Part 11
Hubert hesitated a moment. She perceived a sudden watchful quiver in his eye, like a sword turned edge outward. She unsheathed one of her own steely beams, and for the tenth of a second there was a dainty crossing of blades. “I admire Miss Lambert,” cried Hubert, “with all my heart.”
“True admiration,” said Mrs. Keith, “is one half respect and the other half self-denial.”
Hubert laughed, ever so politely. “I will put that into a sermon,” he said.
“O, I have a sermon to preach you,” she answered. “Take your hat and go.”
He looked very grave: “I will go up and get my hat.” Mrs. Keith, catching his eye as he closed the carriage door, wished to Heaven that she had held her tongue. “I have done him injustice,” she murmured as she went. “I have fancied him light, but I see he’s vicious.” Hubert, however, kept his promise in so far as that he did take up his hat. Having held it a moment he put it down. He had reckoned without his hostess! Nora was seated by the fire, with her bare arms folded, with a downcast brow. Dressed in pale corn-color, her white throat confined by a band of blue velvet overstitched with a dozen pearls, she was not a subject for summary farewells. Meeting her eyes, he saw they were filled with tears. “You must not take this thing too hard,” he said.
For a moment she answered nothing; then she bent her face into her hands and her tears flowed. “O poor, poor Roger!” she cried.
Hubert watched her weeping in her ball-dress those primitive tears. “I have not given him up,” he said at last. “But suppose I had—” She raised her head and looked at him. “O,” he cried, “I should have a hundred things to say! Both as a clergyman and as a man, I should preach resignation. In this crisis, let me speak my mind. Roger is part of your childhood; your childhood’s at an end. Possibly, with it he too is to go! At all events you are not to feel that in losing him you lose everything. I protest! As you sit here he belongs to your past. Ask yourself what part he may play in your future. Believe me, you will have to settle it, you will have to choose. Here, in any case, _your_ life begins. Your tears are for the dead past; this is the future, with its living needs. Roger’s fate is only one of them.”
She rose with her tears replaced by a passionate gravity. “Ah, you don’t know what you say!” she cried. “Talk of my future if you like, but not of my past! No one can speak of it, no one knows it! Such as you see me here, bedecked and bedizened, I am a penniless, homeless, friendless creature! But for Roger, I might be in the streets! Do you think I have forgotten it, that I ever can forget it? There are things that color one’s life, memories that last forever. I have my share! What am I to settle, between whom am I to choose? My love for Roger is no choice, it is part and parcel of my being!”
Hubert was inspired; he forgot everything but that she was lovely. “I wish to Heaven,” he cried, “that you had never ceased to be penniless and friendless! I wish Roger had left you alone and not smothered you beneath this terrible burden of gratitude! Give him back his gifts! Take all _I_ have! In the streets? In the streets I should have found you, as lovely in your poverty as you are now in your finery, and a thousand times more free!” He seized her hand and met her eyes with irresistible ardor. Pain and pleasure, at once, possessed Nora’s heart. It was as if joy, bursting in, had trampled certain tender flowers that bloomed on the threshold. But Hubert had cried, “I love you! I love you!” and joy had taken up the words. She was unable to speak audibly; but in an instant she was spared the effort. The servant hastily came in with a note superscribed with her name. She motioned to Hubert to open it. He read it aloud. “Mr. Lawrence is sinking. You had better come. I send my carriage.” Nora’s voice came to her with a cry,—“He is dying, he is dying!”
In a minute’s time she found herself wrapped in her shawl and seated with Hubert in the doctor’s coupé. A few moments more and the doctor received them at the door of Roger’s room. They passed in, and Nora went straight to the bed. Hubert stood an instant and saw her drop on her knees beside the pillow. She flung back her shawl with vehemence, as if to release her arms; she was throwing them round her friend. Hubert went on into the adjoining chamber, of which the door stood open. The room was dark, the other lit by a night-lamp. He stood listening awhile, but heard nothing; then he began to walk slowly to and fro, past the doorway. He could see nothing but the shining train of Nora’s dress lying on the carpet beyond the angle of the bed. He wanted terribly to see more, but he feared to see too much. At moments he thought he heard whispers. This lasted some time; then the doctor came in, with what seemed to him an odd, unprofessional smile. “The young lady knows a few remedies not taught in the schools,” he whispered. “He has recognized her. He is good for to-night, at least. Half an hour ago he had no pulse at all, but this has started it. I will come back in an hour.” After he had gone Lucinda came, self-commissioned, and shut the door in Hubert’s face. He stood a moment, with an unreasoned sense of insult and defeat. Then he walked straight out of the house. But the next morning, after breakfast, a more generous sentiment moved him to return. The doctor was just coming away. “It was a Daniel come to judgment,” the doctor declared. “I verily believe she saved him. He will be sitting up in a fortnight.” Hubert learned that, having achieved her miracle, Nora had returned to Mrs. Keith’s. What arts she had used he was left to imagine. He had still a sore feeling of having just missed a crowning joy; but there might yet be time to grasp it. He felt, too, an urgent need of catching a glimpse of the afterglow of Nora’s mystical effluence. He repaired to Mrs. Keith’s, hoping to find the young girl alone. But the elder lady, as luck would have it, was established in the drawing-room, and she made haste to inform him that Nora, fatigued by her “watching,” had not yet left her room. But if Hubert was sombre, Mrs. Keith was radiant. Now was her chance to preach her promised sermon; she had just come into possession of facts that furnished a capital text.
“I suppose you will call me a meddling busybody,” she said. “I confess I seem to myself a model of forbearance. Be so good as to tell me in three words whether you are in love with Nora.”
Taken thus abruptly to task, Hubert, after a moment’s trepidation, kept his balance. He measured the situation at a glance, and pronounced it bad. But if heroic urbanity would save it, he would be urbane. “It is hardly a question to answer in two words,” he answered, with an ingenuous smile. “I wish you could tell me!”
“Really,” said Mrs. Keith, “it seems to me that by this time you might know. Tell me at least whether you are prepared to marry her?”
Hubert hesitated just an instant. “Of course not,—so long as I am not sure I am in love with her!”
“And pray when will you make up your mind? And what is to become of poor Nora meanwhile?”
“Why, Mrs. Keith, if Nora can wait, surely you can.” The urbanity need not be all on his side.
“Nora can wait? That’s easily said. Is a young girl a thing to be tried like a piano,—to be strummed on for a pretty tune? O Mr. Lawrence, if I had ever doubted of the selfishness of men! What this matter has been for you, you know best yourself; but I may tell you that for Nora it has been serious.” At these words Hubert passed his hand nervously through his hair and walked to the window. “The miserable fop!” said Mrs. Keith, privately. “His vanity is the only thing that has ears. It is very true they are long ones! If you are not able to make Nora a handsome offer of marriage,” she proceeded, “you have no business here. Retire, quietly, expeditiously, humbly. Leave Nora to me. I will heal her bruises. They shall have been wholesome ones.”
Hubert felt that these peremptory accents implied a menace, and that the lady spoke by book. His vanity rankled, but discretion drew a long breath. For a fortnight it had been shut up in a closet. He thanked his stars they had no witnesses; from Mrs. Keith, for once, he could afford to take a lesson. He remained silent for a moment, with his brow bent in meditation. Then turning suddenly, he faced the music. “Mrs. Keith,” he said, “you have done me a service. I thank you sincerely. I have gone further than I meant; I admit it. I am selfish, I am vain, I am anything you please. My only excuse is Nora’s loveliness. It had made an ass of me; I had forgotten that this is a life of logic.” And he bravely took up his hat.
Mrs. Keith was prepared for a “scene”; she was annoyed at missing it, and her easy triumph led her on. She thought, too, of the young girl up stairs, combing out her golden hair, and seeing no logic in her looking-glass. She had dragged a heavy gun to the front; she determined to fire her shot. So much virtue had never inspired her with so little respect. She played a moment with the bow on her morning dress. “Let me thank you for your great humility,” she said. “Do you know I was going to be afraid of you, so that I had intrenched myself behind a great big preposterous fact? I met, last evening, Mrs. Chatterton of New York. You know she’s a great talker, but she talks to the point. She mentioned your engagement to a certain young lady, a dark-eyed person,—need I repeat the name?” There was no need of her repeating names; Hubert stood before her, flushing crimson, with his blue eyes flashing cold wrath. He remained silent a moment, shaking a scornful finger at her. “For shame, madam,” he cried. “That’s in shocking taste! You might have been generous; it seems to me I deserve it.” And with a summary bow he departed.
Mrs. Keith repented of this extra touch of zeal; the more so as she found that, practically, Nora was to be the victim of the young man’s displeasure. For four days he gave no sign; Nora was left to explain his absence as she might. Even Roger’s amendment failed to console her. At last, as the two ladies were sitting at lunch, his card was brought in, superscribed _P.P.C._ Nora read it in silence, and for a moment rested her eyes on her companion with a piteous look which seemed to ask, “Is it you I have to thank for this?” A torrent of remonstrances rose to Nora’s lips, but they were sealed by the reflection that, though her friend might have been concerned in Hubert’s desertion, its peculiar abruptness had a peculiar motive. She pretended to occupy herself with her plate; but her self-control was rapidly ebbing. She silently rose and retreated to her own room, leaving Mrs. Keith moralizing, over her mutton-chop, upon the miseries of young-ladyhood and the immeasurable egotism of the man who would rather produce a cruel effect than none at all. For a week after this Nora was seriously ill. On the day she left her room she received a short note from Hubert.
NEW YORK.
DEAR NORA: You have, I suppose, been expecting to hear from me; but I have not written, because I am unable to write as I wish and unwilling to write as—other people would wish! I left Boston suddenly, but not unadvisedly. I shall for the present be occupied here. The last month I spent there will remain one of the best memories of my life. But it was time it should end! Remember me a little—what do I say?—forget me! Farewell. I received this morning from the doctor the best accounts of Roger.
Nora handled this letter somewhat as one may imagine a pious maiden of the antique world to have treated a messenger from the Delphic oracle. It was obscure, it was even sinister; but deep in its sacred dimness there seemed to glow a fiery particle of truth. She locked it up in her dressing-case and wondered and waited. Shortly after came a missive of a different cast. It was from her cousin, George Fenton, and also dated New York.
DEAR NORA,—You have left me to find out your return in the papers. I saw your name a month ago in the steamer’s list. But I hope the fine people and things you have been seeing haven’t driven me quite out of your heart,—that you remember at least who I am. I received your answer to my letter of last February; after which I immediately wrote again, but in vain! Perhaps you never got my letter; I could scarcely decipher your Italian address. Excuse my want of learning! Your photograph is a joy forever. Are you really as handsome as that? It taxes even the credulity of one who knows how pretty you used to be; how good you must be still. When I last wrote I told you of my having taken stock in an enterprise for working over refuse iron. But what do you care for refuse iron? It’s awfully dirty, and not fit to be talked of to a fine lady like you. Still, if you have any odd bits,—old keys, old nails,—the smallest contributions thankfully received! We think there is money in it; if there isn’t, I’m afloat again. If this fails, I think of going to Texas. I wish I might see you first. Get Mr. Lawrence to bring you to New York for a week. I suppose it wouldn’t do for me to call on you in the light of day; but I might hang round your hotel and see you going in and out. Does he love me as much as ever, Mr. Lawrence? Poor man, tell him to take it easy; I shall never trouble him again. Are you ever lonely in the midst of your grandeur? Do you ever feel that, after all, these people are not of your blood and bone? I should like you to quarrel with them, to know a day’s friendlessness or a day’s freedom, so that you might remember that here in New York, in a dusty iron-yard, there is a poor devil who is your natural protector.
VIII.
Roger’s convalescence went smoothly forward. One morning as he lay coquetting deliciously with returning sense, he became aware that a woman was sitting at his window in the sun. She seemed to be reading. He fancied vaguely that she was Lucinda; but at last it occurred to him that Lucinda was not addicted to literature, and that Lucinda’s tresses, catching the light, were not of a kind to take on the likeness of a queenly crown. She was no vision; his visions had been dark and troubled; and this image was radiant and fixed. He half closed his eyes and watched her lazily through the lids. There came to him, out of his boyish past, a vague, delightful echo of the “Arabian Nights.” The room was gilded by the autumn sunshine into the semblance of an enamelled harem court; he himself seemed a languid Persian, lounging on musky cushions; the fair woman at the window a Scheherazade, a Badoura. He closed his eyes completely and gave a little groan, to see if she would move. When he opened them, she had moved; she stood near his bed, looking at him. For a moment his puzzled gaze still told him nothing but that she was fictitiously fair. She smiled and smiled, and, after a little, as he only stared confusedly, she blushed, not like Badoura or Scheherazade, but like Nora. Her frequent presence after this became the great fact in his convalescence. The thought of her beauty filled the long empty hours during which he was forbidden to do anything but grow strong. Sometimes he wondered whether his impression of it was only part of the universal optimism of a man with a raging appetite. Then he would question Lucinda, who would shake her head and chuckle with elderly archness. “Wait till you are on your feet, sir, and judge for yourself,” she would say. “Go and call on her at Mrs. Keith’s, and then tell me what you think.” He grew well with a beating heart; he would have stayed his recovery for the very dread of facing his happiness. But at last, one Sunday, he discarded his dressing-gown and sat up, clothed and in his right mind. The effort, of course, gave him a huge appetite, and he dealt vigorous justice upon his luncheon. He had just finished, and his little table was still in position near his arm-chair, when Nora made her appearance. She had been to church, and on leaving church had taken a long walk. She wore one of those dark rich toilets of early winter that are so becoming to fair beauties; but her face lacked freshness; she was pale and tired. On Roger’s remarking it, she said the service had given her a headache; as a remedy, she had marched off briskly at haphazard, missed her way, and wandered hither and thither. But here she was, safe and sound and hungry. She asked for a share of Roger’s luncheon, and, taking off her bonnet, was bountifully served at his table. She ate largely and hungrily, jesting at her appetite and getting back her color. Roger leaned back in his chair, watching her, carving her partridge, offering her this and that; in a word, falling in love. It happened as naturally as if he had never allowed for it. The flower of her beauty had bloomed in a night, that of his passion in a day. When at last she laid down her fork, and, sinking back in her chair, folded her hands on her arms and sat facing him with a friendly, pointless, satisfied smile, and then, raising her goblet, threw back her head and showed her white throat and glanced at him over the brim, while he noted her plump ringless hand, with the little finger curled out, he felt that he was in health again. She strolled about the room, idly touching the instruments on his dressing-table and the odds and ends on his chimney-piece. Her dress, which she had released from the loops and festoons then in fashion, trailed rustling on the carpet, and lent her a sumptuous, ladyish air which seemed to give a price to this domiciliary visit. “Everywhere, everywhere, a little dust,” she said. “I see it is more than time I should be back here. I have been waiting for you to invite me; but as you don’t seem inclined, I invite myself.”
Roger said nothing for a moment. Then with a blush, “I don’t mean to invite you; I don’t want you.”
Nora stared. “Don’t want me? _Par exemple!_”
“I want you as a visitor, but not as a—” And he fumbled for his word.
“As a resident?” She took it gayly. “You turn me out of doors?”
“No; I don’t take you in—yet awhile. My dear child, I have a reason.”
Nora wondered, still smiling. “I might consider this very unkind,” she said, “if I had not the patience of an angel. Would you kindly mention your reason?”
“Not now,” he answered. “But never fear, when it comes it will be all-sufficient!” But he imparted it, a couple of days after, to Mrs. Keith, who came late in the afternoon to present her compliments on his recovery. She displayed an almost sisterly graciousness, enhanced by a lingering spice of coquetry; but somehow, as she talked, he felt as if she were an old woman and he still a young man. It seemed a sort of hearsay that they should ever have been mistress and lover. “Nora will have told you,” he said, “of my wishing you kindly to keep her awhile longer. I can give you no better proof of my regard, for the fact is, my dear friend, I am in love with her.”
“Come!” she cried. “This is interesting.”
“I wish her to accept me freely, as she would accept any other man. For that purpose I must cease to be, in all personal matters, her guardian.”
“She must herself forget her wardship, if there is to be any sentimentalizing between you,—all but forget it, at least. Let me speak frankly,” she went on. Whereupon Roger frowned a bit, for he had known her frankness to be somewhat incisive. “It is all very well that you should be in love with her. You are not the first. Don’t be frightened; your chance is fair. The needful point is that she should be just the least bit in love with you.”
He shook his head with melancholy modesty. “I don’t expect that. She loves me a little, I hope; but I say nothing to her imagination. Circumstances are fatally against it. If she falls in love, it will be with a man as unlike me as possible. Nevertheless, I do hope she may, without pain, learn to think of me as a husband. I hope,” he cried, with appealing eyes, “that she may see a certain rough propriety in it. After all, who can make her such a husband as I? I am neither handsome, nor clever, nor accomplished, nor celebrated. She might choose from a dozen men who are. Pretty lovers doubtless they would make; but, my friend, it’s the _husband_, the husband, that is the test!” And he beat his clenched hand on his knee. “Do they know her, have they watched her, as I have done? What are their months to my years, their vows to my acts? Mrs. Keith!”—and he grasped her hand as if to call her to witness,—“I undertake to make her happy. I know what you can say,—that a woman’s happiness is worth nothing unless imagination lends a hand. Well, even as a lover, perhaps I am not a hopeless case! And then, I confess, other things being equal, I would rather Nora should not marry a poor man.”
Mrs. Keith spoke, on this hint. “You are a rich one, then?”
Roger folded up his pocket-handkerchief and patted it out on his knee, with pregnant hesitation. “Yes, I am rich,—I may call it so. I am rich!” he repeated with unction. “I can say it at last.” He paused a moment, and then, with unstudied irony,—“I was not altogether a pauper when you refused me. Since then, for the last six years, I have been saving and sparing and counting. My purpose has sharpened my wits, and fortune, too, has favored me. I have speculated a little, I have handled stock and turned this and that about, and now I can offer my wife a very pretty fortune. It has been going on very quietly; people don’t know it; but Nora, if she cares to, shall show them!” Mrs. Keith colored and mused; she was lost in a tardy afterthought. “It seems odd to be talking to you this way,” Roger went on, exhilarated by this summing-up of his career. “Do you remember that letter of mine from P——?”
“I did not tear it up in a rage,” she answered. “I came across it the other day.”
“It was rather odd, my writing it, you know,” Roger confessed. “But in my sudden desire to register a vow, I needed a friend. I turned to you as my best friend.” Mrs. Keith acknowledged the honor with a toss of her head. Had she made a mistake of old? She very soon decided that Nora should not repeat it. Her hand-shake, as she left her friend, was generous; it seemed to assure him that he might count upon her.