MR. LAURENCE THORNDYKE.
The little dog Frollo, curled up beside his mistress, was the first to
see and greet the newcomer. He rushed forward, barking a friendly
greeting, and the young lady looked up from the book she was reading,
the young gentleman from the face he was reading at the same moment, and
beheld the dark figure in the doorway.
Norine Bourdon sprang to her feet, blushing violently, and came forward
with outstretched hand. It was the first time he had ever seen her
blush--like that--the first time her eyes had fallen, the first time her
voice had faltered. She might be glad to see him, as she said, but all
the old, frank, childish gladness was gone.
"I have taken you by surprise," he said, gazing into her flushed face
and shrinking eyes, "as I did once before. I get tired of New York and
business very suddenly sometimes, and you know I have a standing
invitation here."
"We are very glad--_I_ am very glad to see you, Mr. Gilbert," Norine
answered, but with an embarrassment, a restraint altogether new in his
experience of her. "We missed you very much after you went away."
The young man on the sofa, who all this time had been calmly looking and
listening, now took an easier position, and spoke:
"Six-and-twenty-years experience of this wicked world has taught me the
folly of being surprised at anything under the sun. But if I had not
outlived the power of wondering, centuries ago, I should wonder at
seeing Mr. Richard Gilbert out of the classic precincts of Wall street
the first week of December. I suppose now you wouldn't have looked to
see _me_ here?"
He held out a shapely, languid hand, with a diamond ablaze on it. The
lawyer touched it about as cordially as though it had been an extended
toad.
"I certainly would not, Mr. Thorndyke. I imagined, and so did Mr. Darcy,
when I saw him last, that you were in Boston, practicing your
profession."
"Ah! no doubt! So I was until a month ago. I suppose it never entered
your--I mean his venerable noddle, to conceive the possibility of my
growing tired practicing my profession. Such is the fact, however. Even
the hub of the universe may pall on the frivolous mind of youth, and
I've 'thrown physic to the dogs, I'll none of it,' for the present at
least. My patients--few and far between, I'm happy to say, will get on
much more comfortably, and stand a much better chance of recovery
without me."
"Indeed! I don't doubt it at all. But your uncle?"
"My uncle can't hope to escape the crosses of life any more than poorer
and better men. All work and no play makes, what's his name, a dull boy.
There will be a row very likely, the sooner my venerated relative is
convinced that my talents don't lie in the bleeding and blistering, the
senna and salts line, the better. They don't."
"Don't they? It would be difficult to say, from what I know of Mr.
Laurence Thorndyke, in what line they _do_ lie. May I ask what you mean
to do?"
"I shall go in for sculpture," responded Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, with
the calm consciousness of superior genius. "Other men have made fame and
fortune by art, and why not I? If my hypocondriacal adopted uncle would
only shell out, send me to Rome, and enable me to study the old masters,
I have the strongest internal conviction that--"
"That you would set the world on fire with your genius. That you would
eclipse the Greek Slave. No doubt--I have known others to think so
before, and I know the sort of 'fame and fortune' they made. How do you
come to be here?" Very curtly and abruptly, this.
"Ah!--thereby hangs a tale," with a long tender glance at Norine. "I am
the debtor of a most happy accident. My horse threw me, and Miss
Bourdon, happening along at the moment, turned Good Samaritan and took
me in."
"I don't mean that," Mr. Gilbert said, stiffly; "how do you come to be
in Maine at all?"
"I beg your pardon. Tom Lydyard--the Portland Lydyards, you know--no I
suppose you don't know, by the by. Tom Lydyard was to be married, and
invited me over on the auspicious occasion. Tom's a Harvard man like
myself, sworn chums, brothers-in-arms, Damon and Pythias, and all that
bosh; and when he asked me down to his wedding, could I--I put it to
yourself, now, Gilbert, could I refuse? I cut the shop. I turned my back
on blue pills and chloral, I came I saw, I--mademoiselle, may I trouble
you for a glass of lemonade? You have no idea, Mr. Gilbert, what a
nuisance I am, not being able to do anything for myself yet."
"Perhaps I have" was Mr. Gilbert's frigid response. The sight of Norine
bending over that recumbent figure gave him a sensation of actual
physical pain. He knew what this languid, graceful, slow speaking young
Sybarite's life had been, if she did not.
Just at that moment--and it was a relief, Aunt Hester entered, followed
by Uncles Reuben and Joe. No restraint here, no doubt about his welcome
from them, no change in the place he held in their esteem and affection.
Tea was ready, would everybody please to come.
Mr. Thorndyke's fractured limb was by no means equal to locomotion, so
Uncle Reuben wheeled him, sofa and all, into the next room, and Aunt
Hester and Norine vied with each other in waiting on him. It comes
natural to all women to pet sick men--if the man be young and handsome,
why it comes all the more naturally.
Mr. Thorndyke wasn't sick by any means--that was all over and done with.
He took his tea from Aunt Hester's hand and drank it, his toast and
chicken from Norine and ate them. He talked to them both in that lazy,
pleasant voice of his, or lay silent and stroked his mustache with his
diamond-ringed hand, and looked handsome, and whether the talk or the
silence were most dangerous, it would have puzzled a cleverer man than
Richard Gilbert to tell. To sit there listening to Aunt Hester chirping
and Uncle Reuben prosing, and see the blue eyes making love, in eloquent
silence, to the black ones, was almost too much for human nature to
endure. She sat there silent, shy, all unlike the bright, chattering
Norine of the summer gone, but with, oh! such an infinitely happy face!
She sat beside Laurence Thorndyke--she ministered to that convalescent
appetite of his, and that was enough. What need of speech when silence
is so sweet?
Supper ended, Mr. Thorndyke was wheeled back to his post in the front
room beside the fire. Norine never came near him all the rest of the
evening, she sat at the little piano, and poured out her whole heart in
song. Richard Gilbert, full of miserable, knawing jealousy, understood
those songs; perhaps Laurence Thorndyke, lying with half-closed eyes,
half-smiling lips, did too. They were old-fashioned songs that the
lawyer had sent her, favorites of his own: "Twere vain to tell thee all
I feel," and "Drink to me only with thine eyes." Yes, the meaning of
those tender old ballads was not for him. It was maddening to see
Laurence Thorndyke lying there, with that conscious smile on his lips;
he could endure no more--he arose with the last note, abruptly enough,
and bade them good-night.
"What! so early, Gilbert?" Thorndyke said, looking at his watch. "What a
dickens of a hurry you're in. You've got no clients in Portland, have
you? and Miss Bourdon, is going to sing us half-a-dozen more songs yet."
Mr. Gilbert paid no attention whatever to this flippant young man. He
turned his back upon him indeed, and explained elaborately to Uncle
Reuben that it was impossible for him to remain longer to-night, but
that he would call early on the morrow.
"He is very much changed," remarked Aunt Hester, thoughtfully; "don't
you think so, Norry? He's nothing like so pleasant and free, as he used
to be."
"Particularly grumpy, I should say," interposed Mr. Thorndyke.
"'Pleasant and free' are the last terms I should think of applying to
Richard Gilbert. Not half a bad fellow either, old Gilbert, but an awful
prig--don't you think so, Miss Bourdon?"
"I like Mr. Gilbert very much," Miss Bourdon answered, strumming idly on
the keys; "and I think him pleasant. He seemed out of spirits to-night,
though, I fancy."
It was bright, frosty starlight as the lawyer walked back to town. He
walked rapidly, his head well up, a dark frown clouding his face.
"Any one but Thorndyke--any one but Thorndyke!" he was thinking
bitterly. Alas! Mr. Gilbert, would you not have been jealous of the
Archbishop of Canterbury had that dignitary been "keeping company" with
Miss Bourdon? "And she loves him already--already. A very old story to
Laurence Thorndyke. Six-and-twenty years, a well-shaped nose, two blue
eyes, a mustache, and the easy insolence of the 'golden youth' of New
York. What else has he but that? What else is needed to win _any_
woman's heart? And hers is his, for good or for evil, for ever and ever.
He is the Prince Charming of her fairy tale, and she has caught his
wandering, artist fancy, as scores have caught it before. And when I
tell her the truth, that his plighted wife awaits him, what then? Little
Norine! to think that you should fall into the power of Laurence
Thorndyke."
Yes, she was in his power--for she loved him. Had it all not been so
delightfully romantic, so like a chapter out of one of her pet novels,
that first meeting, when Fate itself had flung him wounded and bleeding
at her feet? Was it not all photographed forever on her mind, a picture
whose vividness time never could dim! It had befallen in this way:
On the afternoon of the third of November Miss Bourdon had driven over
in the light wagon from the farm to the city, to receive her usual,
eagerly-looked-for package from Mr. Gilbert. It had been dark and windy
from early morning. As the afternoon wore on, the sky grew darker, the
wind higher. She got her bundle of books, visited one or two stores, one
or two friends, and night had fallen before she turned old Kitty's head
towards Kent Farm. A faint and watery moon made its way up through the
drifts of jagged cloud, and the gale howled through the street as though
it had gone mad. It was a lonely and unpleasant ride; but old Kitty
could have made her way asleep, and Norine sang to herself as she drove
slowly along. They were within a quarter of a mile of the house, when
Kitty pricked up her red ears, gave a neigh of alarm, and shied from
some long, dark object lying motionless across her path. Norine bent
over and looked down. There, she saw, lying on his face, the prostrate
form of a man.
Was he drunk, or was he dead? She was out in a twinkling, and bending
above him. There was blood on his clothes, and on the dusty road. She
turned his face over until the pallid moon shone upon it. Dead, to all
seeming, the eyes closed, life and consciousness gone.
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Laurence Thorndyke was lying in the best
bedroom of Kent Farm, with Aunt Hester and Norine bending over him, and
Uncle Joe scudding along on horseback for a doctor. All their efforts to
bring him out of that fainting fit were vain. White and cold he lay; and
so Norine Bourdon, with a great pity in her heart, looked first upon the
face of Laurence Thorndyke.