Читать книгу Norine's Revenge, and, Sir Noel's Heir - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 2

Mr. Richard Gilbert went to New York, and the girl with the black Canadian eyes and floating hair went with him – in spirit, that is to say. That dark, piquant face; that uplifted, gentle glance; that dimpling smile haunted him all through the upward journey; haunted and lit up his dingy office, and came between him and Blackstone, and Coke upon Littleton, and other legal lights.

Her bright, seventeen-year old face formed itself into a picture upon every page of those mouldering, dry-as-dust tomes, looked at him in the purple twilight, in the sunny mornings, in the dead waste and middle of the night. He had become "A Haunted Man," in short, Mr. Gilbert was in love.

And so, "how it came let doctors tell," all of a sudden Mr. Gilbert found that business required his presence Down East early in July. It was trifling business, too, understrappers in the office thought, that could very well have done without his personal supervision; but Mr. Gilbert reasoned otherwise; and, with a very unwonted glow about the region of the heart, packed his portmanteau, and started for Portland, Me.

The hot July sun was blazing in the afternoon sky and the streets of Portland were blistering in the heat, as the New York lawyer walked from the cars to his hotel. That important business which had brought him so many miles was transacted in a couple of hours, and then he returned to his hotel to dress and dine. Dress! – when had Richard Gilbert in his plain business pepper-and-salt suit and round-topped straw hat, ever taken so much pains with his toilet before, ever sported such faultless broadcloth in July, ever wore a diamond pin in his snowy linen, ever stood so long before the glass, ever felt so little satisfied with the result? When had the crow's feet around mouth and eyes ever shown so plainly, when had his tall, bald forehead ever appeared so patriarchal, when had he ever looked so dreadfully middle-aged, and plodding and priggish in his own legal eyes? Ah, when indeed?

He hired a light wagon and a bony horse at the nearest livery stable, and inquired the way to Kent Farm. Kent Farm was three miles distant, he found, and the white, dusty road lay like a strip of silver between the golden, green fields. The haymakers were at work, the summer air was sweet with perfume, the fields of buckwheat waved, the birds sang in the branches of the elms, the grasshoppers chirped until the drowsy air was alive, and far beyond all, more beautiful than all, the silver sea lay asleep under the sparkling sun. Pretty houses, all white and green, were everywhere; and more than one Maud Müller leaned on her rake, and looked up under her broad-brimmed hat as this thoughtful Judge rode by. He rode very slowly, so slowly that it was nearly an hour before he reached his destination and drew up at the gate of Kent Farm.

Had he been wise to come? What was this young girl, this child of seventeen, to him? What could she ever be? Youth turns to youth, as flowers to the sun. What if he found her the plighted wife of some stalwart young farmer, some elegant dry-goods clerk of the town? What? His heart contracted with a sharp, sudden spasm, and told him what?

Kent Farm at last. Half a mile from any other house, on the summit of a green, sloping eminence, an old red, weather-beaten farm-house its once glaring color toned and mellowed down by the sober hand of Time. A charming old place, its garden sloping down to the roadside, its lilac trees in full bloom. A wide-spreading old-fashioned garden, with rose bushes, and gooseberry bushes, currant bushes, sunflowers, and hollyhocks, and big gnarled old apple trees, mixed up in picturesque confusion.

Seated in a chair of twisted branches, under one of these crooked, blossoming apple trees, the sunlight tangled in her shining hair, and the mignonne face, sat Norine Kent Bourdon, reading a novel.

He opened the gate. Her book was interesting – she did not hear. He walked up the gravelled path, and drew near. Then she looked up, then half rose, in doubt for a moment, and then – to the day of his death, until all things earthly, will Richard Gilbert remember the flush of joy, the flash of recognition, the glad cry of welcome, with which she flung aside her book and sprang towards him, both hands outstretched.

"Monsieur! monsieur!" the sweet voice cried. "Ah, monsieur! how glad I am to see you."

She gave him her hands. The lovely, laughing face the eyes of fathomless light, looked up into his. Yes, she was glad to see him, glad with the impulsive gladness of a little younger sister to see an indulgent brother, old and grave, yet beloved. But Mr. Gilbert, holding those hands, looking into that eager, sparkling face, drew no such nice distinctions.

"Thank you, mademoiselle. You have not quite forgotten me, then, after all?"

"Forgotten you, monsieur? Oh, my memory is better than that. You have come to pay us that promised visit, have you not? Uncle Reuben has been looking for you ever since the first of June, and Aunt Hester is never so happy as when she has company. You have come to stay, I know."

"Well, I'm not sure about that, Miss Bourdon. I may remain a week or two, certainly. New York is not habitable after the first week of July, but I am stopping at the Preble House. I am too much of a stranger to trespass on your good uncle's hospitality."

"You have been kind to me, monsieur, and you are a stranger no more. Besides, it is dull here – pleasant but dull, and it will be a second kindness to enliven us with a little New York society."

She laughed and drew away her hands. The golden light of the July afternoon gilded the girlish face, upon which the New York gentleman gazed with an admiration he did not try to hide.

"Dull," he repeated; "you don't find it dull, I should think. Your face tells a very different story."

Mademoiselle shook back her rippling satin hair, and made a little French moue mutine.

"Ah, but it is. Only the fields and the flowers, the trees and the birds, the eating and sleeping, and reading. Now, flowers and fields and birds are very nice and pleasant things, but I like people, new faces, new friends, pleasure, excitement, change. I ride the horse, I milk the cows, I pick the strawberries, I darn the stockings, I play the piano, I make the beds, I read the novels. But I see nobody – nobody – nobody, and it is dull."

"Then you prefer the old life and Montreal?"

"Montreal!" Miss Bourdon's black eyes flashed out, as your black eyes can. "Monsieur," solemnly, "I adore Montreal. It was always new and always nice there; bright and gay and French. French! it is all Yankee here, not but that I like Yankees too. Aunt Hester thinks," a merry laugh, "there never was anybody born like me, and Uncle Reuben thinks I would be an angel if I didn't read so many novels and eat so many custard pies. And, monsieur," with the saucy uplifted coquettish glance he remembered so well, "if you find out I'm not an angel don't tell him, please. I wouldn't have him undeceived for the world."

"I don't think I shall find it out, mademoiselle. I quite agree with your uncle. Here he comes now."

Reuben Kent came out of the open front door, smoking a pipe. He paused at sight of his niece in friendly colloquy with a strange gentleman. The next moment he recognized him, and came forward at once in hearty welcome.

"Wal, squire," Mr. Kent said, "you hev come, when I had e'enamost gi'n you up. How dye deow? 'Tarnal hot, ain't it? Must be a powerful sight hotter, though, up to York. How air you. You're lookin' pretty considerably spry. Norry's glad to see you, I know. That gal's bin a talkin' o' ye continual. Come in, squire – come in. My sister Hester will be right glad to see ye."

What a cordial welcome it was; what a charming agricultural person Mr. Reuben Kent, one of nature's Down East noblemen, indeed. In a glow of pleasure, feeling ten years younger and ten times better looking than when he had started, the New York lawyer walked up to the house, into the wide, cool hall, into the "keepin' room," and took a seat. A pleasant room; but was not everything about Kent Farm pleasant, with two large western windows, through which the rose and golden light of the low dropping sun streamed over the store carpet, the cane-seated chairs, the flowers in the cracked tumblers, and white, delf pitchers. Traces of Norine were everywhere; the piano in a corner, the centre-table littered with books, papers, magazines and scraps of needle-work, the two canaries singing in the sunny windows, all spoke of taste, and girlhood. There were white muslin curtains, crocheted tidies on every chair in the room, a lounge, covered with cretonne in a high state of glaze and gaudy coloring, and the scent of the hay fields and the lilacs over all. No fifth-avenue drawing-room, no satin-hung silver-gilt reception-room, had ever looked one half so exquisite in this metropolitan gentleman's professional eyes. For there, amid the singing birds and the scented roses, stood a tall, slim girl, in a pink muslin dress – and where were the ormolu or brocatelle could embellish any room as she did?

Uncle Reuben went in search of Aunt Hester, and returned with that lady presently; and Mr. Gilbert saw a bony little woman with bright eyes and a saffron complexion. Miss Kent welcomed him as an old friend, and pressed him to "stay to tea."

"It's jest ready," she remarked, – a maiden lady was Aunt Hester, – "we've ben waitin' for brother Joe, and he's jest come. There ain't nothing more refreshing, I think myself, than a nice cup o' hot tea on a warm day."

Uncle Reuben seconded the motion at once.

"We can't offer you anything very grand – silver spoons and sech – as you get at them air hotels, but sech as it is, and Hester's a master hand at crawlers and hot biscuit, you're most mightly welcome. Norry, you fetch him along, while I go and wash up."

Miss Bourdon obeyed. Mr. Gilbert did not require all that pressing, if they had but known it. There was no need to apologize for that "high tea." No silver teaspoons, it is true, but the plated-ware glistened as the real Simon Pure never could have done; and no hotel in Maine, or out of it, could have shown a snowier table-cloth, hotter, whiter, more dyspeptic biscuits, blacker tea, redder strawberries, richer cream, yellower ginger-bread, or pinker cold-sliced ham. Mr. Gilbert ate ham and jelly, strawberries and tea, hot biscuit and cold ginger-bread – in a way that fairly warmed Aunt Hester's heart.

"And we calk'late on keeping you while you're down here, Mr. Gilbert," Uncle Reuben's hearty voice said. "It's a pleasant place, though I say it as hadn't ought to – a heap pleasanter than the city. Our house ain't none too fine, and our ways may be homespun and old-fashioned, but I reckon Norry and Hester kin make you pretty tol'bel comfortable ef you stay."

"Comfortable!"

He looked across at that face opposite; comfortable in the same house with her! But still he murmured some faint objection.

"Don't mention trouble, sir," said Uncle Joe, who was the counterpart of Uncle Reuben; "you've ben kind to our little Norry, and that's enough for us. Norry, hain't you got nothin' to say?"

"I say stay!" and the bewildering black eyes flashed their laughing light across at the victimized lawyer. "Stay, and I'll teach you to milk and make butter, and feed poultry, and pick strawberries, and improve your mind in a thousand rural ways. You shall swing me when Uncle Joe is too busy, and help me make short-cake, and escort me to 'quiltin' bees,' and learn to rake hay. And I – I'll sing for you wet days, and drive you all over the neighborhood, and let you tell me all about New York and the fashions, and the stores, and the theatres, and the belles of Broadway. Of course you stay."

Of course he stayed. It is so easy to let rosy lips persuade us into doing what we are dying to do. He stayed, and his fate was fixed – for good or for evil – fixed. That very night his portmanteau came from Portland, and the "spare room" was his.

Supper over, Uncles Reuben and Joe lit their pipes, and went away to their fields and their cattle – Aunt Hester "cleared up," and Miss Bourdon took possession of Mr. Gilbert. She wasn't the least in awe of him, she was only a bright, frank, fearless, grown-up child. He was grave, staid, old – is not thirty-five a fossil age in the eyes of seventeen? – but venerable though he was, she was not the least afraid of him.

She led her captive – oh, too willing, forth in triumph to see her treasures – sleek, well-fed cows, skittish ponies, big horses, hissing geese, gobling turkeys, hens and chicks innumerable. He took a pleased interest in them all – calves and colts, chickens and ducklings, ganders and gobblers, listened to the history of each, as though he had never listened to such absorbing biographies in all his life before.

How rosy were the lips that spoke, how eager the sunny face uplifted to his, and when was there a time that Wisdom did not fall down and worship Beauty? He liked to think of her pure and sweet, absorbed in these innocent things, to find neither coquetry nor sentimentalism in this healthy young mind, to know her ignorant as the goslings themselves of all the badness and hardness and cruelty of the big, cruel world.

They went into the garden, and lingered under the lilacs, until the last pink flush of the July day died, and the stars came out, and the moon sailed up serene. They found plenty to say; and, as a rule, Richard Gilbert rarely found much to say to girls. But Miss Bourdon could talk, and the lawyer listened to the silvery, silly prattle with a grave smile on his face.

It was easy to answer all her eager questions, to tell her of life in New York, of the opera and the theatres, and the men and women who wrote the books and the poems she loved. And as she drank it in, her face glowed and her great eyes shone.

"Oh, how beautiful it all must be!" she cried, "to hear such music, to see such plays, to know such people! If one's life could only be like the lives of the heroines of books – romantic, and beautiful, and full of change. If one could only be rich and a lady, Mr. Gilbert!"

She clasped her hands with the hopelessness of that thought. He smiled as he listened.

"A lady, Miss Bourdon? Are you not that now?" Miss Bourdon shook her head mournfully.

"Of course not, only a little stupid country girl, a farmer's niece. Oh! to be a lady – beautiful and haughty and admired, to go to balls in diamonds and laces, to go to the opera like a queen, to lead the fashion, and to be worshipped by every one one met! But what is the use of wishing, it never, never, never, can be."

"Can it not? I don't quite see that, although the ladies you are thinking of exist in novels only, never in this prosy, work-a-day world. Wealth is not happiness – a worn-out aphorism, but true now as the first day it was uttered. Great wealth, perhaps, may never come to you but what may seem wealth in your eyes may be nearer than you think – who knows?"

He looked at her, a sudden flush rising over his face, but Norine shook her black ringlets soberly.

"No, I will never be rich. Uncle Reuben won't hear of my going out as governess, so there is nothing left but to go on with the chicken-feeding and butter-making and novel-reading forever. Perhaps it is ungrateful, though, to desire any change, for I am happy too."

He drew a little nearer her; a light in his grave eyes, a glow on his sober face, warm words on his lips. What was Richard Gilbert about to say? The young, sweet, wistful face was fair enough in that tender light, to turn the head of even a thirty-five year-old-lawyer. But those impulsive words were not spoken, for "Norry, Norry!" piped Aunt Hester's shrill treble. "Where's that child gone? Doesn't she know she'll get her death out there in the evening air."

Norine laughed.

"From romance to reality! Aunt Hester doesn't believe in moonlight and star-gazing and foolish longings for the impossible. Perhaps she is right; but I wonder if she didn't stop to look at the moon sometimes, too, when she was seventeen?"

It was a very fair opening, given in all innocence. But Mr. Gilbert did not avail himself of it. He was not a "lady's man" in any sense of the word. Up to the present he had never given the fairest, the cleverest among them a second glance, a second thought. The language of compliment and flirtation was as Chaldaic and Sanscrit to him, and he walked by her side up to the house and into the keeping-room in ignoble silence.

The little old maid and the big old bachelors were assembled here, the lamp was lit, the curtains down and the silvery shimmer of that lovely moon-rise jealously shut out. Norine went to the piano, and entertained her audience with music. She played very well, indeed. She had had plenty of piano-forte-drudgery at the Convent school of the Grey Nuns in her beloved Montreal. She sung for them in the voice that suited her mignonne face, a full, rich contralto.

She sang gayly, with eyes that sparkled, the national song of Lower Canada: "Vive la Canadienne," and the New York lawyer went up to bed that first night with its ringing refrain in his ears:

"Ah!" Richard Gilbert thought, "well may the habitàns sing and extol the beaux yeux of their fair countrywomen, if those bright eyes are one-half as lovely as Norine Bourdon's."

He stayed his fortnight out at the old red farm-house; and he who ran might read the foolish record. He, a sober, practical man of thirty-five, who up to the present had escaped unscarred, had fallen a victim at last to a juvenile disease in its most malignant form. And juvenile disorders are very apt to be fatal when caught in mature years. He was in love with a tall child of seventeen, a foolish little French girl, who looked upon him with precisely the same affection she felt for Uncle Reuben.

"What a fool I am," the lawyer thought, moodily, "to dream a child like that can ever be my wife? A sensible, practical young woman of seven-and-twenty is nearer your mark, Richard Gilbert. What do I know of this girl, except that she has silken ringlets and shining black eyes, and all sorts of charming, childish, bewitching ways. I will not make an idiot of myself at my age. I will go away and forget her and my folly. I was a simpleton ever to come."

He kept his word. He went away with his story untold. He bade them all good-bye, with a pang of regret more keen than any he had ever felt before in his life. Perhaps the little brown hand of mademoiselle lingered a thought longer than the others in his; perhaps his parting look into those beaux yeux was a shade more wistful. He was going for good now – to become a wise man once more, and he might never look into those wonderful, dark eyes more.

Norine was sorry, very sorry, and said so with a frank regret her middle-aged lover did not half like. He might be unskilled in the mysteries of the tender passion, but he had an inward conviction that love would never speak such candid words, never look back at him with such crystal clear eyes. She walked with him to the gate; her ebon curls a stream in the July breeze.

"Will you not write to me sometimes?" Mr. Gilbert could not help asking. "You don't know how glad I shall be to hear of – of you all."

Mademoiselle Bourdon promised readily.

"Though I don't write very good letters," she remarked deprecatingly. "I get the spelling wrong, and the grammar dreadfully mixed when I write in English, but I want to improve. If you'll promise to tell me of all my mistakes, I'll write with pleasure."

So what were to be the most precious love letters on earth to the gentleman, were to be regarded as "English composition," by the lady. Truly, the French proverb saith: "There is always one who loves, and one who is loved."

Mr. Gilbert returned to New York, and found that populous city a blank and howling wilderness. The exercises in English composition began, and though both grammar and spelling might get themselves into hopeless snarls, to him they were the most eloquent and precious epistles ever woman penned. He had read the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, but what were those vapid epistles to Miss Bourdon's? He watched for the coming of the Eastern mail; he tore open the little white envelope; he read and re-read, and smiled over the contents.

And time went on. August, September, October passed. The letters from Miss Norine Bourdon came like clock work, and were the bright spots in Richard Gilbert's hard-working, drab-colored life. He wrote her back; he sent her books and music, and pictures and albums, and pretty things without end, and was happy. And then the Ides of dark November came, and all this pastoral bliss was ended and over.

The letters with the Down-east post mark ceased abruptly, and without any reason; his last two remained unanswered. He wrote a third, and fell into a fever while he waited. Was she sick, was she dead, was she – . No, not faithless, surely, he turned cold at the bare thought. But what was it? The last week of November brought him his answer. Very short, very unsatisfactory.

"Kent Farm, Nov. 28, 1860.

"Dear Mr. Gilbert – You must pardon me for not replying to your last letters. I have been so busy. A gentleman met with an accident nearly three weeks ago, close by our house, broke his left arm, and sprained his right ankle. I have had to take care of him. Aunt Hetty has so much to do all the time that she could not. We are all very well, and send you our best wishes. I am very much obliged for the pretty work-box, and the magazines, etc. And I am, dear Mr. Gilbert, with the most affectionate sentiments,

"Norine K. Bourdon.

"P. S. – The gentleman is greatly better. He is with us still. He is very nice. He is from your city.

"N."

In the solitude of his legal sanctum, Richard Gilbert, with frowning brow and gloomy eyes, read this blighting epistle. His worst fears were realized, more than realized.

There was a gentleman in the case. A gentleman who absorbed so much of Miss Norine Bourdon's time that she could not answer his letters. And he was "greatly better" and he was from your city. Confound the puppy! He was young and good-looking, no doubt; and he must meet with his accident, at her very door; precisely as though he were enacting a chapter out of a novel. Of course, too, it was his arm and his ankle that were smashed, not his villainous face. And Norine sat by his bedside, and bathed his forehead, and held cooling draughts to his parched lips, and listened to his romantic, imbecile delirium, etc., etc., etc. She sat up with him nights; she read to him; she talked to him; she sang for him. He could see it all.

Mr. Gilbert was a Christian gentleman, so he did not swear. But I am bound to say he felt like swearing. He jumped up; he crushed that poor little letter into a ball; he strode up and down his office like a caged (legal) tiger. The green-eyed monster put forth its obnoxious claws, and never left him for many a dreary year. It was that atrocious postscript, so innocently written, so diabolical to read. "He is greatly better. He is with us still. He is very nice." Oh, confound him! what a pity it had not been his neck.

Suddenly he paused in his walk, his brows knit, his eyes flashing, his mouth set. Yes, that was it, he would do it, his resolution was taken. He would go straight to Kent Farm, and see for himself. And next morning at 8 o'clock the express train for Boston bore among its passengers Mr. R. Gilbert, of New York.

The train whirled him away, and as the chill, murky December landscape flew by, he awoke all at once to a sense of what he was about. Why was he going? what did he mean? to ask Norine Bourdon to be his wife? certainly not. To play dog in the manger, and keep some more fortunate man from loving and marrying her? most certainly not. Then why had he come? At this juncture he set his teeth, took up the Herald and scowled moodily at its printed pages all day long.

He slept that night in Boston, and next morning resumed his journey. He reached Portland before noon, dined at his usual hotel, and then, as the afternoon sun began to drop low in the wintry sky, set out on foot for Kent Farm.

How familiar it all was; how often, when the fields were green, the trees waving, and the birds singing, he had walked this road beside Norine. But the fields were white with snow to-day, the trees black, gaunt skeletons, and the July birds dead or gone. All things had changed in four months – why not Norine as well?

It was four by the lawyer's watch as he raised the latch of the garden gate, and walked up the snow-shrouded path. There stood the gnarled old apple tree, with its rustic chair, but the tree was leafless, and the chair empty. Doors and windows had stood wide when he saw them last, with sunshine and summer floating in; now all were closed, and the December blasts howled around the gables. There was no one to be seen, but the red light of a fire streamed brightly out through the curtains of the keeping-room.

He went slowly up the steps, opened the front door, and entered the hall. The door of that best apartment stood half open, light and warmth, voices and laughter came through. Mr. Gilbert paused on the threshold an instant, and looked at the picture within.

A very pretty picture.

The room was lit by the leaping fire alone. Seated on a low stool, before the fire and beside the sofa, he saw Norine. She was reading aloud the lovely story of Lalla Rookh. He had sent her the green and gilt volume himself. She wore a crimson merino dress, over which her black hair fell, and in the fantastic firelight how fair the dark, piquant face looked, the dark eyes were bent upon her book, and the soft voice was the only sound in the room.

On the sofa, perilously near, lay the "gentleman" of her letter – the hero of the broken arm and sprained ankle, who was "very nice." And Richard Gilbert looking, gave a great start.

He knew him.

His worst fears were realized. He saw a man both young and good-looking – something more, indeed, than good-looking. The face was thin and pale, but when was that a fault in the eyes of a girl! – a tall figure in a dark suit, brown hair, and silken blonde mustache artistically curled. Surely a charming picture of youth and beauty on both sides, and yet if Mr. Gilbert had seen a cobra di capella coiled up beside the girl he loved, he could hardly have turned sicker with jealous fear.

"Laurence Thorndyke," he thought blankly "of all the men in the wide world, what evil fortune has sent Laurence Thorndyke here!"