"A FOOL'S PARADISE."
The little house was like a picture--like a doll's house, the whitest,
the brightest, the trimmest, the tiniest of all tiny houses. It nestled
down in a sheltered nook, with its back set comfortably against a hill.
Its pretty little garden full of pretty little flowers, climbing roses
and scarlet-runners all over its inviting porch, and away beyond,
Chelsea beach, like a strip of silver ribbon, and the dimpling sea,
smiling back the sunshine. No other house within a quarter of a mile,
the dim, dark woodland rising up in the back-ground, the big, bustling,
work-a-day world shut out on every hand. Could Laurence Thorndyke, if he
had searched for half a lifetime, have found a more charming, more
secluded spot in which to dream out Love's Young Dream?
And the dream was pretty nearly dreamed out now.
For the fourth week had come, and the days of the honey month were
drawing to a close. If the truth must be told, the honey had cloyed upon
Mr. Thorndyke's fastidious palate before the end of the second week, had
grown distasteful ere the end of the third--had palled entirely at the
beginning of the fourth. In other words, the honeymoon business and
doing "love in a cottage," buried alive here, was fast becoming a most
horrible bore.
"If I had been very much in love with the girl," thought Mr. Thorndyke,
communing with his own heart "it might have been different--even then,
though, let it have been ever so severe a case of spoons, I don't think
I could have stood another week of this deadly lively sort of thing. But
I wasn't very much in love. If you know yourself, Laurence Thorndyke,
and you flatter yourself you do, it isn't in you to get up a _grande
passion_ for any body. There was Lucy West, there is Helen Holmes, here
is Norine Bourdon. I don't believe you ever had more than a passing
fancy for any of them, and your motto ever has been 'lightly won lightly
lost.'"
He was lying upon a sofa, stretched at full length, his hands clasped
behind his head, a cloud of cigar smoke half-veiling his handsome, lazy,
bored face, his eyes fixed dreamily upon the sparkling sea. Down on the
strip of tawny sand he could see Norine, looking like a Dresden china
shepherdess in her white looped-up dress, some blue drapery caught about
her, a jaunty sailor hat on her crushed dark curls, and a cluster of
pink roses in her belt.
"She's very pretty, and all that," pursued this youthful philosopher and
cynic, looking at her with dispassionate eyes, "but is the game worth
the candle? Three weeks and two days, and I'm sick and tired to death of
this place, and--alas! my pretty Norry--of you! 'Men were deceivers
ever.' I suppose it was much the same in old Shakspeare's time as it is
now. It is all very well to pay off Gilbert, and wipe out the old
scores, but it is not at all very well to be disinherited by old Darcy.
If it comes to his ears it's all up with my chance of the inheritance,
and my marriage with Helen. And, upon my word, I shouldn't like to lose
Helen. She's good-looking, she's good style, she can talk on any
subject under Heaven, and she's twenty thousand dollars down on her
wedding-day. Yes, it will never do to throw up my chances there, but how
to drop quietly out of this--that's the rub. There'll be the dickens to
pay with Norine, and sometimes I've thought of late, gentle as she is,
much as she loves me--and she does love me, poor little soul--that she's
not one of the milk-and-water sort to sit down in a corner and break her
heart quietly. I wish--I wish--I wish I had left her in peace at Kent
Farm!"
She was beckoning to him gaily at that moment. He shook off his
disagreeable meditation, put his long limbs down off the sofa, took his
straw hat, and sauntered forth to join her.
The little house--Sea View Cottage, its romantic mistress had named it,
was owned by the two Miss Waddles. The two Miss Waddles were two old
maids. Miss Waddle the elder, taught school in Chelsea. Miss Waddle, the
younger, was literary, and wrote sensation stories for the weekly
papers, poor thing. In addition, they eked out their income by taking a
couple of summer boarders, for people as a rule don't become
millionaires teaching school or writing for the papers. Miss Waddle, the
younger, immersed in ink and romance, looked after the young man with
eyes of keen professional interest.
"How grumpy he looks," thought Miss Waddle; "how radiant _she_ looks.
He's tired to death of it all already; she's more and more in love with
him every day. The first week he was all devotion, the second week the
thermometer fell ten degrees, the third week he took to going to Boston
and coming home in the small hours, smelling of smoke and liquor, this
fourth he yawns in her face from morning until night. And this is what
fools call the honeymoon. Moonshine enough, so far as I can see, but
precious little honey."
Miss Waddle stabbed her pen down in the inkstand, took a deep and
vicious dip, and plunged wildly into literature once more. Mr.
Thorndyke, listlessly, wearily and unutterably bored, joined the idol of
his existence.
In the Chelsea cottage they were known as "Mr. and Mrs. Laurence." For
Norine, she was radiantly happy--no weariness, no boredom for her. The
honey grew sweeter to her taste every day; but then women as a rule have
a depraved taste for unwholesome sweetmeats; the days Mr. Thorndyke
found so long, so vapid, so dreary, were bright, brief dreams of bliss
to her. She had written her short explanatory note home during the first
week, and had given it to Laurence to post. Laurence took it, glad of an
excuse over to Boston, and on the ferry-boat tore it into fifty minute
fragments and cast them to the four winds of Heaven. Norine had written
a second time, and a third. Her piteous little letters met the same
fate. That was one drawback to her perfect Paradise--there was a second,
Laurence's growing weariness of it all.
"If he should become tired of me; if he should repent his hasty
marriage; if he should cease to love me, what would become of me?" she
thought, clasping her hands in an agony. "Oh, mon Dieu! let me die
sooner than that. I know I am far beneath him--such lovely, accomplished
ladies as my darling might have married--but ah, not one of them all
could ever love him better than poor Norine!"
She hid her fears; the tears she shed over their silence and
unforgiveness at home were tears shed in solitude and darkness, where
they might not offend or reproach him. She tried every simple little
art to be beautiful and attractive in his sight. Her smiling face was
the last thing he saw, let him quit her ever so often--her smiling face
looked brightly and sweetly up at him let those absences be ever so
prolonged. And they were growing more frequent and more prolonged every
day. He took her nowhere--his own evenings, without exception now, were
spent in Boston, the smallest of the small hours his universal hours for
coming home. And not always too steady of foot or too fluent of speech
at these comings, for this captivating young man was fonder of the
rattle of the dice-box, the shuffling of the pack, and the "passing of
the rosy" than was at all good for him.
"Laurence," Norine's bright voice called, "you know everything. Come and
tell me what is this botanical specimen I have found growing here in the
cleft of the rocks."
She held up a spray of blue blossom. Laurence looked at it languidly.
"I know everything, I admit, but I don't know that. If you had married
old Gilbert now, my darling, your thirst for information might have been
quenched. There isn't anything, from the laws of the nations down to the
name of every weed that grows, he hasn't at his learned legal finger
ends. Oh, Lord, Norry, what a long day this has been--fifty-eight hours
if one."
He casts himself on the sands at her feet, pulls his hat over his eyes,
and yawns long and loudly. Her happy face clouds, the dark, lovely eyes
look at him wistfully.
"It is dull for you, dear," she says, tenderly, a little tremor in the
soft, sweet tones; "for me the days seem all too short--I am so happy,
I suppose." He glances up at her, struggling feebly with a whole
mouthful of gapes.
"You _are_ happy, then, Norry, are you? Almost as happy as when at home;
almost as happy as if you had married that ornament of society, Richard
Gilbert, instead of the scapegrace and outlaw, Laurence Thorndyke?"
She clasped her hands, always her habit when moved.
"So happy!" she said, under her breath; "so perfectly, utterly happy.
How could I ever have thought of marrying any one but you, Laurence--you
whom I loved from the very very first?"
"And"--he has the grace to hesitate a little--"it would make you very
unhappy if we were forced to part, I suppose, Norry?"
"Part?" She starts, grows very white, and two dilated eyes turn to him.
"Laurence, why do you ask me that? Unhappy? Mon Dieu! it would kill
me--just that!"
He laughs a little, but uneasily, and shifts away from the gaze of the
large, terrified eyes.
"Kill you? No, you're not the sort that die so easily. Don't look so
white and frightened, child; I didn't mean anything, at least, not
anything serious; only we have been almost a month here and it is about
time I went to pay my respected Uncle Darcy a visit. He has taken to
asking unpleasant questions of late--where I am, what I am doing, why I
don't report myself at headquarters--meaning his house in New York.
Norry, there's no help for it; I'll have to take a run up to New York."
She sits down suddenly, her hand over her heart, white as the dress she
wears.
"Of course I need not stay long," Mr. Thorndyke pursues, his hat still
over his eyes; "but go I must, there's no alternative. And then,
perhaps, if I get a chance, I can break it to him gently--about you, you
know. I hate the thought of leaving you, and all that--nobody more; but
still, as I've told you, I'm absolutely depending upon him; the
exchequer is running low and must be replenished. Conjugal love is a
capital thing, but a fellow can't live on it. Love may come and love may
go, but board goes on forever. You'll stay here with the two Waddles, do
fancy work, read novels, and take walks, and you'll ever find the time
slipping by until I am back. You don't mind, do you, Norine?"
"How long will you be gone?" she asks, in an odd, constrained sort of
voice.
"Well, two or three weeks, perhaps. I shall have business to attend to,
and--and all that. But I'll be back at the earliest possible moment, be
sure of that."
She does not speak. She stands looking, with that white change in her
face, over the sunny sea.
"Come, Norine!" he exclaims, impatiently, "you're not going to be a
baby, I hope. If you love me, as you say you do--" She turns and looks
at him, and he alters the phrase suddenly, with an uneasy laugh. "Well,
_since_ you love me so well, Norry, you must try and have a little
common sense. Common sense and pretty girls are incompatible, I know;
but really, my dear child, you can't expect that our whole lives are to
be spent billing and cooing here. It would be very delicious, no
doubt"--a great yawn stifles his words for an instant--"but--by Jove!
who's this?"
He raises himself on his elbow, pushes back his hat, and stares hard at
an advancing figure. Norine follows his glance, and sees, stepping
rapidly over the sand, the small slim figure of a man.
"The--devil!" says Laurence Thorndyke.
He springs to his feet, and stands waiting. The man advances, comes
near, lifts his hat to the lady, and looks with a calm glance of
recognition at the gentleman. He is a pale, thin, sombre little man, not
too well dressed, with keen, small, light blue eyes, and thin, decisive,
beardless lips.
"Good-day, Mr. Thorndyke," he says, quietly.
"Liston--it _is_ Liston!" exclaims Mr. Thorndyke, a red, angry flush
mounting to his face. "At your usual insolent tricks, I see--dogging me!
May I ask--"
"How I have found you out?" Mr. Liston interrupts, in the same calm,
quiet voice. "I knew you were here three weeks ago, Mr. Thorndyke. I saw
Maggs--the Reverend Jonas Maggs--in Boston."
He lifts his light, keen eyes for one second to Laurence Thorndyke's,
then drops them to the sands. The red flush deepens on the young man's
blonde face, his blue eyes flash steely fire.
"By Heaven, you have!" he exclaims, in a suppressed voice. "Has the
drunken fool--"
Liston interrupts again:
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Laurence, but if you will step aside with me, I
would like to say a few words to you. Meantime, here are two
letters--one from your uncle, the other--"
"H'm! All right Liston!" Thorndyke says, hastily, and with a warning
glance. "My uncle has sent you to hunt me up as usual, I suppose."
"As usual, Mr. Laurence. He commands your immediate presence in New
York."
Again the color mounts to the young man's face, again his eyes flash
angry fire.
"Do you mean to say, Liston, that you or that d---- snivelling hypocrite,
Maggs--"
"Mr. Thorndyke," says Mr. Liston, interrupting for the third time, and
raising his voice slightly, "I have a word to say to you in private--if
the young lady will excuse you."
He bows in a sidelong sort of way to Norine, and watches her furtively
beneath his drooping eyelids. She is standing very still, her eyes on
one of the letters--a square, perfumed, rose-colored letter superscribed
in a lady's delicate tracery, and bearing the monogram "H. H." Thorndyke
thrusts both abruptly into his pocket, and draws her aside.
"Go back to the house, Norine," he says hastily. "I must hear what this
fellow has to say. He's secretary--confidential clerk, valet, factotum
generally, to my uncle. And I wish the devil had him before he ever
found me out here!"
She obeys passively, very pale, still.
"That------snivelling hypocrite, Maggs!" she is repeating inwardly.
"What a dreadful way to speak of a clergyman!"
Mr. Thorndyke rejoins Mr. Liston, a scowl on his face, his brows
lowering and angry.
"Well?" he demands, savagely.
"Well," the new-comer's quiet voice repeats, "don't lose your temper,
Mr. Laurence--I haven't done anything. Your uncle told me to hunt you
up, and I have hunted you up--that is all."
"When did he tell you, confound him?"
"One week ago, Mr. Laurence."
"A week ago? I thought you said--"
"That I met Maggs three weeks ago? So I did. That he was beastly drunk?
So he was. That he told me all? So he did. That I have kept my eyes upon
you, off and on, ever since? So I have. Mr. Laurence, Mr. Laurence, I
wonder you're not afraid."
A suppressed oath--no other reply from Mr. Laurence. He gnaws his
mustache, and digs vicious holes with his boots in the soft sand.
"You're a bold card, Mr. Laurence," pursues Mr. Liston's monotonous
voice. "You've played a good many daring games in your life, but this
last daring game I think, has put the topper on the lot. I fancied mock
parsons, sham marriages, and carrying off young ladies by night, went
out of fashion with Gretna Green and Mrs. Radcliffe's romances. If ever
Mr. Darcy hears of it, the sooner you take a rope and hang yourself, the
better."
Another smothered imprecation of rage and impatience from Mr. Thorndyke.
"If I only had Maggs here," he says, clenching his fist.
"You would punch his head for him--very likely. But I don't know that
even that would do much good. He's got the jim-jams to-day, poor brute,
the worst kind. For you, Mr. Laurence--how long before this play of
yours is played out?"
"I'm going to New York to-morrow," growls Mr. Laurence Thorndyke. "I was
just telling her so as you hove in sight."
"Ah! you were just telling her so--the play _is_ played out, then. May I
ask, Mr. Laurence, though it is none of my business, how the poor thing
takes it?"
"No, you mayn't ask," replies Mr. Laurence, with ferocity, "as you say
it's none of your business. Liston! look here, you're not going to turn
State's evidence, are you--honor bright? You are not going to tell the
old man."
His angry voice drops to a pleading cadence. Mr. Liston's shifty light
eyes look up at him for a moment.
"Do I ever tell Mr. Laurence? It is late in the day to ask such a
question as that.
"So it is. You're not half a bad fellow, old boy, and have got me out of
no end of scrapes. Get me out of this and I'll never forget it--that I
swear. One of these days you shall have your reward in hard cash--that I
promise you."
"When you marry Miss Holmes? It's a bargain, Mr. Laurence--I'll try and
earn my reward. What is it you want me to do?"
"I'm going to New York to-morrow," Thorndyke says, hurriedly. "I must
invent some excuse for the governor, and what I say you are to swear to.
And when peace is proclaimed you must come back and tell _her_. I can't
do it myself--by George, I can't."
"Is that all?" asked Mr. Liston.
"You'll look after her--poor little soul! and, if she wishes it, take
her to her friends. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry--for her sake and for my
own. But it's rather late for all that. Liston, is Richard Gilbert in
town?"
"He is in town. He has been to see your uncle. He has been speaking of
this girl. My word Mr. Laurence, you'll have to do some hard swearing to
prove an _alibi_ this time."
"Curse the luck! Tell me what Darcy said to you Liston, word for word."
"Mr. Darcy, said this: 'Liston, go and find young Thorndyke (he never
calls you young Thorndyke except when he's very far gone in anger,
indeed), and fetch him to me. And hark'ee, fellow! no lying from you or
him. If what I hear of him be true, I'll never look upon his false,
cowardly face again, living or dead.' He was in one of his white rages,
when the less said the better. That was a week ago, I had known all
about you for two weeks before. I bowed, kept my own counsel, and--here
I am."
"You're a trump, Liston! And he gave you this letter?"
"He gave me that letter. You'll find it considerably shorter than sweet.
The other came from Miss Holmes, a few days ago--he sent that too."
"She doesn't know--"
"Not likely. She will though, if the old man finds out, and then you're
cake's dough with a vengeance. How do you suppose the little one (she's
very pretty, Mr. Laurence--you always had good taste), how do you
suppose she will take it?"
Mr. Thorndyke's reply was a groan.
"For Heaven's sake don't ask me, Liston! It's a horrible business. I
must have been mad."
"Of course--madly in love."
"Nothing of the sort--not in love at all. It was pure spite--I give you
my word--not a spark of real love in the matter, except what was on her
side. Gilbert was going to marry her, you know."
"I know."
"And I hate him as I hate the----"
"Prince of evil! I know _that_, too."
"You know everything that's my opinion. What a detective was lost in
you, old boy. Perhaps you know why I hate him?"
"He has blocked one or two little games of yours. And he 'peached' in
that affair of Lucy West."
"Liston! what an infernal scoundrel you must think me! When you recall
Lucy West, I wonder you don't hate me tenfold more than I hate Gilbert."
"I do think you an infernal scoundrel," replies Mr. Liston, coolly. "As
for hating--well I'm one of the forgiving sort, you know. Besides,
there's nothing made by turning informer, and there is something to be
made, you say, by keeping mum. Now suppose you go back to the house, and
her, she's pining for you, no doubt, and tell her you're off to-morrow.
I'll call for you with a light wagon about noon. Until then good-day to
you."
Thorndyke seized his hand and shook it.
"I don't know how to thank you, Liston! You're the prince of good
fellows. And I haven't deserved it--I know that."
He strode away. If he could only have seen the look "the prince of good
fellows" cast after him!
"'You don't know how to thank me,'" he thought, with sneering scorn.
"You fool! You blind, conceited, besotted fool! 'When I recall Lucy West
you wonder I don't hate you!' Was there ever a time, my perfumed
coxcomb, when I did not hate you? And you'll reward me, will you? Yes, I
swear you shall, but not in that way. Poor little girl! how young she
is, how pretty, and how innocent. She has had her fool's paradise for
three weeks--it ends to-day."