THE HEART OF HONORA.
While Edith urged the search for Endicott, the little world to be
horrified by her success enjoyed itself north and south as the season
suggested, and the laws of fashion permitted. At the beginning of June,
Anne settled herself comfortably for the summer in a roomy farmhouse,
overlooking Lake Champlain and that particular island of Valcour, which
once witnessed the plucky sea-fight and defeat of dare-devil Arnold.
Only Honora accompanied her, but at the close of the month Louis, the
deacon, and Mrs. Doyle Grahame joined them; and after that the whole
world came at odd times, with quiet to-day and riot to-morrow. Honora,
the center of interest, the storm-center, as we call it in these days,
turned every eye in her direction with speculative interest. Would she
retire to the convent, or find her vocation in the world? She had more
than fulfilled her father's wish that she remain in secular life for a
year. Almost two years had passed. He could not reproach her from his
grave.
One divine morning she came upon the natural stage which had been the
scene of a heart-drama more bitter to her than any sorrow. Walking alone
in the solemn woods along the lake shore, the path suddenly ended on a
rocky terrace, unshaded by trees, and directly over the water. Raspberry
bushes made an enclosure there, in the center of which the stumps of two
trees held a rough plank to make a seat. A stony beach curved inward
from this point, the dark woods rose behind, and the soft waters made
music in the hollows of the rock beneath her feet. Delightful with the
perfume of the forest, the placid shores of Valcour, sun, and flower,
and bird filling eye and ear with beauty, the sight of the spot chilled
her heart. Here Lord Constantine had offered her his love and his life
the year before. To her it had been a frightful scene, this strong,
handsome, clever man, born to the highest things of mind, heart, talent
and rank, kneeling before her, pleading with pallid face for her love,
... and all the rest of it! She would have sunk down with shame but for
his kindness in accepting the situation, and carrying her through it.
Why his proposal shocked her his lordship could not see at first. He
understood before his mournful interview and ended. Honora was of that
class, to whom marriage does not present itself as a personal concern.
She had the true feminine interest in the marriage of her friends, and
had vaguely dreamed of her own march to the altar, an adoring lover, a
happy home and household cares. Happy in the love of a charming mother
and a high-hearted father, she had devoted her youthful days to them and
to music. They stood between her and importunate lovers, whose
intentions she had never divined.
With the years came trouble, the death of the mother, the earning of her
living by her art, the care of her father, and the work for her native
land. Lovers could not pursue this busy woman, occupied with father and
native land, and daily necessity. The eternal round of travel,
conspiracy, scheming, planning, spending, with its invariable ending of
disappointment and weariness of heart, brought forth a longing for the
peace of rest, routine, satisfied aspirations; and from a dream the
convent became a passion, longed for as the oasis by the traveler in the
sands.
Simple and sincere as light, the hollow pretence of the world disgusted
her. Her temperament was of that unhappy fiber which sees the end almost
as speedily as the beginning; change and death and satiety treading on
the heels of the noblest enterprise. For her there seemed no happiness
but in the possession of the everlasting, the unchangeable, the divinely
beautiful. Out of these feelings and her pious habits rose the longing
for the convent, for what seemed to be permanent, fixed, proportioned,
without dust and dirt and ragged edges, and wholly devoted to God.
After a little Lord Constantine understood her astonishment, her
humiliation, her fright. He had a wretched satisfaction in knowing that
no other man would snatch this prize; but oh, how bitter to give her up
even to God! The one woman in all time for him, more could be said in
her praise still; her like was not outside heaven. How much this
splendid lake, with sapphire sky and green shores, lacked of true beauty
until she stepped like light into view; then, as for the first time, one
saw the green woods glisten, the waters sparkle anew, the sky deepen in
richness! One had to know her heart, her nature, so nobly dowered, to
see this lighting up of nature's finest work at her coming. She was
beautiful, white as milk, with eyes like jewels, framed in lashes of
silken black, so dark, so dark!
Honora wept at the sight of his face as he went away. She had seen that
despair in her father's face. And she wept to-day as she sat on the
rough bench. Had she been to blame? Why had she delayed her entrance
into the convent a year beyond the time? Arthur had declared his work
could not get on without her for at least an extra half year. She was
lingering still? Had present comfort shaken her resolution?
A cry roused her from her mournful thoughts, and she looked up to see
Mona rounding the point at the other end of the stony beach, laboring at
the heavy oars. Honora smiled and waved her handkerchief. Here was one
woman for whom life had no problems, only solid contentment, and
perennial interest; and who thought her husband the finest thing in the
world. She beached her boat and found her way up to the top of the rock.
To look at her no one would dream, Honora certainly did not, that she
had any other purpose than breathing the air.
Mrs. Doyle Grahame enjoyed the conviction that marriage settles all
difficulties, if one goes about it rightly. She had gone about it
rightly, with marvellous results. That charming bear her father had put
his neck in her yoke, and now traveled about in her interest as mild as
a clam. All men gasped at the sight of his meekness. When John Everard
Grahame arrived on this planet, his grandfather fell on his knees before
him and his parents, and never afterwards departed from that attitude.
Doyle Grahame laid it to his art of winning a father-in-law. Mona found
the explanation simply in the marriage, which to her, from the making of
the trousseau to the christening of the boy, had been wonderful enough
to have changed the face of the earth. The delicate face, a trifle
fuller, had increased in dignity. Her hair flamed more glorious than
ever. As a young matron she patronized Honora now an old maid.
"You've been crying," said she, with a glance around, "and I don't
wonder. This is the place where you broke a good man's heart. It will
remain bewitched until you accept some other man in the same spot. How
did we know, Miss Cleverly? Do you think Conny was as secret as you? And
didn't I witness the whole scene from the point yonder? I couldn't hear
the words, but there wasn't any need of it. Heavens, the expression of
you two!"
"Mona, do you mean to tell me that every one knew it?"
"Every soul, my dear ostrich with your head in the sand. The hope is
that you will not repeat the refusal when the next lover comes along.
And if you can arrange to have the scene come off here, as you arranged
for the last one ... I have always maintained that the lady with a
convent vocation is by nature the foxiest of all women. I don't know
why, but she shows it."
The usual fashion of teasing Honora attributed to her qualities opposed
to a religious vocation.
"Well, I have made up my mind to fly at once to the convent," she said,
"with my foxiness and other evil qualities. If it was my fault that one
man proposed to me----"
"It was your fault, of course. Why do you throw doubt upon it?"
"It will not be my fault that the second man proposes. So, this place
may remain accursed forever. Oh, my poor Lord Constantine! After all his
kindness to father and me, to be forced to inflict such suffering on
him! Why do men care for us poor creatures so much, Mona?"
"Because we care so much for them ..." Honora laughed ... "and because
we are necessary to their happiness. You should go round the stations on
your knees once a day for the rest of your life, for having rejected
Lord Conny. It wasn't mere ingratitude ... that was bad enough; but to
throw over a career so splendid, to desert Ireland so outrageously,"
this was mere pretence ... "to lose all importance in life for the sake
of a dream, for the sake of a convent."
"You have a prejudice against convents, Mona."
"No, dear, I believe in convents for those who are made that way. I
have noticed, perhaps you have too, that many people who should go to a
convent will not, and many people at present in the cloisters ought to
have stayed where nature put them first."
"It's pleasant on a day like this for you to feel that you are just
where nature intended you to be, isn't it? How did you leave the baby?"
Mona leaped into a rhapsody on the wonderful child, who was just then
filling the time of Anne, and at the same time filling the air with
howlings, but returned speedily to her purpose.
"Did you say you had fixed the day, Honora?"
"In September, any day before the end of the month."
"You were never made for the convent," with seriousness. "Too fond of
the running about in life, and your training is all against it."
"My training!" said Honora.
"All your days you were devoted to one man, weren't you? And to the
cause of a nation, weren't you? And to the applause of the crowd,
weren't you? Now, my dear, when you find it necessary to make a change
in your habits, the changes should be in line with those habits.
Otherwise you may get a jolt that you won't forget. In a convent, there
will be no man, no Ireland, and no crowd, will there? What you should
have done was to marry Lord Conny, and to keep right on doing what you
had done before, only with more success. Now when the next man comes
along, do not let the grand opportunity go."
"I'll risk the jolt," Honora replied. "But this next man about whom you
have been hinting since you came up here? Is this the man?"
She pointed to the path leading into the woods. Louis came towards them
in a hurry, having promised them a trip to the rocks of Valcour. The
young deacon was in fighting trim after a month on the farm, the pallor
of hard study and confinement had fled, and the merry prospect ahead
made his life an enchantment. Only his own could see the slight but
ineffaceable mark of his experience with Sister Claire.
"Take care," whispered Mona. "He is not the man, but the man's agent."
Louis bounced into the raspberry enclosure and flung himself at their
feet.
"Tell me," said Honora mischievously. "Is there any man in love with me,
and planning to steal away my convent from me? Tell me true, Louis."
The deacon sat up and cast an indignant look on his sister.
"Shake not thy gory locks at me," she began cooly....
"There it is," he burst out. "Do you know, Honora, I think marriage
turns certain kinds of people, the redheads in particular, quite daft.
This one is never done talking about her husband, her baby, her
experience, her theory, her friends who are about to marry, or who want
to marry, or who can't marry. She can't see two persons together without
patching up a union for them...."
"Everybody should get married," said Mona serenely, "except priests and
nuns. Mona is not a nun, therefore she should get married."
"The reasoning is all right," replied the deacon, "but it doesn't apply
here. Don't you worry, Honora. There's no man about here that will worry
you, and even if there was, hold fast to that which is given thee...."
"Don't quote Scripture, Reverend Sir," cried Mona angrily.
"The besotted world is not worth the pother this foolish young married
woman makes over it."
The foolish young woman received a warning from her brother when Mona
went into the woods to gather an armful of wild blossoms for the boat.
"Don't you know," said he with the positiveness of a young theologian,
"that Arthur will probably never marry? Has he looked at a girl in that
way since he came back from California? He's giddy enough, I know, but
one that studies him can see he has no intention of marrying. Now why do
you trouble this poor girl, after her scene with the Englishman, with
hints of Arthur? I tell you he will never marry."
"You may know more about him than I do," his sister placidly answered,
"but I have seen him looking at Honora for the last five years, and
working for her, and thinking about her. His look changed recently.
Perhaps you know why. There's something in the air. I can feel it. You
can't. None of you celibates can. And you can't see beyond your books in
matters of love and marriage. That's quite right. We can manage such
things better. And if Arthur makes up his mind to win her, I'm bound
she shall have him."
"We can manage! I'm bound!" he mimicked. "Well, remember that I warned
you. It isn't so much that your fingers may be burned ... that's what
you need, you married minx. You may do harm to those two. They seem to
be at peace. Let 'em alone."
"What was the baby doing when you left the house?" said she for answer.
"Tearing the nurse's hair out in handfuls," said the proud uncle, as he
plunged into a list of the doings of the wonderful child, who fitted
into any conversation as neatly as a preposition.
Mona, grew sad at heart. Her brother evidently knew of some obstacle to
this union, something in Arthur's past life which made his marriage with
any woman impossible. She recalled his silence about the California
episode, his indifference to women, his lack of enthusiasm as to
marriage.
They rowed away over the lake, with the boat half buried in wild bushes,
sprinkled with dandelion flowers and the tender blossoms of the apple
trees. Honora was happy, at peace. She put the scene with Lord
Constantine away from her, and forgot the light words of Mona.
Whoever the suitor might be, Arthur did not appear to her as a lover. So
careful had he been in his behavior, that Louis would have as much place
in her thought as Arthur, who had never discouraged her hope of the
convent, except by pleading for Ireland. The delay in keeping her own
resolution had been pleasant. Now that the date was fixed, the grateful
enclosure of the cloister seemed to shut her in from all this dust and
clamor of men, from the noisome sights and sounds of world-living, from
the endless coming and going and running about, concerning trifles, from
the injustice and meanness and hopeless crimes of men.
In the shade of the altar, in the restful gloom of Calvary, she could
look up with untired eyes to the calm glow of the celestial life,
unchanging, orderly, beautiful with its satisfied aspiration, and rich
in perfect love and holy companionship. Such a longing came over her to
walk into this perfect peace that moment! Mona well knew this mood, and
Louis in triumph signalled his sister to look. Her eyes, turned to the
rocky shore of Valcour, saw far beyond. On her perfect face lay a
shadow, the shadow of her longing, and from her lips came now and then
the perfume of a sigh.
In silence these two watched her, Louis recognizing the borderland of
holy ecstasy, Mona hopeful that the vision was only a mirage. The boat
floated close to the perpendicular rocks and reflected itself in the
deep waters; far away the farmhouse lay against the green woods; to the
north rose the highest point of the bluff, dark with pines; farther on
was the sweep of the curved shore, and still farther the red walls of
the town. Never boat carried freight so beautiful as this which bore
along the island the young mother, the young deacon, and deep-hearted
Honora, who was blessing God.