Watch and Ward (Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1878)/Chapter 7
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VII.
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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 need n'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 would n't recognize you. If he should n'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 should n'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 hatter; 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."
"No, I have gained my crown, I propose to keep it. I would rather not be found out. Besides, I am not preaching now; I am resting. Some people think me a clergyman, Nora," he said, lowering his voice with a hint of mock humility. "But do you know you are formidable, with your fierce friendships and your jealous suspicions? If you doubt of me, well and good. Let me walk like an Homeric god in a cloud; without my cloud, I should be sadly ungodlike. Indeed, for that matter, I doubt of myself. But I don't really undervalue Roger. I love him, I admire him, I envy him. I would give the world to be able to exchange my restless imagination for his silent, sturdy usefulness. I feel as if I were toiling in the sun, and he were sitting under green trees resting from an effort which he has never needed to make. Well, virtue, I suppose, is welcome to the shade. It 's cool, but it 's dreadfully obscure! People are free to find out the best and the worst of me! Here I stand, with all my imperfections on my head; tricked out with a surplice, baptized with a reverend, (Heaven save the mark!) equipped with platform and pulpit and text and audience,—erected into a mouthpiece of the spiritual aspirations of mankind. Well, I confess our sins; that 's good humble-minded work. And I must say, in justice, that when once I don my surplice (I insist on the surplice, I can do nothing without it) and mount into the pupit, I feel conscious of a certain power. They call it eloquence; I suppose it is. I don't know what it 's worth, but they seem to like it."
Nora sat speechless, with expanded eyes, hardly knowing whether his humility or his audacity became him best; flattered, above all, by what she deemed the recklessness of his confidence. She had removed her hat, which she held in her hand, gently curling its great black feather. Few things in a woman could be prettier than her uncovered forehead, illumined with her gentle wonder. The moment, for Hubert, was critical. He knew that a young girl's heart stood trembling on the verge of his influence; he felt, without fatuity, that a glance might beckon her forward, a word might fix her there. Should he speak his word? This mystic circle was haunted with the rustling ghosts of women who had ventured within and found no rest. But as the innermost meaning of Nora's beauty grew vivid before him, it seemed to him that she, at least, might cleanse it of its sinister memories and fill it with the sense of peace. He knew that to such as Nora he was no dispenser of peace; but as he looked at her she seemed to him as an angel knocking at his gates. He could not turn her away. Let her come, at her risk! For angels there is a special providence. "Don't think me worse than I am," he said, "but don't think me better! I shall love Roger well until I begin to fancy that you love him too well. Then,—it 's absurd, perhaps, but I feel it will be so,—I shall be jealous."
The words were lightly uttered, but his eyes and voice gave them meaning. Nora colored and rose; she went to the mirror and put on her hat. Then turning round with a laugh which, to one in the secret, might have seemed to sound the coming-of-age of her maiden's fancy, "If you mean to be jealous," she said, "now is your time! I love Roger now with all my heart. I cannot do more!" She remained but a moment longer.
Roger's illness baffled the doctors, though the doctors were clever. For a fortnight it went from bad to worse. Nora remained constantly at home, and played but a passive part to the little social drama enacted in Mrs. Keith's drawing-room. This lady had already cleared her stage and rung up her curtain. To the temporary indisposition of her young performer she resigned herself with that serene good grace which she had always at command, and which was so subtle an intermixture of kindness and shrewdness that it would have taken a wiser head than Nora's to discriminate them. She valued the young girl for her social uses; but she spared her at this trying hour, just as an impresario, with an eye to the whole season, spares a prima donna who is threatened with bronchitis. Between these two, though there was little natural sympathy, there was a wondrous exchange of caresses and civilities. They had quietly judged each other and each sat serenely encamped in her estimate as in a strategical position. Nevertheless I would have trusted neither lady's account of the other. Nora, for perfect fairness, had too much to learn, and Mrs. Keith too much to unlearn. With her companion, however, she had unlearned much of that circumspect jealousy with which, in the interest of her remnant of youth and beauty, she taxed her commerce with most of the fashionable sisterhood. She strove to repair her one notable grievance against fate by treating Nora as a daughter. She mused with real maternal ardor upon the young girl's matrimonial possibilities, and among them upon that design of which Roger had dropped her a hint of old. He held to his purpose of course; if he had fancied Nora then, he could but fancy her now.
But were his purpose and his fancy to be viewed with undiminished complacency? What might have been a great prospect for Nora as a plain homeless child, was a small prospect for a young lady who was turning out one of the beauties of the day. Roger would be the best of husbands; but in Mrs. Keith's philosophy a very good husband might represent a very indifferent marriage. She herself had married a fool, but she had married well. Her easy, opulent widowhood was there to show it. To call things by their names, would Nora, in marrying Roger, marry money? Mrs. Keith desired to appraise the worldly goods of her rejected suitor. At the time of his suit she had the matter at her fingers' ends; but she suspected that since then he had been lining his pockets. He puzzled her; he had a way of seeming neither rich nor poor. When he spent largely, he had the air of a man straining a point; yet when he abstained, it seemed rather from taste than from necessity. She had been surprised more than once, while abroad, by his copious remittances to Nora. The point was worth making sure of. The reader will agree with me that her conclusion warranted her friend either a fool or a hero; for she graciously assumed that if, financially, Roger should be found wanting, she could easily prevail upon him to make way for a millionnaire. She had several millionnaires in her eye. Never was better evidence that Roger passed for a good fellow. In any event, however, Mrs. Keith had no favor to spare for Hubert and his marked and increasing "attentions." She had determined to beware of false alarms; but meanwhile she was vigilant. Hubert presented himself daily with a report of his cousin's condition,—a report most minute and exhaustive, seemingly, as a couple of hours were needed to make it. Nora, moreover, went frequently to her friend's house, wandered about aimlessly, and talked with Lucinda; and here Hubert, coming on the same errand, was sure to be found or to find her. Roger's malady had defined itself as virulent typhus fever; strength and reason were at the lowest ebb. Of course on these occasions Hubert walked home with the young girl; and as the autumn weather made walking delightful, they chose the longest way. They might have been seen at this period perambulating in deep discourse certain outlying regions, the connection of which with the main line of travel between Mrs Keith's abode and Roger's was not immediately obvious. Apart from her prudent fears, Mrs. Keith had a scantier kindness for Hubert than for most brilliant men. "What is he, when you come to the point?" she impatiently demanded of a friend to whom she had imparted her fears. "He is neither fish nor flesh, neither a priest nor a layman. I like a clergyman to bring with him a little odor of sanctity,—something that rests you, after all your bother. Nothing is so pleasant, near the fire, at the sober end of one's drawing-room. If he does n't fill a certain place, he is in the way. The Reverend Hubert is in any place and every place. His manners are neither of this world nor, I hope, of the next. Last night he let me bring him a cup of tea and sat lounging in his chair while I put it into his hand. O, he knows what he 's about. He is pretentious, with all his nonchalance. He finds the prayer-book rather meagre fare for week-days; so he consoles himself with his pretty parishioners. To be a parishioner, you need n't go to his church."
But in spite of Mrs. Keith's sceptical criticism, these young persons played their game in their own way, with wider moves, even, and heavier stakes, than their shrewd hostess suspected. As Nora, for the present, declined all invitations, Mrs. Keith in the evening frequently went out alone, leaving her in the drawing-room to entertain Hubert Lawrence. Roger's illness furnished a grave undercurrent to their talk and gave it a tone of hazardous melancholy. Nora's young life had known no such hours as these. She hardly knew, perhaps, just what made them what they were. She hardly wished to know; she shrank from breaking the charm with a question. The scenes of the past year had gathered into the background like a huge distant landscape, glowing with color and swarming with life; she seemed to stand with her friend in the shadow of a passing cloud, looking off into the mighty picture, caressing its fine outlines, and lingering where the haze of regret lay purple in its hollows. Hubert, meanwhile, told over the legends of town and tower, of hill and stream. Never, she fondly fancied, had a young couple conversed with less of narrow exclusiveness; they took all history, all culture, into their confidence; the radiant light of an immense horizon seemed to shine between them. Nora had felt perfectly satisfied; she seemed to live equally in every need of her being, in soul and sense, in heart and mind. As for Hubert, he knew nothing, for the time, save that the angel was within his gates and must be treated to angelic fare. He had for the time the conscience, or the no-conscience, of a man who is feasting in Elysian meadows. He thought no evil; he designed no harm; the hard face of destiny was twisted into a smile. If only, for Hubert's sake, this had been an irresponsible world, without penalties to pay, without turnings to the longest lanes! If the peaches and plums in the garden of pleasure had no cheeks but ripe ones, and if, when we have eaten the fruit, we had not to dispose of the stones! Nora's charm of charms was a certain maidenly reserve which Hubert both longed and feared to abolish. While it soothed his conscience it irritated his ambition. He wished to know in what depth of water he stood; but there was no telltale ripple in this tropic calm. Was he drifting in mid-ocean, or was he cruising idly among the sandy shallows? As the days elapsed, he found his rest troubled by this folded rose-leaf of doubt; for he was not used to being baffled by feminine riddles. He determined to pluck out the heart of the mystery.
One evening, at Mrs. Keith's urgent request, Nora had prepared to go to the opera, as the season was to be very brief. Mrs. Keith was to dine with some friends and go thither in their company; one of the ladies was to call for Nora after dinner, and they were to join the party at the theatre. In the afternoon there came to Mrs. Keith's a young German lady, a pianist of merit who had her way to make, a niece of Nora's regular professor, with whom Nora had an engagement to practise duets twice a week. It so happened that, owing to a violent rain, Miss Lilienthal had been unable to depart after their playing; whereupon Nora had kept her to dinner, and the two, over their sweetbread, had sworn an eternal friendship. After dinner Nora went up to dress for the opera, and, on descending, found Hubert sitting by the fire deep in German discourse with the musical stranger. "I was afraid you would be going," said Hubert; "I saw Der Freyschütz on the placards. Well, lots of pleasure! Let me stay here awhile and polish up my German with Mademoiselle. It is great fun. And when the rain is over, Fraülein, perhaps you 'll not mind my walking home with you."
But Mademoiselle was gazing in mute envy at Nora, standing before her in festal array. "She can take the carriage," said Nora, "when we have used it." And then reading the burden of that wistful regard—"Have you never heard Der Freyschütz?"
"Often!" said the other, with a poignant smile. Nora reflected a moment, then drew off her gloves.
"You shall go, you shall take my place. I will stay at home. Your dress will do; you shall wear my shawl. Let me put this flower into your hair, and here are my gloves and my fan. So! You are charming. My gloves are large,—never mind. The others will be delighted to have you; come to-morrow and tell me all about it." Nora's friend, in her carriage, was already at the door. The gentle Fraülein, half shrinking, half eager, suffered herself to be hurried down to the carriage. On the doorstep she turned and kissed her hostess with a fervent "Du allerliebste!" Hubert wondered whether Nora's purpose had been to please her friend or to please herself. Was it that she preferred his society to Weber's music? He knew that she had a passion for Weber. "You have lost the opera," he said, when she reappeared; "but let us have an opera of our own. Play something; play Weber." So she played Weber for more than an hour; and I doubt whether, among the singers who filled the theatre with their melody, the master found that evening a truer interpreter than the young girl playing in the lamplit parlor to the man she loved. She played herself tired. "You ought to be extremely grateful," she said, as she struck the last chord; "I have never played so well."
Later they came to speak of a novel which lay on the table, and which Nora had been reading. "It is very silly," she said, "but I go on with it in spite of myself. I am afraid I am too easily pleased; no novel is so silly I can't read it. I recommend you this, by the way. The hero is a young clergyman, endowed with every charm, who falls in love with a Roman Catholic. She is rather a bigot, and though she loves the young man, she loves her religion better. To win his suit he comes near going over to Rome; but he pulls up short and determines the mountain shall come to Mahomet. He set bravely to work, converts the young lady, baptizes her one week and marries her the next."
"Heaven preserve us, what a hotch-potch!" cried Hubert. "Is that what they are writing nowadays? I very seldom read a novel, but when I glance into one, I am sure to find some such stuff as that! Nothing irritates me so as the flatness of people's imagination. Common life,—I don't say it 's a vision of bliss, but it 's better than that. Their stories are like the underside of a carpet,—nothing but the stringy grain of the tissue,—a muddle of figures without shape and flowers without color. When I read a novel my imagination starts off at a gallop and leaves the narrator hidden in a cloud of dust; I have to come jogging twenty miles back to the dénouement. Your clergyman here with his Romish sweetheart must be a very poor creature. Why did n't he marry her first and convert her afterwards? Is n't a clergyman after all, before all, a man? I mean to write a novel about a priest, who falls in love with a pretty Mahometan and swears by Allah to win her."
"O Hubert!" cried Nora, "would you like a clergyman to love a pretty Mahometan better than the truth?"
"The truth? A pretty Mahometan may be the truth. If you can get it in the concrete, after shivering all your days in the cold abstract, it 's worth a bit of a compromise. Nora, Nora!" he went on, stretching himself back on the sofa and flinging one arm over his head, "I stand up for passion! If a thing can take the shape of passion, that 's a fact in its favor. The greater passion is the better cause. If my love wrestles with my faith, as the angel with Jacob, and if my love stands uppermost, I will admit it 's a fair game. Faith is faith, under a hundred forms! Upon my word, I should like to prove it. What a fraction of my personality is this clerical title! How little it expresses; how little it covers! On Sundays, in the pulpit, I stand up and talk to five hundred people. Does each of them, think you, appropriate his five hundredth share of my discourse? I can imagine talking to one person and saying five hundred times as much, even though she were a pretty Mahometan or a prepossessing idolatress! I can imagine being five thousand miles away from this blessed Boston,—in Turkish trousers, if you please, with a turban on my head and a chibouque in my mouth, with a great blue ball of Eastern sky staring in through the round window, high up; all in perfect indifference to the fact that Boston was abusing, or, worse still, forgetting me! But, my dear Nora," Hubert added, suddenly, "don't let me introduce confusion into your ideas." And he left his sofa and came and leaned against the mantel-shelf. "This is between ourselves; I talk to you as I would to no one else. Understand me and forgive me! There are times when I must speak out and pay my respects to the possible, the ideal! I must protest against the vulgar assumption of people who don't see beyond their noses; that people who do, you and I for instance, are living up to the top of our capacity; that we are contented, satisfied, balanced. I promise you I am not satisfied, not I! I have room for more. I only half live; I am like a purse filled at one end with small coin and empty at the other. Perhaps the other will never know the golden rattle! The Lord's will be done; I can say that with the best of them. But I shall never pretend that I have known happiness, that I have known life. On the contrary, I shall maintain I am a failure. I had the wit to see, but I lacked the courage to do,—and yet I have been called reckless, irreverent, audacious. My dear Nora, I am the veriest coward on earth; pity me, if you don't despise me. There are men born to imagine things, others born to do them. Evidently I am not one of the doers. But I imagine things, I assure you!"
Nora listened to this flow of sweet unreason without staying her hand in the work, which, as she perceived the drift of his talk, she had rapidly caught up, but with a beating heart and a sense of rising tears. It was a ravishing mixture of passion and reason, the agony of a restless soul. Of old, she had thought of Hubert's nature as immutably placid and fixed; it gave her the notion of lucid depth and soundless volume. But of late, with greater nearness, she had seen the ripples on its surface and heard it beating its banks. This was not the first time; but the waves had never yet broken so high; she had never felt their salt spray on her cheeks. The touch of it now was delicious. She went on with her work, mechanically taking her stitches. She felt Hubert's intense blue eyes; the little blue flower in her tapestry grew under her quick needle. A door had suddenly been opened between their hearts; she passed through it. "What is it you imagine," she asked, with intense curiosity; "what is it you dream of doing?"
"I dream," he said, "of breaking some law for your sake!"
The answer frightened her; passion was outstripping reason. What had she to do with broken laws? She trembled and rolled up her work. "I dream," she said, trying to smile, "of the beauty of keeping laws. I expect to get a deal of pleasure from it yet." And she left her chair. For an instant Hubert was confused. Was this the last struggle which precedes submission, or the mere prudence of indifference? Nora's eyes were on the clock. It rang out eleven. "To begin with," she said, "let me keep the law of going early to bed. Good night!"
Hubert wondered; he hardly knew whether this was a rebuke or a challenge. "You will at least shake hands," he said reproachfully.
She had meant in self-defence to omit this ceremony, but she let him take her hand. Hubert gazed at her a moment and raised it to his lips. She blushed, and rapidly withdrew it. "There!" cried Hubert, "I have broken a law!"
"Much good may it do you!" she answered, and went her way. He stood for a moment, waiting, and fancying, rather fatuously, that she might come back. Then, as he took up his hat, he wondered whether she too was not a bit of a coquette.
Nora wondered on her own side whether this scene had not been a little pre-arranged. For a day love and doubt fared in company. Lucinda's mournful discourse on the morrow was not of a nature to restore her calmness. "Last night," said Roger's nurse, "he was very bad. He woke up out of his stupor, but he was none the better for that. He talked all night about you. If he murmurs a word, it 's always your name. He asked a dozen times if you had arrived, and forgot as often as I told him,—he, dear man, who used to remember the very hairs of your head. He kept wondering whether anything had happened to you. Late in the evening, when the carriages began to pass, he cried out that each of them was you, and what would you think of him for not coming to meet you" 'Don't tell her how bad I am,' he says; 'I must have been in bed two or three days, have n't I, Lucinda? Say I shall be out to-morrow; that I have only a little cold. Hubert will do everything for her,' he kept saying. And then when, at midnight, the wind began to blow, he declared it was a storm, that your ship was on the coast. God keep you safe, he cried. Then he asked if you were changed and grown; were you pretty, were you tall, should he know you? And he took the hand-glass and looked at himself and wondered if you would know him. He cried out that he was ugly, he was horrible, you would hate him. He bade me bring him his dressing things so that he might make himself look better, and when I would n't, he began to rage and call me names, and then he broke down and cried like a child." Hearing these things, Nora prayed intently for Roger's recovery,—prayed that he might live to see her more cunningly and lovingly his debtor. She wished to do something, she hardly knew what, not only to prove, but forever to commemorate, her devotion. She felt capable of erecting a monument of self-sacrifice. Her conscience was perfectly at rest.
For a couple of days she saw nothing of Hubert. On the third there came excellent news of Roger, who had taken a marked turn for the better, and had passed the crisis. She had declined, for the evening, a certain attractive invitation; but on the receipt of these tidings she revoked her refusal. Coming down to the drawing-room with Mrs. Keith, dressed and shawled, she found Hubert in waiting, with a face which uttered bad news. Roger's improvement had been momentary, a relapse had followed, and he was worse than ever. She tossed off her shawl with an energy not unnoted by her duenna.
"Of course I cannot go," she said. "It is neither possible nor proper." Mrs. Keith would have given her biggest bracelet that this thing should not have happened in just this way; but she submitted with a good grace,—for a duenna. Hubert went down with her to her carriage. At the foot of the stairs she stopped, and while gathering up her skirts, "Mr. Lawrence," she demanded, "are you going to remain here?"
"A little while," said Hubert, with his imperturbable smile.
"A very little while, I hope." She had been wondering whether admonition would serve as a check or a stimulus. "I need hardly tell you that the young lady up stairs is not a person to be trifled with."
"I hardly know what you mean," said Hubert. "Am I a person to trifle?"
"Is it serious, then?"
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 you 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.
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 have n'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 is n'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 would n'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.