Grace was in all her steps
Heaven in her eye
In every gesture, dignity and love.
--_Milton._
There was no nonsense about Honor Edgeworth. Anyone should like her.
There may have been traits in her character that would elicit no
sympathy from some, but they either forget the extraordinary
circumstances 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 God 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 assume. 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, classes, etc., but that even among individuals
there is no perfect resemblance found. There are the general prominent
traits that serve to classify 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 multitude of victims to
that social levity and those superficial virtues that society honors,
and with which our modern fashionable 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 nobler 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
Shelley'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
snatches 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 assailed 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 _protégée_ 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 assumed 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 anticipation, and God 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 passed 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.