NORAH.
I had crossed in the bright October sunshine from Calais to Dover without once taking refuge in the close, pent-up saloon, which is like a little purgatory when the waters of the Channel are stirred to their depths, and the boat is tossed like a feather from one angry wave to another. It was very quiet that day, and the sea was literally like glass, with the sunshine falling so softly upon it. Nobody had been sick except a fair young girl, withbrideunmistakably stamped upon her, from her dainty traveling-dress to the trustful glance of the blue eyes lifted so often and lovingly to the face of the young man beside her. Once, when the boat rocked more than usual,she had turned white to her lips, and, dropping her golden head upon the shoulder of her husband, had kept it there in a weary, languid kind of way, while I speculated about her, wondering who she was, and where she was going, and hoping that the party of American girls, who seemed to monopolize and fill the entire deck, would take note of her, and see that at least one of my countrywomen had taste, and style and beauty combined.
“Such frights as the English women are, with their horrid shoes, their dresses made before the flood, and that everlasting white thing tied high about their throats,” I had heard one of them say and, while flushing with indignation, had felt, to a certain degree, that their criticism was just, and that, taken as a whole, the English ladies did not compare favorably with their American sisters, so far as grace and style were concerned.
But this little bride, with the blue eyes and golden hair, might have come from the show-rooms of the most fashionable modiste on Broadway, and not have shamed her mantua-maker. She had evidently been gotten up in Paris, and I watched her with a good deal of interest until the cliffs of Doverwere in sight, and we were nearing the shores of England and home. Then, in seeing to my boxes, which were the very last to be brought from the boat, I forgot everything, and came near being left by the train waiting to take us to London.
“Hurry up, miss, you’ve only quarter of a second,” a porter cried, as, in my bewilderment, I was looking for a carriage. “Here, here! this way! Second class?” he screamed again, interrogatively, and seizing the door of a second-class carriage, he held it open for me, guessing, by what intuition I know not, that I must necessarily be a second-class passenger.
For once, he was mistaken; for, thanks to the kindness of dear Kitty Bute, with whom my vacation had been passed, I was first-class all the way from Paris to London, and, rejecting contemptuously the porter’s offer of assistance, I sprang into the nearest first-class compartment, just as the train began to move, and found myself alone with the little bride and groom. There was a look of annoyance in the eyes of the bride, while the young man gave a significant pull to his brown mustache, and I knew I was not wanted. But I had a right as validas their own, and taking my seat on the opposite side, near the open window, I pretended to be occupied with the country through which we were passing so swiftly, while my thoughts went back to the past, gathering up the broken threads of my life, and dwelling upon what I had been once and what I was now.
And this is the picture I saw far back through a vista of twelve long, weary years. A pleasant old house in Middlesex—an English house, of stone, with ivy creeping over it even to the chimney-tops, and the boxes of flowers in the windows, the tall trees in front, the patches of geraniums and petunias in the grass, the honeysuckle over the door of the wide, old-fashioned hall, through which the summer air blew softly, laden with the perfume of roses, and the sweet-scented mignonette. And I was standing in the door, with a half-opened rose in my hair, and the tall, angular boy who had placed it there was looking down upon me with great tears swimming in his eyes, as he said:
“Keep the rose, Norah, till I come back, and I shall know you have not forgotten me, even if youareMrs. Archibald Browning.”
There was an emphasis on the last name, and a tone in his voice as he spoke it, which did not please me, and I said:
“Oh, Tom, why can’t you like Archie better, and he so noble and good, and so kind to get you that position with his uncle in India?”
“Yes, I know; Archie is lovely, and I am a brute because I don’t feel like kissing his feet just because he interested himself to get me the place. But I hope you will be happy, and if those two lubbers of cousins happen to die, you will be my Lady Cleaver, and mistress of Briarton Lodge; but don’t forget old Tom, who by that time will be married to some black East Indian princess, and have a lot of little darkies running round. There, I must go now; it’s time. I say, Norah, come with me through the field to the highway. I want to keep hold of you to the very last, and Archie won’t care. I’m your brother, you know.”
He was my brother to all intents and purposes, though really my second cousin. But I had no brother, or sister, or mother, only a father and aunt, and Tom had lived with us since I was a little girl of ten, and now he was going out to India to makehis fortune. His ship would sail on the morrow, and I could not refuse to go with him as far as the highway, where he was to take the stage for London. It was a forlorn, dreary walk through the pleasant grassy lane; for I loved Tom very dearly, and there was a great wrench in my heart at the thought of parting with him. He was silent, and never spoke a word until the stile was reached, where we were to part. Then, suddenly lifting me high in his arms, as if I were a child, for I was very short and he was very tall, he kissed my forehead and lips, and cried like a baby, as he said:
“Good-by, little Norah, Mrs. Archibald Browning, good-by, and God bless you; and if that husband ever does abuse you, tell him he will answer for it to me, Tom Gordon, the gawky cousin with more legs than brains.”
“Oh, Tom,” I said, struggling to my feet, “you know Archie did not mean that, and maybe he never said it. I wish you did not hate him so.”
“I don’t hate him, Norah. I simply do not like him, or any of his race. They are a proud set, who think you highly honored to be admitted into the blooded family of Brownings. And then, too,Norah,” he continued, with that peculiar smile which was his one beauty and made him irresistible, “then, too, Norah, you see—you know—I’m not your brother; I’m only your second cousin, and though I never thought you very handsome, you are the nicest girl I ever knew, and—well, I think I meant to marry you myself!”
He burst into a merry laugh and looked straight in my face as I drew back from him with a gasp, exclaiming:
“You, Tom;youmarry me! Why, I’m old enough to be your grandmother!”
“You are twenty, I am nineteen; that’s all the difference, though I confess that you have badgered, and scolded, and lectured me enough for forty grandmothers,” he said; “but there’s the stage, and now it’s really good-by.”
Two minutes more and I was walking back alone through the quiet shady lane, where Tom and I had played together so often, and where now were the remains of a playhouse he had built under a spreading oak. There was his room, divided from mine by a line of stones, and there in the wall the little niche where I kept my dishes and hid the gooseberrytarts away from greedy Tom. How happy we had been together, making believe sometimes that I was his mother and he my sick baby, which I tried to rock to sleep in my lap, finding his long legs a great inconvenience and a serious obstacle to much petting on my part. Again he was a fierce knight and I a lorn maiden shut up in some grim fortress—usually old Dunluce Castle—for we had once visited the north of Ireland and explored the ruins of what some writer terms “the grandest, romantickest, awfullest sea-king’s home in all the broad kingdom.” We had had our quarrels, too, and even fights, in which I always came off victor, owing to my peculiar mode of warfare, as I had a habit of springing upon him like a little cat and tearing his face with my nails, while he was usually content with jerky pulls at my hair. But all that was over now, and buried with the doll whose head he had broken because I would not stay home and nurse him when he had the quinsy, and could only talk in a wheezy kind of way. He had threatened revenge, and taken it upon my prettiest Paris doll, and I had flown at him like a tiger and scratched his nose till it bled, and cried myself sick, and then we had madeit up and buried dolly near the old playhouse in the lane, and reared a slab to her memory, and planted some daisies on her grave. And just here, near what seemed to be the grave of my childhood, I sat down that summer afternoon and thought of all those years—of Tom on his way to India, and of the future opening so brightly before me, for I was the betrothed wife of Archibald Browning, who belonged to one of the best families in the county, and in less than a month we were to be married and spend our honeymoon in Switzerland, among the glorious Alps, of which I had dreamed so much. I knew that Archie’s mother was very proud, and thought her son might have looked higher than Norah Burton, especially as there was a possible peerage in prospect, but she was civil to me, and had said that a season in London would improve me greatly, if such a little creature could be improved; and Archie, I was sure, loved me dearly, notwithstanding that he sometimes criticised my style and manner, and wished I was more like his cousin, Lady Darinda Cleaver, who, I heard, powdered her face and penciled her eyebrows, and was the finest rider on Rotten Row. Tom, who had been often inLondon, had seen the Lady Darinda, and reported her as a perfect giantess, who wore a man’s hat, with a flapper behind on the waist of her riding-suit, and sat her horse as stiffly and straight as if held in her place by a ramrod, and never rode faster than a black ant could trot.
This was Tom’s criticism, which I had repeated to Archie, who laughed a little, and pulled his light brown mustache, and said: “Tom was not a proper judge of stylish women, and that Darinda’s manners were faultless.”
I had no doubt they were, though I had never seen her, but I should ere long, as she had consented to be one of my bride-maids, and had written me a note which was very prettily worded, and very patronizing in its tone, and made me dislike her thoroughly. She was in London now, Archie had written in the letter in which he told me he should be with me on the day after Tom’s departure. I was never so glad for his coming, I think, for my heart was very heavy at parting with Tom, whose words, “I meant to marry you myself,” kept ringing in my ears as I sat alone in the grassy lane by the ruins of the playhouse he had built. Notthat I attached the slightest importance to them, or believed for a moment that he was serious in what he said, for he was my brother, my dear, good brother, who had been so much to me, and whom I missed so much, that at last I laid my head upon dollie’s miniature grave and cried bitterly for the boy traveling so fast to London, and the ship which would take him away. There was, however, comfort in the thought that Archie was coming on the morrow, and the next morning found me with spirits restored, eager and expectant for my love. But Archie did not come, and the hours wore on and there was no news of him until the following day, when there came a note from his mother telling me he was sick.
“Nothing very serious,” she wrote, “only a heavy cold, the result of a drenching he received while riding with Darinda several miles out in the country. He sends his love, and says you are not to be alarmed, for he will soon be with you.”
That was the note, and I was not to be alarmed, nor was I. I was only conscious that a strange kind of feeling took possession of me, which I could not define, but which sent me to my room, wherethe bridal finery lay, and made me fold it up, piece by piece, and put it carefully away, with a feeling that it would never be worn. There was much sickness in our neighborhood that summer, and the morning after hearing of Archie’s illness I took my breakfast in bed, and after that day knew little of what was passing around me until the roses which were blossoming so brightly when Tom went away were fading on their stalks, and other and later flowers were blossoming in their place.
I had been very sick, Aunt Esther said, with the distemper, as they called the disease, which had desolated so many homes in our vicinity.
“What day is it? What day of the month, I mean?” I asked, feeling dazed and bewildered, and uncertain whether it was yesterday that I sat in the lane and cried for dear Tom, or whether it was long ago.
“It’s the tenth,” she said; and her voice shook a little, and she did not turn her face toward me but pretended to be busy with the curtains of the bed.
“The tenth?” I cried. “Tenth of July, my wedding-day! Do you mean that?”
“Yes,” she answered, softly; “it was to have been your wedding-day.”
“And Archie,” I continued; “is he better—is he here?”
Still her face was turned from mine, and her hands were busy with the curtain, as she replied:
“He is not here now, but he is better, much better.”
This time her voice and manner awoke in me a suspicion of some impending evil, and exerting all my strength, I raised myself in bed and said, vehemently:
“Aunt Esther, you are keeping something from me. Tell me the worst at once. Is Archie dead, or Tom, or both?”
“No, no. Oh, no, not Tom. Heaven forbid that Tom should die. There’s a letter for you from him. I’ll get it, shall I? You were not to read it till to-day.”
She started to leave the room, but I kept her back with my persistent questionings.
“You have not told me all. You are trying to deceive me. Is Archie dead?”
Archiewasdead and buried ten days ago. Theheavy cold taken while riding with Lady Darinda had become congestion of the lungs, and while I lay unconscious of my loss, he had died, and Lady Darinda had written me a note of condolence and sympathy. Mrs. Browning was too much broken down to write, she said, and so on her devolved the painful duty of telling me how quietly and peacefully Archie had died, after an illness of a few days.
“I nursed him myself to the very last, and was the more anxious to do it,” she wrote, “because I fancied he had never quite forgiven me for having refused him, as you probably knew I did two or three years ago, just before he met you at the Trossachs Hotel. I was very fond of Archie, poor fellow, even if I could not marry him, and it nearly broke my heart to see him die. He spoke your name once or twice, but I could not make out exactly what he said, except ‘Be kind to her,’ and Mrs. Browning wishes me to assure you of her friendship, and good feeling, and desire to serve you if ever in her power to do so. We did not tell Archie you were sick; we thought it better not, and as he expressed no wish to have you come to him,it was not necessary. I send a lock of his hair, which I cut for you myself, and Mrs. Browning says she thinks the picture you have of him better than any she has ever seen, and she will be very glad if you will loan it to her until she can have some copies of it taken. Please send it at once, as we shall leave London soon for Bath, my aunt’s health rendering a change of air and scene imperative.
Yours, in sorrow and sympathy,“Darinda Cleaver.”
Yours, in sorrow and sympathy,“Darinda Cleaver.”
Yours, in sorrow and sympathy,“Darinda Cleaver.”
Yours, in sorrow and sympathy,
“Darinda Cleaver.”
As I read this strange epistle, I felt as if turning into stone, and had my life depended upon it I could not have shed a tear for the lover dead and the ruin of all my hopes. Indeed, in looking back upon the past, I do not think I everreallycried forArchie, though for weeks and months there was a heavy pain in my heart, a sense of loss and loneliness, and disappointment, but often, as I felt the hot tears start, there came the recollection that I had not been his first choice, if indeed I were ever his choice at all; that it was probably in a fit of pique he had asked me to be his wife, and this forced the tears down and made me harder, stonier than before.I sent his picture back that very day, and with it my engagement ring, a splendid solitaire, which I reflected with bitterness would some day sparkle on Lady Darinda’s finger, and it did. I did not write a word. I could not. I merely sent the ring and the picture, and felt when I gave them to Aunt Esther that my old life was ended and a new one just begun.
“Tom’s letter you have not read yet. That may comfort you. I’ll bring it directly,” Aunt Esther said: and in a moment I had it in my hand and was studying the superscription:
“Miss Norah Burton,“The Oaks,“Middlesex.
“Miss Norah Burton,“The Oaks,“Middlesex.
“Miss Norah Burton,“The Oaks,“Middlesex.
“Miss Norah Burton,
“The Oaks,
“Middlesex.
“Not to be opened till the wedding-day.”
Then for a moment there was a feeling in my throat as if my heart were rising into my mouth, but I forced it down, and breaking the seal, read the letter, which was so much like Tom. He had been out to sea three days, and there was a ship in sight by which they hoped to send messages home, so hewas trying to write in spite of the fearful condition of his stomach, which he described as a kind of raging whirlpool.
“Dear Norah,” he began, “I am sitting on deck on a coil of rope, and am sicker than a horse. I’ve thrown up everything I ate for a month before I left England, and everything I expect to eat for a month to come; but I must write a few lines of congratulation to Mrs. Archibald Browning, as you will be when you read this letter. Norah, I hope you will be happy; I do, upon my word, even if I did talk against him and say I meant to marry you myself. That was all bosh, for of course a venerable kind of a girl like you never could think of such a spindle-shanked, sandy-haired gawky as I am. Archie is far better for you, and I am glad you are his wife, real glad, Norah, and no sham, though last night when I sat on the deck and looked out over the dark sea toward old England and you, there was a lump in my throat as big as a tub, and, six-footer as I am, I laid my head on the railing and cried like a baby, and whispered to myself, ‘Good-by, Norah, good-by, once for all.’ I was bending up double thenext minute, and that cramp finished the business, and knocked all sentiment out of me, so that to-day you are my sister, or mother, or grandmother, just which you choose to call yourself, and I am very glad you are to marry Archie. I mean to be a rich man, and by and by pick up some English girl in India, and bring her home to you. There it comes again! that horrid creep from the toes up. I wonder if the whale felt that way when he cast up Jonah. Oh, my gracious. I can’t stand it. Good-by. Yours in the last agony,
“Tom Gordon.”
“Tom Gordon.”
“Tom Gordon.”
“Tom Gordon.”
I had been out in a yacht on the Irish coast, and been sea-sick, and I knew just how Tom felt, and could imagine how he acted, and I laughed aloud in spite of Archie dead and the great pain at my heart. In fact, the laugh did me good, and with Tom’s letter under my pillow I felt better than before I read it.
It was four months before we heard from him again, and then he was so sorry for me, so kindly sympathetic, that I cried as I had not cried since Archie died. Tom was well and happy, and likedthe country and his employment, and to use his words was having a “gay old time,” with some “larks of chaps” whose acquaintance he had made. Regularly each month we heard from him for a year or more, and then his letters became very irregular, and were marked with a daring and flippancy I did not like at all. Then followed an interval of silence, and we heard from other sources that Tom Gordon, though still keeping his place and performing his duties to his employer faithfully, was growing fast into a reckless, daring, dissipated man, such as no sister would like her brother to be. I was his sister; he was my brother, I said, and I wrote him a letter of remonstrance and reproof, telling him how disappointed I was in him and begging him to reform for my sake, and the sake of the old time when we were children together, and he had some respect for goodness and purity. He did not answer that letter. I think it made him angry, and so I could only weep over the wayward boy, and pray earnestly that Heaven would save him yet, and restore him to us as he used to be before he strayed so far from the paths of virtue.
And so the years went by till I was twenty-five, when, suddenly, without a note of warning, my father died, and by some turn in the wheel of fortune, never clear to my woman’s vision, Aunt Esther and I were left with a mere pittance not sufficient to supply the necessities even of one of us. Then Tom wrote and offered to come home if I wished it, but I did not. I was a little afraid of him, and something in my reply must have shown him my distrust, for he was evidently hurt and piqued, and did not write again until after Aunt Esther and myself were settled in lodgings in London, and taking care of ourselves. For we came to that at last; came to the back room, upper floor, of a lodging house in pleasant old Kensington, with the little hall bedroom, scarcely larger than a recess, for our sleeping apartment, and only my piano left me as a reminder of the dear old home in Middlesex, where strangers now are living. And I was a teacher of French and music, and went out every day to give lessons to my pupils, who lived, some of them, near to Abingdon Road, and some of them farther away.
With the next seven years this story has little to do. Aunt Esther died within the first two years, and I was left alone, but stayed always with the Misses Keith, the three dear old ladies who kept the house and petted me like a child. They were poor themselves, and depended for their living upon what their lodgers paid them, and I was the least profitable to them of all, for my little back room on the upper floor was the cheapest room they had. Still I think they would have parted with me more unwillingly than with the rich widow and her son who occupied the drawing-room floor, and made them handsome presents every Christmas. I kept their old hearts young, they said, with my music and my songs, and they pitied me so much, knowing what I used to be, and what I am now.
From Tom I heard quite often after Aunt Esther died. He was a better man, rescued from depths of dissipation he knew not how, he wrote, unless it was the memory of the olden time in Middlesex, and the prayers he was always sure I made for him. It was strange that through all his wildness he had been retained and trusted by his employer, who depended greatly upon him, and made him at lasthis confidential clerk. That was the turning point, and from that time he went up and up until few young men, it was said, stood higher or were more popular in Calcutta than my cousin Tom. And I was so proud of him; and when I read his letters telling me of his success and the many people whom he knew, and the families where he visited—families whose friends lived in London—I was glad he did not know just how poor I was, and that if even one scholar failed me I must deny myself something in order to meet the necessities of my life. I had never written him the truth with regard to my circumstances. I told him of the Misses Keith, who were so kind to me, and of my cozy room which looked into a pleasant garden, and upon the rear of the church which the Duke of Argyle occasionally honored with his presence. I had also mentioned incidentally, that, as I had plenty of leisure, I gave a few lessons in music to the daughters of gentlemen who lived in the vicinity of Abingdon Road. For this deception my conscience had smitten me cruelly, and if asked for a motive, I could not have given one. I merely wished to keep my poverty a secret from Tom, and up to the time when I was apassenger in a first-class carriage from Dover to London I had succeeded in doing so, and though Tom frequently sent me some token of remembrance from India, and, among other things, a real Cashmere shawl, which I could not wear because of the contrast between that and my ordinary dress, he had never sent me money, and so my pride was spared at the expense of a deception on my part.
I had been on a little trip to Paris and Switzerland with one of my pupils, who defrayed all my expenses, and to whom I was indebted for the freest, happiest weeks I had known since my father’s death. But these had come to an end. I had said good-by to the glorious Alps, good-by to delightful Paris, good-by to my pupil, who was to remain abroad with her mother, and here I was at the last stage of my journey, nearing London, whose smoke and spires were visible in the distance. As we flew along like lightning toward the city, there came over me a great dread of taking to the old, monotonous life again—a shrinking from the little back room, third floor, which was dingy and dreary, with the dark paper on the walls, thethreadbare carpet, and the paint which had seen so many years. There was a loathing, too, of my daily fare, always the cheapest I could find—the mutton chop, with rolls and eggs, and the Englishwoman’s invariable tea. No more French dishes, and soups, andcafe au laitfor me. I was not the guest of a party, now; I was again the poor music-teacher, going back to my bondage, and for a few moments I rebelled against it with all my strength, and hot, bitter tears forced themselves to my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. Hastily dashing them away, I glanced at the couple opposite, the bride and groom, to see if they were noticing me; but they were not; they were wholly absorbed in themselves, and were talking of Paris and the fine people they had met there, while the bride was wondering if Miss Lucy Elliston, who lived on Grosvenor Square, would really call upon her as she had promised to do. The name, Elliston, was not new to me, for Tom had more than once mentioned a friend of his, Charlie Elliston, whose father lived on Grosvenor Square, but I did not know there was a Lucy, and I became interested when I heard the bride say:
“George, do you remember how long it is since Miss Elliston returned from India?”
George did not, and the bride, whom George called Addie, continued:
“How very stylish she is, and how much she talked of Mr. Gordon. Is it one ofthe Gordons, do you suppose?”
George did not know, and the conversation soon changed to another subject, while I began to wonder if it could be Tom of whom Miss Lucy Elliston talked so much. Tom was in India, and Tom was descended directly fromthe Gordons, whose coat of arms could be seen any day in Hyde Park during the season. Did Tom know Miss Lucy Elliston, and was she so very stylish and proud, and had he not in one of his letters mentioned the number of the house on Grosvenor Square? If so, I would walk round, some day, and look at it, I said, just as we shot under cover at Victoria Station, and my journey was at an end.
It seemed as if my one insignificant little box was always destined to be the last found, and it was a long time before I took my seat in the cab and was driven in the direction of No. — Abingdon Road.The October sun, which all the day had poured such a flood of golden light upon the English landscape, had gone down in a bank of clouds, and I remember that there were signs of rain in the chill evening air, and the fog began to creep up around the lamp-posts and the corners of the streets as I rode through the darkness with a feeling of homesickness at my heart, as I remembered the Alps and Paris, the long vacation free from care, with every want supplied, and then thought of the little back room, third floor, with its dingy furniture. Even the warm welcome I was sure to receive from the Misses Keith, was forgotten in the gloom which weighed upon my spirits, when at last the cab stopped before No.—, which was all ablaze with light, candles in the basement, candles in the dining-room, and gas, it would seem, in the drawing-room floor, which the wealthy widow had left before I went away, but which evidently had another occupant now. My ring was answered by the youngest Miss Keith, who I fancied looked a very little disappointed at sight of me and my box.
“You here!” she said; “we didn’t expect you till to-morrow night. Not but you are very welcomebut you see—come this way, please, down stairs. Don’t go to your room now. It’s cold there, and dark. We have let the drawing-room floor very advantageously to a newly-married couple, who have just arrived. She is so pretty.”
By this time we had reached the little room in the basement, where the Misses Keith took their meals and sat when the business of the day was over, and where now a cheerful fire was blazing, making me feel more comfortable than I had since I left the Victoria Station in the cab. The elder Miss Keith and her sister were glad to see me, but I thought they looked askance at each other as if I were not after all quite welcome, and in a forlorn, wretched state of mind I sat down to warm my cold feet by the fire, wondering if letting the drawing-room floor so advantageously had quite put me in the background. Evidently it had, for after a few questions as to my journey, I was left alone, while the three ladies flitted back and forth, up stairs and down, busy with the grand dinner to be served in the drawing-room for the new arrivals, Mr. and Mrs. Trevyllan, who were reported as making elaborate toilets for the occasion.
“Married just six weeks, and her dress is beautiful,” Miss Keith said to me, as she conducted me at last to my room, which she reported as ready for me.
The drawing-room door was open, and as I passed it I could not forbear glancing in at the table, set with the best damask and silver and glass which No.— afforded, and, right before the fire, under the chandelier, stood the bride in full evening dress of light silk, her golden curls falling behind from a pearl comb, and her blue eyes upturned to the husband who stood beside her, toGeorge, as I knew in a moment, recognizing them at once as my fellow-travelers from Dover, and remembering again what the bride had said of Miss Lucy Elliston and a Mr. Gordon. Strangely enough, too, my thoughts went far back to Archie, and what I might have been had he lived, and there was a swelling of my heart, and the tears were in my eyes as I followed Miss Keith to my room, the door of which she threw wide open, and then stood back for me to see and admire.
“Oh-h! what have you done? I exclaimed, and then in an instant I comprehended the whole, andknew just how the good souls had planned, and contrived, and undoubtedly denied themselves to give me this surprise and delightful welcome home.
It was not the old dingy apartment at all, but the coziest of rooms, with fresh paint and paper, a new, light ingrain carpet of drab and blue, with chintz coverings for the furniture, of the same shade, and pretty muslin curtains looped back from the windows in place of the coarse Nottingham lace which had always been an offense to me. Add to this a bright fire in the grate, and my little round tea-table drawn up before it, with the rolls and chop, and pot of damson plums, and the teakettle boiling merrily, and you have the picture of the room which I stood contemplating, while Miss Keith blew her nose softly, and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron as she said:
“You see, the girls and me (they always spoke of each other asgirls, these women of fifty, fifty-five and sixty) the girls and me thought you had been forlorn long enough, and when Mrs. Winters left and was pleased to give us ten pounds extra, and we let the drawing-rooms so quick and well, paybeginning the day it was let, we said we would do something for Miss Norah, and we meant to have the fire made and a nice hot supper ready when you came, but you took us by surprise, and we had to keep you below till we could straighten up. I am glad you like it. There’s Mrs. Trevyllan’s bell, and I must go.”
She left me then and went to the little bride, who I knew did not enjoy her elaborately served dinner in her handsome parlor one-half as much as I enjoyed my simple tea in my rocking-chair before the fire, which whispered and spit so cheerily and cast such pleasant shadows on the wall. All my poverty and loneliness were for the time forgotten in the glamour of these creature comforts, but they returned to a certain extent when, my supper over and the tea-things removed, I sat down to read the few letters which had come for me within the last two weeks and not been forwarded. Was there one from Tom? I asked myself, and I was conscious of a feeling of disappointment when I found there was not.
“Tom does not care for me anymore,” I said, sadly, to myself, as I opened the first letter andread, with a pang, that Mrs. Lambert, on Warwick Crescent, had concluded to employ a governess in the house, and consequently would not need my services as French and music-teacher to her three daughters.
This was a great loss to me, and I remember a feeling of cold and almost hunger as I mechanically folded the letter and laid it aside, and as mechanically opened the second, and read that Mrs. Lennox, High street, Kensington, was going abroad for the winter with her daughters, and would not need me until spring, when she should be glad to employ me again if my time was not fully occupied.
“Fully occupied,” I said, bitterly. “Small danger of that. I shall starve at this rate,” and in a hopeless, despairing kind of way I opened the third and last letter and read that Lady Fairfax, No.—Grosvenor Square, would like me to callat onceif I cared for another scholar, as she might wish to put her little daughter Maude under my instruction.
The note was dated more than two weeks back, and thecall at oncewas underscored as if the summons admitted no delay.
“Lost that chance too,” I said, as I studied the small, delicate handwriting, and wondered where I had seen it before, or a handwriting like it.
I could not tell, but somehow my thoughts went back to that summer afternoon twelve years ago, and the breezy hall, with the doors opened wide, the sweet-scented air, and the tall, lank boy placing the white rose in my hair and bidding me keep it till he came back.
I had put the rose between the leaves of a heavy book that night, and when, weeks afterward, I found it there, I laid it away in a little Japanese box with a lock of Archie’s bright brown hair, cut for me from his dead brow by Lady Darinda’s hand, and one of Tom’s sandy curls cut by himself with a jack-knife, and given me on one of my birth-days. That was twelve years in the past, and everything was so changed, and I was so tired, so poor and lonely as I recalled it all, and thought first of Archie dead, then of the father dead also, and the money gone, and then of Tom, who had been so much to me once, and who seemed of late to have forgotten me entirely, for I had not heard from him since July, when he wrote, asking for my photograph, andbidding me be sure and send it, as he wished to know how “the little old mother looked after a dozen years.”
That was what he called me; “little old mother,” the name he gave me long ago when I used to lecture him so soundly and call him a “naughty boy.” He had asked me in the letter if I did not want some money, saying, if I did he wished I would tell him so frankly, and it should be forthcoming to any amount. I did not want money from him; he was too much a stranger to me now to admit of that, but I had sent him a photograph, which the Misses Keith had pronounced excellent, but which I thought younger, fairer, and better-looking than the face I knew as mine. Still, such as it was, I sent it to Tom, and thanked him for offering me money, and said I did not need it, and told him of my projected trip to Switzerland with some friends, and asked him to write to me again, as I was always glad to hear from him. But he had not written me a line, and it was almost four months now since I sent him the photograph.
“He was probably disappointed and disgusted with the picture, and so has ceased to think of or carefor me,” I said; and notwithstanding my newly-renovated room, which an hour before I thought so bright and cheerful, I do not remember that I had ever felt so lonely, and wretched, and forsaken, as I did that night, when I sat thinking of Tom and listening to the rain which had commenced to fall heavily, and was beating against the shutters of the room.
How long I sat there I do not know, but the house was perfectly quiet, and the fire was burned out, when at last I undressed myself and crept shivering to bed.
Next morning I awoke with a dull pain in my head and bones, a soreness in my throat, and a disposition to sneeze, all of which, Miss Keith informed me, were symptoms of influenza, which would nevertheless succumb to a bowl of hot boneset tea, a dose of pills, and a blister on the back of my neck. I took the tea, but declined the blister and pills, and was sick in bed for two whole weeks, during which time the Misses Keith were unremitting in their attentions, and the bride, little Mrs. Trevyllan, came to see me several times. She was a kind-hearted, chatty body, disposed to be very familiar and communicative,and during her first visit to my room told me all about herself, and how she happened to meetGeorge, as she always called her husband. Her father was a clergyman in the Church of England, and had a small parish in the north of Ireland, not far from the Giant’s Causeway, where she was born. Her mother had belonged to one of the county families in Essex, and so she was by birth a lady, and entitled to attention from the best of the people. George was junior partner in the firm of Trevyllan & Co., near Regent Circus, and would some day be very rich. He was the best fellow in the world, and had been staying at Portrush for a few weeks the previous summer, and seen and fallen in love with her, and carried her off in the very face of an old,passebaronet, who wanted her for his wife. Then she spoke of her home looking out on the wild Irish Sea, and of her mother, who, to eke out their slender salary, sometimes received one or two young ladies into the family, and gave them lessons in French and German. Miss Lucy Elliston had been one of these; and on her second visit to me, the little lady entertained me with gossip concerning this lady, whom she evidently admired greatly—“so stylish, anddignified, and pretty,” she said, “and so fond of me, even if I am the daughter of a poor clergyman, and she the daughter of Colonel Elliston, who served so long in India, and whose son is there now. We always corresponded at intervals after she left Ireland, and I was so delighted to meet her again in Paris. She has been to India herself for a year, it seems, and only came home last spring. I believe she has a lover out there; at all events, she talked a great deal of a certain Mr. Gordon, who is very rich and magnificent-looking, she said. She did not tell me she had his photograph, but I heard her say to a friend that she would show it to her sometime, though she did not think it did him justice. I would not wonder if I have it in my possession this very minute.”
“You!” I exclaimed—“you have Mr. Gordon’s photograph! How can that be?”
“I’ll tell you,” she replied. “I met Miss Elliston shopping at Marshall & Snellgrove’s, the other day, and she apologized for not having called upon me as she promised to do when I saw her in Paris. ‘She was so busy,’ she said, and then she was expecting her brother from India, and she wished Iwould waive all ceremony and come and see her some day. She gave me her address, and as her card-case was one of those Florentine mosaic things which open in the center like a book, she dropped several cards upon the floor. I helped her pick them up, and supposed we had them all, but after she was gone, I found, directly under my feet, the picture of a man, who could not have been her brother, for he is sick, and as it was taken in Calcutta, it must have been Mr. Gordon. I shall take it back to her, and am glad of an excuse to call, for, you see, George laughs at my admiration for Miss Elliston, and says it is all on one side, that she does not care two straws for me, or she could find time to come and see me, and all that nonsense, which I don’t believe; men are so suspicious.”
“I’d like to see the photograph,” I said, thinking of Tom, and the utter impossibility that he could be Miss Elliston’s friend, or that she could think him splendid-looking.
Tall, raw-boned, thin-faced, with sandy hair, brownish-gray eyes, and a few frecks on his nose—that was Tom, as I remembered him; while the picture Mrs. Trevyllan brought me was of a broad-shouldered,broad-chested, dark-haired man, with heavy, curling beard, and piercing, gray eyes, which yet had a most kindly, honest expression as they looked into mine.No, Miss Elliston’s Mr. Gordon wasnotTom, and I experienced a feeling of relief as I returned the photograph to Mrs. Trevyllan.
Looking back upon that time, I know that in my inmost heart there was no thought or wish that Tom could ever be more to me than a friend and brother, but I did want him in that capacity, I was so alone in the world; and though I did not know Miss Elliston personally, I was sure she would separate me entirely from Tom, for there could be no sympathy between a proud, fashionable woman like Miss Lucy Elliston, and a poor music-teacher like myself.
The next day Mrs. Trevyllan made her call, and returned quite disappointed, and, as I fancied, a little disgusted. Miss Elliston was very sorry, but too much occupied with a dressmaker to see any one, so Mrs. Trevyllan had left her card and the photograph, and retraced her steps with a feeling that she had taken the trouble for nothing, unless she took into consideration the fact that she had atleast seen the parlors of Miss Elliston’s home. Beautiful beyond anything I had ever seen they must have been, if her description of them was to be trusted, and I sighed a little as I listened to her glowing account of the carpets, and curtains, and pictures, and rare works of art, and then glanced at my own humble surroundings, and thought how poor I was. Only one pound ten was left in my purse, and there was the doctor’s bill and the two weeks’ rent, to say nothing of a new pair of boots which I must have, for the old pair leaked, and was past being made respectable by any amount of French dressing. Yes, I was very poor; too poor, in fact, to remain idle much longer, and as soon as I was able, I started out in quest of pupils in the place of those I had lost.
Remembering the note of Lady Fairfax, I resolved to seek her first, hoping that she had not engaged another teacher for her little girl, notwithstanding the imperative “Come at once, if you care for another scholar.”
How well I remember that November day, when, with a leaden sky overhead, muddy sidewalks under foot, and a feeling of snow or rain in the air, Istarted, in my suit of last year’s gray, which nothing could make new or stylish, but which I did try to freshen a little with clean linen collar and cuffs, and a bright blue necktie in place of the inevitable white one so common then in England. I hunted up, also, an old blue feather which I twisted among the loops of ribbon on my hat, and felt a little flutter of satisfaction when one of the Misses Keith told me how pretty I looked, and how becoming blue was to me. It used to be, when I lived in the roomy old house in Middlesex, and Tom said my eyes were like great robin’s eggs; but that was years and years ago, and I felt so old and changed as I turned into High street, and went down the stairs to the station, and took my seat in a third-class carriage of the under-ground railway. I always traveled third-class in London, but so did hundreds of others far richer than myself, and I did not mind that, or think myself inferior to the people around me, but when at last I found myself ringing the bell at Lady Fairfax’s handsome house, and met the cool stare of the powdered footman, who opened the door to me, and looked as if he wondered at my presumption in ringing there, I felt all my misgivingsreturn, and was painfully conscious of the faded gray dress, the old feather, and the leaky boots, which were wet even with the short distance it had been necessary for me to walk, and which began to smoke as I involuntarily drew near and held them to the warm coal fire in the grate in the reception-room where I was to wait for Lady Fairfax.
She was at home, the tall footman said, and engaged with a lady, but wished me to wait, and I fancied there was a shade of deference in his demeanor toward me after he had taken my card to his mistress and received her message for me. How pleasant it was in that pretty room, with the flowers in the bow window, the soft, rich carpet, the comfortable chairs, the bright fire, which felt so grateful to me after the raw November wind outside. And for a time I enjoyed it all, and listened to the murmur of voices in the parlor across the hall, where Lady Fairfax was entertaining her visitor. Both were well-bred voices, I thought, and one seemed stronger than the other, as if its owner were a stronger, more self-reliant woman than her companion, and I felt intuitively that I would trust herbefore the other. Which was Lady Fairfax, and who was her visitor, I wondered, just as a rustling silk trailed down the stairs, and an elderly lady entered the parlor opposite. I heard her address some one as Miss Elliston, and the lower, softer voice responded. Then the stronger voice said: “Oh, Lucy, by the way, when have you heard from your brother, and will he soon be home?”
Instantly then I knew that Lucy Elliston was Lady Fairfax’s guest, and I was hoping I might have a glimpse of her as she passed the door on her way out, when a smart waiting-maid entered the room hurriedly, and apparently spoke a few words to Lady Fairfax, who exclaimed:
“Why, Lucy dear, Christine tells me that your mamma has sent word for you to come home immediately. Your brother has just arrived.”
“Good gracious!” I heard Miss Elliston say, and wondered a little at the slang from which I supposed her class was free. “Charlie come! Was he alone, Christine? Was no one with him?”
There was a moving of chairs, a shuffling of feet and in the confusion I lost Christine’s reply, but heard distinctly Mr. Gordon’s name uttered bysome one. Then the three ladies moved into the hall, and through the half-open door I saw a tall young lady in a maroon velvet street suit, with a long white plume on her hat, and very large black eyes, which shone like diamonds through the lace vail drawn tightly over her face. That was Miss Elliston; and theverytall and rather stout woman in heavy black silk, with lavender trimmings, was Lady Fairfax, who pushed the door of the reception-room wide open, and with a firm, decided step crossed to the mantel in front of me, and eying me closely said:
“You are Miss Burton, I believe?”
“Yes,” I replied, and she continued: “Miss Norah Burton, who once lived at the Oaks in Middlesex?”
“Yes,” I said again, wondering a little at the question, and how she had ever heard of the Oaks.
She was regarding me very intently, I knew, taking me in from the crumpled blue feather on my hat to the shockingly shabby boots still smoking on the fender. These I involuntarily withdrew, thinking to hide them under my gray dress. She saw the movement, guessed the intention, and said kindly:
“Dry your boots, child. I see they are very wet Did you walk all the distance from Kensington here?”
“Oh, no,” I answered; “only to and from the station, but the streets are very nasty to-day;” and then I looked at her more closely than I had done before.
She was very tall, rather stout, and might have been anywhere from thirty-five to forty; certainly not younger. She had fine eyes, a good complexion, and very large hands, which, nevertheless, were shapely, soft and white, and loaded with diamonds. One splendid solitaire attracted my attention particularly from its peculiar brilliancy, and the nervous manner with which she kept touching it as she talked to me. She saw I was inspecting her, and allowed me time in which to do it; then she began abruptly, and in a tone slightly fault-finding:
“You received my note, of course, or you would not be here, It was written a month ago, and as I heard nothing from you I naturally supposed you did not care for, or need, another pupil, so I have obtained a governess for Maude.”
There was a choking sob in my throat which I forced down as I replied:
“Oh, I am so sorry, for I do need scholars so much, oh, so much.”
“Why didn’t you come, then?” she asked; and I told her how her letter had been two weeks at my lodgings before my return from the continent, and of the sickness which had followed my return.
“And you live there all alone. Have you no friends, no relations anywhere?” she asked.
“None since father and Aunt Esther died.” I said. “I have nobody but Cousin Tom, who is in India, and who never writes to me now. I think he has forgotten me. Yes, I am quite alone.”
“I wonder you have never married in all these years,” was the next remark, and looking up at her I saw something in her face which went over me like a flash of revelation, and my voice shook a little as I repeated her last words, “Never married!” while my thoughts went back to Archie and the summer days when I waited for him, and he did not come, and that later time when Lady Darinda wrote me he was dead.
Was this Lady Darinda? My eyes asked the question, and she answered me: “Perhaps my manner seems strange to you, Miss Burton; let me explain. I was wishing for a new teacher for my little Maude, one who was gentle and patient to children. A friend of mine, Mrs. Barrett, whose daughter you have taught, told me of you. The name attracted me, for I once knew of a Miss Norah Burton. I made inquiries, and learned that Jennie Barrett’s teacher and Miss Norah Burton of the Oaks, Middlesex, were one and the same. I wanted to see you, and so I wrote the note.”
She spoke rapidly, and kept working at the solitaire, without once looking at me, till I said: “You are Lady Darinda Cleaver?”
Then her large blue eyes looked straight at me and she replied:
“I was Lady Darinda Cleaver, cousin to Archibald Browning, whom you were engaged to marry. If you had married him you would have been Lady Cleaver now of Briarton Lodge, for both my brothers are dead, and Archie was next in succession.”
“Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge;” I whisperedthe words with a gasp, and for a moment tried to realize what was involved in being Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge.
Not a third floor back room, sure, with shabby boots and mended gloves, and faded dress of gray, but luxury and elegance, and troops of servants and friends, and equality with such people as Lady Fairfax, who, I knew, was trying to imagine how the crumpled, forlorn little woman, with the shabby boots and feather, would have looked as Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge. Tom had once taunted me with the possibility of my being Lady Cleaver, and with a thought of him the great bitter throb of regret for what might have been passed away, and I was glad in my heart that I was not the mistress of Briarton Lodge; so, when at last Lady Fairfax said to me, “Are you not sorry?” I looked at her steadily and answered, “Yes, very sorry that Archie is dead, but not sorry that I am not his wife. Years have shown me that we were not suited to each other. We should not have been happy together, and then——” I hesitated a moment, while a feeling of pique, or malice, or jealousy, or whatever one chooses to call a desire to give another a littlesting, kept growing within me, until at last I added, “and then—Archie’s first choice was for you; he loved you best; offered himself to you first, you know. You wrote me so in the letter.”
She turned the solitaire on her finger entirely round, and her cheek flushed as she smiled faintly, and replied:
“Offered himself to me first? Yes, and was very fond of me, I think, but whether he loved me best is doubtful. Poor Archie, he did not want to die, and at the last, after he had ceased to answer our questions, he whispered to himself: ‘Poor little girl; she will be so sorry. Be kind to her.’ That was you, I think.”
There was a great lump now in my throat, and a faintness came over me which must have shown itself in my face, for Lady Darinda exclaimed:
“How pale you look, Miss Burton, and how tired. I am sure you will be better to take something,” and touching the bell she bade the servant who appeared bring some biscuits and a glass of wine. I was not hungry, but I reflected that the lunch would save the expense of supper at home, and I took thankfully the biscuits, and sandwichesand wine, which were served from solid silver and the most delicate of Sevres. To such straits of calculation had I come: I, who had just missed of being Lady Cleaver, of Briarton Lodge. I pitied myself even while I ate the sandwiches, with Lady Fairfax looking on and fathoming all my poverty, as I believed. Perhaps I did her injustice, for I think she really meant to be kind, and when I had finished my lunch, she said:
“Archie’s mother, Aunt Eleanor, is here with me now—lives with me entirely. Would you like to see her?” and before I could reply, she stepped across the hall into the drawing-room, where I heard a few low-spoken words; then another step beside that of Lady Darinda, and Archie’s mother, Mrs. Browning, was at my side, and holding my hand in hers.
Time and sorrow had changed her greatly, or else the silvery puffs of hair which shaded her face softened the cold, haughty expression I remembered so well, and made it very pleasing and kind.
“Child,” she said, “it is many years since we met, and I am sorry to hear so sad a story of you. You are all alone in the world, Darinda tells me.”
She had seated herself beside me, still holding my hand, and at the sound of her voice I broke down entirely. All the loneliness, and dreariness and poverty of my life swept over me like a billow of the sea, and forgetting the difference in our stations, I laid my head in her lap and cried bitterly. I think she must have cried, too, a very little, and that for a few moments she lost sight of the poor music teacher in crumpled feather and shabby boots, and saw in me only the girl who had loved her boy, and whom the boy was to have married, if death had not interfered. She was very kind to me, and made me tell her all the sad story of my life since father died, and questioned me of Tom, and then, turning to her niece, who had retired to the window, said:
“Darinda, you did not positively engage Mademoiselle Couchet to read to me?”
Her tone implied that she wished her niece to say no, which she accordingly did, while Mrs. Browning continued:
“Then, I think I shall ask Miss Burton if she can come to me for two hours five days in the week, and read to me either in English or French, as Imay choose at the time. I will give her a pound a week for the winter. Will you come for that?” and she turned now to me. “Come between eleven and one, so as to lunch with me in my room.”
I had hidden nothing of my needs from her, and I felt sure that she included the lunch for a purpose, and my heart swelled with a gratitude so great that it was positive pain, and kept me from accepting the generous offer for a few moments. I had indeed found friends where I least expected them, and when a little later I arose to go, my heart was lighter than it had been since I bade good-by to one favorite pupil in Paris. I was to have a pound a week, with lunch, and what was better yet, Archie’s friends were mine at last. I was sure of that, and was not foolish enough to question their motives or to suspect—what was perhaps the truth—that inasmuch as I was in no way connected with them, and they were not at all responsible for my appearance, they could afford to be kind and lend me a helping hand; and then, I might have been the lady of Briarton Lodge, and lived in as grand a house as that of Lady Fairfax or Miss Lucy Elliston. I passed the latter on my way to the station,knowing it by the number which Mrs. Trevyllan had told me, and which I found was the same which Tom had sent me long ago.
The short November day was drawing to a close, and already the gas was lighted in the parlors of No. —, and in the dining-room, where the butler was arranging the dinner-table. He had not yet closed the shutters, and I could see the silver, and damask, and flowers, and wondered if they were expecting company besides the son just returned, or were their table surroundings always as elegant and grand. Then I remembered Mr. Gordon, and said: “He is to be there too,” just as the figure of a young lady passed before the window of the parlor. It was Miss Elliston, in blue silk evening dress, with white roses in her hair and a soft fall of lace at her throat. She was dressed for dinner, and I stood watching her a moment as she walked up and down for two or three times, restlessly as it seemed, and then came to the window and looked out upon the street. Did she see me, I wonder?—the forlorn little woman who hurried away in the fast-gathering darkness. If she did she thought it some maid or shop-girl, no doubt, andcontinued her watch, while I sped on my way to the station and was soon mounting the stairs which led up and out to High street, Kensington.
It was not far to No. — Abingdon road, but a heavy mist was falling, and I was wet, and bedraggled, and cold when at last I reached the house, and finding the door unfastened, walked in without ringing, and hurried directly to my room. From the basement below one of the Misses Keith called to me softly, and thinking it was some inquiry about my supper which she wished to make, I answered back:
“I have had something to eat, and do not wish anything more.”
Then I ran on up the next flight of stairs, at the head of which was the door of my room. It was partly open, and a flood of light and warmth streamed out into the hall, causing me to stand perfectly still for a moment, while my eyes took in the view presented to them. Such a fire as was roaring in the grate had never been seen there since I had been mistress of the apartment, while in the middle of the floor the table was spread as for a gala dinner, with celery and jelly, and even the coffee-urnwhich I never had used. What did it mean? Why had the Misses Keith taken this liberty with me, and plunged me into such extravagance, when they knew the low state of my finances? I think I felt a very little indignant at the good, kind old souls, as I pushed the door wide open and advanced into the room, starting back and stopping suddenly, at sight of a man—a big, broad-shouldered, tall man—muffled in a heavy coat, and sitting with his back to me, his feet resting on a chair, and his hands clasped behind his head, as if he were intently thinking. Who was he that dared thus intrude? I thought, and my voice had a sharp ring in it, as I said:
“Sir, what are you doing here? You have made a mistake. This is my room.”
He started then, and sprang up so quickly as to upset the chair on which his feet had rested, and which he did not stop to pick up, as he came rapidly toward me. What a giant of a fellow he was, in that shaggy coat, with all that brown, curling beard! and how my heart beat as he caught me in his strong arms, and, kissing me on both cheeks, said:
“I have made no mistake, Norah, and I am hereto see you. Don’t you remember spindle-shanks?”
Then I knew who it was, and, with a glad cry, exclaimed:
“Oh, Tom! Tom! I am so glad. Why didn’t you come before, when I wanted you so much?”
I had struggled to my feet, but did not try to release myself from the arm which held me so fast. In my excitement and surprise I forgot the years since we had met, forgot that he was a full-grown man, and no longer the “spindle-shanks,” as I used sometimes to call him—forgot everything but the fact that he had come back to me again, and that I was no longer alone and friendless in the world. Tom was there with me, a tower of strength, and I did not hesitate to lean upon my tower at once, and when he said, as only Tom could say, in a half-pitiful, half-laughing tone, “Have it out, Norah. Put your head down here, and cry,” I laid my head on the big overcoat, and “cried it out.”
I think he must have cried, too, for, as soon as his hands were at liberty, he made vigorous use of his pocket-handkerchief, and I noticed a redness about his eyes, when at last I ventured to look himfully in the face. How changed he was from the long, lank, thin-faced, sandy-haired Tom of old! Broad-shouldered, broad-chested, brown-faced brown-haired, and brown-bearded, there was scarcely a vestige left of the boy I used to know, except the bright smile, the white, even teeth, and the eyes, which were so kind and honest in their expression, and which, in their turn, looked so searchingly at me. I had divested myself of my hat and sacque by this time, and came back to the fire, when, turning the gas-jets to their full height, Tom made me stand directly under the chandelier, while he scanned me so closely that I felt the hot blood mounting to my hair, and knew my cheeks were scarlet.
“How changed and old he must think me,” I said to myself, just as he asked:
“I say, Mousey, how have you managed to do it?”
“Do what?” I asked, and he continued:
“Managed to keep so young, and fair, and pretty, or rather, to grow so pretty, for you are ten times handsomer than you were that day you walked down the lane with me, twelve years ago, and I said good-by with such a lump in my throat.”
“Oh, Tom, how can you——” I began, when he stopped me short and continued:
“Hear me first, and then put in as many disclaimers as you choose. I want to tell you at once all it concerns you now to know of my life in India. Those first years I was there I fell in with bad associates, and came near going to the dogs, as you know, and nothing saved me from it, I am sure, but the knowing that a certain little English girl was praying for me every day, and still keeping faith in me, as she wrote me in her letters. I could not forget the little girl, Norah, and the memory of her and her pathetic, ‘You will reform, Tom, for the sake of the dear old times, if for nothing else,’ brought me back when my feet were slipping over the brink of ruin, and made a man of me once more. I do not know why Mr. Rand trusted me and kept me through everything, as he did, unless it was for certain business qualities which I possessed, and because I did my work well and faithfully. When your father died you know I offered to come home, but you bade me not, and said you did not need me; and so I staid, for money was beginning to pour in upon me, and I grew richer andricher, while you—oh, Norah, I never dreamed to what you were reduced, or nothing would have kept me away so long. I always thought of you as comfortable and happy, in pleasant lodgings, with a competence from your father. I did not know of music scholars and daily toil to earn your bread. Why didn’t you tell me, Norah? Surely I had a right to know—I, your brother Tom!”
He did not wait for me to answer, but went on:
“Six months ago Mr. Rand, my old employer and then partner, died, and for some good or favor he fancied I had done him, he left me £50,000, which, with what I already had, made me a rich man, and then I began to think of home and the little cousin who, I said, must be a dried-up old maid by this time.”
At this I winced and tried to draw back from Tom, but he held me fast, while his rare smile broke all over his face as he went on:
“I thought I’d like to know just how you did look, and so wrote for your photograph, which, when it came, astonished me, it was so young and pretty and girlish; not in the least old maidish, as I feared it might be——”
“Tom, Tom—are you crazy?” I cried, wrenching my hands from his. “I’m not pretty; I’m not girlish; I’m not young; and I am an old maid of thirty-two.”
“Yes, yes, very true. I know your age to a minute, for didn’t we use to compare notes on that point when you brought up your seniority of ten months as a reason why you should domineer over and give me fits. I knew you were thirty-two, but you’d pass for twenty-five. Why, I’m ten years older than you now, with my bushy head, and tawny face, and brawny chest. Look at the difference, will you?” And leading me to the mirror he showed me the picture it reflected—picture of a tall, broad-shouldered, brown-faced, brown-haired man, who might have been thirty-five, and by his side, not quite reaching his shoulder, the petite figure of a woman whose forehead and lips were very pale, whose cheeks were very red, whose eyes were bright with excitement, and whose wavy hair was not unbecoming even if it was all tumbled and tossed, and falling about her face and neck.
That was Tom and I, and when, with his mischievous smile shining on me from the glass heasked: “Well Mousey, what do you think of us?” I answered with a dash of my old sauciness: “I think you look like a great shaggy bear, and I like a little cub.”
He laughed aloud at that and said: “You are very complimentary, but I’ll forgive you for once, and go on with my story, which was interrupted at the point where I received the photograph, which astonished me so much that I determined to come home and see if it was correct. And, as you know, I came, and wishing to surprise you gave no warning of my coming, but hunted up your lodgings, and felt utterly confounded when I was ushered into this little back third floor room, and was told you had occupied it for years, and not only that, but that you gave music lessons for a living, and had gone out to hunt up scholars. I don’t think I quite swore, but I did tear round a little, and bade the woman make up a roaring fire against your return, and told her I was going to dine with you. You ought to have seen her twist her apron, and heard her stammer and hesitate as she told me ‘Miss Burton didn’t mostly have dinners nowadays;’ meaning, of course, that you couldn’t afford it. I believeI did say d——, with a dash, under my breath, but I gave her a sovereign, and told her to get up the best dinner possible for the time, for I was hungry as forty bears. She courtesied almost to the floor and departed, but upon my soul I believe they think me a burglar or something dreadful, for one or the other of them has been on this floor watching me slyly to see that I was not rummaging your things.”
While he talked I was trying to dry my wet boots which, like Lady Darinda, he spied at last and exclaimed, “Why, child, how wet your boots are. Why do you not change them? You will surely take cold. Go now and do it.”
I did not tell him they were all I had, but he must have guessed it from my manner, and looking sharply at me as if he would wring the truth from me, he said: “Norah, are these your only boots?”
“Yes, Tom, they are,” and my lip quivered a little, while he stalked up and down the room, knocking over a chair with his big overcoat, and nearly upsetting a stand of plants. I think I felt my poverty more at that moment than I had ever done before, but there was nothing I could say, and fortunately for us both Miss Keith just then appeared,saying dinner was ready, and asking if she should send up the soup. What a dinner it was, and Tom did ample justice to it, until suddenly, remembering himself, he said: