“I’m not saying a word against Stanor! Who could say a word against such an elegant creature? He’s been a good friend to me, and he’s going to make a first-rate man when he gets to work, and has something to think about besides his beautiful self. America’ll knock the nonsense out of him. At the end of two years, it will be another man who comes home, a man instead of a boy, just as you will probably be a woman instead of a girl. It’s the most critical time in life, when that change is taking place, and you’d better believe I know what I’m talking about. If I were in your place I’d move mountains, Patricia, if mountains had to be moved, but I’d make sure that the man I loved didn’t go through it apart from me!”
“But if the mountain happened to be an uncle, and the uncle had done everything, and was willing to go on doing everything, and was older and wiser, and knew better than you? Oh, dearie me,” concluded Pixie impatiently, “everybody seems against me! I’m lectured and thwarted on every side, I’ve not been brought up to it, and it’s most depressing. And it’s not a bit of good, either; it’s my own life, and I shall do as I like. And what about yourself, me dear? You are very brave about lecturing me. Suppose I take a turn! Why are you going back to America and leaving Robert Carr behind? What have you been doing to him?”
“I asked him to marry me, and he refused.”
Pixie sat stunned with surprise and consternation. Honor’s voice had been flat and level as usual, not a break or quiver had broken its flow, but there was a pallor round the lips, a sudden sharpening of the features, which spoke eloquently enough, and smote the hearer to the heart.
“Oh, me dear, forgive me!” she cried deeply. “I’m ashamed. Don’t say any more. I’d no right to ask.”
“I meant to tell you. I’d have told you in any case. You guessed how it was when we were here. You can’t be in love like that and not show it.—I thought of him all day; I dreamt of him all night ... when he was out of the room I was wretched; when he came in I knew it by instinct; before I could see him I knew it! In a crowded room I could hear every word he said, see every movement. ... When I was sitting alone, and heard his voice in the distance, my heart leapt—it made me quite faint. I loved him, Pixie!”
Pixie sat staring with startled gaze. She did not speak, and for a moment it seemed that her thoughts had wandered from the story on hand, for her eyes had an inward look, as though she were puzzling out a problem which concerned herself alone. She started slightly as Honor again began to speak, and straightened herself with a quick air of attention.
“Sometimes I thought he loved me too, but he was not the sort of man who would choose to marry an heiress. My money stood between us. So I ... I tried to make it easier by showing him ... how I felt. When we went back to London he said good-bye, and refused my invitations, but I met him by accident, and,” she straightened herself with a gesture of pride, “I am not ashamed of what I did. It would have been folly to sacrifice happiness for the sake of a convention ... I asked him—”
“And?”
“He cared!” Honor said softly. “I had my hour, Pixie, but it was only an hour, for at the end we got to business, and that wrecked it all. I’ve told you about my factory. Over here in England, when people have looked at me through monocles, there have been times when I’ve been ashamed of pickles, but at home I’m proud! Father started as a working lad, and built up that great business, brick by brick. Three thousand ‘hands’ are employed in the factory, but they were never ‘hands’ to him, Patricia, they were souls! He’d been a working man himself, and there was not one thing in their lives he didn’t know and understand. One of the first things I can remember, right away back in my childhood, is being taken to a window to see those men stream past, and being told they were my friends and that I was to take care of them. He had no airs, my pappa; he never gave himself frills, or pretended to be anything different from what he was—there was only one thing he was proud of, and that was that his men were the happiest and most contented in the States. When he died he left me more than his money, he left me his men!”