Roger’s quarrel with his young companion, if quarrel it was, was
never repaired. It had scattered its seed; they were left lying, to
be absorbed in the conscious soil or dispersed by some benignant
breeze of accident, as destiny might appoint. But as a manner of
clearing the air of its thunder, Roger, a week after Fenton’s
departure, proposed she should go with him for a fortnight to town.
Later, perhaps, they might arrange to remain for the winter. Nora
had been longing vaguely for the relief of a change of circumstances;
she assented with great good-will. They lodged at an hotel,—not the
establishment at which they had made acquaintance. Here, late in the
afternoon, the day after their arrival, Nora sat by the window,
waiting for Roger to come and take her to dinner, and watching with
the intentness of country eyes the hurrying throng in the street;
thinking too at moments of a certain blue bonnet she had bought that
morning, and comparing it, not uncomplacently, with the transitory
bonnets on the pavement. A gentleman was introduced; Nora had not
forgotten Hubert Lawrence. Hubert had occupied for more than a year
past a pastoral office in the West, and had recently had little
communication with his cousin. Nora he had seen but on a single
occasion, that of his visit to Roger, six months after her advent.
She had grown in the interval, from the little girl who slept with
the “Child’s Own Book” under her pillow and dreamed of the Prince
Avenant, into a lofty maiden who reperused the “Heir of Redcliffe,”
and mused upon the loves of the clergy. Hubert; too, had changed in
his own degree. He was now thirty-one years of age, and his
character had lost something of a certain boyish vagueness of
outline, which formerly had not been without its grace. But his
elder grace was scarcely less effective. Various possible
half-shadows in his personality had melted into broad, shallow
lights. He was now, distinctly, one of the light-armed troops of the
army of the Lord. He fought the Devil as an irresponsible
skirmisher, not as a sturdy gunsman planted beside a booming
sixty-pounder. The clerical cloth, as Hubert wore it, was not
unmitigated sable; and in spite of his cloth, such as it was,
humanity rather than divinity got the lion’s share of his attentions.
He loved doubtless, in this world, the heavenward face of things, but
he loved, as regards heaven, the earthward. He was rather an idler
in the walks of theology, and he was uncommitted to any very rigid
convictions. He thought the old theological positions in very bad
taste, but he thought the new theological negations in no taste at
all. In fact, Hubert believed so vaguely and languidly in the Devil
that there was but slender logic in his having undertaken the cure of
souls. He administered his spiritual medicines in homoeopathic
doses. It had been maliciously said that he had turned parson
because parsons enjoy peculiar advantages in approaching the fair
sex. The presumption is in their favor. Our business, however, is
not to pick up idle reports. Hubert was, on the whole, a decidedly
light weight, and yet his want of spiritual passion was by no means,
in effect, a want of motive or stimulus; for the central pivot of his
being continued to operate with the most noiseless precision and
regularity,—the slim, erect, inflexible _Ego_. To the eyes of men,
and especially to the eyes of women, whatever may have been the
moving cause, the outer manifestation was very agreeable. If Hubert
had no great firmness of faith, he had a very pretty firmness of
manner. He was gentle without timidity, frank without arrogance,
clever without pedantry. The common measure of clerical disallowance
was reduced in his hands to the tacit protest of a generous personal
purity. His appearance bore various wholesome traces of the
practical lessons of his Western pastorate. This had not been to his
taste; he had had to apply himself, to devote himself, to compromise
with a hundred aversions. His talents had been worth less to him
than he expected, and he had been obliged, as the French say, to
_payer de sa personne_,—that person for which he entertained so
delicate a respect. All this had given him a slightly jaded,
overwearied look, certain to deepen his interest in feminine eyes.
He had actually a couple of fine wrinkles in his seraphic forehead.
He secretly rejoiced in his wrinkles. They were his crown of glory.
He had suffered, he had worked, he had been bored. Now he believed
in earthly compensations.
“Dear me!” he said, “can this be Nora Lambert?”
She had risen to meet him, and held out her hand with girlish
frankness. She was dressed in a light, silk dress; she seemed a
young woman grown. “I have been growing hard in all these years,”
she said. “I have had to catch up with those _pieds énormes_.” The
readers will not have forgotten that Hubert had thus qualified her
lower members. Ignorant as she was, at the moment, of the French
tongue, her memory had instinctively retained the words, and she had
taken an early opportunity to look out _pied_ in the dictionary.
_Énorme_, of course, spoke for itself.
“You must have caught up with them now,” Hubert said, laughing. “You
are an enormous young lady. I should never have known you.” He sat
down, asked various questions about Roger, and adjured her to tell
him, as he said, “all about herself.” The invitation was flattering,
but it met only a partial compliance. Unconscious as yet of her own
charm, Nora was oppressed by a secret admiration of her companion,
whose presence seemed to open a brilliant vista. She compared him
with her cousin, and wondered that he should be at once so impressive
and so different. She blushed a little, privately, for Fenton, and
was not ill pleased to think he was absent. In the light of Hubert’s
good manners, his admission that he was no gentleman acquired an
excessive force. By this thrilling intimation of the diversity of
the male sex, the mental pinafore of childhood seemed finally
dismissed. Hubert was so frank and friendly, so tenderly and
gallantly patronizing, that more than once she felt herself beginning
to expand; but then, suddenly, something absent in the tone of his
assent, a vague fancy that, in the gathering dusk, he was looking at
her all at his ease, rather than listening to her, converted her
bravery into what she knew to be deplorable little-girlishness. On
the whole, this interview may have passed for Nora’s first lesson in
the art, indispensable to a young lady on the threshold of society,
of talking for half an hour without saying anything. The lesson was
interrupted by the arrival of Roger, who greeted his cousin with
almost extravagant warmth, and insisted upon his staying to dinner.
Roger was to take Nora after dinner to a concert, for which he felt
no great enthusiasm; he proposed to Hubert, who was a musical man, to
occupy his place. Hubert demurred awhile; but in the meantime Nora,
having gone to prepare herself, reappeared, looking extremely well in
the blue crape bonnet before mentioned, with her face bright with
anticipated pleasure. For a moment Roger was vexed at having
resigned his office; Hubert immediately stepped into it. They came
home late, the blue bonnet nothing the worse for wear, and the young
girl’s face lighted up by her impressions. Her animation was
extreme; she treated Roger to a representation of the concert, and
made a great show of voice. Her departing childishness, her dawning
tact, her freedom with Roger, her half-freedom with Hubert, made a
charming mixture, and insured for her auditors the success of the
entertainment. When she had retired, amid a mimic storm of applause
from the two gentlemen, Roger solemnly addressed his cousin. “Well,
what do you think of her? I hope you have no fault to find with her
feet.”
“I have had no observation of her feet,” said Hubert; “but she will
have very handsome hands. She is a very nice creature.” Roger sat
lounging in his chair with his hands in his pockets, his chin on his
breast, and a heavy gaze fixed on Hubert. The latter was struck with
his deeply preoccupied aspect. “But let us talk of you rather than
of Nora,” he said. “I have been waiting for a chance to tell you
that you look very poorly.”
“Nora or I,—it’s all one. She is the only thing in life I care for.”
Hubert was startled by the sombre energy of his tone. The old
polished, placid Roger was in abeyance. “My dear fellow,” he said,
“you are altogether wrong. Live for yourself. You may be sure she
will do as much. You take it too hard.”
“Yes, I take it too hard. It troubles me.”
“What’s the matter? Is she a naughty child? Is she more than you
bargained for?” Roger sat gazing at him in silence, with the same
grave eye. He began to suspect Nora had turned out a losing
investment. “Has she—a—low tastes?” he went on. “Surely not with
that sweet face!”
Roger started to his feet impatiently. “Don’t misunderstand me!” he
cried. “I have been longing to see some one,—to talk,—to get some
advice,—some sympathy. I am fretting myself away.”
“Good heavens, man, give her a thousand dollars and send her back to
her family. You have educated her.”
“Her family! She has no family! She’s the loneliest as well as the
sweetest, wisest, best of creatures! If she were only a tenth as
good, I should be a happier man. I can’t think of parting with her;
not for all I possess.”
Hubert stared a moment. “Why, you are in love.”
“Yes,” said Roger, blushing. “I am in love.”
“Dear me!” murmured Hubert.
“I am not ashamed of it,” rejoined Roger, softly.
It was no business of Hubert’s, certainly; but he felt the least bit
disappointed. “Well,” he said coolly, “why don’t you marry her?”
“It is not so simple as that!”
“She will not have you?”
Roger frowned impatiently. “Reflect a moment. You pretend to be a
man of delicacy.”
“You mean she is too young? Nonsense. If you are sure of her, the
younger the better.”
“For my unutterable misery,” said Roger, “I have a conscience. I
wish to leave her free and take the risk. I wish to be just and let
the matter work itself out. You may think me absurd, but I wish to
be loved for myself, as other men are loved.”
It was a specialty of Hubert’s that in proportion as other people
grew hot, he grew cool. To keep cool, morally, in a heated medium
was, in fact, for Hubert a peculiar satisfaction. He broke into a
long light laugh. “Excuse me,” he said, “but there is something
ludicrous in your attitude. What business has a lover with a
conscience? None at all! That’s why I keep out of it. It seems to
me your prerogative to be downright. If you waste any more time in
hair-splitting, you will find your young lady has taken things in the
lump!”
“Do you really think there is danger?” Roger demanded, pitifully.
“Not yet awhile. She’s only a child. Tell me, rather, is she only a
child? You have spent the evening beside her: how does she strike a
stranger?”
While Hubert’s answer lingered on his lips, the door opened and Nora
came in. Her errand was to demand the use of Roger’s watch-key, her
own having mysteriously vanished. She had begun to take out her pins
and had muffled herself for this excursion in a merino dressing-gown
of sombre blue. Her hair was gathered for the night into a single
massive coil, which had been loosened by the rapidity of her flight
along the passage. Roger’s key proved a complete misfit, so that she
had recourse to Hubert’s. It hung on the watch-chain which depended
from his waistcoat, and some rather intimate fumbling was needed to
adjust it to Nora’s diminutive timepiece. It worked admirably, and
she stood looking at him with a little smile of caution as it creaked
on the pivot. “I would not have troubled you,” she said, “but that
without my watch I should oversleep myself. You know Roger’s temper,
and what I should suffer if I were late for breakfast!”
Roger was ravished at this humorous sally, and when, on making her
escape, she clasped one hand to her head to support her released
tresses, and hurried along the corridor with the other confining the
skirts of her inflated robe, he kissed his hand after her with more
than jocular good-will.
“Ah! it’s as bad as that!” said Hubert, shaking his head.
“I had no idea she had such hair,” murmured Roger. “You are right,
it is no case for shilly-shallying.”
“Take care!” said Hubert. “She is only a child.”
Roger looked at him a moment. “My dear fellow, you are a hypocrite.”
Hubert colored the least bit, and then took up his hat and began to
smooth it with his handkerchief. “Not at all. See how frank I can
be. I recommend you to marry the young lady and have done with it.
If you wait, it will be at your own risk. I assure you I think she
is charming, and if I am not mistaken, this is only a hint of future
possibilities. Don’t sow for others to reap. If you think the
harvest is not ripe, let it ripen in milder sunbeams than these
vigorous hand-kisses. Lodge her with some proper person and go to
Europe; come home from Paris a year hence with her trousseau in your
trunks, and I will perform the ceremony without another fee than the
prospect of having an adorable cousin.” With these words Hubert left
his companion pensive.
His words reverberated in Roger’s mind; I may almost say that they
rankled. A couple of days later, in the hope of tenderer counsel, he
called upon our friend Mrs. Keith. This lady had completely rounded
the cape of matrimony, and was now buoyantly at anchor in the placid
cove of well-dowered widowhood. You have heard many a young
unmarried lady exclaim with a bold sweep of conception, “Ah me! I
wish I were a widow!” Mrs. Keith was precisely the widow that young
unmarried ladies wish to be. With her diamonds in her dressing-case
and her carriage in her stable, and without a feather’s weight of
encumbrance, she offered a finished example of satisfied ambition.
Her wants had been definite; these once gratified, she had not
presumed further. She was a very much worthier woman than in those
hungry virginal days when Roger had wooed her. Prosperity had agreed
equally well with her beauty and her temper. The wrinkles on her
brow had stood still, like Joshua’s sun, and a host of good
intentions and fair promises seemed to illuminate her person. Roger,
as he stood before her, not only felt that his passion was incurably
defunct, but allowed himself to doubt that this _veuve consolée_
would have made an ideal wife. The lady, mistaking his embarrassment
for the fumes of smouldering ardor, determined to transmute his
devotion by the subtle chemistry of friendship. This she found easy
work; in ten minutes the echoes of the past were hushed in the
small-talk of the present. Mrs. Keith was on the point of sailing
for Europe, and had much to say of her plans and arrangements,—of
the miserable rent she was to get for her house. “Why shouldn’t one
turn an honest penny?” she asked. “And now,” she went on, when the
field had been cleared, “tell me about the young lady.” This was
precisely what Roger wished; but just as he was about to begin his
story there came an irruption of visitors, fatal to the confidential.
Mrs. Keith found means to take him aside. “Seeing is better than
hearing,” she said, “and I am dying to see her. Bring her this
evening to dinner, and we shall have her to ourselves.”
Mrs. Keith had long been for Nora an object of mystical veneration.
Roger had been in the habit of alluding to her, not freely nor
frequently, but with a certain implicit consideration which more than
once had set Nora wondering. She entered the lady’s drawing-room
that evening with an oppressive desire to please. The interest
manifested by Roger in the question of what she should wear assured
her that he had staked a nameless something on the impression she
might make. She was not only reassured, however, but altogether
captivated, by the lavish cordiality of her hostess. Mrs. Keith
kissed her on both cheeks, held her at her two arms’ length, gave a
twist to the fall of her sash, and made her feel very plainly that
she was being inspected and appraised. All this was done, however,
with a certain flattering light in the eye and a tender matronly
smile which rather increased than diminished the young girl’s
composure. Mrs. Keith was herself so elegant, so finished, so
fragrant of taste and sense, that before an hour was over Nora felt
that she had borrowed the hint of a dozen indispensable graces.
After dinner her hostess bade her sit down to the piano. Here,
feeling sure of her ground, Nora surpassed herself. Mrs. Keith
beckoned to Roger to come and sit beside her on the sofa, where, as
she nodded time to the music with her head, she softly conversed.
Prosperity, as I have intimated, had acted on her moral nature very
much as a medicinal tonic—quinine or iron—acts upon the physical.
She was in a comfortable glow of charity. She itched gently, she
hardly knew where,—was it in heart or brain?—to render some one a
service. She had on hand a small capital of sentimental patronage
for which she desired a secure investment. Here was her chance. The
project which Roger had imparted to her three years before seemed to
her, now she had taken Nora’s measure, to contain such pretty
elements of success that she deemed it a sovereign pity it should not
be rounded into symmetry. She determined to lend an artistic hand.
“Does she know it, that matter?” she asked in a whisper.
“I have never told her.”
“That’s right. I approve your delicacy. Of course you are sure of
your case. She is altogether lovely,—she is one in a thousand. I
really envy you; upon my word, Mr. Lawrence, I am jealous. She has a
style of her own. It is not quite beauty; it is not quite
cleverness. It belongs neither altogether to her person, nor yet to
her mind. It’s a kind of way she has. It’s a way that may lead her
far. She has pretty things, too; one of these days she may take it
into her head to be a beauty of beauties. Nature never meant her to
hold up her head so well for nothing. Ah, how wrinkled and faded it
makes one feel! To be sixteen years old, with that head of hair,
with health and good connections, with that amount of good-will at
the piano, it’s the very best thing in the world, if they but knew
it! But no! they must leave it all behind them; they must pull their
hair to pieces; they must get rid of their complexions; they must be
twenty; they must have lovers, and go their own gait. Well, since it
must come, we must attend to the profits: they will take care of the
pleasures. Give Nora to me for a year. She needs a woman, a wise
woman, a woman like me. Men, when they undertake to meddle with a
young girl’s education, are veriest old grandmothers. Let me take
her to Europe and bring her out in Rome. Don’t be afraid; I will
guard your interests. I will bring you back the most charming girl
in America. I see her from here!” And describing a great curve in
the air with her fan, Mrs. Keith inclined her head to one side in a
manner suggestive of a milliner who descries in the bosom of futurity
the ideal bonnet. Looking at Roger, she saw that her point was
gained; and Nora, having just finished her piece, was accordingly
summoned to the sofa and made to sit down at Mrs. Keith’s feet.
Roger went and stood before the fire. “My dear Nora,” said Mrs.
Keith, as if she had known her from childhood, “how should you like
to go with me to Rome?”
Nora started to her feet, and stood looking open-eyed from one to the
other. “Really?” she said. “Does Roger—”
“Roger,” said Mrs. Keith, “finds you so hard to manage that he has
made you over to me. I forewarn you, I am a terrible woman. But if
you are not afraid, I shall scold you and pinch you no harder than I
would a daughter of my own.”
“I give you up for a year,” said Roger. “It is hard, troublesome as
you are.”
Nora stood wavering for a moment, hesitating where to deposit her
excess of joy. Then graciously dropping on her knees before Mrs.
Keith, she bent her young head and got rid of it in an ample kiss.
“I am not afraid of you,” she said simply. Roger turned round and
began to poke the fire.
The next day Nora went forth to buy certain articles necessary in
travelling. It was raining so heavily that, at Roger’s direction,
she took a carriage. Coming out of a shop, in the course of her
expedition, she encountered Hubert Lawrence tramping along in the
wet. He helped her back to her carriage, and stood for a moment
talking to her through the window. As they were going in the same
direction, she invited him to get in; and on his hesitating, she
added that she hoped their interview was not to end there, as she was
going to Europe with Mrs. Keith. At this news Hubert jumped in and
placed himself on the front seat. The knowledge that she was
drifting away gave a sudden value to the present occasion. Add to
this that in the light of Roger’s revelation after the concert, this
passive, predestined figure of hers had acquired for the young man a
certain picturesque interest. Nora found herself strangely at ease
with her companion. From time to time she strove to check her happy
freedom: but Hubert evidently, with his superior urbanity, was not
the person to note a little more or less in a school-girl’s primness.
Her enjoyment of his presence, her elation in the prospect of
departure, made her gayety reckless. They went together to half a
dozen shops and talked and laughed so distractedly over her
purchases, that she made them sadly at haphazard. At last their
progress was arrested by a dead-lock of vehicles in front of them,
caused by the breaking down of a streetcar. The carriage drew up
near the sidewalk in front of a confectioner’s. On Nora’s regretting
the delay, and saying she was ravenous for lunch, Hubert went into
the shop, and returned with a bundle of tarts. The rain came down in
sheeted torrents, so that they had to close both the windows.
Circled about with this watery screen, they feasted on their tarts
with peculiar relish. In a short time Hubert made another excursion,
and returned with a second course. His diving to and fro in the rain
excited them to extravagant mirth. Nora had bought some
pocket-handkerchiefs, which were in that cohesive state common to
these articles in the shop. It seemed a very pretty joke to spread
the piece across their knees as a table-cloth.
“To think of picnicking in the midst of Washington Street!” cried
Nora, with her lips besprinkled with flakes of pastry.
“For a young lady about to leave her native land, her home, and
friends, and all that is dear to her,” said Hubert, “you seem to me
in very good spirits.”
“Don’t speak of it,” said Nora. “I shall cry to-night; it is
feverish gayety.”
“You will not be able to do this kind of thing abroad,” said Hubert.
“Do you know we are monstrously improper? For a young girl it’s by
no means pure gain, going to Europe. She comes into a very pretty
heritage of prohibitions. You have no idea of the number of improper
things a young girl can do. You are walking on the edge of a
precipice. Don’t look over or you will lose your head and never walk
straight again. Here, you are all blindfold. Promise me not to lose
this blessed bandage of American innocence. Promise me that, when
you come back, we shall spend another morning together as free and
delightful as this one!”
“I promise you!” said Nora; but Hubert’s words had potently
foreshadowed the forfeiture of sweet possibilities. For the rest of
the drive she was in a graver mood. They found Roger beneath the
portico of the hotel, watch in hand, staring up and down the street.
Preceding events having been explained to him, he offered to drive
his cousin home.
“I suppose Nora has told you,” he began, as they proceeded.
“Yes! Well, I am sorry. She is a charming girl.”
“Ah!” Roger cried: “I knew you thought so!”
“You are as knowing as ever! She sails, she tells me, on Wednesday
next. And you, when do you sail?”
“I don’t sail at all. I am going home.”
“Are you sure of that?”
Roger gazed for a moment out of the window. “I mean for a year,” he
said, “to allow her perfect liberty.”
“And to accept the consequences?”
“Absolutely.” And Roger folded his arms.
This conversation took place on a Friday. Nora was to sail from New
York on the succeeding Wednesday; for which purpose she was to leave
Boston with Mrs. Keith on the Monday. The two ladies were of course
to be attended to the ship by Roger. Early Sunday morning Nora
received a visit from her friend. The reader will perhaps remember
that Mrs. Keith was a recent convert to the Roman Catholic faith; as
such, she performed her religious duties with peculiar assiduity.
Her present errand was to propose that Nora should go with her to
church and join in offering a mass for their safety at sea. “I don’t
want to bring you over, you know; but I think it would be so nice,”
said Mrs. Keith. Appealing to Roger, Nora received permission to do
as she chose; she therefore lent herself with fervor to this pious
enterprise. The two ladies spent an hour at the foot of the
altar,—an hour of romantic delight to the younger one. On Sunday
evening Roger, who, as the day of separation approached, became
painfully anxious and reluctant, betook himself to Mrs. Keith, with
the desire to enforce upon her mind a solemn sense of her
responsibilities and of the value of the treasure he had confided to
her. Nora, left alone, sat wondering whether Hubert might not come
to bid her farewell. Wandering listlessly about the room, her eye
fell on the Saturday-evening paper. She took it up and glanced down
the columns. In one of them she perceived a list of the various
church services of the morrow. Last in the line stood this
announcement: “At the —— —— Church, the Rev. Hubert Lawrence, at
eight o’clock.” It gave her a gentle shock; it destroyed the vision
of his coming in and their having, under the lamp, by the fire, the
serious counterpart of their frolicsome _tête-à-tête_ in the
carriage. She longed to show him that she was not a giggling child,
but a wise young lady. But no; in a dimly-crowded church, before a
hundred eyes, he was speaking of divine things. How did he look in
the pulpit? If she could only see him! And why not? She looked at
her watch; it lacked ten minutes to eight. She made no pause to
reflect; she only felt that she must hurry. She rang the bell and
ordered a carriage, and then, hastening to her room, put on her shawl
and bonnet,—the blue crape bonnet of the concert. In a few moments
she was on her way to the church. When she reached it, her heart was
beating fast; she was on the point of turning back. But the coachman
opened the carriage door with such a flourish that she was ashamed
not to get out. She was late; the church was full, the service had
gone forward, the sermon was about to begin. The sexton with great
solemnity conducted her up the aisle to a pew directly beneath the
pulpit. She bent her eyes on the ground, but she knew that there was
a deep expectant silence, and that Hubert was upright before the desk
looking at her. She sat down beside a very grim-visaged old lady
with bushy eyebrows, who stared at her so hard, that to hide her
confusion she buried her head and prolonged her prayer; upon which
the old lady seemed to stare more intently, as if she thought her
very pretentious. When she raised her head, Hubert had begun to
speak; he was looking above her and beyond her, and during the sermon
his level glance never met her own. Of what did he speak and what
was the moral of his discourse? Nora could not have told you; yet
not a soul in the audience, not all those listening souls together,
were more devoutly attentive than she. But it was not on what he
said, but on what he was, or seemed to be, that her perception was
centred. Hubert Lawrence had an excellent gift of oratory. His
voice was full of penetrating sweetness, and, modulated with infinite
art, it sank with a silvery cadence. His speech was silver, though I
doubt whether his silence was ever golden. His utterance seemed to
Nora the perfection of eloquence. She thought of her uplifted
feeling in the morning, in the incense-thickened air of the Catholic
church; but what a straighter flight to heaven was this! Hubert’s
week-day face was a summer cloud, with a lining of celestial
brightness. Now, how the divine truth overlapped its relenting edges
and seemed to transform it into a dazzling focus of light! He spoke
for half an hour, but Nora took no note of time. As the service drew
to a close, he gave her from the pulpit a rapid glance, which she
interpreted as a request to remain. When the congregation began to
disperse, a number of persons, chiefly ladies, waited for him near
the pulpit, and, as he came down, met him with greetings and
compliments. Nora watched him from her place, listening, smiling,
and passing his handkerchief over his forehead. At last they
released him, and he came up to her. She remembered for years
afterward the strange half-smile on his face. There was something in
it like a pair of eyes peeping over a wall. It seemed to express so
fine an acquiescence in what she had done, that, for the moment, she
had a startled sense of having committed herself to something. He
gave her his hand, without manifesting any surprise. “How did you
get here?”
“In a carriage. I saw it in the paper at the last moment.”
“Does Roger know you came?”
“No; he had gone to Mrs. Keith’s.”
“So you started off alone, at a moment’s notice?”
She nodded, blushing. He was still holding her hand; he pressed it
and dropped it. “O Hubert,” cried Nora, suddenly, “now I know you!”
Two ladies were lingering near, apparently mother and daughter. “I
must be civil to them,” he said: “they have come from New York to
hear me.” He quickly rejoined them and conducted them toward their
carriage. The younger one was extremely pretty, and looked a little
like a Jewess. Nora observed that she wore a great diamond in each
ear; she eyed our heroine rather severely as they passed. In a few
minutes Hubert came back, and, before she knew it, she had taken his
arm and he was beside her in her own carriage. They drove to the
hotel in silence; he went up stairs with her. Roger had not
returned. “Mrs. Keith is very agreeable,” said Hubert. “But Roger
knew that long ago. I suppose you have heard,” he added: “but
perhaps you have not heard.”
“I have not heard,” said Nora, “but I have suspected—”
“What?”
“No; it is for you to say.”
“Why, that Mrs. Keith might have been Mrs. Lawrence.”
“Ah, I was right,—I was right,” murmured Nora, with a little air of
triumph. “She may be still. I wish she would!” Nora was removing
her bonnet before the mirror over the chimney-piece; as she spoke,
she caught Hubert’s eye in the glass. He dropped it and took up his
hat. “Won’t you wait?” she asked.
He said he thought he had better go, but he lingered without sitting
down. Nora walked about the room, she hardly knew why, smoothing the
table-covers and rearranging the chairs.
“Did you cry about your departure, the other night, as you promised?”
Hubert asked.
“I confess that I was so tired with our adventures that I went
straight to sleep.”
“Keep your tears for a better cause. One of the greatest pleasures
in life is in store for you. There are a hundred things I should
like to say to you about Rome. How I only wish I were going to show
it you! Let me beg you to go some day to a little place in the Via
Felice, on the Pincian,—a house with a terrace adjoining the fourth
floor. There is a plasterer’s shop in the basement. You can reach
the terrace by the common staircase. I occupied the rooms adjoining
it, and it was my peculiar property. I remember I used often to
share it with a poor little American sculptress who lived below. She
made my bust; the Apollo Belvedere was nothing to it. I wonder what
has become of her! Take a look at the view,—the view I woke up to
every morning, read by, studied by, lived by. I used to alternate my
periods of sight-seeing with fits of passionate study. In another
winter I think I might have learned something. Your real lover of
Rome oscillates with a kind of delicious pain between the city in
itself and the city in literature. They keep forever referring you
to each other and bandying you to and fro. If we had eyes for
metaphysical things, Nora, you might see a hundred odd bits of old
ambitions and day-dreams strewing that little terrace. Ah, as I sat
there, how the Campagna used to take up the tale and respond to my
printed page! If I know anything of the lesson of history (a man of
my profession is supposed to), I learned it in that enchanted air! I
should like to know who is sitting in the same school now. Perhaps
you will write me a word.”
“I will piously gather up the crumbs of your feasts and make a meal
of them,” said Nora. “I will let you know how they taste.”
“Pray do. And one more request. Don’t let Mrs. Keith make a
Catholic of you.” And he put out his hand.
She shook her head slowly; as she took it. “I will have no Pope but
you,” she said.
And after that he went.