Read Ebook: Honor Bright: A Story for Girls by Richards Laura Elizabeth Howe Merrill Frank T Illustrator

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Ebook has 945 lines and 54296 words, and 19 pages

I AT PENSION MADELEINE 1

II HOW HONOR FOUND HER NEW NAME 13

V BIMBO 59

VI IN THE CH?LET OF THE ROCKS 74

X COURTSHIP AND CASTLE-BUILDING 151

PAGE

"'I HAVE THE CAPET HAND, YOU PERCEIVE!'" 26

"ATLI ... WALKED BESIDE HER, HIS ARM ON HER NECK" 52

"STANDING ON ONE SIDE, ARMS AKIMBO" 88

"HONOR COULD HARDLY SPEAK HER DELIGHT" 167

"'OH!' CRIED HONOR. 'OH, HOW LOVELY!'" 307

HONOR BRIGHT

AT PENSION MADELEINE

Honor Bright was twelve years old when her parents died, and left her alone in the world. Six of the twelve years had been spent at school in Vevay, at the Pension Madeleine, the only home she knew. She was too little to remember the big New York house where she was born, and where her toddling years were spent. She was only two when her father accepted the high scientific mission which banished him to the far East for an indefinite time. Of the years there she retained only a few vague memories; one of a dark woman with tinkling ornaments, who sang strange old songs, and whom she called "Amma"; one of an old man-servant, bent and withered like a monkey, who carried her on his shoulder, and bowed to the ground when she stamped her little foot. All beside was a dim mist with curious people and animals moving through it. Long robes, floating veils, shawls and turbans; camels and buffaloes, with here and there an elephant, or a tiger ; ringing of bells, smell of incense and musk and flowers, stifling dust and drowning rain; all part of her, in some mysterious dream-way.

When the child was six, the climate began to tell upon her, as it does on all white children, and her parents were warned that she must leave India. They brought her to Switzerland, to Vevay, the paradise of schoolgirls, and left her there with many tears. Since then she had seen them only twice or thrice; the journey was long and hard; her mother delicate.

The last time they came, it was a festival for the whole school. Mrs. Bright, beautiful and gentle, "like a jasmine-flower," as Stephanie Langolles said; Mr. Bright, kind and bluff, his pockets always full of chocolate, his eyes twinkling with friendliness; they were in and out of the Pension constantly, during the month they spent at the Grand Hotel in Vevay. It was destructive to school routine, but as Madame Madeleine said to Soeur S?raphine, what would you? The case was exceptional. How to deny anything to these parents, so tender, and so desolated at parting from their cherished infant? Happily another year would, under the Providence of God, see this so affectionate family happily and permanently united.

"One more little year," said Mrs. Bright, as she embraced Honor at parting. "Then Papa's long task is done, and we shall go home, and take you with us. Home to our own dear country, my little one, where children can live and be well. No more pensions for you, no more strange lands for us. Home, for all three; home and happiness!"

"And now," sighed Soeur S?raphine. "At twelve years old, an orphan! Our poor little one! And she has seen them so seldom; what tragedy!"

Madame Madeleine was right. A week after the sad news came, Honor was telling Stephanie all about it: I must not say with enjoyment, for that would be untrue: but with a dramatic interest more thrilling than sorrowful.

Honor paused, and drew a long breath, shaking her hair back with a dramatic gesture. Stephanie clasped her hands.

The two girls were sitting together in Honor's little room. Ordinarily, they would have sat on the floor, but to-day her mourning was to be considered. The waxed floor shone with a brilliant polish; no speck of dust was visible anywhere in the spotless cell ; still, one could not be too careful.

"Black is very becoming to thee, my poor dear!" said Stephanie. "Thy hair is like a cloud of golden fire above it. Nothing could be more beautiful, I assure thee."

Honor looked anxiously in the little mirror that hung over the chest of drawers. It was a pleasant image that she saw; a round rosy face, with a pretty, wilful mouth, dark blue eyes heavily fringed with black lashes, a straight little nose, and, as Stephanie said, a perfect cloud of curly red-gold hair. All this, I say, was pleasant enough; but Honor did not notice the general effect; what she saw was a collection of small brown spots on the bridge of the straight little nose, and extending to the cheeks. Freckles! No one else at Madame Madeleine's had freckles. Patricia Desmond, with her complexion like moonlight on ivory; Vivette, with the crimson glow mantling in her brown cheeks, Stephanie herself with her smooth, pale skin--

"Ah!" cried poor Honor. "This hideous disfigurement! Shall I ever outgrow it, I wonder? Maman said I should, but I know not!"

Stephanie thought the freckles quite as dreadful as Honor did, and looked her sympathy.

Here she glanced at her own reflection, with complacent approval of her brown velvet eyes and black satin hair.

"My poor Honor! But your hair is always beautiful, and there are no eyelashes like yours in Vevay. Take courage! In the story your hair is dark, is it not? The story marches always? When shall I hear another chapter?"

Honor's face brightened. The story was always a comfort when the freckles became too afflicting. It was to be a romance, in three volumes: the story of her life, beginning when she was sixteen. It opened thus:

"I was young; they called me fair. My mirror revealed masses of jet-black hair which rippled smoothly to the floor and lay in silken piles on the velvet carpet. My eyes--there was one who called them starry pools of night. My cheek was a white rose."

Stephanie thought this a wonderful description. Honor, as I say, always found comfort in it, and forgot the freckles while she was following the fortunes of her dark-eyed counterpart.

"To-morrow, perhaps! Now--Stephanie, thou must help me in a sorrowful task. It is to put away--"

"Fiordispina and Ang?lique!" Honor spoke with sorrowful dignity and resolve. "Yes, Stephanie, it must be so! While my parents lived, do you see, I was a child; now--" An eloquent shrug and wave completed the sentence. "I am resolved!" she said. "These dear ones, with whom my happy childhood has been passed, must retire to--finally, to the shades of memory, Stephanie!"

"How noble!" murmured Stephanie. "Thou art heroic, Honor!"

Honor looked long and tenderly at the doll; then, dipping her hand into the pitcher of water that stood on the commode close by, she sprinkled some crystal drops on the calm bisque face.

She produced two neat box beds, and laid Fiordispina, serenely smiling through her tears, in one, while Stephanie tucked Ang?lique snugly in the other. They were covered with their own little satin quilts, embroidered with their names; the boxes were closed and tied with satin ribbon.

"The sacrifice is made!" repeated Honor. "It is accomplished. Don't tell the other girls!"

And she burst into tears, and wept on Stephanie's shoulder.

HOW HONOR FOUND HER NEW NAME: AND HOW THEY LIVED AT THE PENSION MADELEINE

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

"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."

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

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 S?raphine 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 S?raphine 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 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 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, "T?l?maque," 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 ; Loulou, who considered all study a forlorn waste of time.

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