NORA FACES THE INEVITABLE
I am inclined to believe that each one of my fair readers, and a
majority of those mere males of less account, would gladly accompany me
in my journey south by east across the map of Europe. I say this, not
by reason of over-weening pride in my personal charm as a _compagnon de
voyage_, but because of the journey’s objective. At the present stage
of my story, Maggie Hutchinson is surely an interesting personage. Have
you ever heard or read of another heroine so situated? Mark you, she
knew Karl when she was a little child. After ten years’ separation she
met him, under very peculiar conditions, for a few hours in a London
hotel. And now, five years later, without ever a word exchanged between
them during all that long time, her life was indissolubly bound up with
his, a passionate love united her to him with ties never dreamed of by
tender Juliet or devoted Héloïse, and to crown the midsummer madness of
it all, Karl was deliberately killing himself to save another woman’s
life.
It is a pardonable assumption, therefore, that every true devotee of
romance should be eager to meet her face to face. I know that I was.
I quitted Charing Cross in a state of nervous exaltation to which my
seasoned heart had long been a stranger.
But Fate, the master playwright, had ordained that influences I had
not foreseen should fill the stage for many an hour ere I reached the
Castello Rondo in far-off Italy. In fact, none of us had taken into
account Karl’s mother.
Mrs. Grier was not enamored of high society as it is understood in
London. She was a German, and she had never lost her Teuton’s tastes.
First, and necessarily, a good housekeeper, she gave her spare time to
reading. She hardly ever glanced at a newspaper, nor did she dawdle
through more than one novel a year. She kept her household accounts,
contrived economies in an annual expenditure of many thousands, looked
after the practical management of certain estates, and, for the rest,
saw as little as possible of fashionable folk, but isolated herself
with some portentous professorial treatise on the more serious matters
of life, or sought relaxation in the pages of her beloved Schiller.
This was excellent while Grier senior was accumulating riches, and
Karl followed the beaten track leading to a suitable marriage and a
peerage. But she had lost none of her maternal love for her wonderful
son, and her shrewd eyes soon divined the anxiety of her husband, the
silent endurance of Karl. At first, her questions encountered a certain
gentle evasiveness. She persisted, and the elder Grier admitted that
all was not well between Karl and Nora.
Then the mother entered the arena, and you need never ask in whose
behalf she drew the sword.
“If Karl does not want to marry Nora Cazenove, why are you trying to
force him into a distasteful match?” she demanded of her distressed
partner.
“I am doing nothing of the kind,” was the instant answer.
“Then who _is_ doing it?”
“No one. He seemed to be happy in his engagement. All went well until
this inf--this dreadful sixth sense of his seized upon him, threatening
to wring the very soul out of him.”
“I believe he has always hankered after Maggie Hutchinson.”
“How can that be? We have not coerced his judgment. He has not
made the slightest effort to meet her for years. I am not prone
to superstition, but there are times when I imagine that the watch
Constantine gave him is an evil thing, a constant reminder of the man’s
unhappy death.”
To what a depth of misery must my old friend have been reduced before
he would seek such an ignoble explanation of his sorrows!
“Unberufen! Unberufen!” cried Mrs. Grier, for she was born in the Black
Forest, and the scientific essay was not yet written which should
rescue her wholly from belief in cryptic omens of malign import.
On the morning of my departure for Como, Karl did not appear at
breakfast. His mother went to him. She found him in his dressing-room,
smoking in seeming content.
“Now, Karl,” she said, sitting on an arm of his easy chair and placing
a loving hand on his shoulder, “tell me all about it.”
He was far too wise to pretend to misunderstand.
“There is not much to tell, mother,” he said placidly. “I find that I
cannot marry Nora, and, in view of the wide-spread interest taken in
our engagement, that is a sad thing, is it not?”
“What is stopping you from marrying her?”
“Some intangible influence which you women call love. It is an affinity
whose properties are shared by all creation, from unicellular protozoa
up or down, to the highest anthropoids. Even air and water are composed
of sympathetic gases, so--”
“Karl, be serious.”
“Mother, I _am_ serious. Paris was drawn to Helen by a living force
which leaped the strongest walls of reason and morality, and the same
impetuous movement unites two atoms of hydrogen to one atom of oxygen
in order to form water. Now, wait a moment! Introduce a Menelaus or an
atom of nitrogen, and you have an explosion.”
“You are fencing with me, _liebchen_.”
“Indeed, I am not.”
“Then, if Margaret Hutchinson is your Helen, and there is no Menelaus,
you must tell Nora Cazenove that it would not be fair to her to take
her as your wife when you love another.”
“Do you think that is the best thing to do?”
“I am so sure of it that if you dislike the task I will go to her
myself.”
Karl saw that his mother meant what she said. Heavy-hearted by the
necessity of it, he set himself deliberately to deceive her.
“There is no harm in waiting a few days,” he said.
“There is every harm. Your father is quite beside himself with care. I
have never seen him so disturbed.”
Karl bit his pipe firmly between his teeth. His father had kept the
secret, then? His mother did not know all.
“I have a reason for saying that,” he continued, after a slight pause.
“However faithfully I may have worshiped Maggie from afar there is no
knowing how she regards me.”
“But you _do_ know.”
“Not in the accepted meaning of the term. I may be blinded by my own
conceit. To settle matters, an old friend has gone to Como to see how
my inamorata regards me.”
“An old friend! Who is it that is so interested in my son?”
He knew that his mother’s heart rebelled against the suggestion of a
stranger taking part in affairs so vital to himself of which she had
been kept in ignorance.
With a well-assumed carelessness, he told her how Hooper and I were
planning to expedite his wooing, and he so insisted on the humor of our
dark conspiracy, when he was fully aware of each act and word, that he
won a smile to her kindly face.
Yet her alarmed perplexity did not abate. There was a subtle change in
Karl which in no way escaped her. He was thinner, altogether unstrung
and devitalized. She was conscious, too, of a physical tension in his
attitude which was strangely at variance with the wonted suppleness of
an athletic youngster of his fine proportions.
“When does this embassy return?” she asked musingly.
“I cannot say. You forget that I have not been consulted,” he grumbled
with a well-feigned laugh.
“And Mr. Hooper remains in London?”
“That is a part of the plot.”
“Very well. Be ready to take me to the hotel in half an hour. There is
a flower-show at Richmond which I wish to visit. We shall call for Mr.
Hooper, drive to Richmond, pass some time at the show, and return here
for tea.”
In a word, Karl was to be tied to his mother’s apron-strings for
a while. And Hooper was to be drawn judiciously. It was a simple
expedient; for Mrs. Grier had failed utterly to recognize the real
nature of the problem which faced her, and not her alone, but all
of us. Her son’s sixth sense had always remained a thing apart and
wholly incomprehensible. She had heard little of it during recent
years. The pranks he used to play occasionally served but to amuse
her. Thus, he could summon any servant in the house by causing that
particular domestic to fancy he or she heard a bell or a voice. He
was exceedingly reliable as a weather prophet, especially when the
conditions were settled for either rain or sunshine. Once, when a
guest, a _malade imaginaire_, was bothering Mrs. Grier and her cook by
the multiplicity of dishes he could not eat and the few he could eat
but which disagreed with him, Karl made him tackle an outrageous meal
of many courses with a hearty gusto. The poor man’s famished digestion
stood the ordeal well, and he slept for twelve hours thereafter, to the
great joy of the household and his own confusion.
I might multiply hundreds of these minor happenings, and it is not
surprising that Mrs. Grier came to regard them as of slight importance,
whereas the existing grave situation was not only of recent growth,
but its nature and extent had been sedulously kept from her. So, there
never was less tangible connection between trivial cause and actual
effect than between the mother’s resolve to keep an eye on her son for
a day or two and the outcome of that resolution.
Examining events in critical review afterwards, I saw that a host of
things which might have occurred were diverted from their obvious
channels by Mrs. Grier’s interference at that moment. Some of these
became clear before many hours had sped.
First and foremost of these baffled circumstances--Hooper’s
acquaintance with Miss Cazenove was delayed a whole day. Secondly--but
here I avail myself of the only chance given me in the course of a
singularly straightforward tale to whet the reader’s appetite somewhat
by refusing to raise the curtain on the last act of the drama before
the penultimate scene has been packed away with the other stage
accessories.
And, indeed, I am concealing nothing from you in the ordered narration
of the story. Mrs. Grier kept the two young men busy all the day, and
insisted on Hooper remaining to dinner that evening. She learnt not a
word which cleared the puzzle. Hooper and Karl were chiefly reminiscent
in their talk. The shrewd American quickly took the cue of his friend’s
attitude. Neither by look nor speech did he betray the trust reposed in
him.
Mrs. Grier twice swung the conversation round to the occupants of the
Castello Rondo. She did this neatly and without undue insistence,
and quite as cleverly did Hooper express his desire to meet such an
exceptionally gifted girl as Maggie Hutchinson was, by all accounts.
Dear lady! She remained awake that night until assured that Karl was
safe and sound in his room. She was bewildered, but far from alarmed.
Yet she knelt and prayed long and earnestly for the welfare of her
loved ones, husband and son, and her last conscious words, uttered with
trembling lips ere she closed her tear-laden eyes, were:--
“Karl, mein liebchen, Gott befolen!”
Little did she dream that she owed her restful sleep to the influence
which Karl exerted in her behalf, nor has she ever known the terrible
strain she imposed by her well-meant efforts to pierce the mystery
which surrounded him. That was mercifully kept from her. Had she ever
realized that the long-drawn-out programme she devised in order to
distract his mind was really the quickest means to bring him to utter
destruction, she would never have forgiven herself.
Hooper was on the rack all the time. The signs which an anxious mother
interpreted as lassitude and a weariness of spirit were clear evidence
to him that Karl was suffering an agony of restraint.
“I was at my wits’ end what to say or do,” he told me subsequently. “I
was afraid that Karl might crack up at any moment. Brain fever was the
best thing I could hope for him; but, somehow, though doctoring is a
science I know less of than conchology, I felt that relief would not
come in that way. Once or twice I managed to touch his hand as if by
accident. He was cool and firm as a block of ice. He knew what I was
up to, and smiled at me in such despair! Guess I had a cold chill down
my spine enough to give a rhinoceros influenza!”
Strange, was it not, that Hooper should use such a simile after what
Karl had said? But I must guard against digression. There is a fitting
place for analysis, but a man may not stand up in a canoe and make a
speech on the laws of bodies in motion when his frail craft is hurtling
through rock-strewn rapids.
“It was a heavy risk I took,” went on my fellow-conspirator, “but I was
sure that Karl was more taxed by his mother’s close observation than by
the manifold demands on his stamina entailed by other considerations.
So I bluffed. Oxford was a natural goal. I suggested that he and I
should visit our old ’Varsity next day, and Mrs. Grier approved of the
idea. That is how I managed to install him in our sitting-room at the
hotel early on the following morning. There he was at peace.”
Karl showed a great desire, at that time, to discuss his sixth sense
fully and freely with one who might be trusted to listen without
scepticism. He acquainted Hooper with many marvels which reached my
ears in due course. And, happily, the freedom from restraint had the
good effect of inducing a slight drowsiness. He would not admit
it, but Hooper was quite convinced that he had not slept during the
preceding four days at least.
That afternoon he yielded sufficiently to the demands of outraged
nature to sink into a heavy sleep, though we found, on inquiry--not
from him but from those whose well-being he was protecting at his own
irreparable loss--that his control over them never slackened for an
instant.
Thinking that the best thing possible had happened, Hooper calmly
locked him in, and told the floor attendant to ask Mr. Grier to await
his (Hooper’s) return if he woke up and rang.
Then, fast as a hansom could carry him, he hurried to Sandilands House,
there to learn that the Honorable Nora Cazenove had driven to the
Griers’, with laudable intent to take Mrs. Grier and Karl to Hurlingham.
The pen almost refuses to write these colorless annals of ordinary life
in town when they are contrasted with the extraordinary incidents to
which they directly contributed. Yet they are essential to my story as
plain brick and mortar to some noble edifice which inspires the muse of
many generations of poets.
Hooper ascertained that Miss Cazenove would return home about half-past
six, to dress for dinner and the opera. None but an American could
have extracted this information from a severe London footman. There
is a charming affability, a dramatic good-fellowship, about our
transatlantic cousins which ignores the traditional reserve of England.
Racing back to the hotel, Hooper found Karl still asleep. At 6.35 P.M.
he coolly telephoned to Miss Nora, and quite as coolly read her my
letter of introduction over the wire.
“I guess I shook her up good an’ hard,” he said to me, in the exchange
of further confidences, and I quite believe it.
He pressed inflexibly for an immediate interview. At all hazards, now,
he was determined to make known to her the dangerous atmosphere in
which her fiancée was existing.
“Her voice was a bit scared as she discussed things,” he declared,
“but, after chewing on it for a minute or two, she asked me to meet her
at the opera at eight o’clock sharp. The lady who would chaperon her,
and some other friends, would not be there until nearly nine. She would
go in advance, leaving a message for her chaperon, and we could talk
undisturbed. I allow I rather cottoned to a girl who could fix things
as slick as that.”
Karl was seemingly sunk in the sleep of sheer weakness. Hooper counted
on meeting Nora and returning to the hotel in time to arouse Karl for
a late meal, and then see him safely home, or even detain him for the
night after explaining matters to his father and mother.
Indeed, things were going so well that he was buoyed up with a new
hope. He dressed rapidly, reached Covent Garden, and saw a lady whom he
took to be Nora Cazenove descend from a brougham, cross the vestibule
while darting an interrogatory glance at its denizens, and hasten up
the stairs.
He was right. An attendant took his card, the lady halted smilingly,
and Hooper made himself known.
A well-bred, bright-eyed, alert young American is seldom at a discount
under such conditions. The spice of the unusual procedure, flavored by
a certain curiosity, led Nora to receive him graciously, if with a not
unnatural shyness arising from the innuendoes of my letter and Hooper’s
own persistence in seeking the meeting.
He lost no time in tackling the subject for which she had accorded the
rendezvous. Once they were seated in the box, and the strains of the
orchestra (how remarkably was music interwoven with the vital events of
Karl’s career!) made it impossible for his voice to carry through the
thin partitions on each side, Hooper plunged into a clear, decisive,
and, to any ears save those of a woman in love, convincing history of
Karl’s sixth sense and its latest astounding developments.
Though she protested vehemently, and threatened (though probably not
quite in earnest in this) to leave the theater, Hooper spared her no
shred of the evidence which proved that Karl was killing himself on her
account.
Never did a nice young man carry out an harder self-imposed ordeal with
a nice young woman than Hooper that evening in his impassioned plea to
Nora Cazenove for his friend’s life.
“I never let up on her for an instant,” he said in his own picturesque
way. “We had a heart-to-heart talk. The storming of San Juan Hill
was child’s play to the way in which I hurled my battalions of fact
against her entrenchments of romance. When I pictured Karl’s impending
collapse, the inconsolable despair of his parents, her own unending
self-reproach, and even the broken-hearted sorrow of her successful
rival, I got her to the point of yielding. I pitied her for her
suffering, but I promised her the reward of the consciousness of
having acted nobly. She, and Karl, and Maggie, were the victims of
circumstances. They could no more help what had happened than moths
driven out to sea by a summer hurricane. One of them must let go for
the good of all. If she renounced Karl voluntarily, there was a chance,
and perhaps only a remote chance, that a tragedy might be averted. I
could not guarantee that. But it was the one way out, in your judgment
and mine, while her marriage with Karl was simply not to be thought of,
because he would be dead within a week.”
Think of this strenuous advocate piling Pelion upon Ossa to scale
the fortress of a woman’s fierce love, asking her to believe the
incredible, to sacrifice herself, not only for the sake of the man she
worshiped, but to secure the happiness of another woman! And yet, he
nearly won. Of that he was certain.
He kept until the last the fact that Karl was even then lying in the
hotel, weary almost unto dissolution, utterly spent by the struggle
which he had waged in her behalf. It seemed to him that the intensity
of his convictions had borne down the barrier Karl himself had erected
in Nora’s heart and brain. She was on the point of yielding. The words
trembled on her lips which would set Karl free, but the dénouement came
in a fashion which neither of them expected.
Hitherto she had been greatly distressed, yet the exigencies of the
time and place restrained her protests to the spoken word, the
flashing eye, the tremulous lip.
Suddenly she rose to her feet and staggered back into the dark interior
of the box. Had not Hooper caught her in his arms she would have fallen.
“Oh, take me home, take me home!” she wailed. “For pity’s sake, do not
leave me! Karl is dead!”