# Watch and Ward (Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1878)/Chapter 5

V.
"Dear me!" he said, "can this be Nora Lambert?"
She had risen to meet him, and held out her hand with ​girlish frankness. She was dressed in a light silk dress; she seemed a young woman grown. "I have been growing hard in all these years," she said. "I have had to catch up with those pieds énormes." The readers will not have forgotten that Hubert had thus qualified her lower members. Ignorant as she was, at the moment, of the French tongue, her memory had instinctively retained the words, and she had taken an early opportunity to look out pied in the dictionary. Énorme, of course, spoke for itself.
"You must have caught up with them now," Hubert said, laughing. "You are an enormous young lady. I should never have known you." He sat down, asked various questions about Roger, and adjured her to tell him, as he said, "all about herself." The invitation was flattering, but it met only a partial compliance. Unconscious as yet of her own charm, Nora was oppressed by a secret admiration of her companion, whose presence seemed to open a brilliant vista. She compared him with her cousin, and wondered that he should be at once so impressive and so different. She blushed a little, privately, for Fenton, and was not ill pleased to think he was absent. In the light of Hubert's good manners, his admission that he was no gentleman acquired an excessive force. By this thrilling intimation of the diversity of the male sex, the mental pinafore of childhood seemed finally dismissed. Hubert was so frank and friendly, so tenderly and gallantly patronizing, that more than once she felt herself beginning to expand; but then, suddenly, something absent in the tone of his assent, a vague fancy that in the gathering dusk, he was looking at her all at ​his ease, rather than listening to her, converted her bravery into what she knew to be deplorable little-girlishness. On the whole, this interview may have passed for Nora's first lesson in the art, indispensable to a young lady on the threshold of society, of talking for half an hour without saying anything. The lesson was interrupted by the arrival of Roger, who greeted his cousin with almost extravagant warmth, and insisted upon his staying to dinner. Roger was to take Nora after dinner to a concert, for which he felt no great enthusiasm; he proposed to Hubert, who was a musical man, to occupy his place. Hubert demurred awhile; but in the meantime Nora, having gone to prepare herself, reappeared, looking extremely well in the blue crape bonnet before mentioned, with her face bright with anticipated pleasure. For a moment Roger was vexed at having resigned his office; Hubert immediately stepped into it. They came home late, the blue bonnet nothing the worse for wear, and the young girl's face lighted up by her impressions. Her animation was extreme; she treated Roger to a representation of the concert, and made a great show of voice. Her departing childishness, her dawning tact, her freedom with Roger, her half-freedom with Hubert, made a charming mixture, and insured for her auditors the success of the entertainment. When she had retired, amid a mimic storm of applause from the two gentlemen, Roger solemnly addressed his cousin. "Well, what do you think of her? I hope you have no fault to find with her feet."
"I have had no observation of her feet," said Hubert; "but she will have very handsome hands. She is a very ​nice creature." Roger sat lounging in his chair with his hands in his pockets, his chin on his breast, and a heavy gaze fixed on Hubert. The latter was struck with his deeply preoccupied aspect. "But let us talk of you rather than of Nora," he said. "I have been waiting for a chance to tell you that you look very poorly."
"Nora or I,—it 's all one. She is the only thing in life I care for."
Hubert was startled by the sombre energy of his tone. The old polished, placid Roger was in abeyance. "My dear fellow," he said, "you are altogether wrong. Live for yourself. You may be sure she will do as much. You take it too hard."
"Yes, I take it too hard. It troubles me."
"What 's the matter? Is she a naughty child? Is she more than you bargained for?" Roger sat gazing at him in silence, with the same grave eye. He began to suspect Nora had turned out a losing investment. Has she—a—low tastes?" he went on. "Surely not with that sweet face!"
Roger started to his feet impatiently. "Don't misunderstand me!" he cried. "I have been longing to see some one,—to talk,—to get some advice,—some sympathy. I am fretting myself away."
"Good heavens, man, give her a thousand dollars and send her back to her family. You have educated her."
"Her family! She has no family! She 's the loneliest as well as the sweetest, wisest, best of creatures! If she were only a tenth as good, I should be a happier man. I can't think of parting with her; not for all I possess."
Hubert stared a moment. "Why, you are in love."
​"Yes," said Roger blushing. "I am in love."
"Dear me!" murmured Hubert.
"I am not ashamed of it," rejoined Roger, softly.
It was no business of Hubert's, certainly; but he felt the least bit disappointed. "Well," he said coolly, "why don't you marry her?"
"It is not so simple as that!"
"She will not have you?"
Roger frowned impatiently. "Reflect a moment. You pretend to be a man of delicacy."
"You mean she is too young? Nonsense. If you are sure of her, the younger the better."
"For my unutterable misery," said Roger, "I have a conscience. I wish to leave her free and take the risk. I wish to be just and let the matter work itself out. You may think me absurd, but I wish to be loved for myself, as other men are loved."
It was a specialty of Hubert's that in proportion as other people grew hot, he grew cool. To keep cool, morally, in a heated medium was, in fact, for Hubert a peculiar satisfaction. He broke into a long light laugh. "Excuse me," he said, "but there is something ludicrous in your attitude. What business has a lover with a conscience? None at all! That 's why I keep out of it. It seems to me your prerogative to be downright. If you waste any more time in hair-splitting, you will find your young lady has taken things in the lump!"
"Do you really think there is danger?" Roger demanded, pitifully. "Not yet awhile. She 's only a child. Tell me, rather, is she only a child? You have spent the evening beside her: how does she strike a stranger?"
​While Hubert's answer lingered on his lips, the door opened and Nora came in. Her errand was to demand the use of Roger's watch-key, her own having mysteriously vanished. She had begun to take out her pins and had muffled herself for this excursion in a merino dressing-gown of sombre blue. Her hair was gathered for the night into a single massive coil, which had been loosened by the rapidity of her flight along the passage. Roger's key proved a complete misfit, so that she had recourse to Hubert's. It hung on the watch-chain which depended from his waistcoat, and some rather intimate fumbling was needed to adjust it to Nora's diminutive timepiece. It worked admirably, and she stood looking at him with a little smile of caution as it creaked on the pivot. "I would not have troubled you," she said, "but that without my watch I should oversleep myself. You know Roger's temper, and what I should suffer if I were late for breakfast!"
Roger was ravished at this humorous sally, and when, on making her escape, she clasped one hand to her head to support her released tresses, and hurried along the corridor with the other confining the skirts of her inflated robe, he kissed his hand after her with more than jocular good-will.
"Ah! it 's as bad as that!" said Hubert, shaking his head.
"I had no idea she had such hair," murmured Roger. "You are right, it is no case for shilly-shallying."
"Take care!" said Hubert. "She is only a child."
Roger looked at him a moment. "My dear fellow, you are a hypocrite."
​Hubert colored the least bit, and then took up his hat and began to smooth it with his handkerchief. "Not at all. See how frank I can be. I recommend you to marry the young lady and have done with it. If you wait, it will be at your own risk. I assure you I think she is charming, and if I am not mistaken, this is only a hint of future possibilities. Don't sow for others to reap. If you think the harvest is not ripe, let it ripen in milder sunbeams than these vigorous hand-kisses. Lodge her with some proper person and go to Europe; come home from Paris a year hence with her trousseau in your trunks, and I will perform the ceremony without another fee than the prospect of having an adorable cousin." With these words Hubert left his companion pensive.
His words reverberated in Roger's mind; I may almost say that they rankled. A couple of days later, in the hope of tenderer counsel, he called upon our friend Mrs. Keith. This lady had completely rounded the cape of matrimony, and was now buoyantly at anchor in the placid cove of well-dowered widowhood. You have heard many a young unmarried lady exclaim with a bold sweep of conception, "Ah me! I wish I were a widow!" Mrs. Keith was precisely the widow that young unmarried ladies wish to be. With her diamonds in her dressing-case and her carriage in her stable, and without a feather's weight of encumbrance, she offered a finished example of satisfied ambition. Her wants had been definite; these once gratified, she had not presumed further. She was a very much worthier woman than in those hungry virginal days when Roger had wooed her. Prosperity had agreed equally well with her beauty and her temper. The ​wrinkles on her brow had stood still, like Joshua's sun, and a host of good intentions and fair promises seemed to illuminate her person. Roger, as he stood before her, not only felt that his passion was incurably defunct, but allowed himself to doubt that this veuve consolée would have made an ideal wife. The lady, mistaking his embarrassment for the fumes of smouldering ardor, determined to transmute his devotion by the subtle chemistry of friendship. This she found easy work; in ten minutes the echoes of the past were hushed in the small-talk of the present. Mrs. Keith was on the point of sailing for Europe, and had much to say of her plans and arrangements,—of the miserable rent she was to get for her house. "Why should n't one turn an honest penny?' she asked. "And now," she went on, when the field had been cleared, "tell me about the young lady." This was precisely what Roger wished; but just as he was about to begin his story there came an irruption of visitors, fatal to the confidential. Mrs. Keith found means to take him aside. "Seeing is better than hearing," she said, "and I am dying to see her. Bring her this evening to dinner, and we shall have her to ourselves."
Mrs. Keith had long been for Nora an object of mystical veneration. Roger had been in the habit of alluding to her, not freely nor frequently, but with a certain implicit consideration which more than once had set Nora wondering. She entered the lady's drawing-room that evening with an oppressive desire to please. The interest manifested by Roger in the question of what she should wear assured her that he had staked a nameless something on the impression she might make. She was ​not only reassured, however, but altogether captivated, by the lavish cordiality of her hostess. Mrs. Keith kissed her on both cheeks, held her at her two arms' length, gave a twist to the fall of her sash, and made her feel very plainly that she was being inspected and appraised. All this was done, however, with a certain flattering light in the eye and a tender matronly smile which rather increased than diminished the young girl's composure. Mrs. Keith was herself so elegant, so finished, so fragrant of taste and sense, that before an hour was over Nora felt that she had borrowed the hint of a dozen indispensable graces. After dinner her hostess bade her sit down to the piano. Here, feeling sure of her ground, Nora surpassed herself. Mrs. Keith beckoned to Roger to come and sit beside her on the sofa, where, as she nodded time to the music with her head, she softly conversed. Prosperity, as I have intimated, had acted on her moral nature very much as a medicinal tonic—quinine or iron—acts upon the physical. She was in a comfortable glow of charity. She itched gently, she hardly knew where,—was it in heart or brain?—to render some one a service. She had on hand a small capital of sentimental patronage for which she desired a secure investment. Here was her chance. The project which Roger had imparted to her three years before seemed to her, now she had taken Nora's measure, to contain such pretty elements of success that she deemed it a sovereign pity it should not be rounded into symmetry. She determined to lend an artistic hand. "Does she know it, that matter?" she asked in a whisper.
"I have never told her."
​"That 's right. I approve your delicacy. Of course you are sure of your case. She is altogether lovely,—she is one in a thousand. I really envy you; upon my word, Mr. Lawrence, I am jealous. She has a style of her own. It is not quite beauty; it is not quite cleverness. It belongs neither altogether to her person, nor yet to her mind. It 's a kind of way she has. It 's a way that may lead her far. She has pretty things, too; one of these days she may take it into her head to be a beauty of beauties. Nature never meant her to hold up her head so well for nothing. Ah, how wrinkled and faded it makes one feel! To be sixteen years old, with that head of hair, with health and good connections, with that amount of good-will at the piano, it 's the very best thing in the world, if they but knew it! But no! they must leave it all behind them; they must pull their hair to pieces; they must get rid of their complexions; they must be twenty; they must have lovers, and go their own gait. Well, since it must come, we must attend to the profits: they will take care of the pleasures. Give Nora to me for a year. She needs a woman, a wise woman, a woman like me. Men, when they undertake to meddle with a young girl's education, are veriest old grandmothers. Let me take her to Europe and bring her out in Rome. Don't be afraid; I will guard your interests. I will bring you back the most charming girl in America. I see her from here!" And describing a great curve in the air with her fan, Mrs. Keith inclined her head to one side in a manner suggestive of a milliner who descries in the bosom of futurity the ideal bonnet. Looking at Roger, she saw that her point was gained; ​and Nora, having just finished her piece, was accordingly summoned to the sofa and made to sit down at Mrs. Keith's feet. Roger went and stood before the fire. "My dear Nora," said Mrs. Keith, as if she had known her from childhood, "how should you like to go with me to Rome?"
Nora started to her feet, and stood looking open-eyed from one to the other. "Really?" she said. "Does Roger—"
"Roger," said Mrs. Keith, "finds you so hard to manage that he has made you over to me. I forewarn you, I am a terrible woman. But if you are not afraid, I shall scold you and pinch you no harder than I would a daughter of my own."
"I give you up for a year," said Roger. "It is hard, troublesome as you are."
Nora stood wavering for a moment, hesitating where to deposit her excess of joy. Then graciously dropping on her knees before Mrs. Keith, she bent her young head and got rid of it in an ample kiss. "I am not afraid of you," she said simply. Roger turned round and began to poke the fire.
The next day Nora went forth to buy certain articles necessary in travelling. It was raining so heavily that, at Roger's direction, she took a carriage. Coming out of a shop, in the course of her expedition, she encountered Hubert Lawrence tramping along in the wet. He helped her back to her carriage, and stood for a moment talking to her through the window. As they were going in the same direction, she invited him to get in; and on his hesitating, she added that she hoped their interview ​was not to end there, as she was going to Europe with Mrs. Keith. At this news Hubert jumped in and placed himself on the front seat. The knowledge that she was drifting away gave a sudden value to the present occasion. Add to this that in the light of Roger's revelation after the concert, this passive, predestined figure of hers had acquired for the young man a certain picturesque interest. Nora found herself strangely at ease with her companion. From time to time she strove to check her happy freedom: but Hubert evidently, with his superior urbanity, was not the person to note a little more or less in a school-girl's primness. Her enjoyment of his presence, her elation in the prospect of departure, made her gayety reckless. They went together to half a dozen shops and talked and laughed so distractedly over her purchases, that she made them sadly at haphazard. At last their progress was arrested by a dead-lock of vehicles in front of them, caused by the breaking down of a streetcar. The carriage drew up near the sidewalk in front of a confectioner's. On Nora's regretting the delay, and saying she was ravenous for lunch, Hubert went into the shop, and returned with a bundle of tarts. The rain came down in sheeted torrents, so that they had to close both the windows. Circled about with this watery screen, they feasted on their tarts with peculiar relish. In a short time Hubert made another excursion, and returned with a second course. His diving to and fro in the rain excited them to extravagant mirth. Nora had bought some pocket-handkerchiefs, which were in that cohesive state common to these articles in the shop. It seemed a very pretty joke to spread the piece across their knees as a table-cloth.
​"To think of picnicking in the midst of Washington Street!" cried Nora, with her lips besprinkled with flakes of pastry.
"For a young lady about to leave her native land, her home, and friends, and all that is dear to her," said Hubert, "you seem to me in very good spirits."
"Don't speak of it," said Nora. "I shall cry tonight; it is feverish gayety."
"You will not be able to do this kind of thing abroad," said Hubert. "Do you know we are monstrously improper? For a young girl it 's by no means pure gain, going to Europe. She comes into a very pretty heritage of prohibitions. You have no idea of the number of improper things a young girl can do. You are walking on the edge of a precipice. Don't look over or you will lose your head and never walk straight again. Here, you are all blindfold. Promise me not to lose this blessed bandage of American innocence. Promise me that, when you come back, we shall spend another morning together as free and delightful as this one!"
"I promise you!" said Nora; but Hubert's words had potently foreshadowed the forfeiture of sweet possibilities. For the rest of the drive she was in a graver mood. They found Roger beneath the portico of the hotel, watch in hand, staring up and down the street. Preceding events having been explained to him, he offered to drive his cousin home.
"I suppose Nora has told you," he began, as they proceeded.
"Yes! Well, I am sorry. She is a charming girl."
"Ah!" Roger cried; "I knew you thought so!"
​"You are as knowing as ever! She sails, she tells me, on Wednesday next. And you, when do you sail?"
"I don't sail at all. I am going home."
"Are you sure of that?"
Roger gazed for a moment out of the window. "I mean for a year," he said, "to allow her perfect liberty."
"And to accept the consequences?"
"Absolutely." And Roger folded his arms.
This conversation took place on a Friday. Nora was to sail from New York on the succeeding Wednesday; for which purpose she was to leave Boston with Mrs. Keith on the Monday. The two ladies were of course to be attended to the ship by Roger. Early Sunday morning Nora received a visit from her friend. The reader will perhaps remember that Mrs. Keith was a recent convert to the Roman Catholic faith; as such, she performed her religious duties with peculiar assiduity. Her present errand was to propose that Nora should go with her to church and join in offering a mass for their safety at sea. "I don't want to bring you over, you know; but I think it would be so nice," said Mrs. Keith. Appealing to Roger, Nora received permission to do as she chose; she therefore lent herself with fervor to this pious enterprise. The two ladies spent an hour at the foot of the altar,—an hour of romantic delight to the younger one. On Sunday evening Roger, who, as the day of separation approached, became painfully anxious and reluctant, betook himself to Mrs. Keith, with the desire to enforce upon her mind a solemn sense of her responsibilities and of the value of the treasure he had confided to her. ​Nora, left alone, sat wondering whether Hubert might not come to bid her farewell. Wandering listlessly about the room, her eye fell on the Saturday-evening paper. She took it up and glanced down the columns. In one of them she perceived a list of the various church services of the morrow. Last in the line stood this announcement: "At the —— —— Church, the Rev. Hubert Lawrence, at eight o'clock." It gave her a gentle shock; it destroyed the vision of his coming in and their having, under the lamp, by the fire, the serious counterpart of their frolicsome tête-à-tête in the carriage. She longed to show him that she was not a giggling child, but a wise young lady. But no; in a dimly-crowded church, before a hundred eyes, he was speaking of divine things. How did he look in the pulpit? If she could only see him! And why not? She looked at her watch; it lacked ten minutes to eight. She made no pause to reflect; she only felt that she must hurry. She rang the bell and ordered a carriage, and then, hastening to her room, put on her shawl and bonnet,—the blue crape bonnet of the concert. In a few moments she was on her way to the church. When she reached it, her heart was beating fast; she was on the point of turning back. But the coachman opened the carriage door with such a flourish that she was ashamed not to get out. She was late; the church was full, the service had gone forward, the sermon was about to begin. The sexton with great solemnity conducted her up the aisle to a pew directly beneath the pulpit. She bent her eyes on the ground, but she knew that there was a deep expectant silence, and that Hubert was upright before the desk looking at ​her. She sat down beside a very grim-visaged old lady with bushy eyebrows, who stared at her so hard, that to hide her confusion she buried her head and prolonged her prayer; upon which the old lady seemed to stare more intently, as if she thought her very pretentious. When she raised her head, Hubert had begun to speak; he was looking above her and beyond her, and during the sermon his level glance never met her own. Of what did he speak and what was the moral of his discourse? Nora could not have told you; yet not a soul in the audience, not all those listening souls together, were more devoutly attentive than she. But it was not on what he said, but on what he was, or seemed to be, that her perception was centred. Hubert Lawrence had an excellent gift of oratory. His voice was full of penetrating sweetness, and, modulated with infinite art, it sank with a silvery cadence. His speech was silver, though I doubt whether his silence was ever golden. His utterance seemed to Nora the perfection of eloquence. She thought of her uplifted feeling in the morning, in the incense-thickened air of the Catholic church; but what a straighter flight to heaven was this! Hubert's week-day face was a summer cloud, with a lining of celestial brightness. Now, how the divine truth overlapped its relenting edges and seemed to transform it into a dazzling focus of light! He spoke for half an hour, but Nora took no note of time. As the service drew to a close, he gave her from the pulpit a rapid glance, which she interpreted as a request to remain. When the congregation began to disperse, a number of persons, chiefly ladies, waited for him near the pulpit, and, as he came down, met him with ​greetings and compliments. Nora watched him from her place, listening, smiling, and passing his handkerchief over his forehead. At last they released him, and he came up to her. She remembered for years afterward the strange half-smile on his face. There was something in it like a pair of eyes peeping over a wall. It seemed to express so fine an acquiescence in what she had done, that, for the moment, she had a startled sense of having committed herself to something. He gave her his hand, without manifesting any surprise. "How did you get here?"
"In a carriage. I saw it in the paper at the last moment."
"Does Roger know you came?"
"No; he had gone to Mrs. Keith's."
"So you started off alone, at a moment's notice?"
She nodded, blushing. He was still holding her hand; he pressed it and dropped it. "O Hubert," cried Nora, suddenly, "now I know you!"
Two ladies were lingering near, apparently mother and daughter. "I must be civil to them," he said; "they have come from New York to hear me." He quickly rejoined them and conducted them toward their carriage. The younger one was extremely pretty, and looked a little like a Jewess. Nora observed that she wore a great diamond in each ear; she eyed our heroine rather severely as they passed. In a few minutes Hubert came back, and, before she knew it, she had taken his arm and he was beside her in her own carriage. They drove to the hotel in silence; he went up stairs with her. Roger had not returned. "Mrs. Keith is very agreeable," said ​Hubert. "But Roger knew that long ago. I suppose you have heard," he added; "but perhaps you have not heard."
"I have not heard," said Nora, "but I have suspected—"
"What?"
"No; it is for you to say."
"Why, that Mrs. Keith might have been Mrs. Lawrence."
"Ah, I was right,—I was right," murmured Nora, with a little air of triumph. "She may be still. I wish she would!" Nora was removing her bonnet before the mirror over the chimney-piece; as she spoke, she caught Hubert's eye in the glass. He dropped it and took up his hat. "Won't you wait?" she asked.
He said he thought he had better go, but he lingered without sitting down. Nora walked about the room, she hardly knew why, smoothing the table-covers and rearranging the chairs.
"Did you cry about your departure, the other night, as you promised?" Hubert asked.
"I confess that I was so tired with our adventures that I went straight to sleep."
"Keep your tears for a better cause. One of the greatest pleasures in life is in store for you. There are a hundred things I should like to say to you about Rome. How I only wish I were going to show it you! Let me beg you to go some day to a little place in the Via Felice, on the Pincian,—a house with a terrace adjoining the fourth floor. There is a plasterer's shop in the basement. You can reach the terrace by the common staircase. I ​occupied the rooms adjoining it, and it was my peculiar property. I remember I used often to share it with a poor little American sculptress who lived below. She made my bust; the Apollo Belvedere was nothing to it. I wonder what has become of her! Take a look at the view,—the view I woke up to every morning, read by, studied by, lived by. I used to alternate my periods of sight-seeing with fits of passionate study. In another winter I think I might have learned something. Your real lover of Rome oscillates with a kind of delicious pain between the city in itself and the city in literature. They keep forever referring you to each other and bandying you to and fro. If we had eyes for metaphysical things, Nora, you might see a hundred odd bits of old ambitions and day-dreams strewing that little terrace. Ah, as I sat there, how the Campagna used to take up the tale and respond to my printed page! If I know anything of the lesson of history (a man of my profession is supposed to), I learned it in that enchanted air! I should like to know who is sitting in the same school now. Perhaps you will write me a word."
"I will piously gather up the crumbs of your feasts and make a meal of them," said Nora. "I will let you know how they taste."
"Pray do. And one more request. Don't let Mrs. Keith make a Catholic of you." And he put out his hand.
She shook her head slowly, as she took it. "I will have no Pope but you," she said.
And after that he went.