Honor Bright. Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe

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СКАЧАТЬ 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:

      “Ah! the good time for every one

      When good Queen Bertha spun!”1

      “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.

      “Avez-vous bien des filles, cousin,

      Cousine СКАЧАТЬ