CHAPTER XI.

THE TURNING OF THE WORM

No one spoke a word for quite a minute. The girls and mamma were looking at me--I was conscious of their eyes all over me--and I was looking at the floor. I felt as if I had been guilty of--to say the very least--the gravest impropriety, though I had not the faintest notion how, and was thoroughly well aware that now the storm was about to burst,--which presently it did. Mamma began--in that tone of voice in which she addresses observations to the servants which she dares them to deny. It gives you the impression that she is sitting on the safety-valve, and that in another half-second there will be a blow-up. And there generally is.

“Norah, may I ask you to tell me what is the meaning of the scene which I have just witnessed?”

I smoothed the petals of one of Mr Carter’s roses.

“Really, mamma, you know as well as I do.”

“Please don’t speak to me in that impertinent manner.” Her voice was raised perhaps half a tone. “I insist upon an explanation. Why have these men behaved in so disgraceful a fashion, and what encouragement have you been giving them?”

“Encouragement? I?” I glanced up with what I intended to be my air of perfect innocence. I do not fancy, from the expression which was on mamma’s countenance, that she quite liked the look which was on mine. “Audrey and Doris have been here the whole time. They will be able to tell you what encouragement I have offered.”

“Do you expect me to believe that these men would have given you--you!--the presents which were intended for your sisters, unless you had offered them some extraordinary and disgraceful encouragement?”

“I do not know why they gave the things to me. I am sure I did not want them. I could not have told them so more plainly. I shall have pleasure in handing them over to whoever you think they were originally intended for.”

Doris spoke. She was still sitting on the couch, her arms raised, her hands clasped under the back of her head, her face turned towards the ceiling. Her manner was smilingly acid.

“How nice of you, Norah! And will you really give me Mr Purchase’s red roses, and Audrey Mr Carter’s pink ones, and Lilian Mr Rumford’s bonbons? Eveleen already has Mr Hammond’s gloves, and mamma the Major’s turkey,--at least, she will have, when she picks it up from the floor, since those you declined to accept. How very sweet you are! Think of studying our feelings to that extent.”

Lilian came forward. She looked more disagreeable than any of them. Considering that Mr Rumford’s conduct had been so very unexpected, and that she had made up her mind that it was time that she should marry someone, and that Mr Rumford was the most eligible person who seemed likely to present himself, there was some excuse for her, though I do not think she need have been quite so vicious as she was.

“At any rate, I will have those bonbons. They certainly were not meant for you.”

She positively snatched at the box, which was on the ottoman at my side. I looked up at her with my sweetest smile.

“With the greatest possible pleasure, my dear Lilian. I should not wish to accept anything from Mr Rumford. You know that he is not the sort of person to whom I should care to be indebted in the smallest particular.”

“Then don’t you dare to go to the Gaiety with him to-night!”

“Dare? My dear Lilian, what very odd language you do use. It’s not a question of daring, I can assure you.” I smiled down at Mr Carter’s roses, which I had exchanged for Mr Purchase’s. “It’s not my fault if he prefers to take me instead of you--is it?”

I thought she would have boxed my ears. I feel sure she would have liked to. Eveleen laughed.

“And I suppose,” she said, “that it’s not your fault if they all of them prefer to take you instead of us.”

I kept on smiling at the roses.

“I don’t know why they should prefer it. I haven’t an idea.”

“It is a novel experience, isn’t it?”

“I certainly haven’t been to the theatre with so many gentlemen as you, if that’s what you mean.”

I did not raise my eyes, but I have a suspicion that Eveleen looked at me a little waspishly.

“I wonder if, after all, you are cleverer than we have given you credit for. If so, you have managed to hide your light under a bushel for a good many years. You must excuse my saying so, but you seem this afternoon to have performed a sort of conjuring trick.”

“A conjuring trick? How?”

“You have captured, at a single stroke, the five hearts which, separately and individually, we have been laboriously cultivating, and all the seats which were meant for us; while we--we, alas!--have been left lamenting. Don’t you think yourself that that’s a sort of conjuring trick?”

“You know, Eveleen, men are very fickle.”

“I have had some experience of men, as you have hinted, and I am painfully aware, my dear child, of the truth of that elementary fact in natural history; but I did not know that they were fickle to quite the extent which you suggest. I personally have never before seen them perform a right-about-face quite so rapidly, or quite so impudently either.”

Audrey came and planted herself on the carpet at my feet.

“Let me look at you, Norah. Every marvel, the wise inform us, is capable of a natural explanation; so perhaps this is.” I was conscious that those lovely eyes of hers, which see everything, were subjecting me to a curious scrutiny. “Do you know that there is something different about you somehow. It’s a sort of atmosphere. I’m sensible of it as I look at you. Let me see your eyes.” I did. I saw her breathe more quickly the moment they were fastened on her face. “That’s it! Child, what hankey-pankey have you been indulging in?” She laid her hands upon my knees. “Do you know that there is magic in your eyes, and that you’re prettier than I am?”

“Audrey! Don’t talk such nonsense! As if I didn’t know!”

“I beat you in regularity of feature--in those formal charms which go to the composition of a picture; but there’s magic in your eyes. No man could look at them and remain unmoved. I can’t. They move me quite funnily. I’d like to kiss them, and I’m not a kissing person as a rule. Masculine flesh is much more susceptible than mine. Doris, come here and look at her, and tell me if you don’t see exactly what I mean.”

“I’m much obliged, but I don’t happen to be interested. I have seen too many persons apparently moved by them already. What I want to know is, is Jack Purchase going to be moved by them for ever.”

Audrey had never looked away from my face. Although she might not have been aware of it, in her voice there came a touch of anxiety.

“Norah, you’re not fond of Mr Carter, are you?”

“Well--in a kind of a way.”

“In a kind of a way? What kind of a way? Remember, child, that what is sport to you may be--something else to me.”

I was in a mischievous frame of mind. Each moment the mood was growing on me. What is more, my courage had returned. When I thought of what I had suffered at the hands of those four girls, and realised that now an opportunity had come--though goodness only knew whence, or how, or why!--to pay them back some of their own coin, an imp of malice seemed to enter into me, so that I did not care what I did or said. Ignoring Audrey’s evident earnestness I tried to seem as indifferent as I could.

“I don’t like him as much as I do Jack Purchase.”

“Don’t you, indeed!” retorted Doris, still with her face upturned. “What an altogether delightful person you seem to have suddenly become--such a storehouse of all the sisterly virtues. You have my permission to like Mr Purchase as much as you please; and he is at liberty to like you--if he is that sort of person.”

“It’s ridiculous!” cried Lilian, in that vicious way of hers. “Norah is nothing but a great, ungainly, awkward gawk. She always has been, and always will be. She is as little likely to appeal to a decent man as one of Barnum’s freaks. The only kind of person to whom she is likely to commend herself is such a monstrosity as Crooked Ben.”

When she said that, I went hot all over. I made up my mind that I would show her no mercy, at any rate.

“If that is so isn’t it rather queer that Mr Rumford should prefer my society to yours?”

“He doesn’t, and you know very well he doesn’t. If you suppose he does then you must be a little madder even than I thought, and I am not conscious of ever having rated your intellectual capacity highly. These men have simply combined to make you the victim of a stupid practical joke. They know you are dull, and have traded on that knowledge to a degree for which I readily admit there is no excuse.”

“You think so?”

“Surely you are not going to be such an idiot as to take their tomfooleries seriously? Use your common-sense--or what stands you in the place of common-sense. Has any one of them ever treated you with sufficient civility to enable you to justify to yourself their ridiculous conduct of this afternoon--the preposterous pose they have taken up? On the contrary, haven’t they studiously ignored your very existence--except on those occasions when they have gone out of their way to laugh at you.”

“That’s true enough. I’m afraid they have not been very nice to me--in the past.”

“In the past! Do you consider, then, that they have treated you nicely in the present--this afternoon--just now, for instance?”

“I am of opinion that they have behaved very horridly to us--including Norah. We should be quite justified in never admitting them into the house again. Were I Norah I should signify my resentment of their conduct in a fashion which they would not be likely to forget. However, tastes differ. It is possible that Norah has her own ideas.”

This was Doris. Then came Eveleen--in almost everything she said there was a meaning which was not upon the surface. She is just a mistress of innuendo.

“There are people who would prefer to occupy the peculiar position of a common butt rather than not be taken notice of at all. Perhaps these gentlemen have counted on the fact. In some men the sense of humour takes such an odd direction.”

Audrey showed that she had a clearer insight into the real inwardness of the matter than all the rest of them put together.

“You are wrong--all of you. This afternoon Norah is a witch--she has bewitched them.”

Eveleen sneered.

“Really? What a very simple, lucid, and satisfactory explanation of these gentlemen’s wrong-headedness.”

“Audrey!” cried Lilian. “How can you talk such nonsense? Do you want to make a greater fool of her than she has been made already.”

“Lilian, your temper is such a short one; do keep hold of it. I’m not holding a brief for Norah; but if you come here and look at her eyes, and realise the intangible something which is in the atmosphere which surrounds her, you’ll catch my meaning--for you’re almost as good a judge of that sort of thing as I am!”

But Lilian was not to be persuaded.

“Mamma,” she exclaimed, “why do you allow Audrey to back up those wretched men in their attempts to turn poor Norah’s naturally silly head? Do you consider that their behaviour this afternoon has been creditable either to themselves, or to us, or to you? We are your daughters. Can you not insist on our being treated, at any rate while we are in your house, with at least the elements of common respect?”

Mamma assumed what she meant to be her most dignified air. Her remarks were intended to be both judicial and crushing.

“Lilian, you forget yourself, and me. I have hitherto shown myself capable of watching over my daughters, so far as they have permitted me to do so. Unfortunately, in some directions, the young women of the present day are in advance of their parents. Audrey, I must request you not to make foolish remarks to Norah, who has already been placed in a sufficiently ridiculous position. Norah, I will not comment at this moment on the extremely singular manner in which you have deemed it proper to behave. I find it difficult to credit that I have been witnessing the conduct of a child of my own. But on that subject I shall have plenty to say later; of that you may be sure. In the meantime you will be so good as to understand that I positively forbid you ever to speak to either of these gentlemen again, or to remain, under any circumstances, in a room in which they are. Now you will please to leave this room, and retire to your own.”

She moved on one side, as if she expected me to march right past her then and there. But I didn’t. I put first Mr Carter’s and then Mr Purchase’s roses to my nose, and kept on smiling.

“Never speak to them again? Mamma, what do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I say; and what I say is intelligible even to you. Now, go.”

“But, mamma, I am going to dine with them, and going to the theatre with them afterwards.”

Mamma came a step nearer. She looked very angry indeed.

“Be careful, Norah, that you don’t go too far.”

“Too far! Mamma, what do you mean? You heard them ask me, press me even--especially Major Tibbet--and the arrangements which were made. They are coming here in a body at a quarter to seven;--and you, Eveleen, must have noticed how Mr Hammond begged and prayed I wouldn’t keep them waiting.”

“Norah, let me advise you not to force me to resort to measures which you will afterwards have serious cause to regret. Don’t defy me! You have not seemed to be a child of mine from the day that you were born. You have been a burden to me and your sisters all along. Your conduct this afternoon is a climax. The limits of my patience are nearly reached. Do as I tell you--leave this room.”

“I’ll leave this room with pleasure. After what you have said I’m hardly likely to be tempted to remain. But before I go I mean to have my say and it’s no use, mamma, your trying to stop me.”

I stood up, a bunch of roses in either hand; and though mamma looked as if she would have liked to annihilate me then and there, I fancy there was something in my appearance which persuaded even her that it might be advisable, just this once, to let me gang my own queer gait. I was so much larger than she was, in every way, that to attempt physical coercion would, obviously, be absurd. And it seemed that no other measures would avail; so I had my say.

“You have it that I have been a burden to you and to the girls. Does it not occur to you that there may be another side to that position, and that you and the girls have been a burden to me? I suggest it with no unfilial intention, or in any spirit of disrespect; but doesn’t it? So far back as I can remember you have never treated me as if I seemed to be your child. You have thwarted my every wish, tried to force me into grooves for which nature has unfitted me, trammelled me wherever I sought expansion. You have always held my sisters up to me as models of all the virtues--as I have not the slightest doubt they are--and you have taught them to regard me as half idiot, half monster. I readily admit that they have been willing pupils, so that I verily believe that you and they have come to look upon me as of different flesh and blood than yourselves--almost as something lower than the beasts that grovel. My life, so far, has been an arid waste. I do not think that during the whole of it I have known a week’s real happiness, which is scant measure when you consider what a good time the girls have always had. You must concede that my turn to have a good time is nearly due. If you do or don’t, it’s come. I present, my dear mamma and sisters, an, I am afraid, unpalatable fact--that my turn to have a good time has come. As Audrey puts it--I’m a witch. I’ve become one in the twinkling of an eye--just as it happens in the fairy tales. You have seen how I bewitched those five men whom you have all been so assiduously courting. Yes--courting; it’s no good any of you looking black--it’s the exact word. In your dexterous, delicate, dainty way you’ve all of you courted every man you’ve ever met. Now, I never courted any man.”

“For reasons,” murmured Eveleen.

“Yes, Eveleen, for reasons; one of them being that you’ve always done your best to make it clear how absurd it would be for me to attempt to court any man who was in the least desirable. Yet now these men have courted me!--you’ve seen it with your own eyes!--to the ruination of your tempers! At sight of me they’ve thrown themselves at my head before your very faces, pressed on me the offerings which were designed for you, implored my acceptance of the seats which you had hoped to occupy. And they have left the house, ignoring your existence--as mine has been wont to be ignored; thinking only of me, looking forward rapturously to the evening they hope to spend in my society. And they shall spend it, too. I’ll sit in all those seats, turn and turn about, one after the other; and I’ll be admired by all the theatre--or, at least, by all the men in it. You wait and you shall see; or, if you don’t see, afterwards you shall hear. It will amuse you hugely, I haven’t the slightest doubt. And I’ll dine with them. You know, mamma, that Major Tibbet can be trusted to order a dinner; and though I mayn’t do it such justice as you would, I’ll do my best. And I should like to see any of you try to stop me. How would you propose to do it? Physically, I’m a match for all of you together. In a muscular sense, I’m a splendid animal. Compared to me you’re like dolls, soft as putty--you pride yourselves on it!--while I’m comparatively as hard as iron. I could drop you out of the window, one after the other, or all together, with the greatest ease.”

Audrey touched my arm.

“Norah, don’t talk like that.”

“I am only putting a purely supposititious case, my dearest Audrey. What is more, if any of you were to seek to stay me with so much as a word, when those men come I’d make my complaint to them; then you’d see what it means for a man to be bewitched by a woman. At a word from me there’s nothing they would not do. I’ve but to raise my finger, and they’d cast what you call decency to the winds. Then you’d see the natural man; it would surprise you. They’re just my slaves. And now that I have made the position clear to you, and my intentions plain, I shall have much pleasure--in leaving you the room.”

I left it. I fancy I left them in rather a curious frame of mind as well.