FLED!
Mr. Gilbert went to his room, went to his bed, but he did not go to
sleep. He lay awake so long, tossing restlessly, that, at last, in
disgust, he got up dressed himself partly, and sat down in the darkness
by his open chamber window; to have it out.
What was the matter with Norine? Headache; she had said--but to eyes
sharpened by deep, true love, it looked much more like heartache. The
averted eyes, the faltering voice, the pallid cheeks, the shrinking
form, betokened something deeper than headache. Was she at the eleventh
hour repenting her marriage? Was she still in love with Laurence
Thorndyke? Was she pining for the freedom she had resigned? Was there no
spark of affection for him in her girl's heart after all?
"I was mad and presumptuous to dream of it," he thought. "I am
thirty-six--she is seventeen. I am not handsome, nor brilliant, nor
attractive to a girl's fancy in any way--she is all. Yes, she is pining
for him, and repenting of her hastily-plighted troth. Well, then, she
shall have it back. If I loved her tenfold more than I do, and Heaven
knows to love her any better than I do mortal man cannot, still I would
resign her. No woman shall ever come to me as wife with her heart in
the keeping of another man. Better a thousand times to part now than to
part after marriage. I have seen quite too much, in my professional
capacity of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure, to try it
myself. I will speak to her to-morrow; she shall tell me the truth
fearlessly and frankly while it is not yet too late, and if it be as I
dread, why, then, I can do as better men have done--bear my pain and go
my way. Poor, pretty little Norry! with her drooping face and pathetic,
wistful eyes--she longs to tell me, I know, and is afraid. It is a very
tender heart, a very romantic little heart, and who is to blame her if
it turns to him, young and handsome as she is herself, instead of to the
grave, dull, middle-aged lawyer. And yet, it will be very hard to say
good-by."
He broke down for a moment, alone as he was. A great flood of
recollection came over him--the thought of parting--now--was bitter
indeed. A vision rose before him--Norine as he had seen her first,
standing shyly downcast in the train, her dark, childlike eyes glancing
imploringly around, the sensitive color coming and going in her innocent
face. She arose before him again as he had seen her later, flushed and
downcast, sweet and smiling, bending over Laurence Thorndyke, with
"Love's young dream" written in every line of her happy face. Again as
he had seen her that day when he spoke, pale, startled, troubled, afraid
to accept, afraid to refuse, and faltering out the words that made him
so idiotically happy, with her little, white, handsome face, keeping its
startled pallor.
"Yes," he said, "yes, yes, I see it all. She said 'yes,' because it is
not in her yielding, gentle, child's heart to say no. And now she is
repenting when she thinks it too late. But it is not too late; to-morrow
I will speak and she will answer, and if there be one lingering doubt in
her mind, we will shake hands and part. My little love! I wish for your
sake Laurence Thorndyke were worthy of you, and might return; but to
meet him again is the worst fate that can befall you, and in three
months poor Helen Holmes will be his bride."
Hark! was that a sound? He broke off his reverie to listen. No, all was
still again--only the surging of the wind in the maples.
"It certainly sounded like the opening of a door below," he thought; "a
rat perhaps--all are in bed."
He was looking blankly out into the windy darkness. This time to-morrow
night his fate would be decided. Would he still be in this room, waiting
for Thursday morning to dawn and give him Norine, or--
He broke off abruptly again. Was that a figure moving down in the gloom
to the gate? Surely not, and yet something moved. A second more, and it
had vanished. Was this fancy, too? He waited, he listened. Clearly
through the dusk, borne on the wind, there came to him the faint,
far-off sound of a laugh.
"Who can it be?" he thought, puzzled. "No fancy this time. I certainly
heard a laugh. Rather an odd hour and lonely spot for mirth."
He listened once more, and once more, fainter and farther off, came on
the wind that laugh. Did he dream, or did a cry mingle with it? The next
instant he started to his feet as the loud, rapid rush of carriage
wheels sounded through the deep silence of the night. What did it mean?
Had some one stealthily left the house and driven away? He rose, drew
on his coat, and without his boots, quitted his room, and descended the
stairs.
The house door stood ajar--some one had left them and driven away.
He walked to the gate. Nothing was to be seen, nothing to be heard. The
gloomy night sky, the tossing trees, the soughing wind, nothing else far
or near.
"It may have been Reuben or Joe Kent," he thought, "and yet at this time
of night and in secret! And there was a cry for help, or what certainly
sounded like one. No need to puzzle over it, however--to-morrow will
tell. A New England farm-house is about the last place on earth to look
for mysteries."
Mr. Gilbert went to bed again, and, somewhere in the small hours, to
sleep. It was rather late when he awoke, and an hour past the usual
breakfast time when, his toilet completed, he descended the stairs. The
storm had come in pouring rain, in driving wind, in sodden earth, and
frowning sky.
Aunt Hetty was alone, the table was laid for two, a delightful odor of
coffee and waffles perfumed the air. She looked up from her sewing with
a smile as he bade her good-morning.
"I was just wondering if you and Norry meant to keep your rooms all day.
Oh, you needn't make any apology; it is as easy to wait breakfast for
two as for one. The boys and me"--(they were the "boys" still to Miss
Hester Kent)--"had ours at seven o'clock. Now sit right down Mr.
Gilbert, and I'll go and rout out Norry, and you and her can have your
breakfast sociably together. You'll have a good many sociable breakfasts
alone together, I dare say, before long. Gloomy sort of day now, ain't
it?"
"Norine is not down then?" the lawyer said, startled a little, yet
hardly knowing why.
"Not yet. She ain't often lazy o' mornings, ain't Norry, neither. You
wait, though. I'll have her down in ten minutes."
He looked at her as though to say something, changed his mind suddenly,
and took seat. Miss Kent left the room. Five minutes passed. Then she
came rushing down the stairs, and back to his side, all white and
frightened.
"Mr. Gilbert, Norine's not in her room! Her bed was not slept in at all
last night!" She sat down all at once, pressing her hand hard over her
heart. "I'm," she said, panting, "I'm very foolish, I know, but it has
given me a turn."
He rose to his feet. He knew it then! As well as he ever knew it in the
after time, Richard Gilbert knew it all at that moment, Norine had fled.
"It was she, then, who left the house last night," he said, in a hushed
voice; "and it was a man's laugh! Was it-- My God! Was it--"
He stopped, turning white with the horror of that thought.
"Call your brothers," he said, his voice ringing, his face setting white
and stern as stone. "We must search for her at once. At all costs we
must find her--must bring her back. Quick, Miss Kent! Your brothers! I
am afraid Norine has fled."
"Fled!"
"Fled--run away from home, for fear of marrying me. Don't you
understand, Miss Kent? Call your brothers, I say every minute may be
worth a life--or more! Quick!"
She obeyed--stunned, stupefied by the shock, the horror of her amaze.
The two men rushed wildly in, frightened by their sister's incoherent
words. Rapidly, clearly, Richard Gilbert told them what he had heard
last night, told them even what he feared most.
"Thorndyke has come back, and either persuaded her to run away with him
or forcibly abducted her. I feel sure of it. I heard him laugh, and her
cry last night as plainly as I hear my own voice now. There is not a
moment to be lost. On with your coats! out with the horses, and let us
be off. Better she were dead than with him."
They are gone, and the woman sits alone, stunned, speechless, unable to
realize it, only dumbly conscious that something awful has happened.
Norine has gone! Fled on the very eve of her bridal with another man.
Norine--little Norrie, who but yesterday seemed to her as a young
innocent child.
The woman sits and weeps alone by her desolate hearth. The men go forth
into the world, and forget their grief for the time in the excitement of
the search--the men, who have the best of it always.
All his life long that miserable day remained in Richard Gilbert's
memory more as a sickening dream than as a reality. He suffered
afterward--horribly--to-day he was too dazed to suffer or feel. Whether
found or not, Norine Bourdon was lost to him forever; dumbly he felt
that, but she must be found. At all costs, she must be brought back from
Laurence Thorndyke.
The two men acted passively under his orders--awed into silence by the
look on his set, white face. Even to them that day remained as a dizzy
dream. Now they were at the station, listening to Gilbert's rapid, lucid
inquiries and description, and the clerk shook his head.
"No," he said; "so far as he could recollect, no two parties answering
the description, had left by the earliest train that morning."
Then Mr. Gilbert went backward, and tried the registers of the various
hotels for the name of Thorndyke. It did not appear, but in one of the
lesser hotels the question was solved.
"Thar hain't ben nobody here answerin' to that air," said the Down-East
innkeeper; "but thar hes ben a chap callin' himself Smith--John Smith.
That may be the cove you want. Likely's not, ye know, if he's ben up to
any of his larks, he would give a false name, ye know. He come Saturday
night--staid Sunday and Monday, paid his bill last evenin', and made
himself scarce. Shouldn't be a mite surprised, now, if he's the rooster
you're after."
"Describe him," the lawyer said, briefly.
"Wal, he was a good-lookin' young fellow as ye'd wish to see. Tall and
slim and genteel, city clothes, a moustache, blueish eyes, and sorter
light hair--a swell young chap, sech as we ain't used to in our house."
"Thorndyke!" the lawyer muttered, between his teeth.
"He never stirred out all Sunday," pursued mine host, "until after
nightfall. Then he started off afoot, and it was past eleven when he got
back. All day Monday he loafed about his room the same way, and on
Monday evennin', as I said, he paid his bill, got a buggy somewhere, and
drove off. And I calk'late, square, he'd been a drinkin', he kinder
looked and talked that way. That's all I know about Mr. John Smith."
They telegraphed along the line, but without success. Nothing
satisfactory could be discovered. It was noon now--there was a train
for Boston at two. Mr. Gilbert looked at his watch.
"I will not return with you," he said, decisively. "I will go on to
Boston. I am positive he will take her there. Meantime, you will leave
no stone unturned to track the fugitives here."
"I'll go with you to Boston," said Uncle Reuben, quietly; "if he's taken
her there, my place is on the ground. Joe will do all he can here. And
by the Lord! when I _do_ see him, I'll make it the dearest night's work
he ever did in his life."
So it was arranged. In the dismal loneliness of the pouring afternoon,
Joe Kent drove back alone to Kent Hill and to the tortured woman waiting
there. Who knew? thought quiet Joe. Perhaps Mr. Gilbert and Reuben had
been too hasty, after all. Perhaps Norine was back.
But Norine was not back. The house was empty and desolate--Aunt Hetty
sat crying alone. She had gone and left no trace behind, not one word,
no note, no letter. Her clothes were all untouched, except those she had
worn, and her waterproof cloak. Surely she had never meant to run away,
or she would have gone differently from that, and left some line of
farewell, some prayer for pardon behind. It must be as Mr. Gilbert had
said--the villain had taken her by force.
And while the rainy afternoon deepened into night, the two sad, silent
men sat side by side, flying along to Boston. At every station inquiries
were made, but no one had seen anything of a young girl and a young man
answering the description given. So many came and went always it was
impossible to remember. So when night fell in lashing rain and raw east
wind the lawyer and the farmer were in Boston, and no trace of runaway
Norine had been found.