Watch and Ward (Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1878)/Chapter 11
_chapters_2_and_11_heading_ornament.png)
XI.
_dropcap_N.png)
"Give it to me, my dear; I will attend to it," said Mrs. Paul; and straightway read the address. "I suppose this is your old schoolmistress. Mr. Fenton told me all about it." Then, after turning the letter for a moment, "Keep it over a day!"
"Not an hour," said Nora, with decision. "My time is precious."
"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Paul, "we shall be delighted to keep you a month."
"You are very good. You know I have my living to make."
"Don't talk about that! I make my living,—I know what it means! Come, let me talk to you as a friend. Don't go too far. Suppose, now, you take it all back? Six months hence, it may be too late. If you leave him lamenting too long, he 'll marry the first pretty girl he sees. They always do,—a man refused is just like a widower. They 're not so faithful as the widows! But let me tell you it 's not every girl that gets such a chance; I would have snapped at it. He 'll love you the better, you see, for your having led him a little dance. But he mustn't dance too long! Excuse the liberty I take; but Mr. Fenton and I, you see, are great friends, and I feel as if his cousin was my cousin. Take back this letter and give me just one word to post,—Come! Poor little man! You must have a high opinion of men, my dear, to play such a game with this one!"
If Roger had wished for a proof that Nora still cared for him, he would have found it in the disgust she felt at hearing Mrs. Paul undertake his case. The young girl colored with her sense of the defilement of sacred things. George, surely, for an hour, at least, might have kept her story intact. "Really, madam," she answered, "I can't discuss this matter. I am extremely obliged to you." But Mrs. Paul was not to be so easily baffled. Poor Roger, roaming helpless and hopeless, would have been amazed to hear how warmly his cause was being urged. Nora, of course, made no attempt to argue the case. She waited till the lady had exhausted her eloquence, and then, "I am a very obstinate person," she said; "you waste your words. If you go any further I shall take offence." And she rose, to signify that Mrs. Paul might do likewise. Mrs. Paul took the hint, but in an instant she had turned about the hard reverse of her fair face, in which defeated self-interest smirked horribly. "Bah! you're a silly girl!" she cried; and swept out of the room. Nora, after this, determined to avoid a second interview with George. Her bad headache furnished a sufficient pretext for escaping it. Half an hour later he knocked at her door; quite too loudly, she thought, for good taste. When she opened it, he stood there, excited, angry, ill-disposed. "I am sorry you are ill," he said; "but a night's rest will put you right. I have seen Roger."
"Roger! is he here?"
"Yes, he 's here. But he don't know where you are. Thank the Lord you left him! he 's a brute!" Nora would fain have learned more,—whether he was angry, whether he was suffering, whether he had asked to see her; but at these words she shut the door in her cousin's face. She hardly dared think of what offered impertinence this outbreak of Fenton's was the rebound. Her night's rest brought little comfort. She wondered whether Roger had supposed George to be her appointed mediator, and asked herself whether it was not her duty to see him once again and bid him a respectfully personal farewell. It was a long time after she rose before she could bring herself to leave her room. She had a vague hope that if she delayed, her companions might have gone out. But in the dining-room, in spite of the late hour, she found George gallantly awaiting her. He had apparently had the discretion to dismiss Mrs. Paul to the background, and apologized for her absence by saying that she had breakfasted long since and had left the house. He seemed to have slept off his wrath and was full of brotherly bonhomie. "I suppose you will want to know about Roger," he said, when they were seated at breakfast. "He had followed you directly, in spite of your hope that he would n't; but it was not to beg you to come back. He counts on your repentance, and he expects you to break down and come to him on your knees, to beg his pardon and promise never to do it again. Pretty terms to marry a man on, for a woman of spirit! But he does n't know his woman, does he, Nora? Do you know what he intimated? indeed, he came right out with it. That you and I want to make a match! That you 're in love with me, Miss, and ran away to marry me. That we expected him to forgive us and endow us with a pile of money. But he 'll not forgive us,—not he! We may starve, we and our brats, before he looks at us. Much obliged! We shall thrive, for many a year, as brother and sister, sha n't we, Nora, and need neither his money nor his pardon?"
In reply to this speech, Nora sat staring in pale amazement. "Roger thought," she at last found words to say, "that it was to marry you I refused him,—to marry you I came to New York?"
Fenton, with seven-and-twenty years of impudence at his back, had received in his day snubs and shocks of various shades of intensity; but he had never felt in his face so chilling a blast of reprobation as this cold disgust of Nora's. We know that the scorn of a lovely woman makes cowards brave; it may do something towards making knaves honest men. "Upon my word, my dear," he cried, "I am sorry I hurt your feelings. It may be offensive, but it is true."
Nora wished in after years she had been able to laugh at this disclosure; to pretend, at least, to an exhilaration she so little felt. But she remained almost sternly silent, with her eyes on her plate, stirring her tea. Roger, meanwhile, was walking about under this detestable deception. Let him think anything but that! "What did you reply," she asked, "to this—to this—"
"To this handsome compliment? I replied that I only wished it were true; but that I feared I had no such luck! Upon which he told me to go to the Devil,—in a tone which implied that he did n't much care if you went with me."
Nora listened to this speech in freezing silence. "Where is Roger?" she asked at last.
Fenton shot her a glance of harsh mistrust. "Where is he? What do you want to know that for?"
"Where is he, please!" she simply repeated. And then, suddenly, she wondered how and where it was the two men had happened to meet. "Where did you find him?" she went on. "How did it happen?"
Fenton drained his cup of tea at one long gulp before he answered. "My dear Nora," he said, "it 's all very well to be modest, it 's all very well to be proud; but take care you are not ungrateful! I went purposely to look him up. I was convinced he would have followed you to beg and implore you, as I supposed, to come back. I wanted to say to him, 'She 's safe, she 's happy, she 's in the best hands. Don't waste your time, your words, your hopes. Give her rope. Go quietly home and leave things to me. If she gets homesick, I will let you know.' You see I 'm frank, Nora; that 's what I meant to say. But I was received with this broadside. I found a perfect bluster of injured vanity. 'You 're her lover, she's your mistress, and be d—d to both of you!'"
That George deliberately lied Nora did not distinctly say to herself, for she lacked practice in this range of incrimination. But she as little said to herself that this could be the truth. "I am not ungrateful," she answered firmly. "But where was it?"
At this, George pushed back his chair. "Where—where? Don't you believe me? Do you want to go and ask him if it 's true? What is the matter with you, anyway? What are you up to? Have you put yourself into my hands, or not?" A certain manly indignation was now kindled in his breast; he was equally angry with Roger, with Nora, and with himself; fate had offered him an overdose of contumely, and he felt a reckless, savage impulse to wring from the occasion that compliment to his power which had been so rudely denied to his delicacy. "Are you using me simply as a vulgar tool? Don't you care for me the least little bit? Let me suggest that for a girl in your—your ambiguous position, you are several shades too proud. Don't go back to Roger in a hurry! You are not the immaculate young person you were but two short days ago. Who am I, what am I, to the people whose opinion you care for? A very low fellow, my dear; and yet, in the eyes of the world, you have certainly taken up with me. If you are not prepared to do more, you should have done less. Nora, Nora," he went on, breaking into a vein none the less revolting for being more ardent, "I confess I don't understand you! But the more you puzzle me the more you fascinate me; and the less you like me the more I love you. What has there been, anyway, between you and Lawrence? Hang me if I can understand! Are you an angel of purity, or are you the most audacious of flirts?"
She had risen before he had gone far. "Spare me," she said, "the necessity of hearing your opinions or answering your questions. Please be a gentleman! Tell me, I once more beg of you, where Roger is to be found?"
"Be a gentleman!" was a galling touch. He placed himself before the door. "I refuse the information," he said. "I don't mean to have been played with, to have been buffeted hither by Roger and thither by you! I mean to make something out of all this. I mean to request you to remain quietly in this room. Mrs. Paul will keep you company. You did n't treat her over well, yesterday; but, in her way, she is quite as strong as you. Meanwhile I shall go to our friend. 'She 's locked up tight,' I will say; 'she 's as good as in jail. Give me five thousand dollars and I 'll let her out.' Of course he will begin to talk about legal proceedings. Then I will tell him that he is welcome to take legal proceedings if he does n't mind the exposure. The exposure won't be pleasant for you, Nora, you know; for the public takes things in the lump. It won't hurt me!"
"Heaven forgive you!" murmured Nora, for all response to this explosion. It made a hideous whirl about her; but she felt that to advance in the face of it was her best safety. It sickened rather than frightened her. She went to the door. "Let me pass!" she said.
Fenton stood motionless, leaning his head against the door, with his eyes closed. She faced him a moment, looking at him intently. He seemed ineffably repulsive. "Coward!" she cried. He opened his eyes at the sound; for an instant they met hers; then a burning blush blazed out strangely on his dead complexion; he strode past her, dropped into a chair, and buried his face in his hands. "O Lord!" he cried. "I am an ass!"
Nora made it the work of a single moment to reach her own room and fling on her bonnet and shawl, of another to descend to the hall door. Once in the street she never stopped running till she had turned a corner and put the house out of sight. She went far, hurried along by the ecstasy of relief and escape, and it was some time before she perceived that this was but half the question, and that she was now quite without refuge. Thrusting her hand into her pocket to feel for her purse, she found that she had left it in her room. Stunned and sickened as she was already, it can hardly be said that the discovery added to her grief. She was being precipitated toward a great decision; sooner or later made little difference. The thought of seeing Hubert Lawrence had now taken possession of her. Reserve, prudence, mistrust, had melted away; she was mindful only of her trouble, of his nearness, and of the way he had once talked to her. His address she well remembered, and she neither paused nor faltered. To say even that she reflected would be to speak amiss, for her longing and her haste were one. Between them both it was with a beating heart that she reached his door. The servant admitted her without visible surprise (for Nora wore, as she conceived, the air of some needy parishioner) and ushered her into his bachelor's parlor. As she crossed the threshold, she perceived with something both of regret and of relief, that he was not alone. He was sitting somewhat stiffly, with folded arms, facing the window, near which, before an easel, stood a long-haired gentleman of foreign and artistic aspect, giving the finishing touches to a portrait in crayons. Hubert was in position for a likeness of his handsome face. When Nora appeared, his handsome face remained for a moment a blank; the next it turned most eloquently pale. "Miss Lambert!" he cried.
There was such a tremor in his voice that Nora felt that, for the moment, she must have self-possession for both. "I interrupt you," she said with extreme deference.
"We are just finishing!" Hubert answered. "It is my portrait, you see. You must look at it." The artist made way for her before the easel, laid down his implements, and took up his hat and gloves. She looked mechanically at the picture, while Hubert accompanied him to the door, and they talked awhile about another sitting, and about a frame that was to be sent home. The portrait was clever, but superficial; better looking, at once, and worse looking than Hubert,—elegant, effeminate, unreal. An impulse of wonder passed through her mind that she should happen just then to find him engaged in this odd self-reproduction. It was a different Hubert that turned and faced her as the door closed behind his companion, the real, the familiar Hubert. He had gained time; but surprise, admiration, conjecture, a lively suggestion of dismay, were shining in his handsome eyes. Nora had dropped into the chair vacated by the artist; and as she sat there with clasped hands, she felt the young man reading the riddle of her shabby dress and her excited face. For him, too, she was the real Nora. Dismay in Hubert's face began to elbow its companions. He advanced, pushed towards her the chair in which he had been posturing, and, as he seated himself, made a half-movement to offer his hand; but before she could take it, he had begun to play with his watch-chain. "Nora," he asked, "what is it?"
What was it, indeed? What was her errand, and in what words could it be told? An inexpressible weakness had taken possession of her, a sense of having reached the goal of her journey, the term of her strength. She dropped her eyes on her shabby skirt and passed her hand over it with a gesture of eloquent simplicity. "I have left Roger," she said.
Hubert made no answer, but his silence seemed to fill the room. He sank back in his chair, still looking at her with startled eyes. The fact intimidated him; he was amazed and confused; yet he felt he must say something, and in his confusion he uttered a gross absurdity. "Ah," he said; "with his consent?"
The sound of his voice was so grateful to her that, at first, she hardly heeded his words. "I am alone," she added, "I am free." It was after she had spoken, as she saw him, growing, to his own sense, infinitely small in the large confidence of her gaze, rise in a kind of agony of indecision and stand before her, stupidly staring, that she felt he had neither taken her hand, nor dropped at her feet, nor divinely guessed her trouble; that, in fact, his very silence was a summons to tell her story and justify herself. Her presence there was either a rapture or a shame. Nora felt as if she had taken a jump, and was learning in mid-air that the distance was tenfold what she had imagined. It is strange how the hinging-point of great emotions may rest on an instant of time. These instants, however, seem as ages, viewed from within; and in such a reverberating moment Nora felt something that she had believed to be a passion melting from beneath her feet, crumbling and crashing into the gulf on whose edge she stood. But her shame at least should be brief. She rose and bridged this dizzy chasm with some tragic counterfeit of a smile. "I have come—I have come—" She began and faltered. It was a pity some great actress had not been there to note upon the tablets of her art the light, all-eloquent tremor of tone with which she transposed her embarrassment into the petition, "Could you lend me a little money?"
Hubert was simply afraid of her. All his falsity, all his levity, all his egotism and sophism, seemed to crowd upon him and accuse him in deafening chorus; he seemed exposed and dishonored. It was with an immense sense of relief that he heard her ask this simple favor. Money? Would money buy his release? He took out his purse and grasped a roll of bills; then suddenly he was overwhelmed by a sense of his cruelty. He flung the thing on the floor, and passed his hands over his face. "Nora, Nora," he cried, "say it outright; you despise me!"
He had become, in the brief space of a moment, the man she once had loved; but if he was no longer the rose, he stood too near it to be wantonly bruised. Men and women alike need in some degree to respect those they have suffered to wrong them. She stooped and picked up the porte-monnaie, like a beggar-maid in a ballad. "A very little will do," she said. "In a day or two I hope to be independent."
"Tell me at least what has happened!" he cried.
She hesitated a moment. "Roger has asked me to be his wife." Hubert's head swam with the vision of all that this simple statement embodied and implied. "I refused," Nora added, "and, having refused, I was unwilling to live any longer on his—on his—" Her speech at the last word melted into silence, and she seemed to fall a-musing. But in an instant she recovered herself. "I remember your once saying that you would have liked to see me poor and homeless. Here I am! You ought at least," she added with a laugh, "to pay for the exhibition!"
Hubert abruptly drew out his watch. "I expect here at any moment," he said, "a young lady of whom you may have heard. She is to come and see my portrait. I am engaged to marry her. I was engaged to marry her five months ago. She is rich, pretty, charming. Say but a single word, that you don't despise me, that you forgive me, and I will give her up, now, here, forever, and be anything you will take me for,—your husband, your friend, your slave!" To have been able to make this speech gave Hubert immense relief. He felt almost himself again.
Nora fixed her eyes on him, with a kind of unfathomable gentleness. "You are engaged, you were engaged? How strangely you talk about giving her up! Give her my compliments!" It seemed, however, that Nora was to have the chance of offering her compliments personally. The door was thrown open and admitted two ladies whom Nora vaguely remembered to have seen. In a moment she recognized them as the persons whom, on the evening she had gone to hear Hubert preach, he had left her, after the sermon, to conduct to their carriage. The younger one was decidedly pretty, in spite of a nose a trifle too aquiline. A pair of imperious dark eyes, as bright as the diamond which glittered in each of her ears, and a nervous, capricious rapidity of motion and gesture, gave her an air of girlish brusquerie, which was by no means without charm. Her mother's aspect, however, testified to its being as well to enjoy this charm at a distance. She was a stout, coarse-featured, good-natured woman, with a jaded, submissive expression, and seemed to proclaim by a certain ponderous docility, as she followed in her daughter's wake, the subserviency of matter to mind. Both ladies were dressed to the uttermost limit of opportunity. They came into the room staring frankly at Nora, and overlooking Hubert, with a gracious implication of his being already one of the family. The situation was a trying one, but he faced it as he might.
"This is Miss Lambert," he said gravely; and then with an effort to dissipate embarrassment by a jest, waving his hand toward his portrait, "This is the Reverend Hubert Lawrence!"
The elder lady moved toward the picture, but the other came straight to Nora. "I have seen you before!" she cried defiantly, and with defiance in her pretty eyes. "And I have heard of you too! Yes, you are certainly very handsome. But pray, what are you doing here?"
"My dear child!" said Hubert, imploringly, and with a burning side-glance at Nora. The world seemed to him certainly very cruel.
"My dear Hubert," said the young lady, "what is she doing here? I have a right to know. Have you come running after him even here? You are a wicked girl. You have done me a wrong. You have tried to turn him away from me. You kept him in Boston for weeks, when he ought to have been here; when I was writing to him day after day to come. I heard all about it! I don't know what is the matter with you. I thought you were so very well off! You look very poor and unhappy, but I must say what I think!"
"My own darling, be reasonable!" murmured her mother. "Come and look at this beautiful picture. There 's no deceit in that noble face!"
Nora smiled charitably. "Don't attack me," she said. "If I ever wronged you, I was quite unconscious of it, and I beg your pardon now."
"Nora," murmured Hubert, piteously, "spare me!"
"Ah, does he call you Nora?" cried the young lady. The harm 's done, madam! He will never be what he was. You have changed, Hubert!" And she turned passionately upon her intended. "You know you have! You talk to me, but you think of her. And what is the meaning of this visit? You are both strangely excited; what have you been talking about?"
"Mr. Lawrence has been telling me about you," said Nora; "how pretty, how charming, how gentle you are!"
"I am not gentle!" cried the other. "You are laughing at me! Was it to talk about my prettiness you came here? Do you go about alone, this way? I never heard of such a thing. You are shameless! do you know that? But I am very glad of it; because once you have done this for him, he will not care for you. That 's the way with men. And I am not pretty either, not as you are! You are pale and tired; you have got a horrid dress and shawl, and yet you are beautiful! Is that the way I must look to please you?" she demanded, turning back to Hubert.
Hubert, during this rancorous tirade, had stood looking as dark as thunder, and at this point he broke out fiercely, "Good God, Amy! hold your tongue,—I command you."
Nora, gathering her shawl together, gave Hubert a glance. "She loves you," she said, softly.
Amy stared a moment at this vehement adjuration; they she melted into a smile and turned in ecstasy to her mother. "O, did you hear that?" she cried. "That 's how I like him. Please say it again!"
Nora left the room; and, in spite of her gesture of earnest deprecation, Hubert followed her down stairs to the street. "Where are you going?" he asked in a whisper. "With whom are you staying?"
"I am alone," said Nora.
"Alone in this great city? Nora, I will do something for you."
"Hubert," she said, "I never in my life needed help less than at this moment. Farewell." He fancied for an instant that she was going to offer him her hand, but she only motioned him to open the door. He did so, and she passed out.
She stood there on the pavement, strangely, almost absurdly, free and light of spirit. She knew neither whither she should turn nor what she should do, yet the fears which had haunted her for a whole day and night had vanished. The sky was blazing blue overhead; the opposite side of the street was all in sun; she hailed the joyous brightness of the day with a kind of answering joy. She seemed to be in the secret of the universe. A nursery-maid came along, pushing a baby in a perambulator. She stooped and greeted the child, and talked pretty nonsense to it with a fervor which left the young woman staring. Nurse and child went their way, and Nora lingered, looking up and down the empty street. Suddenly a gentleman turned into it from the cross-street above. He was walking fast; he had his hat in his hand, and with his other hand he was passing his handkerchief over his forehead. As she stood and watched him draw near, down the bright vista of the street, there came upon her a singular and altogether nameless sensation, strangely similar to the one she had felt a couple of years before, when a physician had given her a dose of ether. The gentleman, she perceived, was Roger; but the short interval of space and time which separated them seemed to expand into a throbbing immensity and eternity. She seemed to be watching him for an age, and, as she did so, to be floating through the whole circle of emotion and the full realization of being. Yes, she was in the secret of the universe, and the secret of the universe was, that Roger was the only man in it who had a heart. Suddenly she felt a palpable grasp. Roger stood before her, and had taken her hand. For a moment he said nothing; but the touch of his hand spoke loud. They stood for an instant scanning the change in each other's faces. "Where are you going?" said Roger, at last, imploringly.
Nora read silently in his haggard eyes the whole record of his suffering. It is a strange truth that this seemed the most beautiful thing she had ever looked upon; the sight of it was delicious. It seemed to whisper louder and louder that secret about Roger's heart.
Nora collected herself as solemnly as one on a deathbed making a will; but Roger was still in miserable doubt and dread. "I have followed you," he said, "in spite of that request in your letter."
"Have you got my letter?" Nora asked.
"It was the only thing you had left me," he said, and drew it forth, creased and crumpled.
She took it from him and thrust it into the pocket of her dress, never taking her eyes off his own. "Don't try and forget that I wrote it," she said. "I want you to see me burn it up, and to remember that."
"What does it mean, Nora?" he asked, in hardly audible tones.
"It means that I am a wiser girl to-day than then. I know myself better, I know you better. Roger!" she cried, "it means everything!"
He passed her hand through his arm and held it there against his heart, while he stood looking hard at the pavement, as if to steady himself amid this great convulsion of things. Then raising his head, "Come," he said; "come!"
But she detained him, laying her other hand on his arm. "No; you must understand first. If I am wiser now, I have learnt wisdom at my cost. I am not the girl you proposed to on Sunday. I feel—I feel dishonored!" she said, uttering the word with a vehemence that stirred his soul to its depths.
"My own poor child!" he murmured, staring.
"There is a young girl in that house," Nora went on, "who will tell you that I am shameless!"
"What house? what young girl?"
"I don't know her name. Hubert is engaged to marry her."
Roger gave a glance at the house behind them, as if to fling defiance and oblivion upon all that it suggested and contained. Then turning to Nora with a smile of exquisite tenderness: "My dear Nora, what have we to do with Hubert's young girls?"
Roger, the reader will admit, was on a level with the occasion,—as with every other occasion that subsequently presented itself.
Mrs. Keith and Mrs. Lawrence are very good friends. On being complimented on possessing the confidence of so charming a woman as Mrs. Lawrence, Mrs. Keith has been known to say, opening and shutting her fan, "The fact is, Nora is under a very peculiar obligation to me!"
_end_of_chapter_11_ornament.png)
Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.