Part 14

Roger wondered whether Fenton was making horrible sport of his trouble; he turned cold at the thought of maternal care of his providing. But he admonished himself to lose nothing by arrogance. “I thank you extremely for your kindness. Nothing remains but that I should see her.”

“Nothing, indeed! You are very considerate. You know that she particularly objects to seeing you.”

“Possibly! But that is for her to say. I claim the right to take the refusal from her own lips.”

Fenton looked at him with an impudent parody of compassion. “Don’t you think you have had refusals enough? You must enjoy them!”

Roger turned away with an imprecation, but he continued to swallow his impatience. “Mr. Fenton,” he said, “you have not come here, I know, to waste words, nor have I to waste temper. You see before you a desperate man. Come, make the most of me! I am willing, I am delighted, to be fleeced! You will help me, but not for nothing. Name your terms.”

Fenton flinched, but he did not protest; he only gave himself the luxury of swaggering a little. “Well, you see,” he answered, “my assistance is worth something. Let me explain how much. You will never guess! I know your story; Nora has told me everything,—everything! We have had a great talk. Let me give you a little hint of my story,—and excuse egotism! You proposed to her; she refused you. You offered her money, luxury, a position. She knew you, she liked you enormously, yet she refused you flat! Now reflect on this.”

There was something revolting to Roger in seeing his adversary profaning these sacred mysteries; he protested. “I _have_ reflected, quite enough. You can tell me nothing. Her affections,” he added stiffly, to make an end of it, “were pre-engaged.”

“Exactly! You see how that complicates matters. Poor, dear little Nora!” And Fenton gave a twist to his mustache. “Imagine, if you can, how a man placed as I am feels toward a woman,—toward _the_ woman! If he reciprocates, it’s love, it’s passion, it’s what you will, but it’s common enough! But when he doesn’t repay her in kind, when he can’t, poor devil, it’s—it’s—upon my word,” cried Fenton, slapping his knee, “it’s chivalry!”

For some moments Roger failed to appreciate the remarkable purport of these observations; then, suddenly, it dawned upon him. “Do I understand you,” he asked, in a voice gentle by force of wonder, “that you are the man?”

Fenton squared himself in his chair. “You have hit it, sir. I am the man,—the happy, the unhappy man. D—n it, sir, it’s not my fault!”

Roger stood staring; Fenton felt his eyes penetrating him to the core. “Excuse me,” said Roger, at last, “if I suggest your giving me some slight evidence in support of this extraordinary claim!”

“Evidence? isn’t there about evidence enough? When a young girl gives up home and friends and fortune and—and reputation, and rushes out into the world to throw herself into a man’s arms, it seems to me you have got your evidence. But if you’ll not take my word, you may leave it! I may look at the matter once too often, let me tell you! I admire Nora with all my heart; I worship the ground she treads on; but I confess I’m afraid of her; she’s too good for me; she was meant for a finer gentleman than I! By which I don’t mean you, of necessity. But you have been good to her, and you have a claim. It has been cancelled in a measure; but you wish to set it up again. Now you see that I stand in your way; that if I had a mind to, I might stand there forever! Hang it, sir, I am playing the part of a saint. I have but a word to say to settle my case, and to settle yours. But I have my eye on a lady neither so young nor so pretty as my cousin, yet whom I can marry with a better conscience, for she expects no more than I can give her. Nevertheless, I don’t answer for myself. A man isn’t a saint every day in the week. Talk about conscience when a beautiful girl sits gazing at you through a mist of tears! O, you have yourself to thank for it all! A year and a half ago, if you hadn’t treated me like a swindler, Nora would have been content to treat me like a friend. But women have a fancy for an outlaw. You turned me out of doors, and Nora’s heart went with me. It has followed me ever since. Here I sit with my ugly face and hold it in my hand. As I say, I don’t quite know what to do with it. You propose an arrangement, I inquire your terms. A man loved is a man listened to. If I were to say to Nora to-morrow, ‘My dear girl, you have made a mistake. You are in a false position. Go back to Mr. Lawrence directly, and then we will talk about it!’ she would look at me a moment with those beautiful eyes of hers, she would sigh, she would gather herself up like a princess on trial for treason, remanded to prison,—and she would march to your door. Once she’s within it, it’s your own affair. That’s what I can do. Now what can you do? Come, something handsome!”

Fenton spoke loud and fast, as if to outstrip self-contempt. Roger listened amazedly to this tissue of falsity, impudence, and greed, and at last, as Fenton paused, and he seemed to see Nora’s very image turning away with a shudder, his disgust broke forth. “Upon my word, sir,” he cried, “you go too far; you ask too much. Nora in love with you,—you, who haven’t the grace even to lie decently! Tell me she’s ill, she’s lost, she’s dead; but don’t tell me she can look at you without horror!”

Fenton rose and stood for a moment, glaring with anger at his useless self-exposure. For an instant, Roger expected a tussle. But Fenton deemed that he could deal harder vengeance than by his fists. “Very good!” he cried. “You have chosen. I don’t mind your words; you’re an ass at best, and of course you are twenty times an ass when you are put out by a disagreeable truth. But you are not such a fool, I guess, as not to repent!” And Fenton made a rather braver exit than you might have expected.

Roger’s recent vigil with Mrs. Keith had been dismal enough; but he was yet to learn that a sleepless night may contain deeper possibilities of suffering. He had flung back Fenton’s words, but they returned to the charge. When once the gate is opened to self-torture, the whole army of fiends files in. Before morning he had fairly out-Fentoned Fenton. There was no discretion in his own love; why should there be in Nora’s? We love as we must, not as we should; and she, poor girl, might have bowed to the common law. In the morning he slept awhile for weariness, but he awoke to a world of agitation. If Fenton’s tale was true, and if, at Mrs. Keith’s instigation, his own suspicions had done Hubert wrong, he would go to Hubert, pour out his woes, and demand aid and comfort. He must move to find rest. Hubert’s lodging was far up town; Roger started on foot. The weather was perfect; one of those happy days of February which seem to snatch a mood from May,—a day when any sorrow is twice a sorrow. The winter was melting and trickling; you heard on all sides, in the still sunshine, the raising of windows; on the edges of opposing house-tops rested a vault of vernal blue. Where was she hidden, in the vast bright city? The streets and crowds and houses that concealed her seemed hideous. He would have beggared himself for the sound of her voice, though her words might damn him. When at last he reached Hubert’s dwelling, a sudden sense of all that he risked checked his steps. Hubert, after all, and Hubert alone, was a possible rival, and it would be sad work to put the torch into his hands! So he turned heavily back to the Fifth Avenue and kept his way to the Park. Here, for some time he walked about, heeding, feeling, seeing nothing but the glaring, mocking brightness of the day. At last he sat down on a bench; the delicious mildness of the air almost sickened him. It was some time before he perceived through the mist of his thoughts that two ladies had descended from a carriage hard by, and were approaching his bench,—the only one near at hand. One of these ladies was of great age and evidently infirm; she came slowly, leaning on her companion’s arm; she wore a green shade over her eyes. The younger lady, who was in the prime of youth and beauty, supported her friend with peculiar tenderness. As Roger rose to give them place, he dimly observed on the young lady’s face a movement of recognition, a smile,—the smile of Miss Sands! Blushing slightly, she frankly greeted him. He met her with the best grace at his command, and felt her eyes, as he spoke, scanning the trouble in his aspect. “There is no need of my introducing you to my aunt,” she said. “She has lost her hearing, and her only pleasure is to bask in the sun.” She turned and helped this venerable invalid to settle herself on the bench, put a shawl about her, and satisfied her feeble needs with filial solicitude. At the end of ten minutes of commonplace talk, relieved however by certain intelligent glances on either side, Roger found a kind of healing quality in the presence of this agreeable woman. At last these sympathetic eye-beams resolved themselves, on Miss Sands’s part, into speech. “You are either very unwell, Mr. Lawrence, or very unhappy.”

Roger hesitated an instant, under the empire of that stubborn aversion to complaint which, in his character, was half modesty and half philosophy. But Miss Sands seemed to sit there eying him so like the genius of friendship, that he answered simply, “I am unhappy!”

“I was afraid it would come!” said Miss Sands. “It seemed to me when we met, a year ago, that your spirits were too high for this life. You know you told me something which gives me the right,—I was going to say, to be interested; let me say, at least, to be compassionate.”

“I hardly remember what I told you. I only know that I admired you to a degree which may very well have loosened my tongue.”

“O, it was about the charms of another you spoke! You told me about the young girl to whom you had devoted yourself.”

“I was dreaming then; now I am awake!” Roger hung his head and poked the ground with his stick. Suddenly he looked up, and she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. “Dear lady,” he said, “you have stirred deep waters! Don’t question me. I am ridiculous with disappointment and sorrow!”

She gently laid her hand upon his arm. “Let me hear it all! I assure you I can’t go away and leave you sitting here the same image of suicidal despair I found you.”

Thus urged, Roger told his story. Her attention made him understand it better himself, and, as he talked, he worked off the superficial disorder of his grief. When he came to speak of this dismal contingency of Nora’s love for her cousin, he threw himself frankly upon Miss Sands’s pity, upon her wisdom. “Is such a thing possible?” he asked. “Do you believe it?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You must remember that I know neither Miss Lambert nor the gentleman you speak of. I can hardly risk a judgment; I can only say this, that the general effect of your story is to diminish my esteem for women,—to elevate my opinion of men.”

“O, except Nora on one side, and Fenton on the other! Nora is an angel!”

Miss Sands gave a vexed smile. “Possibly! You are a man, and you ought to have loved a woman. Angels have a good conscience guaranteed them; they may do what they please. If I should except any one, it would be Mr. Hubert Lawrence. I met him the other evening.”

“You think it is Hubert then?” Roger demanded mournfully.

Miss Sands broke into a brilliant laugh. “For an angel, Miss Lambert hasn’t lost her time on earth! But don’t ask me for advice, Mr. Lawrence; at least not now and here. Come and see me to-morrow, or this evening. Don’t regret having spoken; you may believe at least that the burden of your grief is shared. It was too miserable that at such a time you should be sitting here alone, feeding upon your own heart.”

These seemed to Roger excellent words; they lost nothing on the speaker’s lips. She was indeed extremely beautiful; her face, softened by intelligent pity, was lighted by a gleam of tender irony of his patience. Was he, after all, stupidly patient, ignobly fond? There was in Miss Sands something delightfully rich and mellow. Nora, for an instant, seemed a flighty school-girl. He looked about him, vaguely questioning the empty air, longing for rest, yet dreading forfeiture. He left his place and strolled across the dull-colored turf. At the base of a tree, on its little bed of sparse raw verdure, he suddenly spied the first violet of the year. He stooped and picked it: its mild firm tint was the color of friendship. He brought it back to Miss Sands, who now had risen with her companion and was preparing to return to the carriage. He silently offered her the violet,—a mere pin’s head of bloom; a passionate throb of his heart had told him that this was all he could offer her. She took it with a sober smile; it seemed to grow pale beneath her dark blue eyes. “We shall see you again?” she said.

Roger felt himself blushing to his brows. He had a vision on either hand of an offered cup,—the deep-hued wine of illusion,—the bitter draught of constancy. A certain passionate instinct answered,—an instinct deeper than his wisdom, his reason, his virtue,—deep as his love. “Not now,” he said. “A year hence!”

Miss Sands turned away and stood for a moment as motionless as some sculptured statue of renunciation. Then, passing her arm caressingly round her companion, “Come, dear aunt,” she murmured: “we must go.” This little address to the stone-deaf dame was her single tribute to confusion. Roger walked with the ladies to their carriage and silently helped them to enter it. He noted the affectionate tact with which Miss Sands adjusted her movements to those of her companion. When he lifted his hat, his friend bowed, as he fancied, with an air of redoubled compassion. She had but imagined his prior loss,—she knew his present one! “She would make an excellent wife!” he said, as the carriage rolled away. He stood watching it for some minutes; then, as it wheeled round a turn, he was seized with a deeper, sorer sense of his impotent idleness. He would go to Hubert with his accusation, if not with his appeal.

XI.

Nora, relieved of her hostess’s company, turned the key in her door and went through certain motions mechanically suggestive of her being at rest and satisfied. She unpacked her little bag and repaired her disordered toilet. She took out her inkstand and prepared to write a letter to Miss Murray. But she had not written many words before she lapsed into sombre thought. Now that she had seen George again and judged him, she was coming rapidly to feel that to have exchanged Roger’s care for his care was, for the time, to have paid a scanty compliment to Roger. But she took refuge from this reflection in her letter, and begged for an immediate reply. From time to time, as she wrote, she heard a step in the house, which she supposed to be George’s; it somehow quickened her pen and the ardor of her petition. This was just finished when Mrs. Paul reappeared, bearing a salver charged with tea and toast,—a gracious attention, which Nora was unable to repudiate. The lady took advantage of it to open a conversation. Mrs. Paul’s overtures, as well as her tea and toast, were the result of her close conference with Fenton; but though his instructions had made a very pretty show as he laid them down, they dwindled sensibly in the vivid glare of Nora’s mistrust. Mrs. Paul, nevertheless, seated herself bravely on the bed and rubbed her plump pretty hands like the best little woman in the world. But the more Nora looked at her, the less she liked her. At the end of five minutes she had conceived a horror of her comely stony face, her false smile, her little tulle cap, her artificial ringlets. Mrs. Paul called her my dear, and tried to take her hand; Nora was afraid that, the next thing, she would kiss her. With a defiant flourish, Nora addressed her letter with Miss Murray’s venerated title: “I should like to have this posted, please,” she said.

“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 wouldn’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 doesn’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 didn’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?”