A Modern Chronicle — Complete. Winston Churchill

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      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 and butter and jam.”

      “Honora would only have eaten the jam,” said Mrs. Hayden. “But I love her.”

      “I, too, am fond of the child, but I tremble for her. I am afraid she has that terrible thing which is called temperament.”

      George Hanbury made a second heroic rush, and dragged Honora out once more.

      “What is this disease you've got?” he demanded.

      “Disease?” she cried; “I haven't any disease.”

      “Mrs. Dwyer says you have temperament, and that it is a terrible thing.”

      Honora stopped him in a corner.

      “Because people like Mrs. Dwyer haven't got it,” she declared, with a warmth which George found inexplicable.

      “What is it?” he demanded.

      “You'll never know, either, George,” she answered; “it's soul.”

      “Soul!” he repeated; “I have one, and its immortal,” he added promptly.

      In the summer, that season of desolation for Honora, when George Hanbury and Algernon Cartwright and other young gentlemen were at the seashore learning to sail boats and to play tennis, Peter Erwin came to his own. Nearly every evening after dinner, while the light was still lingering under the shade trees of the street, and Aunt Mary still placidly sewing in the wicker chair on the lawn, and Uncle Tom making the tour of flowers with his watering pot, the gate would slam, and Peter's tall form appear.

      It never occurred to Honora that had it not been for Peter those evenings would have been even less bearable than they were. To sit indoors with a light and read in a St. Louis midsummer was not to be thought of. Peter played backgammon with her on the front steps, and later on—chess. Sometimes they went for a walk as far as Grand Avenue. And sometimes СКАЧАТЬ