THE FINISHED SENTENCE
For some moments I could not think what had happened. I had just
been eloping with the Duke of Chelmsford, and because several men had
maintained that he ought to do nothing of the kind, he had put me in
his pocket--which was not anything like large enough--and thrown
Jane’s crimson shoes into his sister’s face, who had thereupon changed
into a horse--with Walter Hammond’s head, on which he had sprung; and,
galloping down the racecourse, had dragged me from his pocket--with
much difficulty!--and married me in the middle of the grand stand. I
felt, even in my sleep, that this was a surprising way for a person to
behave, and that I had a grievance, when all at once I became
conscious of Audrey’s face bent over my bed, and of the fact that she
was shaking me.
“Do you know what time it is?” I did not, and did not care. I fancy I
signified as much. “It’s half-past eleven, and already people have
come to see you.” Still I was indifferent: as yet the statement
conveyed no meaning. “How are you feeling?”
“Cheap.”
Audrey laughed.
“That’s lack of experience, my dear. Though it’s true that the more
expensive a night one has, the more economical one feels in the
morning--especially, I fancy, when it’s a woman in the case. Though
I’ve known men who suffered. But you did have a good time--didn’t
you?”
“Don’t ask me. I suppose I did--but--at present--I’m not quite sure.
It was a little nightmarey.”
Audrey was still. Although my eyes were closed I was oddly conscious
that hers were searching my face with a curious scrutiny. And,
somehow, I seemed to know that what she saw there made her sorry, but
whether for herself or for me I could not tell.
“I fancy that everyone must have been a wee bit mad--yesterday.”
There was an inflection in her voice which caused me to look up.
“Mad? Yes; I think they must have been!”
“Some of Puck’s magic powder must have got into their eyes, so that
they saw things as they did in that wood near Athens. Perhaps they’ll
have got it out to-day.”
“Perhaps.”
Again she looked at me, and, as I was looking at her, this time I saw
that there was trouble in her eyes, trouble which seemed to grow as
she looked. Stooping, she kissed me, saying something which I did not
understand at all.
“Never mind, Norah; we’ve all got our burdens to bear. It’s a pretty
hard world for feminine things. Shall I tell those people you cannot
see them, that you’re not feeling well? You don’t seem quite up to the
mark, you know.”
“Am I looking ill?”
“No--not ill--exactly. You’re like your ordinary self: and--last
night--you hardly were.”
This time something in her words, her tone, her manner, did give me a
hint of what it was she meant. As I began to perceive what it was she
wanted me to understand I became conscious of a tightness about the
region of the heart, as if it had been suddenly weighted with lead.
She saw it was so, because she kissed me again.
“Shall I send them away?”
While I hesitated, because the thought which she had presented to my
mind had left me for the moment speechless, mamma came into the room.
The instant she spoke, it was plain that she had heard what Audrey had
said:
“They won’t go,” she began. “I can’t think what people are coming to
nowadays--never saw such manners in my life--if those men were
crossing-sweepers they could not behave worse!--and I’m not sure that
some of them are much better! One of them has the assurance to call
himself the Duke of Chelmsford. Quite apart from anything else, the
fact of his being so extremely good-looking proclaims him an impostor.
All dukes are notoriously ugly. Norah, I insist upon your telling me
what is the meaning of these proceedings.”
Audrey answered for me.
“My dear mamma, since Norah is scarcely awake I can’t see how you can
expect her to explain what she herself as yet knows nothing about.”
Mamma pretended to be angry with Audrey, which was a most unusual
thing, for no one was ever angry with Audrey long.
“It’s no use your endeavouring to palliate Norah’s conduct, Audrey--I
won’t have it!--I have had too much of it already!--I don’t like the
attitude you have taken up in the matter!--it doesn’t become you!
Norah’s behaviour is beyond my comprehension--look at the scene last
night! And now here are these men--strange men!--at this unseemly hour
of the morning, demanding to see her as if they were presenting a
pistol at my head. I will not keep silent and allow scandal to be
brought upon my house. Tell me at once, Norah, who is this person who
calls himself the Duke of Chelmsford?”
“He is the Duke of Chelmsford, mamma.”
“How do you know? And how did you become acquainted with him, if he
is--you, of all the people in the world?”
“He introduced himself to me last night.”
“Introduced himself to you!--a man in his position!--to you! Where
were those other men that such a thing should have been possible?”
I sighed, at least I made a noise which I suppose may be described as
a sigh, though it has always seemed to me to be rather a poetic word
to apply to the sort of gasping sound one makes when one feels that
other people are just a trifle stupid.
“It would take me a good time to explain, mamma, and then perhaps you
wouldn’t understand.”
“Indeed, though that’s a remark which no girl ought to make to her
mother, I daresay it’s true enough; the whole thing’s beyond my
understanding. Ever since yesterday afternoon I’ve been asking myself
if the whole world’s gone mad. And now that I look at you I ask myself
more than ever. No man has ever seen anything in you except two eyes
and a nose, and now what they think they see in you all of a sudden is
beyond me altogether. What you say about her having changed, Audrey,
is just nonsense, except it’s changed for the worse--unless you wish
to insinuate that my eyesight’s failing me. She’s always been a plain
girl--the only one of my family!--and she’s a plain woman--without
even that kind of plainness which is interesting. And what you wish me
to understand by talking about her having changed sufficiently to
account for the behaviour of those men, as I say, unless I’m going
blind, it’s balderdash you’re talking. She’s a fright, just that, and
nothing more; and it’s a bad day when I, her mother, that never had a
child except her that wasn’t fit for framing--have to say it.”
During the utterance of these very outspoken remarks, I knew--although
I was not looking--that Audrey was making signs to mamma to be a
little careful in her choice of words; signs which, apparently, mamma
preferred to ignore--feeling, possibly, that, under the circumstances,
to spare my feelings was to spoil the child. When mamma had quite
finished then I did turn towards Audrey, and when I caught her eyes
she smiled, there was no mistake about her being a picture well worth
framing!
“Never mind what mamma says,” she whispered.
“I don’t,” I replied, with perfect candour, and equal truth. “I never
do.”
Of course the confession was not lost upon mamma.
“If I’d spoken to my mother like that, in her presence, she’d have
beaten me; but, in those days, daughters used to look upon a mother as
a parent. Now, she might as well be the cattle in the field. And the
consequences of it will be, Norah O’Brady, that you may as well go
clerking, or companion to an old lady, or something equally as
degrading to your father’s child, for all the chances you’ll ever have
of getting decently settled in life--in spite of all the half-witted
men who’re invading my house at this time of the morning. And what it
is that I’m to do with them, I’d like to know.”
Audrey repeated the question which I had left unanswered.
“Shall I send them away?”
I hesitated, searching her face for what was written on it. It was
with a fresh sinking of the heart that I understood, or thought I did.
“No; let them wait. I will be as quick as I can, and come down to
them. It will be better to get it over.”
She stooped down and whispered in my ear, so that, this time, I was
the only one who heard:
“Men are the least dependable of all God’s creatures. You mustn’t
mind.”
It was a cryptic utterance--to those who were without the key, which I
fancied that I had. She took mamma away with her. I was left alone.
The instant they were gone I brought up, from between the sheets, a
scrap of paper--_the_ scrap. I had taken it with me to bed. All night
long, it seemed, I had held it in my hand, clutched between my
fingers. I had thought of it the moment I supposed myself to have an
idea of Audrey’s meaning; and, feeling it there, had realised how
close a neighbour it had been while I had slept. It was all crumpled.
I smoothed it out, and looked. The writing had grown faint; so faint
as to suggest that the writer must have used ink of a very evanescent
quality. Already, here and there, the words could scarcely be
deciphered.
But the sentence was finished!
How, while I had slept, the finish had been arrived at, or by whom, I
could not tell. The result was unmistakable. My doom stared me in the
face; my forebodings were realised; the meaning of what I had seen in
Audrey’s eyes, heard in her voice, was made quite plain.
“Your wish shall be gratified until to-morrow.”
“To-morrow” had been the missing word--that was, to-day. My wish was
to be gratified until to-day, which meant that all the gratification I
was to receive--so far as that particular wish was concerned--I had
already had. What was my wish exactly? I should not have liked to have
had to answer the question on my oath. I had been talking pretty
wildly at the time! But, so far as I could remember, I wished that all
men--every man--might fall in love with me at sight. As, lying there,
in cold blood--metaphorically, in very cold blood, indeed!--I
endeavoured to recall it, as accurately as I could, what a singular
wish it seemed, to say the very least!
And it had been gratified? And now it was done with? Dear! dear! what
a very short span of enjoyment had been allotted me. What a very small
result the boon which had been conferred had ended in. Was that the
meaning of the feeling I was conscious of--that I had returned again
to what I was? It certainly was true that I was oppressed by an
apprehension, which was near akin to fear, that since last night
something had been lost, that something had gone from me, which I had
when I laid down to sleep--gone, never to return. What could it be? It
was not that I was ill, or tired, or--as I had pretended to
Audrey--even cheap. It was nothing half so commonplace.
I got out of bed, and, as I did so, I felt that virtue had gone from
me; life, that ichor of the gods which had been in my veins last night
instead of blood. I had hit it--I was as one of the gods--the writer
of the sentence on that scrap of paper alone knew how--and was again
but mortal. Between sleeping and waking, I had come down the Olympian
hill, slung down, rather, been kicked down, perhaps, amid the jeers
and jesting of the rightful inhabitants; and at the very, very foot
was once more--Norah O’Brady.
I needed not the assurance of the mirror. Had I done so, I had it,
beyond all possibility of controverting. The face I saw in it was the
one I had always seen; not the one that had seemed to blaze at me
yester afternoon. The light had gone from the eyes; the flare, a mere
glimpse of which--as, somehow, I had known--would set the most
sluggish blood in masculine veins flaming as with fire; and, with it,
all had gone. There was but left the plain, uninteresting,
undistinguished, unintellectual face of overgrown Norah O’Brady.
I dressed. How shabby my things did seem, unusually shabby, even for
me. Ill-shaped, ill-fitting, with about them, every one, that
exasperating suggestion of having been intended for someone else.
Always, everything I had, seemed to shout at me, with furious
grievance, that it might have looked presentable if only it had been
worn by a creature different entirely to me. If they had only let me
choose my own things, and, regardless of what was, or was not, the
mode, have permitted me to clothe myself in the garments in which I
looked least awkward; at any rate, my actual deficiencies might not
have been quite so obtrusive. But, in continual parodies of the
fashions of the moment--which went very well with them, but, oh! so
horribly with me--what a fright they made me look.