Part 9

“‘I have not forgotten your asking me to write to you about your beloved Pincian view. Indeed, I have been daily reminded of it by having that same view continually before my eyes. From my own window I see the same dark Rome, the same blue Campagna. I have rigorously performed my promise, however, of ascending to your little terrace. I have an old German friend here, a perfect archæologist in petticoats, in whose company I think as little of climbing to terraces and towers as of diving into catacombs and crypts. We chose the finest day of the winter, and made the pilgrimage together. The plaster-merchant is still in the basement. We saw him in his doorway, standing to dry, whitened over as if he meant personally to be cast. We reached your terrace in safety. It was flooded with light,—you know the Roman light,—the yellow and the purple. A young painter who occupies your rooms had set up his easel under an umbrella in the open air. A young _contadina_ imported, I suppose, from the Piazza di Spagna, was sitting to him in the sunshine, which deepened her brown face, her blue-black hair, and her white head-cloth. He was flattering her to his heart’s content, and of course to hers. When I want my portrait painted, I shall know where to go. My friend explained to him that we had come to look at his terrace on behalf of an unhappy far-away American gentleman who had once been lodger there. Hereupon he was charmingly polite. He showed us the little _salotto_, the fragment of bas-relief inserted in the wall,—was it there in your day?—and a dozen of his own pictures. One of them was a very pretty version of the view from the terrace. Does it betray an indecent greed for applause to let you know that I bought it, and that, if you are very good and write me a delightful long letter, you shall have it when I get home? It seemed to me that you would be glad to learn that your little habitation is not turned to baser uses, and that genius and ambition may still be found there. In your case, I suppose, they were not found in company with dark-eyed _contadine_, though they had an admirer in the person of that poor little American sculptress. I asked the young painter if she had left any memory behind her. Only a memory, it appears. She died a month after his arrival. I never was so bountifully thanked for anything as for buying our young man’s picture. As he poured out his lovely Italian gratitude, I felt like some patronizing duchess of the Renaissance. You will have to do your best, when I transfer the picture to your hands, to give as pretty a turn to your thanks. This is only one specimen of a hundred delightful rambles I have had with Mlle. Stamm. We go a great deal to the churches; I never tire of them. Not in the least that I am turning Papist; though in Mrs. Keith’s society, if I chose to do so, I might treat myself to the luxury of being a nine days’ wonder, (admire my self-denial!) but because they are so picturesque and historic; so redolent of memories, so rich with traditions, so haunted with the past. To go into most of the churches is like reading some novel, better than I find most novels. They are for different days. On a fine day, if I have on my best bonnet, if I have been to a party the night before, I like to go to Santa-Maria Maggiore. Standing there, I dream, I dream, I dream; I should be ashamed to tell you the nonsense I _do_ dream! On a rainy day, when I tramp out with Mlle. Stamm in my waterproof; when the evening before, instead of going to a party, I have sat quietly at home reading Rio’s “Art Chrétien” (recommended by the Abbé Leblond, Mrs. Keith’s confessor), I like to go to the Ara Cœli. There you stand among the very bric-à-brac of Christian history. Something takes you at the throat,—but you will have felt it; I needn’t try to define the indefinable. Nevertheless, in spite of M. Rio and the Abbé Leblond (he is a very charming old man too, and a keeper of _ladies’_ consciences, if there ever was one), there is small danger of my changing my present faith for one that will make it a sin to go and hear you preach. Of course, we don’t only haunt the churches. I know in a way the Vatican, the Capitol, and those charming galleries of the great palaces. Of course, you know them far better. I am stopped short on every side by my deplorable ignorance; still, as far as may be given to a silly girl, I enjoy. I wish you were here, or that I knew some benevolent man of culture. My little German duenna is a marvel of learning and communicativeness, and when she fairly harangues me, I feel as if in my single person I were a young ladies’ boarding-school. But only a man can talk really to the point of this manliest of cities. Mrs. Keith sees a great many gentlemen of one sort and another; but what do they know of Brutus and Augustus, of Emperors and Popes? I shall keep my impressions, such as they are, and we shall talk them over at our leisure. I shall bring home plenty of photographs; we shall have charming evenings looking at them. Roger writes that he means next winter to take a furnished house in town. You must come often and see us. We are to spend the summer in England.... Do you often see Roger? I suppose so,—he wrote he was having a ‘capital winter.’ By the way, I am ‘out.’ I go to balls and wear Paris dresses. I toil not, neither do I spin. There is apparently no end to my banker’s account, and Mrs. Keith sets me a prodigious example of buying. Is Roger meanwhile going about with patched elbows?”

At this point Hubert stopped, and, on Roger’s asking him if there was nothing more, declared that the rest was private. “As you please,” said Roger. “By Jove! what a letter,—what a letter!”

Several months later, in September, he hired for the ensuing winter a small furnished house. Mrs. Keith and her companion were expected to reach home on the 10th of October. On the 6th, Roger took possession of his house. Most of the rooms had been repainted, and on preparing to establish himself in one for the night, Roger found that the fresh paint emitted such an odor as to make his position untenable. Exploring the premises, he discovered in the lower regions, in a kind of sub-basement, a small vacant apartment, destined to a servant, in which he had a bed put up. It was damp, but, as he thought, not too damp, the basement being dry, as basements go. For three nights be occupied this room. On the fourth morning he woke up with a chill and a headache. By noon he had a fever. The physician, being sent for, pronounced him seriously ill, and assured him that he had been guilty of a gross imprudence. He might as well have slept in a burial-vault. It was the first sanitary indiscretion Roger had ever committed; he had a dismal foreboding of its results. Towards evening the fever deepened, and he began to lose his head. He was still distinctly conscious that Nora was to arrive on the morrow, and sadly disgusted that she was to find him in this sorry plight. It was a bitter disappointment that he might not meet her at the steamer. Still, Hubert might go. He sent for Hubert accordingly, who was brought to his bedside. “I shall be all right in a day or two,” he said, “but meanwhile some one must receive Nora. I know you will be glad to do it, you villain!”

Hubert declared that he was no villain, but that he should be happy to perform this service. As he looked at his poor fever-stricken cousin, however, he doubted strongly if Roger would be “all right” in a day or two. On the morrow he went down to the ship.

VII.

On arriving at the landing-place of the European steamer, Hubert found the passengers filing ashore from the tug-boat in which they had been transferred from the ship. He instructed himself, as he took his place near the gangway, to allow for a certain change in Nora’s appearance; but even with this allowance none of the various advancing ladies seemed to be Nora. Suddenly he found himself confronted with a fair stranger, a smile, and an outstretched hand. The smile and the offered hand of course proclaimed the young lady’s identity. Yet in spite of them, Hubert’s surprise was great; his allowance had been too small. But the next moment, “Now you speak,” he said, “I recognize you”; and the next he had greeted Mrs. Keith, who immediately followed her companion; after which he ushered the two ladies, with their servant and their various feminine impedimenta, into a carriage. Mrs. Keith was to return directly to her own house, where, hospitable even amid prospective chaos, she invited Hubert to join them at dinner. He had, of course, been obliged to inform Nora offhand of the cause of Roger’s absence, though as yet he made light of his illness. It was agreed, however, that Nora should remain with her companion until she had communicated with her guardian.

Entering Mrs. Keith’s drawing-room a couple of hours later, Hubert found the young girl on her knees before the hearth. He sat down near by, and in the glow of the firelight he noted her altered aspect. A year, somehow, had made more than a year’s difference. Hubert, in his intercourse with women, was accustomed to indulge in a sort of cool contemplation which, as a habit, found favor according to the sensibility of the ladies touching whom it was practised. It had been intimated to him more than once, that, in spite of his cloth, just a certain turn of the head made this a license. But on this occasion his gaze was all respectful. He was lost in admiration; for Nora was beautiful. She had left home a simple maiden of common gifts, with no greater burden of loveliness than the slender, angular, neutral grace of youth and freshness; and here she stood, a mature, consummate, superb young woman! It was as if she had bloomed into ripeness in the sunshine of a great contentment; as if, fed by the sources of æsthetic delight, her nature had risen calmly to its allotted level. A singular harmony and serenity seemed to pervade her person. Her beauty lay in no inordinate perfection of individual features, but in the deep sweet fellowship that reigned between smile and step and glance and tone. The total effect was an impression of the simplest and yet the richest loveliness. “Pallas Athene,” said Hubert to himself, “sprang full-armed, we are told, from the brain of Jove. But we have a Western version of the myth. She was born in Missouri; for years she wore aprons and carried lesson-books. Then one fine day she was eighteen, and she sported a black silk dress of Paris!” Meanwhile Pallas Athene had been asking about Roger. “Shall I see him to-morrow, at least?” she demanded.

“I think not; he will not get out for several days.”

“But I can easily go to him. It is very tiresome. Things never turn out as we arrange them. I had arranged this meeting of ours to perfection! He was to dine with us here, and we were to talk, talk, talk, till midnight; and then I was to go home with him; and there we were to stand leaning on the banisters at his room door, and talk, talk; talk till morning.”

“And where was I to be?” asked Hubert.

“I had not arranged for you. But I expected to see you to-morrow. To-morrow I shall go to Roger.”

“If the doctor allows,” said Hubert.

Nora rose to her feet. “You don’t mean to say, Hubert, that it is as bad as _that_?” She frowned a little and bent her eyes eagerly on his face. Hubert heard Mrs. Keith’s voice in the hall; in a moment their tête-à-tête would be at an end. Instead of answering her question,—“Nora,” he said, in his deepest, lowest voice, “you are wonderfully beautiful!” He caught her startled, unsatisfied glance; then he turned and greeted Mrs. Keith. He had not pleased Nora, evidently; it was premature. So to efface the solemnity of his speech, he repeated it aloud: “I tell Nora she is very beautiful!”

“Bah!” said Mrs. Keith: “you needn’t tell her; she knows it.”

Nora smiled unconfusedly. “O, say it all the same!”

“Was it not the French ambassador, in Rome,” Mrs. Keith demanded, “who attacked you in that fashion? He asked to be introduced. There’s an honor! ‘_Mademoiselle, vous êtes parfaitement belle._’”

“He was very ugly himself,” said Nora.

Hubert was a lover of the luxuries and splendors of life. He had no immediate personal need of them; he could make his terms with narrow circumstances; but his imagination was a born aristocrat. He liked to be reminded that certain things were,—ambassadors, ambassadorial compliments, Old-World drawing-rooms with duskily moulded ceilings. Nora’s beauty, to his vision, took a deeper color from this homage of an old starched and embroidered diplomatist. It was valid, it had passed the ordeal. He had little need at table to play at discreet inattention. Mrs. Keith, preoccupied with her housekeeping and the “dreadful state” in which her freshly departed tenants had left her rooms, indulged in a tragic monologue and dispensed with responses. Nora, looking frankly at Hubert, consoled their hostess with gentle optimism; and Hubert returned her looks, wondering. He mused upon the mystery of beauty. What sudden magic had made her so handsome? She was the same tender slip of girlhood who had come trembling to hear him preach a year before; the same, yet how different! And how sufficient she had grown, withal, to her beauty! How with the added burden had come an added strength,—with the greater charm a greater force,—a force subtle, sensitive, just faintly self-suspecting. Then came the thought that all this was Roger’s,—Roger’s speculation, Roger’s property! He pitied the poor fellow, lying senseless and helpless instead of sitting there delightedly, drawing her out and showing her off. After dinner Nora talked little, partly, as he felt, from anxiety about her friend, and partly because of that natural reserve of the altered mind when confronted with old associations. He would have been glad to believe that she was taking pensive note of his own appearance. He had made his mark in her mind a twelvemonth before. Innumerable scenes and figures had since passed over it; but his figure, Nora now discovered, had not been obliterated. Fixed there indelibly, it had grown with the growth of her imagination. She knew that she had changed, and she had wondered whether Hubert would have lost favor with difference. Would he suffer by contrast with people she had seen? Would he seem graceless, colorless, common? Little by little, as his presence defined itself, it became plain to her that the Hubert of the past had a lease of the future. As he rose to take his leave, she begged him to let her write a line to Roger, which he might carry.

“He will not be able to read it,” said Hubert.

Nora mused. “I will write it, nevertheless. You will place it by his bedside, and the moment he is better he will find it at hand.”

When she had left the room, Mrs. Keith demanded tribute. “Have not I done well? Have not I made a charming girl of her?”

“She does you great credit,” said Hubert, with a mental reservation.

“O, but wait awhile! You have not seen her yet. She is tired, and anxious about your cousin. Wait till she comes out. My dear Mr. Lawrence, she is perfect. She lacks nothing, she has nothing too much. You must do me justice. I saw it all in the rough, and I knew just what it wanted. I wish she were my daughter: you should see great doings! And she’s as good as gold. It’s her nature. After all, unless your nature is right, what are you?” But before Hubert could reply to this little philosophic proposition, Nora reappeared with her note.

The next morning Mrs. Keith went to call officially upon her mother-in-law; and Nora, left alone and thinking much of Roger’s condition, conceived an intense desire to see him. He had never been so dear to her as now, and no one’s right to be with him was equal to hers. She dressed hastily and repaired to the little dwelling they were to have so happily occupied. She was admitted by her old friend Lucinda, who, between trouble and wonder, found a thousand things to say. Nora’s beauty had never received warmer tribute than the affectionate marvellings of this old woman who had known her early plainness so well. She led her into the drawing-room, opened the windows and turned her about in the light, patted her braided tresses, and rejoiced with motherly unction in her tallness and straightness and elegance. Of Roger she spoke with tearful eyes. “It would be for him to see you, my dear,” she said: “he would not be disappointed. You are better than his brightest dreams. O, I know all about it! He used to talk to me evenings, after you were in bed. ‘Lucinda, do you think she’s pretty? Lucinda, do you think she’s plain? Lucinda, do you dress her warm? Lucinda, have you changed her shoes? And mind, Lucinda, take good care of her hair; it’s the only thing we are sure of!’ Yes, my dear, you have me to thank for these big braids. Would he feel sure of you now, poor man? You must keep yourself in cotton-wool till he recovers. You are like a picture; you ought to be enclosed in a gilt frame and stand against the wall.” Lucinda begged, however, that Nora would not insist upon seeing him; and her great reluctance betraying his evil case, Nora consented to wait. Her own small experience could avail nothing. “He is flighty,” said Lucinda, “and I’m afraid he wouldn’t recognize you. If he shouldn’t, it would do you no good; and if he should, it would do him none; it would increase his fever. He’s bad, my dear, he’s bad; but leave him to me! I nursed him as a baby; I nursed him as a boy; I will nurse him as a man grown. I have seen him worse than this, with the scarlet fever at college, when his poor mother was dying at home. Baby, boy, and man, he has always had the patience of a saint. I will keep him for you, Miss Nora, now I have seen you! I shouldn’t dare to meet him in heaven, if I were to let him miss you!”

When Lucinda had returned to her bedside duties, Nora wandered about the house with a soundless tread, taking melancholy note of the preparations Roger had made for her return. His choice, his taste, his ingenuity, were everywhere visible. The best beloved of her possessions from the old house in the country had been transferred hither and placed in such kindly half-lights as would temper justice with mercy; others had found expensive substitutes. Nora went into the drawing-room, where the blinds were closed and the chairs and sofas shrouded in brown linen, and sat sadly revolving possibilities. How, with Roger’s death, loneliness again would close about her; how he was her world, her strength, her fate! He had made her life; she needed him still to watch his work. She seemed to apprehend, as by a sudden supernatural light, the extent of his affection and his wisdom. In the perfect stillness of the house she could almost hear his tread on the stairs, hear his voice utter her name with that tender adjustment of tone which conveyed a benediction in a commonplace. Her heart rose to her throat; she felt a passionate desire to scream. She buried her head in a cushion to stifle the sound; her silent tears fell upon the silk. Suddenly she heard a step in the hall; she had only time to brush them away before Hubert Lawrence came in. He greeted her with surprise. “I came to bring your note,” he said: “I did not expect to find you.’”

“Where better should I be?” she asked, with intensity. “I can do nothing here, but I should look ill elsewhere. Give me back my note, please. It does not say half I feel.” He gave it back, and stood watching her while she tore it in bits and threw it into the empty fireplace. “I have been wandering over the house,” she added. “Everything tells me of poor Roger.” She felt an indefinable need of protesting of her affection for him. “I never knew till now,” she said, “how much I loved him. I am sure you don’t know him, Hubert; not as I do. I don’t believe any one does. People always speak of him with a little air of amusement. Even Mrs. Keith is witty at his expense. But I know him; I grew to know him in thinking of him while I was away. There is more of him than the world knows or than the world would ever know, if it were left to his modesty and the world’s stupidity!” Hubert began to smile at her eloquence. “But I mean to put an end to his modesty. I mean to say, ‘Come, Roger, hold up your head and speak out your mind and do yourself justice.’ I have seen people without a quarter of his goodness who had twenty times his assurance and his success. I shall turn the tables! People shall have no favor from me, unless they are good to Roger. If they want me, they must take him too. They tell me I am a beauty, and I can do what I please. We shall see. The first thing I shall do will be to make them show him a great deal of respect.”

“I admire your spirit,” said Hubert. “Dr. Johnson liked a good hater; I like a good lover. On the whole, it’s more rarely found. But aren’t you the least bit Quixotic, with your terrible loyalty? No one denies that Roger is the best of the best of the best! But do what you please, Nora, you cannot make virtue entertaining. As a clergyman, you know, I have had to try it. But it’s no use; there’s a fatal family likeness between goodness and dulness. Of course you are fond of Roger. So am I, so is every one in his heart of hearts. But what are we to do about it? The kindest thing is to leave him alone. His virtues are his own affair. You describe him perfectly when you say that everything in the house here sings his praise,—already, before he has been here ten days! The chairs are all straight, the pictures are admirably hung, the locks are oiled, the winter fuel is stocked, the bills are paid! Look at the tidies pinned on the chairs. I will warrant you he pinned them with his own hands. Such is Roger! Such virtues, in a household, are priceless. He ought never to marry; his wife would die for want of occupation. What society cares for in a man is not his household virtues, but his worldly ones. I am talking now, of course, as a man of the world. Society wants to see things by the large end of the telescope, not by the small. ‘Be as good as you please,’ it says, ‘but unless you are interesting, I’ll none of you!’”

“Interesting!” cried Nora, with a rosy flush. “I have seen some very interesting people who have bored me to death. But if people don’t care for Roger, it’s their own loss!” Pausing a moment she fixed Hubert with the searching candor of her gaze. “You are unjust,” she said.

This charge was pleasant to the young man’s soul; he would not, for the world, have summarily rebutted it. “Explain, dear cousin,” he said, smiling kindly. “Wherein am I unjust?”

It was the first time he had called her cousin; the word made a sweet confusion in her thoughts. But looking at him still while she collected them, “You don’t care to know!” she cried. “Not when you smile so! You are laughing at me, at Roger, at every one!” Clever men had ere this been called dreadfully satirical by pretty women; but never, surely, with just that imperious naïveté. She spoke with a kind of joy in her frankness; the sense of intimacy with the young man had effaced the sense of difference.

“The scoffing fiend! That’s a pretty character to give a clergyman!” said Hubert.

“Are you, at heart, a clergyman? I have been wondering.”

“You have heard me preach.”

“Yes, a year ago, when I was a silly little girl. I want to hear you again.”