CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FINISHED SENTENCE

For some moments I could not think what had happened. I had just been eloping with the Duke of Chelmsford, and because several men had maintained that he ought to do nothing of the kind, he had put me in his pocket--which was not anything like large enough--and thrown Jane’s crimson shoes into his sister’s face, who had thereupon changed into a horse--with Walter Hammond’s head, on which he had sprung; and, galloping down the racecourse, had dragged me from his pocket--with much difficulty!--and married me in the middle of the grand stand. I felt, even in my sleep, that this was a surprising way for a person to behave, and that I had a grievance, when all at once I became conscious of Audrey’s face bent over my bed, and of the fact that she was shaking me.

“Do you know what time it is?” I did not, and did not care. I fancy I signified as much. “It’s half-past eleven, and already people have come to see you.” Still I was indifferent: as yet the statement conveyed no meaning. “How are you feeling?”

“Cheap.”

Audrey laughed.

“That’s lack of experience, my dear. Though it’s true that the more expensive a night one has, the more economical one feels in the morning--especially, I fancy, when it’s a woman in the case. Though I’ve known men who suffered. But you did have a good time--didn’t you?”

“Don’t ask me. I suppose I did--but--at present--I’m not quite sure. It was a little nightmarey.”

Audrey was still. Although my eyes were closed I was oddly conscious that hers were searching my face with a curious scrutiny. And, somehow, I seemed to know that what she saw there made her sorry, but whether for herself or for me I could not tell.

“I fancy that everyone must have been a wee bit mad--yesterday.”

There was an inflection in her voice which caused me to look up.

“Mad? Yes; I think they must have been!”

“Some of Puck’s magic powder must have got into their eyes, so that they saw things as they did in that wood near Athens. Perhaps they’ll have got it out to-day.”

“Perhaps.”

Again she looked at me, and, as I was looking at her, this time I saw that there was trouble in her eyes, trouble which seemed to grow as she looked. Stooping, she kissed me, saying something which I did not understand at all.

“Never mind, Norah; we’ve all got our burdens to bear. It’s a pretty hard world for feminine things. Shall I tell those people you cannot see them, that you’re not feeling well? You don’t seem quite up to the mark, you know.”

“Am I looking ill?”

“No--not ill--exactly. You’re like your ordinary self: and--last night--you hardly were.”

This time something in her words, her tone, her manner, did give me a hint of what it was she meant. As I began to perceive what it was she wanted me to understand I became conscious of a tightness about the region of the heart, as if it had been suddenly weighted with lead. She saw it was so, because she kissed me again.

“Shall I send them away?”

While I hesitated, because the thought which she had presented to my mind had left me for the moment speechless, mamma came into the room. The instant she spoke, it was plain that she had heard what Audrey had said:

“They won’t go,” she began. “I can’t think what people are coming to nowadays--never saw such manners in my life--if those men were crossing-sweepers they could not behave worse!--and I’m not sure that some of them are much better! One of them has the assurance to call himself the Duke of Chelmsford. Quite apart from anything else, the fact of his being so extremely good-looking proclaims him an impostor. All dukes are notoriously ugly. Norah, I insist upon your telling me what is the meaning of these proceedings.”

Audrey answered for me.

“My dear mamma, since Norah is scarcely awake I can’t see how you can expect her to explain what she herself as yet knows nothing about.”

Mamma pretended to be angry with Audrey, which was a most unusual thing, for no one was ever angry with Audrey long.

“It’s no use your endeavouring to palliate Norah’s conduct, Audrey--I won’t have it!--I have had too much of it already!--I don’t like the attitude you have taken up in the matter!--it doesn’t become you! Norah’s behaviour is beyond my comprehension--look at the scene last night! And now here are these men--strange men!--at this unseemly hour of the morning, demanding to see her as if they were presenting a pistol at my head. I will not keep silent and allow scandal to be brought upon my house. Tell me at once, Norah, who is this person who calls himself the Duke of Chelmsford?”

“He is the Duke of Chelmsford, mamma.”

“How do you know? And how did you become acquainted with him, if he is--you, of all the people in the world?”

“He introduced himself to me last night.”

“Introduced himself to you!--a man in his position!--to you! Where were those other men that such a thing should have been possible?”

I sighed, at least I made a noise which I suppose may be described as a sigh, though it has always seemed to me to be rather a poetic word to apply to the sort of gasping sound one makes when one feels that other people are just a trifle stupid.

“It would take me a good time to explain, mamma, and then perhaps you wouldn’t understand.”

“Indeed, though that’s a remark which no girl ought to make to her mother, I daresay it’s true enough; the whole thing’s beyond my understanding. Ever since yesterday afternoon I’ve been asking myself if the whole world’s gone mad. And now that I look at you I ask myself more than ever. No man has ever seen anything in you except two eyes and a nose, and now what they think they see in you all of a sudden is beyond me altogether. What you say about her having changed, Audrey, is just nonsense, except it’s changed for the worse--unless you wish to insinuate that my eyesight’s failing me. She’s always been a plain girl--the only one of my family!--and she’s a plain woman--without even that kind of plainness which is interesting. And what you wish me to understand by talking about her having changed sufficiently to account for the behaviour of those men, as I say, unless I’m going blind, it’s balderdash you’re talking. She’s a fright, just that, and nothing more; and it’s a bad day when I, her mother, that never had a child except her that wasn’t fit for framing--have to say it.”

During the utterance of these very outspoken remarks, I knew--although I was not looking--that Audrey was making signs to mamma to be a little careful in her choice of words; signs which, apparently, mamma preferred to ignore--feeling, possibly, that, under the circumstances, to spare my feelings was to spoil the child. When mamma had quite finished then I did turn towards Audrey, and when I caught her eyes she smiled, there was no mistake about her being a picture well worth framing!

“Never mind what mamma says,” she whispered.

“I don’t,” I replied, with perfect candour, and equal truth. “I never do.”

Of course the confession was not lost upon mamma.

“If I’d spoken to my mother like that, in her presence, she’d have beaten me; but, in those days, daughters used to look upon a mother as a parent. Now, she might as well be the cattle in the field. And the consequences of it will be, Norah O’Brady, that you may as well go clerking, or companion to an old lady, or something equally as degrading to your father’s child, for all the chances you’ll ever have of getting decently settled in life--in spite of all the half-witted men who’re invading my house at this time of the morning. And what it is that I’m to do with them, I’d like to know.”

Audrey repeated the question which I had left unanswered.

“Shall I send them away?”

I hesitated, searching her face for what was written on it. It was with a fresh sinking of the heart that I understood, or thought I did.

“No; let them wait. I will be as quick as I can, and come down to them. It will be better to get it over.”

She stooped down and whispered in my ear, so that, this time, I was the only one who heard:

“Men are the least dependable of all God’s creatures. You mustn’t mind.”

It was a cryptic utterance--to those who were without the key, which I fancied that I had. She took mamma away with her. I was left alone.

The instant they were gone I brought up, from between the sheets, a scrap of paper--_the_ scrap. I had taken it with me to bed. All night long, it seemed, I had held it in my hand, clutched between my fingers. I had thought of it the moment I supposed myself to have an idea of Audrey’s meaning; and, feeling it there, had realised how close a neighbour it had been while I had slept. It was all crumpled. I smoothed it out, and looked. The writing had grown faint; so faint as to suggest that the writer must have used ink of a very evanescent quality. Already, here and there, the words could scarcely be deciphered.

But the sentence was finished!

How, while I had slept, the finish had been arrived at, or by whom, I could not tell. The result was unmistakable. My doom stared me in the face; my forebodings were realised; the meaning of what I had seen in Audrey’s eyes, heard in her voice, was made quite plain.

“Your wish shall be gratified until to-morrow.”

“To-morrow” had been the missing word--that was, to-day. My wish was to be gratified until to-day, which meant that all the gratification I was to receive--so far as that particular wish was concerned--I had already had. What was my wish exactly? I should not have liked to have had to answer the question on my oath. I had been talking pretty wildly at the time! But, so far as I could remember, I wished that all men--every man--might fall in love with me at sight. As, lying there, in cold blood--metaphorically, in very cold blood, indeed!--I endeavoured to recall it, as accurately as I could, what a singular wish it seemed, to say the very least!

And it had been gratified? And now it was done with? Dear! dear! what a very short span of enjoyment had been allotted me. What a very small result the boon which had been conferred had ended in. Was that the meaning of the feeling I was conscious of--that I had returned again to what I was? It certainly was true that I was oppressed by an apprehension, which was near akin to fear, that since last night something had been lost, that something had gone from me, which I had when I laid down to sleep--gone, never to return. What could it be? It was not that I was ill, or tired, or--as I had pretended to Audrey--even cheap. It was nothing half so commonplace.

I got out of bed, and, as I did so, I felt that virtue had gone from me; life, that ichor of the gods which had been in my veins last night instead of blood. I had hit it--I was as one of the gods--the writer of the sentence on that scrap of paper alone knew how--and was again but mortal. Between sleeping and waking, I had come down the Olympian hill, slung down, rather, been kicked down, perhaps, amid the jeers and jesting of the rightful inhabitants; and at the very, very foot was once more--Norah O’Brady.

I needed not the assurance of the mirror. Had I done so, I had it, beyond all possibility of controverting. The face I saw in it was the one I had always seen; not the one that had seemed to blaze at me yester afternoon. The light had gone from the eyes; the flare, a mere glimpse of which--as, somehow, I had known--would set the most sluggish blood in masculine veins flaming as with fire; and, with it, all had gone. There was but left the plain, uninteresting, undistinguished, unintellectual face of overgrown Norah O’Brady.

I dressed. How shabby my things did seem, unusually shabby, even for me. Ill-shaped, ill-fitting, with about them, every one, that exasperating suggestion of having been intended for someone else. Always, everything I had, seemed to shout at me, with furious grievance, that it might have looked presentable if only it had been worn by a creature different entirely to me. If they had only let me choose my own things, and, regardless of what was, or was not, the mode, have permitted me to clothe myself in the garments in which I looked least awkward; at any rate, my actual deficiencies might not have been quite so obtrusive. But, in continual parodies of the fashions of the moment--which went very well with them, but, oh! so horribly with me--what a fright they made me look.