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 writing-materials and prepared to compose 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 outraged Roger. It may have been needful, but it was none the less a revolting need. But it should pass quickly! She took refuge again 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. It seemed to her that she had met just such women in reports of criminal trials. She had wondered what the heroines of these tragedies were like. Why, like Mrs. Paul, of course! They had her comely stony face, her false smile, her little tulle cap, which seemed forever to discredit coquetry. And here, in her person, sat the whole sinister sisterhood on Nora's bed, calling the young girl "my dear," wanting to take her hand and draw her out! With a defiant flourish, Nora addressed her letter with Miss Murray's honest title: "I should like to have this posted, please," she said.
"Give it to me, my dear; I'll 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," cried Mrs. Paul, "we shall be delighted to keep you a month."
"You're very good. You know I've 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 repent? 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; if I'd had it, I wouldn't have split hairs! He'll love you the better, you see, for your having led him a little dance. But he mustn't dance too long! Excuse my breaking out this way; 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 think you hadn't drawn a prize!"
If Roger had wished for a proof that sentiment survived in Nora's mind, he would have found it in the disgust she felt at hearing Mrs. Paul undertake his case. She 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'm 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 a-pleading. Nora, of course, made no attempt to argue the case. She waited till the lady had exhausted her eloquence, and then, "I'm a very obstinate person," she said; "you waste your words. If you go any further I shall feel persecuted." 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'm sorry you're ill," he said; "but a night's rest will put you right. I've seen Roger."
"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. Time seemed not to cancel her disturbing thoughts, but to multiply them. 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 gone to market. He seemed to have slept off his wrath and was full of brotherly bonhomie. "I suppose you'll want to know about Roger," he said, when they were seated at breakfast. "He had followed you directly, in spite of your solemn request; but not out of pure affection, I think. The little man's mad. He expects you to back down and come to him on your knees,—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'm sorry I hurt your feelings. It's rough, but it's so!"
Nora wished in after years she had been able to laugh at this disclosure; to pretend, at least, to a mirth 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 miserable error! 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 sceptical 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're not ungrateful! I went purposely to look him up. I was convinced he would have followed you,—as I supposed, to beg and beg and beg again. 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 turns homesick, I'll 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 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'm not ungrateful," she answered, firmly. "But where was it?"
At this, George pushed back his chair. "Where—where? Don't you believe me? Do you want to go and ask him if it's true? What are you, anyway? Nora, who are you, where are you? Have you put yourself into my hands or not?" A certain manly indignation was now kindled in his breast; he was equally angry with Roger, with Nora, and with himself; fate had offered him an overdose of contumely, and he felt a reckless, savage impulse to wring from the occasion that compliment to his force which had been so rudely denied to his delicacy. "Are you using me simply as a vulgar tool? Don't you care for me the least little bit? Let me suggest that for a girl in your—your ambiguous position, you are too proud, by several shades. Don't go back to Roger in a hurry! You're not the unspotted maiden you were but two short days ago. Who am I, what am I, to the people whose opinion you care for? A very low fellow, madam; and yet with me you've gone far to cast your lot. If you're not prepared to do more, you should have done less. Nora, Nora," he went on, breaking into a vein none the less revolting for being more ardent, "I confess I don't understand you! But the more you puzzle me the more you fascinate me; and the less you like me the more I love you. What has there been, anyway, between you and Lawrence? Hang me if I can understand! Are you an angel of purity, or are you the most audacious of flirts?"
She had risen before he had gone far. "Spare me," she said, "the necessity of hearing your opinions or answering your questions. Be a gentleman! Tell me, I once more beg of you, where Roger is to be found?"
"Be a gentleman!" was a galling touch. He had gone too far to be a gentleman; but in so far as a man means a bully, he might still be a man. He placed himself before the door. "I refuse the information," he said. "I don't mean to have been played with, to have been buffeted hither by Roger and thither by you! I mean to make something out of all this. I mean to request you to remain quietly in this room. Mrs. Paul will keep you company. You didn't treat her over-well, yesterday; but, in her way, she's quite as strong as you. Meanwhile I shall go to our friend. `She's locked up tight,' I'll say; `she's as good as in jail. Give me five thousand dollars and I'll let her out.' Of course he'll drop a hint of the law. `O, the law! not so fast. Two can play at that game. Go to a magistrate and present your case. I'll go straight to the `Herald' office and demand a special reporter and the very biggest headings. That will rather take the bloom off your meeting.' The public don't mind details, Nora; it looks at things in the gross; and the gross here is gross, for you! It won't hurt me!"
"Heaven forgive you!" murmured Nora, for all response to this explosion. It made a hideous whirl about her; but she felt that to advance in the face of it was her best safety. It sickened rather than frightened her. She went to the door. "Let me pass!" she said.
Fenton stood motionless, leaning his head against the door, with his eyes closed. She faced him a moment, looking at him intently. He seemed hideous. "Coward!" she cried. He opened his eyes at the sound; for an instant they met hers; then a burning blush blazed out strangely on his dead complexion; he strode past her, dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. "O God!" he cried. "I'm an ass!"
Nora made it the work of a single moment to reach her own room and fling on her bonnet and shawl, of another to descend to the hall door. Once in the street, she never stopped running till she had turned a corner and put the house out of sight. She went far, hurried along by the ecstasy of relief and escape, and it was some time before she perceived that this was but half the question, and that she was now quite without refuge. Thrusting her hand into her pocket to feel for her purse, she found that she had left it in her room. Stunned and sickened as she was already, it can hardly be said that the discovery added to her grief. She was being precipitated toward a great decision; sooner or later made little difference. The thought of seeing Hubert Lawrence now filled her soul. That, after what had passed between them, she should so sorely need help, and yet not turn to him, seemed as great an outrage against his professions as it was an impossibility to her own heart. Reserve, prudence, mistrust, had melted away; she was conscious only of her trouble, of his ardor, and of their nearness. His address she well remembered, and she neither paused nor faltered. To say even that she reflected would be to speak amiss, for her longing and her haste were one. Between them both, you may believe, it was with a beating heart that she reached his door. The servant admitted her without visible surprise (for Nora wore, as she conceived, the air of some needy parishioner), and ushered her into the little sitting-room which, with an adjoining chamber, constituted his apartments. As she crossed the threshold, she perceived, with something of regret and relief, that he was not alone. He was sitting somewhat stiffly, with folded arms, facing the window, near which, before an easel, stood a long-haired gentleman of foreign and artistic aspect, giving the finishing touches to a portrait in crayons. Hubert was in position for a likeness of his handsome face. When Nora appeared, his handsome face remained for a moment a blank; the next it turned most eloquently pale. "Miss Lambert!" he cried.
There was such a tremor in his voice that Nora felt that, for the moment, she must have self-possession for both. "I interrupt you," she said, with excessive deference.
"We are just finishing!" Hubert answered. "It's my portrait, you see. You must look at it." The artist made way for her before the easel, laid down his implements, and took up his hat and gloves. She looked mechanically at the picture, while Hubert accompanied him to the door, and they talked awhile about another sitting and about a frame which was to be sent home. The portrait was clever, but superficial; better looking at once, and worse looking than Hubert,—elegant, effeminate, and unreal. An impulse of wonder passed through her mind that she should happen just then to find him engaged in this odd self-reproduction. It was a different Hubert that turned and faced her as the door closed behind his companion, the real Hubert, with a vengeance! He had gained time; but surprise, admiration, conjecture, a broad hint of dismay, wrought bright confusion on his brow. Nora had dropped into the chair vacated by the artist; and as she sat there with clasped hands, she felt the young man reading the riddle of her shabby dress and her excited face. For him, too, she was the real Nora. Dismay began to prevail in his questioning eyes. He advanced, pushed towards her the chair in which he had been posturing, and, as he seated himself, made a half-movement to offer his hand; but before she could take it, he had begun to play with his watch-chain. "Nora," he asked, "what is it?"
What was it, indeed? What was her errand, and in what words could it be told? An utter weakness had taken possession of her, a sense of having reached the goal of her journey, the term of her strength. She dropped her eyes on her shabby skirt, and passed her hand over it with a gesture of eloquent simplicity. "I've left Roger," she said.
Hubert made no answer, but his silence somehow seemed to fill the room. He sunk back in his chair, still looking at her with startled eyes. The fact intimidated him; he was amazed and confused; yet he felt he must say something, and in his confusion he uttered a gross absurdity: "Ah, with his consent?"
The sound of his voice was so grateful to her that, at first, she hardly heeded his words. "I'm alone," she added, "I'm free." It was after she had spoken, as she saw him, growing, to his own sense, infinitely small in the large confidence of her gaze, rise in a perfect agony of impotence and stand before her, stupidly staring, that she felt he had neither taken her hand, nor dropped at her feet, nor divinely guessed her trouble; that, in fact, his very silence was a summons to tell her story and to justify herself. Her presence there was either a rapture or a shame. Nora felt as if she had taken a jump, and was learning in mid-air that the distance was tenfold what she had imagined. It is strange how the hinging point of great emotions may rest on an instant of time. These instants, however, seem as ages, viewed from within; and in such a reverberating moment Nora felt the spiritual substructure of a passion melting from beneath her feet, crumbling and crashing into the gulf on whose edge she stood. But her shame at least should be brief. She rose and bridged this dizzy chasm with some tragic counterfeit of a smile. "I've come—I've come—" she began and faltered. It was a vast pity some great actress had not been there to note upon the tablets of her art the light, all-eloquent tremor of tone with which she transposed her embarrassment into the petition, "Could you lend me a little money?"
Hubert was simply afraid of her. At his freest and bravest, he would have shrunk from being thus peremptorily brought to the point; and as matters stood, he felt all the more miserably paralyzed. For him, too, this was a vital moment. All his falsity, all his levity, all his egotism and sophism, seemed to crowd upon him and accuse him in deafening chorus; he seemed, under some glaring blue sky, to stand in the public stocks for all his pleasant sins. It was with a vast sense of relief that he heard her ask this simple favor. Money? Would money buy his release? He took out his purse and grasped a roll of bills; then suddenly he was overwhelmed by a sense of his cruelty. He flung the thing on the floor and passed his hands over his face. "Nora, Nora," he cried, "say it outright; I disappoint you!"
He had become, in the brief space of a moment, the man she once had loved; but if he was no longer the rose, he stood too near it to be wantonly bruised. Men and women alike need in some degree to respect those they have suffered to wrong them. She stooped and picked up the porte-monnaie, like a beggar-maid in a ballad. "A very little will do," she said. "In a day or two I hope to be independent."
"Tell me at least what has happened!" he cried.
She hesitated a moment. "Roger has asked me to be his wife." Hubert's head swam with the vision of all that this simple statement embodied and implied. "I refused," Nora added, "and, having refused, I was unwilling to live any longer on his—on his—" Her speech at the last word melted into silence, and she seemed to fall a-musing. But in an instant she recovered herself. "I remember your once saying that you would have liked to see me poor and homeless. Here I am! You ought at least," she added with a laugh, "to pay for the exhibition!"
Hubert abruptly drew out his watch. "I expect here this moment," he said, "a young lady of whom you may have heard. She is to come and see my portrait. I'm engaged to her. I was engaged to her five months ago. She's rich, pretty, charming. Say but a single word, that you don't despise me, that you forgive me, and I'll give her up, now, here, forever, and be anything you'll take me for,—your husband, your friend, your slave!" To have been able to make this speech gave Hubert immense relief. He felt almost himself again.
Nora fixed her eyes on him, with a kind of unfathomable gentleness. "You're engaged, you were engaged? How strangely you talk about giving up! Give her my compliments!" It seemed, however, that Nora was to have the chance of offering them personally, [sic] The door was thrown open and admitted two ladies whom Nora vaguely remembered to have seen. In a moment she recognized them as the persons whom, on the evening she had gone to hear Hubert preach, he had left her, after the sermon, to conduct to their carriage. The younger one was decidedly pretty, in spite of a nose a trifle too aquiline. A pair of imperious dark eyes, as bright as the diamond which glittered in each of her ears, and a nervous capricious rapidity of motion and gesture, gave her an air of girlish brusquerie, which was by no means without charm. Her mother's aspect, however, testified to its being as well to enjoy this charm at a distance. She was a stout, coarse-featured, good-natured woman, with a jaded, submissive expression, and seemed to proclaim by a certain bulky languor, as she followed in her daughter's wake, the subserviency of matter to mind. Both ladies were dressed to the utmost limits of the occasion, and savored potently of New York. They came into the room staring frankly at Nora, and overlooking Hubert with gracious implication of his being already one of the family. The situation was a trying one, but he faced it as he might.
"This is Miss Lambert," he said, gravely; and then with an effort to conjure away confusion with a jest, waving his hand toward his portrait, "This is the Rev. Hubert Lawrence!"
The elder lady moved toward the picture, but the other came straight to Nora. "I've seen you before!" she cried defiantly, and with defiance in her fine eyes. "And I've heard of you too! Yes, you're certainly very handsome. But pray, what are you doing here?"
"My dear child!" said Hubert, imploringly, and with a burning side-glance at Nora. If he had been in the pillory before, it was not till now that the rain of missiles had begun.
"My dear Hubert," said the young lady, "what is she doing here? I have a right to know. Have you come running after him even here? You're a wicked girl. You've done me a wrong. You've tried to turn him away from me. You kept him in Boston for weeks, when he ought to have been here; when I was writing to him day after day to come. I heard all about it! I don't know what's the matter with you. I thought you were so very well off! You look very poor and unhappy, but I must say what I think!"
"My own darling, be reasonable!" murmured her mother. "Come and look at this beautiful picture. There's no deceit on that brow!"
Nora smiled charitably. "Don't attack me," she said. "If I ever wronged you, I was quite unconscious of it, and I beg your pardon now."
"Nora," murmured Hubert, piteously, "spare me!"
"Ah, does he call you Nora?" cried the young lady. "The harm's done, madam! He'll never be what he was. You've changed, Hubert!" And she turned passionately on her fiance. "You know you are! You talk to me, but you think of her. And what is the meaning of this visit? You're both vastly excited; what have you been talking about?"
"Mr. Lawrence has been telling me about you," said Nora; "how pretty, how charming, how gentle you are!"
"I'm not gentle!" cried the other. "You're laughing at me! Was it to talk about my prettiness you came here? Do you go about alone, this way? I never heard of such a thing. You're shameless! do you know that? But I'm very glad of it; because once you've done this for him, he'll not care for you. That's the way with men. And I'm not pretty either, not as you are! You're pale and tired; you've got a horrid dress and shawl, and yet you're beautiful! Is that the way I must look to please you?" she demanded, turning back to Hubert.
Hubert, during this spiteful tirade, had stood looking as dark as thunder, and at this point he broke out fiercely, "Good God, Amy! hold your tongue. I command you."
Nora, gathering her shawl together, gave Hubert a glance. "She loves you," she said, softly.
Amy stared a moment at this vehement adjuration; then she melted into a smile and turned in ecstasy to her mother. "Good, good!" she cried. "That's how I like him. I shall have my husband yet."
Nora left the room; and, in spite of her gesture of earnest deprecation, Hubert followed her down stairs to the street door. "Where are you going?" he asked in a whisper. "With whom are you staying?"
"Alone in this great city? Nora, I will do something for you."
"Hubert," she said, "I never in my life needed help less than at this moment. Farewell." He fancied for an instant that she was going to offer him her hand, but she only motioned him to open the door. He did so and she passed out.
She stood there on the pavement, strangely, almost absurdly, free and light of spirit. She knew neither whither she should turn nor what she should do, yet the fears which had haunted her for a whole day and night had vanished. The sky was blazing blue overhead; the opposite side of the street was all in sun; she hailed the joyous brightness of the day with a kind of answering joy. She seemed to be in the secret of the universe. A nursery-maid came along, pushing a baby in a perambulator. She stooped and greeted the child, and talked pretty nonsense to it with a fervor which left the young woman staring. Nurse and child went their way, and Nora lingered, looking up and down the empty street. Suddenly a gentleman turned into it from the cross-street above. He was walking fast; he had his hat in his hand, and with his other hand he was passing his handkerchief over his forehead. As she stood and watched him draw near, down the bright vista of the street, there came upon her a singular and altogether nameless sensation, strangely similar to one she had felt a couple of years before, when a physician had given her a dose of ether. The gentleman, she perceived, was Roger; but the short interval of space and time which separated them seemed to expand into a throbbing immensity and eternity. She seemed to be watching him for an age, and, as she did so, to be swinging through the whole circle of emotion and the full realization of being. Yes, she was in the secret of the universe, and the secret of the universe was, that Roger was the only man in it who had a heart. Suddenly she felt a palpable grasp. Roger stood before her, and had taken her hand. For a moment he said nothing; but the touch of his hand spoke loud. They stood for an instant scanning the change in each other's faces. "Where are you going?" said Roger, at last, imploringly.
Nora read silently in his haggard furrows the whole record of his passion and grief. It is a strange truth that they seemed the most beautiful things she had ever looked upon; the sight of them was delicious. They seemed to whisper louder and louder that secret about Roger's heart.
Nora collected herself as solemnly as one on a death-bed making a will; but Roger was still in miserable doubt and dread. "I've followed you," he said, "in spite of that request in your letter."
"Have you got my letter?" Nora asked.
"It was the only thing you had left me," he said, and drew it, creased and crumpled, out of his pocket.
She took it from him and tore it slowly into a dozen pieces, never taking her eyes off his own. "Don't try and forget that I wrote it," she said. "My destroying it now means more than that would have meant."
"What does it mean, Nora?" he asked, in hardly audible tones.
"It means that I'm a wiser girl to-day than then. I know myself better, I know you better. O Roger!" she cried, "it means everything!"
He passed her hand through his arm and held it there against his heart, while he stood looking hard at the pavement, as if to steady himself amid this great convulsion of things. Then raising his head, "Come," he said; "come!"
But she detained him, laying her other hand on his arm. "No; you must understand first. If I'm wiser now, I've learnt wisdom at my cost. I'm not the girl you proposed to on Sunday. I feel—I feel dishonored !" she said, uttering the word with a vehemence which stirred his soul to its depths.
"My own poor child!" he murmured, staring.
"There's a young girl in that house," Nora went on, "who will tell you that I'm shameless!"
"What house? what young girl?"
"I don't know her name. Hubert is engaged to her."
Roger gave a glance at the house behind them, as if to fling defiance and oblivion upon all that it suggested and contained. Then turning to Nora with a smile of consummate tenderness: "My dear Nora, what have we to do with Hubert's young girls?"
Roger, the reader will admit, was on a level with the occasion,—as with every other occasion which subsequently presented itself.
Mrs. Keith and Mrs. Lawrence are very good friends. On being complimented on possessing the confidence of so charming a woman as Mrs. Lawrence, Mrs. Keith has been known to say, opening and shutting her fan, "The fact is, Nora is under a very peculiar obligation to me." Another of Mrs. Keith's sayings may perhaps be appositely retailed,—her answer, one evening, to an inquiry as to Roger's age: "Twenty-five—seconde jeunesse." Hubert Lawrence, on the other hand, has already begun to pass for an elderly man. Mrs. Hubert, however, preserves the balance. She is wonderfully fresh, and, with time, has grown stout, like her mother, though she has nothing of the jaded look of that excellent lady.
