Watch and Ward

XI

Nora, relieved of her hostess’s company, turned the key in her door and went through certain motions mechanically suggestive of her being at rest and satisfied. She unpacked her little bag and repaired her disordered toilet. She took out her writing-materials and prepared to compose a letter to Miss Murray. But she had not written many words before she lapsed into sombre thought. Now that she had seen George again and judged him, she was coming rapidly to feel that to have exchanged Roger’s care for his care was, for the time, to have outraged Roger. It may have been needful, but it was none the less a revolting need. But it should pass quickly! She took refuge again in her letter and begged for an immediate reply. From time to time, as she wrote, she heard a step in the house, which she supposed to be George’s; it somehow quickened her pen and the ardor of her petition. This was just finished when Mrs. Paul reappeared, bearing a salver charged with tea and toast, – a gracious attention, which Nora was unable to repudiate. The lady took advantage of it to open a conversation. Mrs. Paul’s overtures, as well as her tea and toast, were the result of her close conference with Fenton; but though his instructions had made a very pretty show as he laid them down, they dwindled sensibly in the vivid glare of Nora’s mistrust.

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Mrs. Paul, nevertheless, seated herself bravely on the bed and rubbed her plump pretty hands like the best little woman in the world. But the more Nora looked at her, the less she liked her. At the end of five minutes she had conceived a horror of her. It seemed to her that she had met just such women in reports of criminal trials. She had wondered what the heroines of these tragedies were like. Why, like Mrs. Paul, of course! They had her comely stony face, her false smile, her little tulle cap, which seemed forever to discredit coquetry. And here, in her person, sat the whole sinister sisterhood on Nora’s bed, calling the young girl “my dear,” wanting to take her hand and draw her out! With a defiant flourish, Nora addressed her letter with Miss Murray’s honest title: “I should like to have this posted, please,” she said.

“Give it to me, my dear; I’ll attend to it,” said Mrs. Paul; and straightway read the address. “I suppose this is your old schoolmistress. Mr. Fenton told me all about it.” Then, after turning the letter for a moment, “Keep it over a day!”

“Not an hour,” said Nora, with decision. “My time is precious.”

“Why, my dear,” cried Mrs. Paul, “we shall be delighted to keep you a month.”

“You’re very good. You know I’ve my living to make.” “Don’t talk about that! I make my living, – I know what it

means! Come, let me talk to you as a friend. Don’t go too far. Suppose, now, you repent? Six months hence, it may be too late. If you leave him lamenting too long, he’ll marry the first pretty girl he sees. They always do, – a man refused is just like a widower. They’re not so faithful as the widows! But let me

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tell you it’s not every girl that gets such a chance; if I’d had it, I wouldn’t have split hairs! He’ll love you the better, you see, for your having led him a little dance. But he mustn’t dance too long! Excuse my breaking out this way; but Mr. Fenton and I, you see, are great friends, and I feel as if his cousin was my cousin. Take back this letter and give me just one word to post, – Come ! Poor little man! You must have a high opinion of men, my dear, to think you hadn’t drawn a prize!”

If Roger had wished for a proof that sentiment survived in Nora’s mind, he would have found it in the disgust she felt at hearing Mrs. Paul undertake his case. She colored with her sense of the defilement of sacred things. George, surely, for an hour, at least, might have kept her story intact. “Really, madam,” she answered, “I can’t discuss this matter. I’m extremely obliged to you.” But Mrs. Paul was not to be so easily baffled. Poor Roger, roaming helpless and hopeless, would have been amazed to hear how warmly his cause was a-pleading. Nora, of course, made no attempt to argue the case. She waited till the lady had exhausted her eloquence, and then, “I’m a very obstinate person,” she said; “you waste your words. If you go any further I shall feel persecuted.” And she rose, to signify that Mrs. Paul might do likewise. Mrs. Paul took the hint, but in an instant she had turned about the hard reverse of her fair face, in which defeated self-interest smirked horribly. “Bah! you’re a silly girl!” she cried; and swept out of the room. Nora, after this, determined to avoid a second interview with George. Her bad headache furnished a sufficient pretext for escaping it. Half an hour later he knocked at her door, quite too loudly, she thought, for good taste. When she opened it, he stood

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there, excited, angry, ill-disposed. “I’m sorry you’re ill,” he said; “but a night’s rest will put you right. I’ve seen Roger.”

“Roger! he’s here?”

“Yes, he’s here. But he don’t know where you are. Thank the Lord you left him! he’s a brute!” Nora would fain have learned more, – whether he was angry, whether he was suffering, whether he had asked to see her; but at these words she shut the door in her cousin’s face. She hardly dared think of what offered impertinence this outbreak of Fenton’s was the rebound. Her night’s rest brought little comfort. Time seemed not to cancel her disturbing thoughts, but to multiply them. She wondered whether Roger had supposed George to be her appointed mediator, and asked herself whether it was not her duty to see him once again and bid him a respectfully personal farewell. It was a long time after she rose before she could bring herself to leave her room. She had a vague hope that if she delayed, her companions might have gone out. But in the dining-room, in spite of the late hour, she found George gallantly awaiting her. He had apparently had the discretion to dismiss Mrs. Paul to the background, and apologized for her absence by saying that she had breakfasted long since and had gone to market. He seemed to have slept off his wrath and was full of brotherly bonhomie. “I suppose you’ll want to know about Roger,” he said, when they were seated at breakfast. “He had followed you directly, in spite of your solemn request; but not out of pure affection, I think. The little man’s mad. He expects you to back down and come to him on your knees, – beg his pardon and promise never to do it again. Pretty terms to marry a man on, for a woman of spirit! But he doesn’t know

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his woman, does he, Nora? Do you know what he intimated? indeed, he came right out with it! That you and I want to make a match! That you’re in love with me, Miss, and ran away to marry me. That we expected him to forgive us and endow us with a pile of money. But he’ll not forgive us, – not he! We may starve, we and our brats, before he looks at us. Much obliged! We shall thrive, for many a year, as brother and sister, sha’n’t we, Nora? and need neither his money nor his pardon!”

In reply to this speech, Nora sat staring in pale amazement. “Roger thought,” she at last found words to say, “that it was to marry you I refused him, – to marry you I came to New York?” Fenton, with seven-and-twenty years of impudence at his back, had received in his day snubs and shocks of various shades of intensity; but he had never felt in his face so chilling a blast of reprobation as this cold disgust of Nora’s. We know that the scorn of a lovely woman makes cowards brave; it may do something towards making knaves honest men. “Upon my word, my dear,” he cried, “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. It’s

rough, but it’s so!”

Nora wished in after years she had been able to laugh at this disclosure; to pretend, at least, to a mirth she so little felt. But she remained almost sternly silent, with her eyes on her plate, stirring her tea. Roger, meanwhile, was walking about under this miserable error! Let him think anything but that! “What did you reply,” she asked, “to this – to this – “

“To this handsome compliment? I replied that I only wished it were true; but that I feared I had no such luck! Upon which he told me to go to the Devil – in a tone which implied that he didn’t much care if you went with me.”

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Nora listened to this speech in sceptical silence. “Where is Roger?” she asked at last.

Fenton shot her a glance of harsh mistrust. “Where is he? What do you want to know that for?”

“Where is he, please?” she simply repeated. And then, suddenly, she wondered how and where it was the two men had happened to meet. “Where did you find him?” she went on. “How did it happen?”

Fenton drained his cup of tea at one long gulp before he answered. “My dear Nora,” he said, “it’s all very well to be modest, it’s all very well to be proud; but take care you’re not ungrateful! I went purposely to look him up. I was convinced he would have followed you, – as I supposed, to beg and beg and beg again. I wanted to say to him, `She’s safe, she’s happy, she’s in the best hands. Don’t waste your time, your words, your hopes. Give her rope. Go quietly home and leave things to me. If she turns homesick, I’ll let you know.’ You see I’m frank, Nora; that’s what I meant to say. But I was received with this broadside. I found a perfect bluster of injured vanity. `You’re her lover, she’s your mistress, and be d – d to both of you!’ “

That George lied Nora did not distinctly say to herself, for she lacked practice in this range of incrimination. But she as little said to herself that this could be the truth. “I’m not ungrateful,” she answered, firmly. “But where was it?”

At this, George pushed back his chair. “Where – where? Don’t you believe me? Do you want to go and ask him if it’s true? What are you, anyway? Nora, who are you, where are you? Have you put yourself into my hands or not?” A certain manly indignation was now kindled in his breast; he was equally an-

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gry with Roger, with Nora, and with himself; fate had offered him an overdose of contumely, and he felt a reckless, savage impulse to wring from the occasion that compliment to his force which had been so rudely denied to his delicacy. “Are you using me simply as a vulgar tool? Don’t you care for me the least little bit? Let me suggest that for a girl in your – your ambiguous position, you are too proud, by several shades. Don’t go back to Roger in a hurry! You’re not the unspotted maiden you were but two short days ago. Who am I, what am I, to the people whose opinion you care for? A very low fellow, madam; and yet with me you’ve gone far to cast your lot. If you’re not prepared to do more, you should have done less. Nora, Nora,” he went on, breaking into a vein none the less revolting for being more ardent, “I confess I don’t understand you! But the more you puzzle me the more you fascinate me; and the less you like me the more I love you. What has there been, anyway, between you and Lawrence? Hang me if I can understand! Are you an angel of purity, or are you the most audacious of flirts?”

She had risen before he had gone far. “Spare me,” she said, “the necessity of hearing your opinions or answering your questions. Be a gentleman! Tell me, I once more beg of you, where Roger is to be found?”

“Be a gentleman!” was a galling touch. He had gone too far to be a gentleman; but in so far as a man means a bully, he might still be a man. He placed himself before the door. “I refuse the information,” he said. “I don’t mean to have been played with, to have been buffeted hither by Roger and thither by you! I mean to make something out of all this. I mean to request you to remain quietly in this room. Mrs. Paul will keep

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you company. You didn’t treat her over-well, yesterday; but, in her way, she’s quite as strong as you. Meanwhile I shall go to our friend. `She’s locked up tight,’ I’ll say; `she’s as good as in jail. Give me five thousand dollars and I’ll let her out.’ Of course he’ll drop a hint of the law. `O, the law! not so fast. Two can play at that game. Go to a magistrate and present your case. I’ll go straight to the `Herald’ office and demand a special reporter and the very biggest headings. That will rather take the bloom off your meeting.’ The public don’t mind details, Nora; it looks at things in the gross; and the gross here is gross, for you ! It won’t hurt me!”

“Heaven forgive you!” murmured Nora, for all response to this explosion. It made a hideous whirl about her; but she felt that to advance in the face of it was her best safety. It sickened rather than frightened her. She went to the door. “Let me pass!” she said.

Fenton stood motionless, leaning his head against the door, with his eyes closed. She faced him a moment, looking at him intently. He seemed hideous. “Coward!” she cried. He opened his eyes at the sound; for an instant they met hers; then a burning blush blazed out strangely on his dead complexion; he strode past her, dropped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. “O God!” he cried. “I’m an ass!”

Nora made it the work of a single moment to reach her own room and fling on her bonnet and shawl, of another to descend to the hall door. Once in the street, she never stopped running till she had turned a corner and put the house out of sight. She went far, hurried along by the ecstasy of relief and escape, and it was some time before she perceived that this was

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but half the question, and that she was now quite without refuge. Thrusting her hand into her pocket to feel for her purse, she found that she had left it in her room. Stunned and sickened as she was already, it can hardly be said that the discovery added to her grief. She was being precipitated toward a great decision; sooner or later made little difference. The thought of seeing Hubert Lawrence now filled her soul. That, after what had passed between them, she should so sorely need help, and yet not turn to him, seemed as great an outrage against his professions as it was an impossibility to her own heart. Reserve, prudence, mistrust, had melted away; she was conscious only of her trouble, of his ardor, and of their nearness. His address she well remembered, and she neither paused nor faltered. To say even that she reflected would be to speak amiss, for her longing and her haste were one. Between them both, you may believe, it was with a beating heart that she reached his door. The servant admitted her without visible surprise (for Nora wore, as she conceived, the air of some needy parishioner), and ushered her into the little sitting-room which, with an adjoining chamber, constituted his apartments. As she crossed the threshold, she perceived, with something of regret and relief, that he was not alone. He was sitting somewhat stiffly, with folded arms, facing the window, near which, before an easel, stood a long-haired gentleman of foreign and artistic aspect, giving the finishing touches to a portrait in crayons. Hubert was in position for a likeness of his handsome face. When Nora appeared, his handsome face remained for a moment a blank; the next it turned most eloquently pale. “Miss Lambert!” he cried.

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