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

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.

Honor loved it all, and was happy; but as Madame Madeleine frankly said, Honor would be happy anywhere.

Whereupon Soeur S?raphine would sigh and murmur, "Poor Honor! poor dear child!" and say a special prayer to Ste. G?nevi?ve for her favorite pupil.

There were ten of them: three Americans, Patricia Desmond, Maria Patterson, and Honor herself, the rest French or French-Swiss. Rose-Marie was the oldest and had been there longest; poor Rose-Marie, so good, so dull, the despair of all except Soeur S?raphine, who never despaired of any one. Loulou was the youngest, a little mouse-like girl afflicted with a devouring curiosity, which was always getting her into scrapes: scrapes, for which Stephanie, who, I am sorry to say, was somewhat similarly afflicted, was apt to be partly responsible.

Yes; but why then did Soeur S?raphine'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 S?raphine 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.

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.

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.

Jacqueline laughed her pretty silvery laugh; that also was high-bred, if her speech did not always match.

"Oh, Jacqueline! not really? How thrilling!" murmured Honor.

"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.

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!"

"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.

"How does your--your family" "feel about the Republic?"

"We do not recognize it!" said Jacqueline calmly. "For us, it does not exist. We serve his sacred Majesty Louis Philippe Robert, whom you probably know only as the Duc d'Orleans."

"I don't know him at all!" said poor Honor.

Jacqueline gave her a compassionate smile. "His Majesty lives in retirement!" she said. "Little people like thee may be excused for an ignorance which is rather the fault of others than of thyself, Moriole. For the rest, we bide our time! We follow the customs of our House, and mate--so nearly as may be--with our equals."

"When I am the Lady of Virelai, my poor Honor," said Jacqueline, "you must visit me, you must indeed. I shall receive you with pleasure."

The supper bell rang just then, and the future Lady of Virelai jumped up with more animation than she often showed.

"There are to be apple fritters for supper!" she cried. "Margoton told me so! Quick, Moriole, or those greedy children will get the top ones."

Jacqueline turned a look of surprise on her.

"The top ones," she said, "are the last off the griddle; naturally, one desires them!"

THE MOUNTAINEERS

It was Madame's birthday, a bright June day; it was also the feast of St. Zita.

Every girl, Catholic and Protestant alike, had laid a flower on the Saint's shrine, the pretty little marble shrine at the end of the garden, with the yellow roses climbing over it. Every girl had presented her gift to Madame at breakfast, to the good lady's unbounded astonishment. They had been making the gifts under her benevolent nose for a month past, but she had seen nothing; Soeur S?raphine said so, and she ought to know. The steel beads of Honor's neck chain had flashed in sun and lamp light, had dropped on the floor and been rescued from corners and cracks; Madame never noticed. She did not even notice when Maria Patterson's handkerchief case fell into the soup, which, as Patricia said, served Maria right for tatting at table. Soeur S?raphine saw, and Maria got no pudding, but Madame Madeleine never so much as looked that way, and never faltered in her recital of the virtues and sufferings of St. Zita.

Dear Madame Madeleine! Surely her birthday was the happiest day of the happy year for herself and all of us.

What a voyage of wonder that was! The morning was crystal clear, the mountains stood in dazzling white and resplendent green, the lake was a great sparkling sapphire studded with gold and diamonds.

Honor, sitting near the stern, watched the swirling wake, stretching far behind, saw the rainbow bubbles rise, dance, break, fall away in silver showers. She was fascinated, could not even look up at her beloved mountains.

Honor shook her shoulders a little impatiently. Stephanie was always seeing distinguished strangers; they seldom, if ever, were distinguished in Honor's eyes.

Suppose, she thought, an Arm should suddenly appear, rising from the bosom of the lake,

"Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful!"

Suppose Undine were there--no! she lived in a fountain; well, other nymphs then! There must be ever so many. But it was to be some time yet before Honor came to her water world.

"Regard the mountains, my child!" said Madame. "They also are dressed to welcome us, is it not so?"

Honor looked up, and the mountains took possession of her again. One could hardly look at the white giants themselves, they were too dazzling, midway between the vivid blues of sky and lake, the blinding sunlight beating on them. Instinctively one's eyes blinked, fell, rested on the lovely green of the lower forest-clad heights; lower still, on the mellow brown huddle at their feet, on the very edge of the water, the Rocks of Meillerie.

"Behold!" said Madame. "The good rocks which await us!"

The good rocks, basking in sunshine as soft as it was warm, neither dazzled nor blinded; they welcomed. They were actually warm under the feet, as, released from the steamer, the happy girls clambered over them, laden with baskets, shawls, campstools.

"This way!" the brown rocks invited: "to the left here, my children, under our shadow, for the sun is hot! here rather to the right, since the footing is better. Yonder is a place of treachery; avoid always that emerald patch! Unknown depths lurk beneath."

And so on, and so on! Did the rocks actually speak, or was it Soeur S?raphine panting in the rear, cautioning, adjuring? Never mind! Here they were at last in the picnic place, their own place, discovered by the two good sisters, Madame Madeleine and Soeur S?raphine, hundreds of years ago, when they were girls themselves. No one else knew of it, they were sure; except, of course, Atli and Gretli, and they were safe. It was a family affair, the rock parlor, with its brown walls and its carpet of softest moss. No treachery here! The moss was as dry as it was soft; a wonderful moss, like tiny velvet ferns; Honor and Stephanie agreed it could grow nowhere else in the world. Here and there baby rocks jutted through the green, making perfect stools; there was even an armchair for Madame; it was arranged, Soeur S?raphine assured them gaily. Nature, the good Mother Superior of the White Sisters yonder--she indicated the towering giants above them--had designed this place for them.

Down through the brown rocks, stepping as sturdily and easily as if on level ground, came the gigantic twins, Margoton's brother and sister; he bearing a shining milkcan, she a comb of golden honey in a blue bowl. This also was a part of the regular programme. Never were twins more alike. Clip Gretli's flaxen hair and put her into Atli's white shirt, broad green breeches and worsted stockings; furnish Atli with two heavy braids hanging to his waist, and dress him in bodice and petticoat--Madame asked you--was there a difference? They were superb, even Patricia allowed that. Their massive, regular features, their blue eyes, the flash of their white teeth, the ruddy brown of cheek and chin, contrasting with the milk-white strip of forehead when the shady hat came off--all this with the figure of a Norse viking and--"Is there such a word as 'vi-queen'?" asked Patricia. Soeur S?raphine thought not: the idea, however, was admirable. That was certainly what our good Atli and Gretli resembled. Vee-king! vee-quin--: ki--veen! my faith! That was difficult, if you would! a majestic language, but of a complexity!

Honor thought silently that they were more like the Norse Gods: Baldur the Beautiful, Nanna the Fair: there was a story about them in a little brown book--

"It is that we understand!" said Gretli simply; "she is our sister, do you see?"

Atli nodded gravely.

"It is like that!" he confirmed her. "We are all creatures of the good God. Few human beings have the virtues of La Dumaine. The Duchesse, now, is of another quality; that cow is malicious, if you will. Figure to yourselves, my ladies, her endeavoring to snatch from our poor Dumaine the tuft of clover that I had found for her and brought up from the valley. An evil beast! my faith, she was well paid for that, the Duchesse; good strokes of the cudgel rewarded her."

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