Читать книгу Honor Bright - Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe, Laura Richards - Страница 2

“Black and red!” said Patricia Desmond. “You look like a Baltimore oriole, Honor!”

“What is that?” asked Vivette. “Bal-ti-moriole? Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?”

“Baltimore – oriole! Roll your ‘r’ twice, Vivi! More – ori-ole!”

“Moro-morio – bah! That does not say itself, Patricia. Moriole, that is prettier, not so?”

“Have it your own way! It’s a bird, and Honor looks like one in her black dress, that’s all. She moves like a bird too; ‘flit’ is the word there, Vivi.”

“Fleet?” Vivette repeated carefully. “Is that co-rect, Patricia?”

Patricia yawned; Vivette was rather tiresome with her English.

“‘Fleet’ will do,” she said. “She’s that too. No, I can’t explain: I’m busy, Vivette.”

“Bee-sy? Like a bee, is that, Patricia? Trés occupée, n’est-ce pas?”

“It does; and if you don’t go away, Vivette, I’ll show you with a hatpin what a bee does!”

“Tiens!” murmured Vivette; “none the less, ‘Moriole’ is pretty, and far more facile to say than ‘Honor’!”

That was how Honor came to be called “Moriole” among the girls; the name clung long after the black dress had been laid aside.

Two years passed; years of calm, peaceful, happy days. Two years of study in the gray classroom, with its desks and blackboards, and its estrade where Madame Madeleine or Soeur Séraphine sat benevolently watching, knitting or rosary in hand, ready to encourage or reprove, as need should arise. They were sisters, the two ladies of the Pension Madeleine, though, as the girls often said, no one would have thought it. Madame Madeleine was the elder by many years. She was more like a robin than one would have thought a person could be; round and rosy, with bright black eyes and a nose as sharp as a robin’s bill. She wore black always, with a little white knitted shoulder shawl; and flat shoes of black cloth which she made herself, no one knew why.

Soeur Séraphine was slender and beautiful, so beautiful in her gray dress and white coif, that every new girl longed to dress like her, and all the girls made up romances about her, no one of which was true. Both ladies were “good as bread,” and everybody loved them, even people who loved no one else; old Cruchon, the milkman, for example, who announced boldly that he hated all human kind.

Two years of récreation in the garden, with its high box hedges, and its brick-paved alleys from which the girls were set once a week to remove the weeds and mosses that came sprouting up between the small bright red bricks. (Thus they learned, Madame would explain, the ceaseless industry and perseverance of Nature, overcoming every obstacle; besides strengthening the muscles of the back in a manner altogether special.)

It was a delightful garden, with its square plots of flowers and vegetables, alternating along both sides of the broad central allée which ran its entire length; its fruit trees fastened primly to the brick walls, “like one’s hair in curl-papers,” as Patricia said; its currant and gooseberry bushes, and the great grapevines that buried the lower wall in a mass of heavy green.

The grande allée was not bricked, but was covered with sand, white and firm and delightful to run on. Was it not rolled every morning by Margoton, daughter of Anak, the gigantic gardener and chorewoman? Here the girls might run at will (within bounds of health, prudence, and good taste, as Madame explained) either for mere pleasure and exercise, or by way of preparation for the Courses, which were held here; the races for the Pommes d’Atalante, the little gilded apples which were more coveted than any other school prize. Of this more hereafter.

Two years of quiet evenings in Madame’s own parlor, the dim, pleasant room with its dark shining floor and old tapestries, its wonderful chandelier of Venetian glass and the round convex mirror that was so good (said Soeur Séraphine) for repressing the sin of vanity in the breast of the Young Person. We sat upright on cross-stitch tabourets, and knitted or embroidered, while Madame or the Sister read aloud, “Télémaque,” or “Paul et Virginie,” or “La Tulipe Noire.”

It was a happy time. Dull, some of the girls found it; Stephanie, for example, who pined for excitement; Rose-Marie, who was desperately homesick for Aigues-Mortes (thought by some the dullest place in Europe); Loulou, who considered all study a forlorn waste of time.

Honor loved it all, and was happy; but as Madame Madeleine frankly said, Honor would be happy anywhere.

“She carries her world with her!” Madame would shrug her kind shoulders under their little white shawl. “We are but scenery, ma mie!”

Whereupon Soeur Séraphine would sigh and murmur, “Poor Honor! poor dear child!” and say a special prayer to Ste. Gêneviève for her favorite pupil.

There were ten of them: three Americans, Patricia Desmond, Maria Patterson, and Honor herself, the rest French or French-Swiss. Rose-Marie was the oldest and had been there longest; poor Rose-Marie, so good, so dull, the despair of all except Soeur Séraphine, who never despaired of any one. Loulou was the youngest, a little mouse-like girl afflicted with a devouring curiosity, which was always getting her into scrapes: scrapes, for which Stephanie, who, I am sorry to say, was somewhat similarly afflicted, was apt to be partly responsible.

Stephanie was pretty, lively, sentimental, and always in love with somebody. She had tried worshipping Patricia, when she first came, but that, Patricia intimated to her quietly, was a thing she could not endure, and the sooner she, Stephanie, dropped it, the better for all concerned. Since then there had been little love lost between the two girls. Stephanie transferred her adoration to Honor, who took it simply, as she took most things, and thought it was wonderful of Stephanie to care for her.

Vivette was pretty, too, – indeed, most of the girls were pretty, a fact which gave Soeur Séraphine more pleasure than she felt it quite right to take in anything so temporary and ensnaring as flesh and blood. But, she would reflect, Vivette, for all her beauty, was serious. Tiens! If she should prove to have a Vocation! When this thought first came to her, Soeur Séraphine felt her heart sink in a strange and certainly a very sinful manner. She loved her vocation; for herself, it had been a heavenly refuge from certain tragic sorrows of her youth. When her convent had been broken up a few years ago, she had been at first like a homeless bird, till the good elder sister, long widowed, had come to her, and folded her in strong, tender arms, and taken her away to Vevay, to share her home, her work, and all her good, peaceful life.

Yes; but why then did Soeur Séraphine’s heart sink at thought of Vivette’s having a vocation for the cloister? Well, because the little Sister desired that everybody might be happy; and in her heart of hearts she would have liked to see every young girl blissfully married to a young man without fault, of marvelous beauty, large fortune and irreproachable lineage. That was all. Of course, where a young person had a real vocation, it was another matter. Vivette had hitherto shown no signs of special piety, but what would you? She was yet young. If even an unuttered thought should in any mysterious way turn her from heavenly paths, that would be grievous sin on the part of the thinker. Satan was very watchful, and her own heart, Soeur Séraphine reflected, was desperately wicked. The Sister did penance for this, and fasted on a feast day, to the amazement of the girls and the great distress of Madame Madeleine.

She need not have disturbed her sweet self; Vivette had no vocation whatever, except for teaching. She was a very practical girl, and had, at the age of fifteen, mapped out her life methodically. She explained it all to Honor: somehow they all explained things to la Moriole; she was sympathetic, you understood.

“I also shall bee-come an orphanne!” she said in her careful English. “For you, my all-dear, this was unattended, —hein? ‘Unexpected?’ Merci bien, chèrie!– your honored parents being still in the middle ages. Ainsi – hein? I have again made fault?”

Honor explained patiently; “middle ages” meant something wholly different; it meant Charlemagne and Lorenzo de Medici and all that kind of thing; in short, the Feudal System! Besides, she said, Maman was really young, but quite young for an old person; nor was Papa so old as many.

“But go on, Vivi! Why should you become an orphan?”

Vivette explained in turn. Her parents had married late; her father was already bald as a bat, her mother in feeble health. What would you? They had told her all simply that it would be necessary for her to earn her own living when they joined the Saints, or else to make an advantageous marriage.

“It is like that!” said Vivette, simply. “I assure thee, Moriole, I have observed, but with a microscope, every desirable parti in Vevay. There is not one with whom I would spend a day, far less my life. Enough! I desire to teach. To master the English tongue, to go to Amérique, to instruct the young in my own language —voilà! it is my secret, chérie! I confide it to thee as to the priest.”

Honor, with shining eyes, promised to keep the secret, which, by the way, half the school knew. It was very noble of Vivette, she thought. How strange, how incomprehensible, to be able to teach! To write, now, that was different. That was as natural as breathing.

It was noble also of Jacqueline de La Tour de Provence to accept the lot which Fate had in store for her. This also was confided to Honor, in a twilight hour in the garden. Jacqueline was a slender, lily-like girl, too pale and languid, perhaps, for real beauty, but graceful and highbred, aristocrat to her fingertips. She was a Royalist, she told Honor. How could it be otherwise with one of her House.

“What is your house?” asked Honor innocently. “Is it in Vevay? Is it one of the chateaux on the hill?”

Jacqueline laughed her pretty silvery laugh; that also was high-bred, if her speech did not always match.

“The Americans are incredibly ignorant, are they not?” she said amiably. “It is that you have no noblesse, my poor Honor. Every Frenchman knows that in the veins of the family of La Tour de Provence runs the blood royal of France.”

“Oh, Jacqueline! not really? How thrilling!” murmured Honor.

“A La Tour de Provence married a cousin of the Grand Monarque!” said Jacqueline, acknowledging the murmur with a regal bend of the head. “But that is nothing; the Bourbons, you understand, are of yesterday. On my mother’s side – ” she paused, and proceeded slowly, dropping each word as if it were a pearl – “I am a daughter of St. Louis, and of those from whom St. Louis sprang. I am directly descended from la reine Berthe!”

“Jacqueline! What do you tell me? Not Bertha Broadfoot?”

Jacqueline again bent a regal head. “Wife of Pepin d’Heristal!” she said calmly. “Mother of Charlemagne! From that royal and sainted woman descends the House of La Tour de Provence!”

She paused to enjoy for a moment Honor’s look of genuine awe and astonishment; when she continued, it was with a touch of queenly condescension, which might have moved to unseemly mirth any one less direct and simple-minded than Honor.

“We were not in the direct line of succession; our ancestor was a younger brother, you understand, of the Emperor. We have never reigned! But we know our descent, and we never stoop. Such as you see me here – ” Jacqueline made a disparaging gesture – “in a tiny pension (though the Madeleines are well-born, it goes without saying, otherwise were I not here!) surrounded by a little bourgeoisie like this, I remain Myself.”

Jacqueline was silent a moment, contemplating her polished finger-nails.

“I have the Capet hand, you perceive!” she raised a very pretty, useless-looking hand; not to be compared for beauty with Patricia’s hand, thought Honor, that combination of white velvet and steel, but pretty enough.

“Was – was Queen Bertha really lame?” asked Honor timidly; it was really astonishing to be talking with a Capet; she wondered whether she ought to bow when she spoke. “And did she really spin?” And Honor repeated the familiar rhyme that every French child knows:

“My sainted ancestress,” replied Jacqueline, “was all devoted to her people. Her time was principally passed in spinning and weaving garments for the poor. So great was her industry that she spun even on horseback, carrying her distaff with her. Her constant labors at wheel and loom caused one foot, that which worked the treadle, to become larger than the other; this at least is the legend in our House. You can figure to yourself, Moriole, my feelings at seeing, as lately among these children of unknown people, the holy and venerable Queen made part of a childish game.”

Honor blushed to her very ears. She and Stephanie had been playing only that day with Loulou and Toinette, the two youngest pupils, the old nursery game, never dreaming of harm.

She hoped Jacqueline had not seen her. Madame Madeleine had asked her to amuse the little ones for half an hour. Next time they would play something else, “Compagnons de la Marjolaine,” or “Nous n’irons plus au bois!”

“How does your – your family” (Honor could not somehow bring herself to say “House”; it sounded so undemocratic!) “feel about the Republic?”

“We do not recognize it!” said Jacqueline calmly. “For us, it does not exist. We serve his sacred Majesty Louis Philippe Robert, whom you probably know only as the Duc d’Orleans.”

“I don’t know him at all!” said poor Honor.

Jacqueline gave her a compassionate smile. “His Majesty lives in retirement!” she said. “Little people like thee may be excused for an ignorance which is rather the fault of others than of thyself, Moriole. For the rest, we bide our time! We follow the customs of our House, and mate – so nearly as may be – with our equals.”

She then went on to tell Honor of the Fate that awaited her. She was to remain another year at school. Then, when she was eighteen, she was to be married, to the Sieur de Virelai, a nobleman of their own neighborhood, a friend of her father’s. He was somewhat older than her father, but a grand seigneur, with one of the historic castles of France.

“When I am the Lady of Virelai, my poor Honor,” said Jacqueline, “you must visit me, you must indeed. I shall receive you with pleasure.”

The supper bell rang just then, and the future Lady of Virelai jumped up with more animation than she often showed.

“There are to be apple fritters for supper!” she cried. “Margoton told me so! Quick, Moriole, or those greedy children will get the top ones.”

“Why shouldn’t they?” asked Honor, as they sped up the allée. “There’ll be plenty for every one.”

Jacqueline turned a look of surprise on her.

“The top ones,” she said, “are the last off the griddle; naturally, one desires them!”