CHAPTER VI.
"Oh the snow, the beautiful snow
Filling the sky and the earth below.'
"It will be a stormy night I think," Honor says, shrugging her pretty shoulders behind the window-blind she is just lowering, "I wish I had the stout brawny arms of a man to-night…."
"Around your waist?" says a voice from behind her, and, suiting the action to the word, some one encircles her slender waist with "stout brawny arms."
"Guy! I have told you in plain English that I will not allow you to take such freedom with me. This time, I say, 'Je vous difends sirieusementde mettre vos bras….'"
"Oh! that's enough, by Jove, you'd drive a fellow crazy if he'd listen to you long enough, with your recitals on maidenly propriety. Now, there's Miss Bella Dash—many a season's belle—just chuckles with delight when I get this broad cloth sleeve fairly around her blue satin basque"
"Oh! I dare say! but society gives 'poetical licences' to her adopted children, which outside of her pale would be simply atrocious. If Bella Dash saw your coat sleeve around Betsy, the house-maid's basque, it would mean another thing altogether, though Betsy's eyes are as fine as Miss Bella's any day. Besides, you must have learned by now that the 'Bella Dash's' of Ottawa society to-day are nothing to me. My sympathy for my sex goes out to the whole species and when I offer it to individuals, I exclude the 'Miss Dash's' that make the 'tableaux vivants' of the modern drawing-room."
"By Jove! that is a fine speech Honor; now see here between you and me (I might also add the only two sensible people in Ottawa) what do you think would become of us young enthusiastic fellows if all the 'girls' stood on their high-heeled dignity like you? Why of course the monasteries and lunatic asylums would have more to do, and by and by, the lunatic asylum would have it all; but destiny is not so cruel a tyrant as you, so she makes your haughty kind the exception and not the rule."
Honor laughed, a low curious laugh, and said "Then she is very kind to me to have made me realize soon enough how much too worthy I am to be any man's pastime, a toy for him to play with until the paint is rubbed off—then to be flung aside for something new. If that is all Bella Dash and her prototypes, are worth in your estimation, it is no wonder they are proud, and no wonder they hold their heads high enough to sniff the air over the heads of girls, who, were you to use their names as you do Miss Dash's, would level you to the ground."
"My most supreme stand-offish friend, I hope sincerely you won't preach any of these theories around our gay little city. Why, the young ladies here are just a jolly crowd, who don't transmogrify their whole faces because a fellow likes to spoon now and then to kill time. By Jove! you'd spoil the fun for the winter, and as soon as spring came the whole male element of Ottawa City would 'make' for the fresh pastures of the North-West."
"That is a worthy declaration Mr. Elersly, I must say. I hope you are aware that in speaking thus, you risk the good opinion of your respectable sensible friends—if you have any—outside of this house. It is cold so near the window, let me pass please. I prefer a seat by the fire to this stupid argument here in the window recess."
The mischievous smile died out of Guy's handsome face, as he looked earnestly into the beautiful eyes of the girl standing by him.
"Oh yes, of course" said he, with a sigh, "anything is stupid in my company, although I come to you when I'm in good spirits for sympathy, as well as when I'm 'blue' for consolation: you always find it dull and stupid, and you don't hesitate to tell me either. If I bore you so dreadfully, I'll be off."
Honor looked up suddenly; she stretched out her hand and laid it on his shoulder; her voice was changed and earnest as she said. "Stay Guy, and we'll talk it over in a friendly way. There are two seats by the grate, and I will be very amiable—I promise you."
There was a moment of hesitation—temptation—both ways for Guy. At last he looked up, saying: "I'm really sorry, Honor, but I made an engagement for eight o'clock, and I've only ten minutes to walk over half a mile; so we'll have to postpone our little 'veillée.'"
She turned from him and looked into the fire "Very well," she answered quietly, "the night is stormy, but I suppose you don't mind that."
"Not much," a fellow has to humour the weather for the weather won't humour him.
"But by Jove! its eight o'clock," said Guy, looking at his watch, "and
I'll be puckering my patrician brow to invent an excuse for this delay.
So 'ta-ta.'"
"Good night," Honor said in a low voice, extending her hand as Guy approached the fire to light his cigar. Another moment, and the young girl was alone with her thoughts.
We might stop here and wonder at the mysterious conventionality that is influencing all our lives now-a-days. It is not a deception, and yet its consequences are often the same. Here was a striking instance of its existence. It might have been noticed from the beginning of the last interview that Honor and Guy had grown somewhat more familiar with one another. It was Mr. Rayne's doings, for had he not interfered, the same cold mysterious distance would still have been between them; but there was no sacrifice too great where he was concerned, and it was purely for his sake the young people dispensed with the formality of their early acquaintance. And yet, how superficial this familiarity was on both sides! Just now, look at them—read their thoughts—see their hearts.
Guy closed the front door with a heavy bang and went out into the street troubled. He was talking to himself: "Such a farce, by Jove! one would think she was a little sister, by the way I try to speak, and if she only knew how I struggle to suffocate the passion that rises within me, when she looks up so earnestly out of her big dreaming eyes; it is sheer folly and I'll go mad if it must continue—and yet—if uncle ever suspected my love he would separate us then and there. But it is dangerous dust I am flinging in his eyes by being free and easy with her in this way. In a little while more I won't be able to trust myself, and God help me then. Confound those Teazle girls, only for their invitation I would have stayed with Honor to-night, but a fellow belongs to every one in this city before himself, and I can't expect to escape"
"Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun."
By this time he was mounting the steps of his boarding-house, and he flung the butt of his cigar violently at a gaunt spare cat that just ventured its pinched countenance from under the verandah. As he turned the latch-key, he was indulging in a strain of "In the gloaming, oh! my darling" as though he were the happiest of living creatures.
For some moments after Guy left his uncle's house Honor sat motionless reading the coals. She was troubled: Mr. Rayne expected her to be able to entice his nephew away from these never ending parties of pleasure, and she could not. If she did not care for him quite so much, her task would indeed be easier, indifference spurs on so to a task that is mere duty. How miserable she was, here, all alone, on his account, while he, where was he spending these moments fraught with so much anxiety for her?
At this juncture Mr. Rayne bustled in and, somewhat surprised to find his little girl alone, he took the seat Honor had placed for Guy, and settled himself for a comfortable fireside chat.