasping at chance, in the dim, soulful, dreamy, intense, abstract world of thought. Men, who the punster would say in the dewy twilight or still moonlight, are _pie_ously all for _soul_, but who in the raw early afternoon are _sole_ly all for _pie_.

But from a suspicion of an inclination to such influence, I must surely except Vivian Standish, he could neither see, hear or feel any fascination in those things, and yet, he was not without knowing, that herein lay the weak point of souls more susceptible than his own; he was cunning enough to know, that a young lady is at the limit of all her reason and control, when ushered into such a spot, as that which he had chosen as a resting-place during their row, on this eventful evening.

But with all his precious knowledge, there were a few very simple things, which Vivian Standish had never learned; he understood other people perfectly, it is true, human nature, was as legible to him, as the plainest book, as a rule, he read faces, as he would the morning- paper, and yet, strange to say, he knew less of his own self than he did of any one--he was clever enough to veneer his character well, that others might not know him, but apart from that he was a mystery to himself--he had certain instinctive ideas of his own bias and inclinations; he knew every positive quality or defect he had, and in that same he had plenty to remember, but he never asked himself, whether he was proof against every pa.s.sing circ.u.mstance or not; he met them generally, with an admirable collectedness and _sang-froid_, but, depending on the spur of the moment is not the safest thing in a person of his pursuits. The cleverest diplomatists and adventurers have been betrayed by themselves and so was he.

While he sat, watching the contemplative features of the girl in the boat before him, something, in the clear depths of the admiring eyes, struck him; there was an expression of infinite longing over her face, her mouth was drawn into a sad smile, and her hands were folded listlessly on her lap: a few withering daisies and b.u.t.ter-cups, that she had s.n.a.t.c.hed an hour before as they skimmed along the sh.o.r.e, lay carelessly between her fingers, and the loose ties of her broad hat were fluttering on the breeze, under her pretty, upturned chin. If ever repentance could have worked its influence over a guilty soul, it could not have found a moment more propitious than this, wherein to accomplish its task, the very last susceptibility of a heart, hardened and inured to sin was struggling to a.s.sert itself, a long, unheeded impulse, was trying to shake away the fetters of vice and crime, and free itself to n.o.ble action.

The fierce combat between his good and evil spirits waged for an instant, he must either fall before this commanding angel, or crush with a mighty blow, and forever, the already weak agent of good, whose "wee small voice" tantalized him strangely at this moment.

But while he hesitated, his destiny decided itself; a new phase suddenly subst.i.tuted his calculating indifference, he felt a strong, jealous pa.s.sion flooding his whole soul, he saw the beauty of Honor Edgeworth's face by an entirely new light, he scorned the suspicion--but the truth was terribly bare, he had been caught in his own meshes--he loved this girl. It did not steal upon him, nor come by slow degrees, but rushed in a crushing torrent of realization, into his heart. All the words of devotedness and admiration, that he had spoken to her of late, were only a mockery, to what his pa.s.sion suggested now.

Love, to so many others an enviable blessing, threatened to be a miserable portion for him, for naturally enough, coming to him as it did through the channels of the soul, it had to partake of the unholy nature of these unhealthy and corrupt by-ways; and hence instead of the pure, buoyant emotion that fills the honest breast, in the redeeming pa.s.sion of its first exalted love, there rushed into the heart of Vivian Standish, a poisonous torrent of insuperable desire, that held him like an iron-bound victim, foaming and struggling in his own chains. A look of devouring admiration flashed from his fiery eyes over the face of the girl. She was thinking; thinking something pleasant, something fascinating, thinking of someone agreeable to her thought--who was not _he_, this he knew, and a crushing feeling of envy, worse than the worst hatred, filled him. Whose memory did he, by his own voluntary action, awake within her by bringing her to this spot? who was it, conjured by her, sat between them, or perhaps subst.i.tuted him altogether? "Egad," he stifled, between his teeth, "I must know the worst of this." With a voice that bespoke a terrible power of self-command, Vivian, blandly broke this heavy silence--

"I need not ask if you enjoy yourself, Honor, I can see that?"

The girl turned her head slowly towards him, as if loth to raise her eyes from the visionary world, that fascinated her, and smiling, as if in sad remembrance, answered abstractedly,

"Yes, I am easily influenced by such surroundings as these," and as she spoke she waved her hand with a graceful gesture that took in her picturesque environs.