The good lady who enjoyed the sinecure of being mother-in-law to Mrs.
Keith passed on that especial Sunday an exceptionally dull evening.
Her son’s widow was oppressed and preoccupied, and took an early
leave. Mrs. Keith’s first question on reaching home was as to
whether Nora had left her room. On learning that she had quitted the
house alone, after dark, Mrs. Keith made her way, stirred by vague
conjecture, to the empty chamber, where, of course, she speedily laid
her hands on those two testamentary notes to which allusion has been
made. In a moment she had read the one addressed to herself.
Perturbed as she was, she yet could not repress an impulse of
intelligent applause. “Ah, how character plays the cards!” she
mused. “How a good girl’s very errors set her off!” If Roger longed
for Nora to-day, who could measure the morrow’s longing? He might
enjoy, however, without waiting for the morrow, this refinement of
desire. In spite of the late hour, Mrs. Keith repaired to his abode,
armed with the other letter, deeming this, at such a moment, a more
gracious course than to send for him. The letter Roger found to be
brief but pregnant. “Dear Roger,” it ran, “I learned this afternoon
the secret of all these years,—too late for our happiness. I have
been strangely blind; you have been too forbearing,—generous where
you should have been strictly just. I never dreamed of what this day
would bring. Now, I must leave you; I can do nothing else. This is
no time to thank you for what you have been to me, but I shall live
to do so yet. Dear Roger, get married, and send me your children to
teach. I shall live by teaching. I have a family, you know; I go to
New York to-night. I write this on my knees, imploring you to be
happy. One of these days, when I have learned to be myself again, we
shall be better friends than ever. I beg you, I beg you, not to
follow me.”
Mrs. Keith sat a long time with her host. For the first time in her
knowledge of him she saw Roger violent,—violent with horror and
self-censure and vain imprecation. “Take her at her word,” she said;
“don’t follow her. Let her knock against the world a little, and she
will have you yet.”
This philosophy seemed to Roger too stoical by half; to sit at home
and let Nora knock against the world was more than he could
undertake. “Whether she will have me or not,” he said, “I must bring
her back. I am morally responsible for her. Good God! think of her
afloat in that horrible city with that rascal of a half-cousin—her
‘family’ she calls him!—for a pilot!” He took, of course, the first
train to New York. How to proceed, where to look, was a hard
question; but to linger and waver was agony. He was haunted, as he
went, with dreadful visions of what might have befallen her; it
seemed to him that he had never loved her before.
Fenton, as he recognized him, was a comfortable sight, in spite of
his detested identity. He was better than uncertainty. “You have
news for me!” Roger cried. “Where is she?”
Fenton looked about him at his leisure, feeling, agreeably, that now
_he_ held the cards. “Gently,” he said. “Hadn’t we better retire?”
Upon which Roger, grasping his arm with grim devotion, led him to his
own apartment. “I rather hit it,” George went on. “I am not the
fool you once tried to make me seem.”
“Where is she,—tell me that!” Roger repeated.
“Allow me, dear sir,” said Fenton, settling himself in spacious
vantage. “If I have come here to oblige you, you must let me take my
own way. You don’t suppose I have rushed to meet you for the
pleasure of the thing. I owe it to my cousin, in the first place, to
say that I have come without her knowledge.”
“If you mean only to torture me,” Roger answered, “say so outright.
Is she well? is she safe?”
“Safe? the safest creature in the city, sir! A delightful home,
maternal care!”
Roger wondered whether Fenton was making horrible sport of his
trouble; he turned cold at the thought of maternal care of his
providing. But he admonished himself to lose nothing by arrogance.
“I thank you extremely for your kindness. Nothing remains but that I
should see her.”
“Nothing, indeed! You are very considerate. You know that she
particularly objects to seeing you.”
“Possibly! But that is for her to say. I claim the right to take
the refusal from her own lips.”
Fenton looked at him with an impudent parody of compassion. “Don’t
you think you have had refusals enough? You must enjoy them!”
Roger turned away with an imprecation, but he continued to swallow
his impatience. “Mr. Fenton,” he said, “you have not come here, I
know, to waste words, nor have I to waste temper. You see before you
a desperate man. Come, make the most of me! I am willing, I am
delighted, to be fleeced! You will help me, but not for nothing.
Name your terms.”
Fenton flinched, but he did not protest; he only gave himself the
luxury of swaggering a little. “Well, you see,” he answered, “my
assistance is worth something. Let me explain how much. You will
never guess! I know your story; Nora has told me
everything,—everything! We have had a great talk. Let me give you
a little hint of my story,—and excuse egotism! You proposed to her;
she refused you. You offered her money, luxury, a position. She
knew you, she liked you enormously, yet she refused you flat! Now
reflect on this.”
There was something revolting to Roger in seeing his adversary
profaning these sacred mysteries; he protested. “I _have_ reflected,
quite enough. You can tell me nothing. Her affections,” he added
stiffly, to make an end of it, “were pre-engaged.”
“Exactly! You see how that complicates matters. Poor, dear little
Nora!” And Fenton gave a twist to his mustache. “Imagine, if you
can, how a man placed as I am feels toward a woman,—toward _the_
woman! If he reciprocates, it’s love, it’s passion, it’s what you
will, but it’s common enough! But when he doesn’t repay her in kind,
when he can’t, poor devil, it’s—it’s—upon my word,” cried Fenton,
slapping his knee, “it’s chivalry!”
For some moments Roger failed to appreciate the remarkable purport of
these observations; then, suddenly, it dawned upon him. “Do I
understand you,” he asked, in a voice gentle by force of wonder,
“that you are the man?”
Fenton squared himself in his chair. “You have hit it, sir. I am
the man,—the happy, the unhappy man. D—n it, sir, it’s not my
fault!”
Roger stood staring; Fenton felt his eyes penetrating him to the
core. “Excuse me,” said Roger, at last, “if I suggest your giving me
some slight evidence in support of this extraordinary claim!”
“Evidence? isn’t there about evidence enough? When a young girl
gives up home and friends and fortune and—and reputation, and rushes
out into the world to throw herself into a man’s arms, it seems to me
you have got your evidence. But if you’ll not take my word, you may
leave it! I may look at the matter once too often, let me tell you!
I admire Nora with all my heart; I worship the ground she treads on;
but I confess I’m afraid of her; she’s too good for me; she was meant
for a finer gentleman than I! By which I don’t mean you, of
necessity. But you have been good to her, and you have a claim. It
has been cancelled in a measure; but you wish to set it up again.
Now you see that I stand in your way; that if I had a mind to, I
might stand there forever! Hang it, sir, I am playing the part of a
saint. I have but a word to say to settle my case, and to settle
yours. But I have my eye on a lady neither so young nor so pretty as
my cousin, yet whom I can marry with a better conscience, for she
expects no more than I can give her. Nevertheless, I don’t answer
for myself. A man isn’t a saint every day in the week. Talk about
conscience when a beautiful girl sits gazing at you through a mist of
tears! O, you have yourself to thank for it all! A year and a half
ago, if you hadn’t treated me like a swindler, Nora would have been
content to treat me like a friend. But women have a fancy for an
outlaw. You turned me out of doors, and Nora’s heart went with me.
It has followed me ever since. Here I sit with my ugly face and hold
it in my hand. As I say, I don’t quite know what to do with it. You
propose an arrangement, I inquire your terms. A man loved is a man
listened to. If I were to say to Nora to-morrow, ‘My dear girl, you
have made a mistake. You are in a false position. Go back to Mr.
Lawrence directly, and then we will talk about it!’ she would look at
me a moment with those beautiful eyes of hers, she would sigh, she
would gather herself up like a princess on trial for treason,
remanded to prison,—and she would march to your door. Once she’s
within it, it’s your own affair. That’s what I can do. Now what can
you do? Come, something handsome!”
Fenton spoke loud and fast, as if to outstrip self-contempt. Roger
listened amazedly to this tissue of falsity, impudence, and greed,
and at last, as Fenton paused, and he seemed to see Nora’s very image
turning away with a shudder, his disgust broke forth. “Upon my word,
sir,” he cried, “you go too far; you ask too much. Nora in love with
you,—you, who haven’t the grace even to lie decently! Tell me she’s
ill, she’s lost, she’s dead; but don’t tell me she can look at you
without horror!”
Fenton rose and stood for a moment, glaring with anger at his useless
self-exposure. For an instant, Roger expected a tussle. But Fenton
deemed that he could deal harder vengeance than by his fists. “Very
good!” he cried. “You have chosen. I don’t mind your words; you’re
an ass at best, and of course you are twenty times an ass when you
are put out by a disagreeable truth. But you are not such a fool, I
guess, as not to repent!” And Fenton made a rather braver exit than
you might have expected.
Roger’s recent vigil with Mrs. Keith had been dismal enough; but he
was yet to learn that a sleepless night may contain deeper
possibilities of suffering. He had flung back Fenton’s words, but
they returned to the charge. When once the gate is opened to
self-torture, the whole army of fiends files in. Before morning he
had fairly out-Fentoned Fenton. There was no discretion in his own
love; why should there be in Nora’s? We love as we must, not as we
should; and she, poor girl, might have bowed to the common law. In
the morning he slept awhile for weariness, but he awoke to a world of
agitation. If Fenton’s tale was true, and if, at Mrs. Keith’s
instigation, his own suspicions had done Hubert wrong, he would go to
Hubert, pour out his woes, and demand aid and comfort. He must move
to find rest. Hubert’s lodging was far up town; Roger started on
foot. The weather was perfect; one of those happy days of February
which seem to snatch a mood from May,—a day when any sorrow is twice
a sorrow. The winter was melting and trickling; you heard on all
sides, in the still sunshine, the raising of windows; on the edges of
opposing house-tops rested a vault of vernal blue. Where was she
hidden, in the vast bright city? The streets and crowds and houses
that concealed her seemed hideous. He would have beggared himself
for the sound of her voice, though her words might damn him. When at
last he reached Hubert’s dwelling, a sudden sense of all that he
risked checked his steps. Hubert, after all, and Hubert alone, was a
possible rival, and it would be sad work to put the torch into his
hands! So he turned heavily back to the Fifth Avenue and kept his
way to the Park. Here, for some time he walked about, heeding,
feeling, seeing nothing but the glaring, mocking brightness of the
day. At last he sat down on a bench; the delicious mildness of the
air almost sickened him. It was some time before he perceived
through the mist of his thoughts that two ladies had descended from a
carriage hard by, and were approaching his bench,—the only one near
at hand. One of these ladies was of great age and evidently infirm;
she came slowly, leaning on her companion’s arm; she wore a green
shade over her eyes. The younger lady, who was in the prime of youth
and beauty, supported her friend with peculiar tenderness. As Roger
rose to give them place, he dimly observed on the young lady’s face a
movement of recognition, a smile,—the smile of Miss Sands! Blushing
slightly, she frankly greeted him. He met her with the best grace at
his command, and felt her eyes, as he spoke, scanning the trouble in
his aspect. “There is no need of my introducing you to my aunt,” she
said. “She has lost her hearing, and her only pleasure is to bask in
the sun.” She turned and helped this venerable invalid to settle
herself on the bench, put a shawl about her, and satisfied her feeble
needs with filial solicitude. At the end of ten minutes of
commonplace talk, relieved however by certain intelligent glances on
either side, Roger found a kind of healing quality in the presence of
this agreeable woman. At last these sympathetic eye-beams resolved
themselves, on Miss Sands’s part, into speech. “You are either very
unwell, Mr. Lawrence, or very unhappy.”
Roger hesitated an instant, under the empire of that stubborn
aversion to complaint which, in his character, was half modesty and
half philosophy. But Miss Sands seemed to sit there eying him so
like the genius of friendship, that he answered simply, “I am
unhappy!”
“I was afraid it would come!” said Miss Sands. “It seemed to me when
we met, a year ago, that your spirits were too high for this life.
You know you told me something which gives me the right,—I was going
to say, to be interested; let me say, at least, to be compassionate.”
“I hardly remember what I told you. I only know that I admired you
to a degree which may very well have loosened my tongue.”
“O, it was about the charms of another you spoke! You told me about
the young girl to whom you had devoted yourself.”
“I was dreaming then; now I am awake!” Roger hung his head and poked
the ground with his stick. Suddenly he looked up, and she saw that
his eyes were filled with tears. “Dear lady,” he said, “you have
stirred deep waters! Don’t question me. I am ridiculous with
disappointment and sorrow!”
She gently laid her hand upon his arm. “Let me hear it all! I
assure you I can’t go away and leave you sitting here the same image
of suicidal despair I found you.”
Thus urged, Roger told his story. Her attention made him understand
it better himself, and, as he talked, he worked off the superficial
disorder of his grief. When he came to speak of this dismal
contingency of Nora’s love for her cousin, he threw himself frankly
upon Miss Sands’s pity, upon her wisdom. “Is such a thing possible?”
he asked. “Do you believe it?”
She raised her eyebrows. “You must remember that I know neither Miss
Lambert nor the gentleman you speak of. I can hardly risk a
judgment; I can only say this, that the general effect of your story
is to diminish my esteem for women,—to elevate my opinion of men.”
“O, except Nora on one side, and Fenton on the other! Nora is an
angel!”
Miss Sands gave a vexed smile. “Possibly! You are a man, and you
ought to have loved a woman. Angels have a good conscience
guaranteed them; they may do what they please. If I should except
any one, it would be Mr. Hubert Lawrence. I met him the other
evening.”
“You think it is Hubert then?” Roger demanded mournfully.
Miss Sands broke into a brilliant laugh. “For an angel, Miss Lambert
hasn’t lost her time on earth! But don’t ask me for advice, Mr.
Lawrence; at least not now and here. Come and see me to-morrow, or
this evening. Don’t regret having spoken; you may believe at least
that the burden of your grief is shared. It was too miserable that
at such a time you should be sitting here alone, feeding upon your
own heart.”
These seemed to Roger excellent words; they lost nothing on the
speaker’s lips. She was indeed extremely beautiful; her face,
softened by intelligent pity, was lighted by a gleam of tender irony
of his patience. Was he, after all, stupidly patient, ignobly fond?
There was in Miss Sands something delightfully rich and mellow.
Nora, for an instant, seemed a flighty school-girl. He looked about
him, vaguely questioning the empty air, longing for rest, yet
dreading forfeiture. He left his place and strolled across the
dull-colored turf. At the base of a tree, on its little bed of
sparse raw verdure, he suddenly spied the first violet of the year.
He stooped and picked it: its mild firm tint was the color of
friendship. He brought it back to Miss Sands, who now had risen with
her companion and was preparing to return to the carriage. He
silently offered her the violet,—a mere pin’s head of bloom; a
passionate throb of his heart had told him that this was all he could
offer her. She took it with a sober smile; it seemed to grow pale
beneath her dark blue eyes. “We shall see you again?” she said.
Roger felt himself blushing to his brows. He had a vision on either
hand of an offered cup,—the deep-hued wine of illusion,—the bitter
draught of constancy. A certain passionate instinct answered,—an
instinct deeper than his wisdom, his reason, his virtue,—deep as his
love. “Not now,” he said. “A year hence!”
Miss Sands turned away and stood for a moment as motionless as some
sculptured statue of renunciation. Then, passing her arm caressingly
round her companion, “Come, dear aunt,” she murmured: “we must go.”
This little address to the stone-deaf dame was her single tribute to
confusion. Roger walked with the ladies to their carriage and
silently helped them to enter it. He noted the affectionate tact
with which Miss Sands adjusted her movements to those of her
companion. When he lifted his hat, his friend bowed, as he fancied,
with an air of redoubled compassion. She had but imagined his prior
loss,—she knew his present one! “She would make an excellent wife!”
he said, as the carriage rolled away. He stood watching it for some
minutes; then, as it wheeled round a turn, he was seized with a
deeper, sorer sense of his impotent idleness. He would go to Hubert
with his accusation, if not with his appeal.