Honor Edgeworth; Or, Ottawa's Present Tense Part 36

"Oh, 'tis nothing to dread, my darling; I am only a little weaker, that's all."

"Yes; but that's a great deal," Honor retorted, "and we must try all we can to restore you before to-morrow. You were getting on so nicely. I wonder what can have made the difference."

"Why, you'll quite spoil me," the gentle voice tried to say jestingly, but the eyes closed languidly and the head drooped helplessly back among the cushions. Two great, round tears stood in Honors eyes, she bowed her head over the suffering form, and kissed the clammy brow of the invalid--she tried to say something of encouragment, but great sobs of stifled anguish choked the pa.s.sage in her throat.

A moment after, the sick man raised his lids wearily and looked on the girl's clouded face.

"My dear little one," he faltered, as he saw the wet lashes and the trembling lips, "I think, after all, you love your old friend a little bit."

Honor tried to smile through her tears--it was like a little rainbow bursting through the clouds. She knelt down beside him, and looking up earnestly into his face, said,

"You _must_ get better, if 'twere only for my sake. I did not realize before as I do now how essential you are to my very existence. I shudder to imagine life without you, and yet if you do not eat and nourish yourself during these days, you cannot--" but she would not say the fearful word--her head fell on his shoulder, and she burst into tears.

"My darling!" muttered the unsteady voice of the invalid, "life was never so seductive to me as it is now, there was a time when I did not much mind whether I lived or died, but that was before I had you,--since you have begun to share my solitary life, turning it's dark, dreary nights into days of happy brightness, I have seen it with other eyes. I have resigned my days as they pa.s.sed, one by one, with a greedy, unwilling resignation, because I had learned to prize them and to love them, after I had prized and loved you; but, now!--if I must give them up all at once and forever, I am not going to grumble." A low sob of suppressed pain escaped the girl's lips. "I have had more comfort in this world than I ever counted upon," he continued, "I have not known poverty or dest.i.tution, and since a merciful Creator has spared me from so many briars and thorns of life, I must be doubly resigned to leave the comforts I have so undeservedly enjoyed, and obey His call."

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

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

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

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

Clasping her hands in an att.i.tude of thoughtful attention, she answered,

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

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

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

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

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

Circ.u.mstances mould our lives so strangely and capriciously, that we are ever doing things, which in after moments surprise ourselves those unplanned, unplotted, spontaneous deeds of ours that spring from the natural source of action, directly as it is influenced by some pa.s.sing circ.u.mstance of moment! These are where the true character is betrayed, and the mind and heart laid bare, in their most genuine state.

Afterwards, when everything is past and done, we can judge of ourselves at will, we can regret the golden opportunities, we so foolishly squandered, or we can wonder at the strength and magnanimity, that we had unconsciously displayed in the hour of trial. Only, we know, that such little moments of an existence have but one pa.s.sage through time, and their foot-prints are indelible, on that well-trodden sh.o.r.e, be they, then pleasant or bitter, to think upon, they must hold their place in our memory, but once, and forever, there is no going back over the mistaken path; the weak steps that have faltered and staggered where they should have been firm and strong, may act as melancholy guides, for the future, but their own deformity is as immortal as the spirit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How long he sleeps!" she murmured anxiously, "I don't like this listlessness that has come over him lately; he dozes now all the time."

Then springing quietly up, she stole over to the low couch, and stooped down beside the sleeping figure, she rested her chin thoughtfully in her hand and looked earnestly and lovingly into his face. The eyes were only half closed, the breathing was loud and labored, now and then the lips moved convulsively, as if in an effort to speak. Something so unnatural and so forboding dwelt on his kind, dear features, that a racking pain seized the girl's heart as she looked, her throat filled up, and hot, blinding tears welled into her eyes.

What is there sadder or more painful, than the quiet, tearful vigils that some dear one keeps by the sick bed of the unconscious invalid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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