A Modern Chronicle — Complete. Winston Churchill
the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in a rapture which her aunt and cousins were far from guessing.
“Come, Honora,” said her aunt. “What's the matter, dear?”
How could she explain to Aunt Mary that the sight of beautiful things gave her a sort of pain—when she did not yet know it herself? There was the massive stairway, for instance, which they ascended, softly lighted by a great leaded window of stained glass on the first landing; and the spacious bedrooms with their shining brass beds and lace spreads (another innovation which Honora resolved to adopt when she married); and at last, far above all, its deep-set windows looking out above the trees towards the park a mile to the westward, the ballroom—the ballroom, with its mirrors and high chandeliers, and chairs of gilt and blue set against the walls, all of which made no impression whatever upon George and Mary and Edith, but gave Honora a thrill. No wonder that she learned to dance quickly under such an inspiration!
And how pretty Mrs. Hayden looked as she came forward to greet them and kissed Honora! She had been Virginia Grey, and scarce had had a gown to her back when she had married the elderly Duncan Hayden, who had built her this house and presented her with a checkbook—a check-book which Virginia believed to be like the widow's cruse of oil-unfailing. Alas, those days of picnics and balls; of dinners at that recent innovation, the club; of theatre-parties and excursions to baseball games between the young men in Mrs. Hayden's train (and all young men were) who played at Harvard or Yale or Princeton; those days were too care-free to have endured.
“Aunt Mary,” asked Honora, when they were home again in the lamplight of the little sitting-room, “why was it that Mr. Meeker was so polite to Cousin Eleanor, and asked her about my dancing instead of you?”
Aunt Mary smiled.
“Because, Honora,” she said, “because I am a person of no importance in Mr. Meeker's eyes.”
“If I were a man,” cried Honora, fiercely, “I should never rest until I had made enough money to make Mr. Meeker wriggle.”
“Honora, come here,” said her aunt, gazing in troubled surprise at the tense little figure by the mantel. “I don't know what could have put such things into your head, my child. Money isn't everything. In times of real trouble it cannot save one.”
“But it can save one from humiliation!” exclaimed Honora, unexpectedly. Another sign of a peculiar precociousness, at fourteen, with which Aunt Mary was finding herself unable to cope. “I would rather be killed than humiliated by Mr. Meeker.”
Whereupon she flew out of the room and upstairs, where old Catherine, in dismay, found her sobbing a little later.
Poor Aunt Mary! Few people guessed the spirit which was bound up in her, aching to extend its sympathy and not knowing how, save by an unswerving and undemonstrative devotion. Her words of comfort were as few as her silent deeds were many.
But Honora continued to go to the dancing class, where she treated Mr. Meeker with a hauteur that astonished him, amused Virginia Hayden, and perplexed Cousin Eleanor. Mr. Meeker's cringing soul responded, and in a month Honora was the leading spirit of the class, led the marches, and was pointed out by the little dancing master as all that a lady should be in deportment and bearing.
This treatment, which succeeded so well in Mr. Meeker's case, Honora had previously applied to others of his sex. Like most people with a future, she began young. Of late, for instance, Mr. George Hanbury had shown a tendency to regard her as his personal property; for George had a high-handed way with him—boys being an enigma to his mother. Even in those days he had a bullet head and a red face and square shoulders, and was rather undersized for his age—which was Honora's.
Needless to say, George did not approve of the dancing class; and let it be known, both by words and deeds, that he was there under protest. Nor did he regard with favour Honora's triumphal progress, but sat in a corner with several congenial spirits whose feelings ranged from scorn to despair, commenting in loud whispers upon those of his sex to whom the terpsichorean art came more naturally. Upon one Algernon Cartwright, for example, whose striking likeness to the Van Dyck portrait of a young king had been more than once commented upon by his elders, and whose velveteen suits enhanced the resemblance. Algernon, by the way, was the favourite male pupil of Mr. Meeker; and, on occasions, Algernon and Honora were called upon to give exhibitions for the others, the sight of which filled George with contemptuous rage. Algernon danced altogether too much with Honora—so George informed his cousin.
The simple result of George's protests was to make Honora dance with Algernon the more, evincing, even at this period of her career, a commendable determination to resent dictation. George should have lived in the Middle Ages, when the spirit of modern American womanhood was as yet unborn. Once he contrived, by main force, to drag her out into the hall.
“George,” she said, “perhaps, if you'd let me alone perhaps I'd like you better.”
“Perhaps,” he retorted fiercely, “if you wouldn't make a fool of yourself with those mother's darlings, I'd like you better.”
“George,” said Honora, “learn to dance.”
“Never!” he cried, but she was gone. While hovering around the door he heard Mrs. Hayden's voice.
“Unless I am tremendously mistaken, my dear,” that lady was remarking to Mrs. Dwyer, whose daughter Emily's future millions were powerless to compel youths of fourteen to dance with her, although she is now happily married, “unless I am mistaken, Honora will have a career. The child will be a raving beauty. And she has to perfection the art of managing men.”
“As her father had the art of managing women,” said Mrs. Dwyer. “Dear me, how well I remember Randolph! I would have followed him to—to Cheyenne.”
Mrs. Hayden laughed. “He never would have gone to Cheyenne, I imagine,” she said.
“He never looked at me, and I have reason to be profoundly thankful for it,” said Mrs. Dwyer.
Virginia Hayden bit her lip. She remembered a saying of Mrs. Brice, “Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted.”
“They say that poor Tom Leffingwell has not yet finished paying his debts,” continued Mrs. Dwyer, “although his uncle, Eleanor Hanbury's father, cancelled what Randolph had had from him in his will. It was twenty-five thousand dollars. James Hanbury, you remember, had him appointed consul at Nice. Randolph Leffingwell gave the impression of conferring a favour when he borrowed money. I cannot understand why he married that penniless and empty-headed beauty.”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Hayden, “it was because of his ability to borrow money that he felt he could afford to.”
The eyes of the two ladies unconsciously followed Honora about the room.
“I never knew a better or a more honest woman than Mary Leffingwell, but I tremble for her. She is utterly incapable of managing that child. If Honora is a complicated mechanism now, what will she be at twenty? She has elements in her which poor Mary never dreamed of. I overheard her with Emily, and she talks like a grown-up person.”
Mrs. Hayden's dimples deepened.
“Better than some grown-up women,” she said. “She sat in my room while I dressed the other afternoon. Mrs. Leffingwell had sent her with a note about that French governess. And, by the way, she speaks French as though she had lived in Paris.”
Little Mrs. Dwyer raised her hands in protest.
“It doesn't seem natural, somehow. It doesn't seem exactly—moral, my dear.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Hayden. “Mrs. Leffingwell is only giving the child the advantages which her companions have—Emily has French, hasn't she?”
“But Emily can't speak it—that way,” said Mrs. Dwyer. “I don't blame Mary Leffingwell. She thinks she is doing her duty, but it has always seemed to me that Honora was one of those children who would better have been brought up on bread