Henry James - Henry James - The Complete Novels (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 10)

"Tell me at least what has happened!" he cried.

She hesitated a moment. "Roger has asked me to be his wife." Hubert's head swam with the vision of all that this simple statement embodied and implied. "I refused," Nora added, "and, having refused, I was unwilling to live any longer on his—on his—" Her speech at the last word melted into silence, and she seemed to fall a-musing. But in an instant she recovered herself. "I remember your once saying that you would have liked to see me poor and homeless. Here I am! You ought at least," she added with a laugh, "to pay for the exhibition!"

Hubert abruptly drew out his watch. "I expect here at any moment," he said, "a young lady of whom you may have heard. She is to come and see my portrait. I am engaged to marry her. I was engaged to marry her five months ago. She is rich, pretty, charming. Say but a single word, that you don't despise me, that you forgive me, and I will give her up, now, here, forever, and be anything you will take me for,—your husband, your friend, your slave!" To have been able to make this speech gave Hubert immense relief. He felt almost himself again.

Nora fixed her eyes on him, with a kind of unfathomable gentleness. "You are engaged, you were engaged? How strangely you talk about giving her up! Give her my compliments!" It seemed, however, that Nora was to have the chance of offering her compliments personally. The door was thrown open and admitted two ladies whom Nora vaguely remembered to have seen. In a moment she recognized them as the persons whom, on the evening she had gone to hear Hubert preach, he had left her, after the sermon, to conduct to their carriage. The younger one was decidedly pretty, in spite of a nose a trifle too aquiline. A pair of imperious dark eyes, as bright as the diamond which glittered in each of her ears, and a nervous, capricious rapidity of motion and gesture, gave her an air of girlish brusquerie , which was by no means without charm. Her mother's aspect, however, testified to its being as well to enjoy this charm at a distance. She was a stout, coarse-featured, good-natured woman, with a jaded, submissive expression, and seemed to proclaim by a certain ponderous docility, as she followed in her daughter's wake, the subserviency of matter to mind. Both ladies were dressed to the uttermost limit of opportunity. They came into the room staring frankly at Nora, and overlooking Hubert, with a gracious implication of his being already one of the family. The situation was a trying one, but he faced it as he might.

"This is Miss Lambert," he said gravely; and then with an effort to dissipate embarrassment by a jest, waving his hand toward his portrait, "This is the Reverend Hubert Lawrence!"

The elder lady moved toward the picture, but the other came straight to Nora. "I have seen you before!" she cried defiantly, and with defiance in her pretty eyes. "And I have heard of you too! Yes, you are certainly very handsome. But pray, what are you doing here?"

"My dear child!" said Hubert, imploringly, and with a burning side-glance at Nora. The world seemed to him certainly very cruel.

"My dear Hubert," said the young lady, "what is she doing here? I have a right to know. Have you come running after him even here? You are a wicked girl. You have done me a wrong. You have tried to turn him away from me. You kept him in Boston for weeks, when he ought to have been here; when I was writing to him day after day to come. I heard all about it! I don't know what is the matter with you. I thought you were so very well off! You look very poor and unhappy, but I must say what I think!"

"My own darling, be reasonable!" murmured her mother. "Come and look at this beautiful picture. There 's no deceit in that noble face!"

Nora smiled charitably. "Don't attack me," she said. "If I ever wronged you, I was quite unconscious of it, and I beg your pardon now."

"Nora," murmured Hubert, piteously, "spare me!"

"Ah, does he call you Nora?" cried the young lady. The harm 's done, madam! He will never be what he was. You have changed, Hubert!" And she turned passionately upon her intended. "You know you have! You talk to me, but you think of her. And what is the meaning of this visit? You are both strangely excited; what have you been talking about?"

"Mr. Lawrence has been telling me about you," said Nora; "how pretty, how charming, how gentle you are!"

"I am not gentle!" cried the other. "You are laughing at me! Was it to talk about my prettiness you came here? Do you go about alone, this way? I never heard of such a thing. You are shameless! do you know that? But I am very glad of it; because once you have done this for him, he will not care for you. That 's the way with men. And I am not pretty either, not as you are! You are pale and tired; you have got a horrid dress and shawl, and yet you are beautiful! Is that the way I must look to please you?" she demanded, turning back to Hubert.

Hubert, during this rancorous tirade , had stood looking as dark as thunder, and at this point he broke out fiercely, "Good God, Amy! hold your tongue,—I command you."

Nora, gathering her shawl together, gave Hubert a glance. "She loves you," she said, softly.

Amy stared a moment at this vehement adjuration; they she melted into a smile and turned in ecstasy to her mother. "O, did you hear that?" she cried. "That 's how I like him. Please say it again!"

Nora left the room; and, in spite of her gesture of earnest deprecation, Hubert followed her down stairs to the street. "Where are you going?" he asked in a whisper. "With whom are you staying?"

"I am alone," said Nora.

"Alone in this great city? Nora, I will do something for you."

"Hubert," she said, "I never in my life needed help less than at this moment. Farewell." He fancied for an instant that she was going to offer him her hand, but she only motioned him to open the door. He did so, and she passed out.

She stood there on the pavement, strangely, almost absurdly, free and light of spirit. She knew neither whither she should turn nor what she should do, yet the fears which had haunted her for a whole day and night had vanished. The sky was blazing blue overhead; the opposite side of the street was all in sun; she hailed the joyous brightness of the day with a kind of answering joy. She seemed to be in the secret of the universe. A nursery-maid came along, pushing a baby in a perambulator. She stooped and greeted the child, and talked pretty nonsense to it with a fervor which left the young woman staring. Nurse and child went their way, and Nora lingered, looking up and down the empty street. Suddenly a gentleman turned into it from the cross-street above. He was walking fast; he had his hat in his hand, and with his other hand he was passing his handkerchief over his forehead. As she stood and watched him draw near, down the bright vista of the street, there came upon her a singular and altogether nameless sensation, strangely similar to the one she had felt a couple of years before, when a physician had given her a dose of ether. The gentleman, she perceived, was Roger; but the short interval of space and time which separated them seemed to expand into a throbbing immensity and eternity. She seemed to be watching him for an age, and, as she did so, to be floating through the whole circle of emotion and the full realization of being. Yes, she was in the secret of the universe, and the secret of the universe was, that Roger was the only man in it who had a heart. Suddenly she felt a palpable grasp. Roger stood before her, and had taken her hand. For a moment he said nothing; but the touch of his hand spoke loud. They stood for an instant scanning the change in each other's faces. "Where are you going?" said Roger, at last, imploringly.

Nora read silently in his haggard eyes the whole record of his suffering. It is a strange truth that this seemed the most beautiful thing she had ever looked upon; the sight of it was delicious. It seemed to whisper louder and louder that secret about Roger's heart.