Honor Edgeworth; Or, Ottawa's Present Tense Part 7

There may have been traits in her character that would elicit no sympathy from some, but they either forget the extraordinary circ.u.mstances that influenced her young life, or else they are prejudiced against such individuals as she, whose eyes are widely opened to all the existing follies and extravagances of her species.

Honor would have grown up and bloomed to ornament a far fairer land than Canada, her too enthusiastic nature would have been infinitely better developed in another world, but it is useless to sit down and mourn over the "might have beens" that are always such a loss to us, because we see them, devoid of all the disadvantages realization brings to bear on our own sad experience.

Honor was not even one of those exceptionable women created, not out of the slime of the earth, but conceived in the romantic mind of some extravagant novelist, and brought into the world by his magic pen. No indeed, she had certainly a beautiful face, almost a faultless face, but how many have cursed the day when first they knew their own beauty! How many look back over pages and pages of awful crimes and shameful deeds, and the index page, the starting point, is their beautiful face. So do not be too hasty in envying the physical perfection or loveliness of others. Rejoice that you have it not; the want of it must be your salvation. Know well that if it is not yours, it is because the possession and consciousness thereof would lead you to evil, and it is one of those things for which G.o.d has his own wise ends.

Perhaps if Honor had mixed with the feminine world more intimately she would not be the standard of maidenly modesty and reserve that she was in her nineteenth year; but in her there was an utter absence of that self-sufficiency and loudness that is painfully prominent now-a-days in the very city we inhabit. And yet in all her meekness and mildness if you by look or word injured the extreme sense of delicacy that was the under current of all her movements, then--she reared her aristocratic chin high in the air and looked down upon you in such scorn and anger, as wounded innocence alone can a.s.sume. One curl of that splendid lip, one flash from that cold grey eye and you did not take long to feel how basely you had lowered yourself, and that a pardon craved on your knees could scarce half atone for the offence.

What a loss to the social world that women of her stamp are not more plentiful! What on earth else can redress social evils if not the redeeming influence of good Christian determined women? Why should they not hold the key to the good impulses, the moral treasures of mankind as well as they wind themselves into the evil nature by enticing the susceptible, dealing out gratification to the willing, and dragging souls blindfolded into an irremediable eternity?

Physiognomists tell us, if we can not observe it for ourselves, that there exists not only that universal difference among things, which makes genus, species, cla.s.ses, etc., but that even among individuals there is no perfect resemblance found. There are the general prominent traits that serve to cla.s.sify them, but perhaps there is more difference among the individuals of a species, when examined minutely, than there would be between individuals of a different genus.

This is so true of the human species, which is difficult to judge individually on account of the incessant mysterious hidden workings of that ever active faculty of the soul, which manifests itself so differently to other eyes through actions and words of greater or less import.

This is a digression, but, it came from contemplating the singular beauty of one woman's soul, among the tarnished mult.i.tude of victims to that social levity and those superficial virtues that society honors, and with which our modern fas.h.i.+onable women persuade themselves they are doing marvels in the world of good.

If I make a paragon of Honor Edgeworth, it is because I can defy any broad-minded, unprejudiced critic to find a single grievous fault in her character.

Besides the ordinary cultivation of her mind in all its faculties, Honor had another and a n.o.bler ambition. She had acquired all the requisite knowledge to fit her for any station in life, from that of a nursery governess to that of the highest lady in the land. Her learning was not a smattering of this and that--a few words of German, a great deal too many of her own tongue, a well-studied enthusiasm for Tennyson and Longfellow, and may be now and then a word for the "Lake" school poets.

Who has not met in their long or short run of experience with the modern graduate who "perfectly idolized" Tennyson or Byron, who "raved" about Sh.e.l.ley's poetical mysticism, or who was "fairly enchanted" with Goethe's deep romanticism. In some of her peculiar phases she even reckons as items of her illimitable knowledge selections from her "favorites" among the French romantics, or the realistic school may be more to her taste. She rolls up her eyes for Mozart and Beethoven and Gottschalk, but her heart thumps for Offenbach, Lamothe or Strauss. To make herself "interesting" in society she has "burned the midnight oil"

over "David Copperfield," "Dombey and Son," "Jane Eyre," "East Lynne,"

"Endymion" and other popular volumes as they gain fame. She can sing s.n.a.t.c.hes from all the finest operas, in Italian, German or French. She can dance the Boston and Rush Polka with unrivalled grace, she can flirt and affect the most becoming airs, she never misses a _matinee_ or evening performance at the Grand Opera House; she can do the "grape-vine" exquisitely on her silver-plated skates, and can toss the tennis ball with wonderful dexterity.

All this relates to the effects of the superficial cultivation that our women are getting in this century. A mind polished so that the "rough"

cannot manifest itself, a little veneering of knowledge and showy accomplishments, but a heart, alas!--ignored and neglected; the source of all womanly perfection blocked up and destroyed--that is the sacrifice that will alone appease the world in its most sensual phase of to-day, the sacrifice complete and universal of women's hearts. Ah! how soon they nourish the briers and thistles of cold indifference and unchristian feeling. In opposition to this sad spectacle I come back to Honor Edgeworth by her bedside, on her knees, at her evening prayer.

Here is a woman who has moulded her heart according to the law of Christ. "Be ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." Here is a woman who is learned, wise and simple, gay, light-hearted and pious, confiding and discreet, one who can redeem the loss of many because temptation a.s.sailed her and left her the victor.

Long after Honor lay sleeping peacefully, her pink cheeks buried in the soft pillows, Mr. Rayne sat thinking in the armchair below. It was growing painfully evident to him that his darling _protegee_ was now budding into all the fullness and maturity of womanhood, and had she been his own daughter he would have introduced her formally into society by now. This was what troubled him. He did not relish the idea of sending this fair delicate morsel out among the chills and dangers of a cold world. And yet, if influenced by this good intention, he deprived her of the seeming advantages that active life in society affords, and if in later years she would reproach him as the cause of some misfortune or other, what would these probably groundless fears avail him in his defence? She was old enough to know danger, and she had spoken to him already of the world as though her experience of it was great and sufficient. Perhaps all she needed for a final confirmation of her opinions of the degradation of that same world was a trial of it. And should he wrong her by depriving her of it through a false motive?

Whatever way he turned the argument it looked like a dilemma. He should either send her "out" or not. If he pursued the former course, the advantages were six, the disadvantages half-a-dozen. If the latter, the advantages were twelve, the disadvantages a dozen, so that he found himself almost unequal to the solution of the problem.

Bye-and-bye however, he resolved to come to some conclusion, and thus by getting angry with himself, he narrowed the two inclinations into one, and that a.s.sumed the shape of a final decision to give her the same chances as Ottawa's other comfortable daughters.

Once his resolution was made, matters grew easy. He would write to a widowed cousin who was living a seceded life in Western Ontario, inducing her to share his home, and the responsibility that weighed upon him of giving his adopted child her due.

This lady had mourned her departed husband in solitary seclusion for nigh eight years, and it struck Mr. Rayne on this eventful evening that may be she would find pleasure in a change.

Thus was Honor's destiny slowly deciding itself in the troubled mind of her benefactor while she lay blissfully unconcious, fast asleep among a heap of downy pillows, with one fair hand thrown carelessly over her head and a little stray curl or two nestling on her warm flushed brow.

Satisfied with his final judgment, Mr. Rayne called for a light and escorted himself to the downy arms of his comfortable bed, and when we next take a peep--for of course we've not intruded for the few moments he was saying his prayers--he is snoring the snore of the truly heavy sleeper, and his big good-natured face scarcely discernible among night-cap, pillows and sheets, easily convinces one of the indisputable quiescence of the mind's consciousness in slumber.

Is it not almost equivalent to the acomplishment of the deed itself when we have fallen asleep the night before with the resolution of performing it on the morrow? Is not the wrong almost redressed when we have promised our selves to right it at any cost on the morrow? Is not the thought itself equal to the vow if we know that with the morning's sun we shall rise to make it in reality? One feels all the satisfaction of a deed accomplished in antic.i.p.ation, and G.o.d be thanked for this, for how many weary souls must have made their last night on earth endurable, by the peace of mind that such resolutions infallibly bring.

This explains the comfort and utter heedlessness of Mr Rayne's slumber after such a miserable time as he pa.s.sed arguing against himself in his drawing-room. He had vowed that he would broach the tender subject to Honor the very next day, and thus free himself from any more hours of self-reproach.

CHAPTER IX.

"They say the maxim is not new, That good and evil mixed must be In every thing this world can show."

--_Patty_

The next morning dawned a calm, mild day. The snow was knee-deep on the ground and covered the housetops with a thick soft mantle. On how many utterly different scenes the stray sunbeams rested that winter morning.

Nearly all the heroines of Miss Teazle's ball were sunk in heavy, tired slumber, in rooms strewn with laces and flowers and other fragments of last night's dissipation. The poor over-exerted mammas are neither able to rise nor to sleep, and their pitiably puckered brows and sour looking faces would excite the sympathy of the most cynical misanthrope.

And yet, perhaps if not reminded, some readers would be tasteless enough to overlook the n.o.ble sacrifice these mothers were making of the comfort of their lives in order to "chaperone" their stylish daughters to all the haunts of pleasure. These poor fas.h.i.+onable women must indeed drain life's cup of bitterness to the dregs, if we can judge from the worldly girl's soliloquy.

Who rigs herself in satins light, And goes to parties every night, To chaperone her daughters bright?

My mother

Who eats late suppers to her grief, Of jellied turkeys and roast beef, And finds no dyspeptic relief My mother

Who tries to talk with pompous air, And saturates with dye her hair, To gratify her daughters fair?

My mother

Who snubs our neighbor Mrs. Bell, In poorer days we knew so well, And tales of woe did often tell?

My mother

Who calls at Ridleau and all round, Where rank and t.i.tles do abound, And boasts of cousins newly found?

My mother

Who fears to bow to poorer kin, For fear her daughters will begin To growl and scold as though 'twere sin!

My mother.

I give the intelligent reader ten minutes to pause and moralize after digestion.

I antic.i.p.ate the look of stupid wonder that must necessarily envelope the face. If there is so much in individual influence in the lower circle, what can one expect from the mult.i.tude that must submit to a thousand other decrees coming imperatively from the infallible (?) lips of society herself? How can we do otherwise than subst.i.tute for truth and simplicity, deception and affectation? What else can we do but fail to recognise one another in the characters we are forced to a.s.sume? Is it surprising that good and wise men from their corners of seclusion call the world degenerate, and wonder at the persistent wrong-doing of those who are the work of such merciful hands? Strange to say, most of us know, or pretend to know, that life is all deception; that the world itself, and those who belong to it are essentially, almost necessarily, selfish; that the goodness and charity which circulate at rare intervals are only the superfluidities of comfort, proceeding from no generous impulse whatever. It is not dealt out at the sacrifice of a crust of bread. It is given so that it may not be left.

Oh, the weakness of humanity after nineteen centuries of fortification!

Oh, the despicable degradation of a race conceived in an Eternal Mind, created by an Infinite Hand, redeemed by the voluntary sacrifice of a G.o.d, and sanctified by the Spirit that pervades the universe!

Knowing this, realizing this, as most of us do, why do we not make a move towards independence? Not the independence of the State, that gratifies the paltry ambition of thousands, not that social independence whose meaning has of late been so shamefully misapplied, not even the individual independence that satisfies many. These are but names. I mean that independence that leaves one unfettered by one's self, that makes one victor over one's own evil tendencies and impulses--for man has no enemy so cunning as himself. If he cannot conquer his own inclinations to error, how is he going to subdue them in others?

If we are slaves, mentally and morally to our sensual selves--if we raise the material element above the spiritual within us, we then lose the right of opinion on good or evil, for a man that is pa.s.sion's slave is the mouth-piece of evil, and an active agent of the enemy of mankind!

If we open our volumes of literature, every page bears a reflection of some kind on these things.

For instance, see what a great writer says, speaking of the deception in life:

"I am weary Of the bewildering masquerade of life-- Where strangers walk as friends and friends as strangers, Where whispers overhead betray false hearts; And through the mazes of the crowd we chase Some form of loveliness that smiles and beckons.

And cheats us with fair words, to leave us A mockery and a jest, maddened, confused-- Not knowing friend from foe."

Every one who chooses to think at all has a thought in common on the question. In a biography of George Eliot, Hutton speaks of the manners of good society as "a kind of social costume or disguise which is in fact much more effective in concealing how much of depth ordinary characters have, and in restraining the expression of universal human instincts and feelings, than in hiding individualities the distinguis.h.i.+ng inclinations, talents, bias and tastes of those who a.s.sume them. After all, what we care chiefly to know of men and women is not so much their special bias or tastes as the general depths and ma.s.s of the human nature that is in them--the breadth and power of their life, its comprehensiveness of grasp, its tenacity of instinct, its capacity for love and its need for trust."

I fear we will never find this among the leading men and women of our day. Great minds, like George Eliot's, when they wish to spend their genius in written books, will leave the lighted hall where refinement and _bon-ton_ hold their nightly revels, and will descend to the huts of laborers and mechanics that form one distinct phase of English life.

Like Charlotte Bronte, and some others, she seeks substance for her work in a true, open character, and that is rarely found among the educated cla.s.ses, who learn from books to unlearn the lessons of nature.

We will now leave the "lollipop" darlings of material nature and pa.s.s on out of their dishevelled untidy rooms, leaving their painted faces and powdered heads to spin out the late morning among the blankets,--and seek gratification elsewhere. It is breakfast-time in Henry Rayne's house and the curling steam rises in graceful clouds from the hot tasty dishes that Mrs. Potts concocts with so much art. Honor, Nanette and Mr.

Rayne are as usual the only partic.i.p.ants of the wholesome things. Honor has just come in, fresh and rosy, all smiles as she steps up to Mr.