A Modern Chronicle — Complete. Winston Churchill
insists upon hard work, and the discipline is very strict.”
“No young men,” added Uncle Tom.
“That,” declared Aunt Mary, “is certainly an advantage.”
“And no chocolate cake, and bed at ten o'clock,” said Uncle Tom.
Honora, dazed, only half heard them. She laughed at Uncle Tom because she always had, but tears were shining in her eyes. Young men and chocolate cake! What were these privations compared to that magic word Change? Suddenly she rose, and flung her arms about Uncle Tom's neck and kissed his rough cheek, and then embraced Aunt Mary. They would be lonely.
“Aunt Mary, I can't bear to leave you—but I do so want to go! And it won't be for long—will it? Only until next spring.”
“Until next summer, I believe,” replied Aunt Mary, gently; “June is a summer month-isn't it, Tom?”
“It will be a summer month without question next year,” answered Uncle Tom, enigmatically.
It has been remarked that that day was sultry, and a fine rain was now washing Uncle Tom's flowers for him. It was he who had applied that term “washing” since the era of ultra-soot. Incredible as it may seem, life proceeded as on any other of a thousand rainy nights. The lamps were lighted in the sitting-room, Uncle Tom unfolded his gardening periodical, and Aunt Mary her embroidery. The gate slammed, with its more subdued, rainy-weather sound.
“It's Peter,” said Honora, flying downstairs. And she caught him, astonished, as he was folding his umbrella on the step. “Oh, Peter, if you tried until to-morrow morning, you never could guess what has happened.”
He stood for a moment, motionless, staring at her, a tall figure, careless of the rain.
“You are going away,” he said.
“How did you guess it?” she exclaimed in surprise. “Yes—to boarding-school. To Sutcliffe, on the Hudson, with Edith and Mary. Aren't you glad? You look as though you had seen a ghost.”
“Do I?” said Peter.
“Don't stand there in the rain,” commanded Honora; “come into the parlour, and I'll tell you all about it.”
He came in. She took the umbrella from him, and put it in the rack.
“Why don't you congratulate me?” she demanded.
“You'll never come back,” said Peter.
“What a horrid thing to say! Of course I shall come back. I shall come back next June, and you'll be at the station to meet me.”
“And—what will Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary do—without you?”
“Oh,” said Honora, “I shall miss them dreadfully. And I shall miss you, Peter.”
“Very much?” he asked, looking down at her with such a queer expression. And his voice, too, sounded queer. He was trying to smile.
Suddenly Honora realized that he was suffering, and she felt the pangs of contrition. She could not remember the time when she had been away from Peter, and it was natural that he should be stricken at the news. Peter, who was the complement of all who loved and served her, of Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom and Catherine, and who somehow embodied them all. Peter, the eternally dependable.
She found it natural that the light should be temporarily removed from his firmament while she should be at boarding-school, and yet in the tenderness of her heart she pitied him. She put her hands impulsively upon his shoulders as he stood looking at her with that queer expression which he believed to be a smile.
“Peter, you dear old thing, indeed I shall miss you! I don't know what I shall do without you, and I'll write to you every single week.”
Gently he disengaged her arms. They were standing under that which, for courtesy's sake, had always been called the chandelier. It was in the centre of the parlour, and Uncle Tom always covered it with holly and mistletoe at Christmas.
“Why do you say I'll never come back?” asked Honora. “Of course I shall come back, and live here all the rest of my life.”
Peter shook his head slowly. He had recovered something of his customary quizzical manner.
“The East is a strange country,” he said. “The first thing we know you'll be marrying one of those people we read about, with more millions than there are cars on the Olive Street line.”
Honora was a little indignant.
“I wish you wouldn't talk so, Peter,” she said. “In the first place, I shan't see any but girls at Sutcliffe. I could only see you for a few minutes once a week if you were there. And in the second place, it isn't exactly—Well—dignified to compare the East and the West the way you do, and speak about people who are very rich and live there as though they were different from the people we know here. Comparisons, as Shakespeare said, are odorous.”
“Honora,” he declared, still shaking his head, “you're a fraud, but I can't help loving you.”
For a long time that night Honora lay in bed staring into the darkness, and trying to realize what had happened. She heard the whistling and the puffing of the trains in the cinder-covered valley to the southward, but the quality of these sounds had changed. They were music now.
CHAPTER VI. HONORA HAS A GLIMPSE OF THE WORLD
It is simply impossible to give any adequate notion of the industry of the days that followed. No sooner was Uncle Tom out of the house in the morning than Anne Rory marched into the sitting-room and took command, and turned it, into a dressmaking establishment. Anne Rory, who deserves more than a passing mention, one of the institutions of Honora's youth, who sewed for the first families, and knew much more about them than Mr. Meeker, the dancing-master. If you enjoyed her confidence—as Aunt Mary did—she would tell you of her own accord who gave their servants enough to eat, and who didn't. Anne Rory was a sort of inquisition all by herself, and would have made a valuable chief of police. The reputations of certain elderly gentlemen of wealth might have remained to this day intact had it not been for her; she had a heaven-sent knack of discovering peccadilloes. Anne Rory knew the gentlemen by sight, and the gentlemen did not know Anne Rory. Uncle Tom she held to be somewhere in the calendar of the saints.
There is not time, alas, to linger over Anne Rory or the new histories which she whispered to Aunt Mary when Honora was out of the room. At last the eventful day of departure arrived. Honora's new trunk—her first—was packed by Aunt Mary's own hands, the dainty clothes and the dresses folded in tissue paper, while old Catherine stood sniffing by. After dinner—sign of a great occasion—a carriage came from Braintree's Livery Stable, and Uncle Tom held the horses while the driver carried out the trunk and strapped it on. Catherine, Mary Ann, and Bridget, all weeping, were kissed good-by, and off they went through the dusk to the station. Not the old Union Depot, with its wooden sheds, where Honora had gone so often to see the Hanburys off, that grimy gateway to the fairer regions of the earth. This new station, of brick and stone and glass and tiles, would hold an army corps with ease. And when they alighted at the carriage entrance, a tall figure came forward out of the shadow. It was Peter, and he had a package under his arm. Peter checked Honora's trunk, and Peter had got the permission—through Judge Brice—which enabled them all to pass through the grille and down the long walk beside which the train was standing.
They entered that hitherto mysterious conveyance, a sleeping-car, and spoke to old Mrs. Stanley, who was going East to see her married daughter, and who had gladly agreed to take charge of Honora. Afterwards they stood on the platform, but in spite of the valiant efforts of Uncle Tom and Peter, conversation was a mockery.
“Honora,” said Aunt Mary, “don't forget that your trunk