Norine's Revenge, and, Sir Noel's Heir

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!"

CHAPTER III.

MR. LAURENCE THORNDYKE

The little dog Frollo, curled up beside his mistress, was the first to see and greet the newcomer. He rushed forward, barking a friendly greeting, and the young lady looked up from the book she was reading, the young gentleman from the face he was reading at the same moment, and beheld the dark figure in the doorway.

Norine Bourdon sprang to her feet, blushing violently, and came forward with outstretched hand. It was the first time he had ever seen her blush – like that – the first time her eyes had fallen, the first time her voice had faltered. She might be glad to see him, as she said, but all the old, frank, childish gladness was gone.

"I have taken you by surprise," he said, gazing into her flushed face and shrinking eyes, "as I did once before. I get tired of New York and business very suddenly sometimes, and you know I have a standing invitation here."

"We are very glad —I am very glad to see you, Mr. Gilbert," Norine answered, but with an embarrassment, a restraint altogether new in his experience of her. "We missed you very much after you went away."

The young man on the sofa, who all this time had been calmly looking and listening, now took an easier position, and spoke:

"Six-and-twenty-years experience of this wicked world has taught me the folly of being surprised at anything under the sun. But if I had not outlived the power of wondering, centuries ago, I should wonder at seeing Mr. Richard Gilbert out of the classic precincts of Wall street the first week of December. I suppose now you wouldn't have looked to see me here?"

He held out a shapely, languid hand, with a diamond ablaze on it. The lawyer touched it about as cordially as though it had been an extended toad.

"I certainly would not, Mr. Thorndyke. I imagined, and so did Mr. Darcy, when I saw him last, that you were in Boston, practicing your profession."

"Ah! no doubt! So I was until a month ago. I suppose it never entered your – I mean his venerable noddle, to conceive the possibility of my growing tired practicing my profession. Such is the fact, however. Even the hub of the universe may pall on the frivolous mind of youth, and I've 'thrown physic to the dogs, I'll none of it,' for the present at least. My patients – few and far between, I'm happy to say, will get on much more comfortably, and stand a much better chance of recovery without me."

"Indeed! I don't doubt it at all. But your uncle?"

"My uncle can't hope to escape the crosses of life any more than poorer and better men. All work and no play makes, what's his name, a dull boy. There will be a row very likely, the sooner my venerated relative is convinced that my talents don't lie in the bleeding and blistering, the senna and salts line, the better. They don't."

"Don't they? It would be difficult to say, from what I know of Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, in what line they do lie. May I ask what you mean to do?"

"I shall go in for sculpture," responded Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, with the calm consciousness of superior genius. "Other men have made fame and fortune by art, and why not I? If my hypocondriacal adopted uncle would only shell out, send me to Rome, and enable me to study the old masters, I have the strongest internal conviction that – "

"That you would set the world on fire with your genius. That you would eclipse the Greek Slave. No doubt – I have known others to think so before, and I know the sort of 'fame and fortune' they made. How do you come to be here?" Very curtly and abruptly, this.

"Ah! – thereby hangs a tale," with a long tender glance at Norine. "I am the debtor of a most happy accident. My horse threw me, and Miss Bourdon, happening along at the moment, turned Good Samaritan and took me in."

"I don't mean that," Mr. Gilbert said, stiffly; "how do you come to be in Maine at all?"

"I beg your pardon. Tom Lydyard – the Portland Lydyards, you know – no I suppose you don't know, by the by. Tom Lydyard was to be married, and invited me over on the auspicious occasion. Tom's a Harvard man like myself, sworn chums, brothers-in-arms, Damon and Pythias, and all that bosh; and when he asked me down to his wedding, could I – I put it to yourself, now, Gilbert, could I refuse? I cut the shop. I turned my back on blue pills and chloral, I came I saw, I – mademoiselle, may I trouble you for a glass of lemonade? You have no idea, Mr. Gilbert, what a nuisance I am, not being able to do anything for myself yet."

"Perhaps I have" was Mr. Gilbert's frigid response. The sight of Norine bending over that recumbent figure gave him a sensation of actual physical pain. He knew what this languid, graceful, slow speaking young Sybarite's life had been, if she did not.

Just at that moment – and it was a relief, Aunt Hester entered, followed by Uncles Reuben and Joe. No restraint here, no doubt about his welcome from them, no change in the place he held in their esteem and affection. Tea was ready, would everybody please to come.

Mr. Thorndyke's fractured limb was by no means equal to locomotion, so Uncle Reuben wheeled him, sofa and all, into the next room, and Aunt Hester and Norine vied with each other in waiting on him. It comes natural to all women to pet sick men – if the man be young and handsome, why it comes all the more naturally.

Mr. Thorndyke wasn't sick by any means – that was all over and done with. He took his tea from Aunt Hester's hand and drank it, his toast and chicken from Norine and ate them. He talked to them both in that lazy, pleasant voice of his, or lay silent and stroked his mustache with his diamond-ringed hand, and looked handsome, and whether the talk or the silence were most dangerous, it would have puzzled a cleverer man than Richard Gilbert to tell. To sit there listening to Aunt Hester chirping and Uncle Reuben prosing, and see the blue eyes making love, in eloquent silence, to the black ones, was almost too much for human nature to endure. She sat there silent, shy, all unlike the bright, chattering Norine of the summer gone, but with, oh! such an infinitely happy face! She sat beside Laurence Thorndyke – she ministered to that convalescent appetite of his, and that was enough. What need of speech when silence is so sweet?

Supper ended, Mr. Thorndyke was wheeled back to his post in the front room beside the fire. Norine never came near him all the rest of the evening, she sat at the little piano, and poured out her whole heart in song. Richard Gilbert, full of miserable, knawing jealousy, understood those songs; perhaps Laurence Thorndyke, lying with half-closed eyes, half-smiling lips, did too. They were old-fashioned songs that the lawyer had sent her, favorites of his own: "Twere vain to tell thee all I feel," and "Drink to me only with thine eyes." Yes, the meaning of those tender old ballads was not for him. It was maddening to see Laurence Thorndyke lying there, with that conscious smile on his lips; he could endure no more – he arose with the last note, abruptly enough, and bade them good-night.

"What! so early, Gilbert?" Thorndyke said, looking at his watch. "What a dickens of a hurry you're in. You've got no clients in Portland, have you? and Miss Bourdon, is going to sing us half-a-dozen more songs yet."

Mr. Gilbert paid no attention whatever to this flippant young man. He turned his back upon him indeed, and explained elaborately to Uncle Reuben that it was impossible for him to remain longer to-night, but that he would call early on the morrow.

"He is very much changed," remarked Aunt Hester, thoughtfully; "don't you think so, Norry? He's nothing like so pleasant and free, as he used to be."

"Particularly grumpy, I should say," interposed Mr. Thorndyke. "'Pleasant and free' are the last terms I should think of applying to Richard Gilbert. Not half a bad fellow either, old Gilbert, but an awful prig – don't you think so, Miss Bourdon?"

"I like Mr. Gilbert very much," Miss Bourdon answered, strumming idly on the keys; "and I think him pleasant. He seemed out of spirits to-night, though, I fancy."

It was bright, frosty starlight as the lawyer walked back to town. He walked rapidly, his head well up, a dark frown clouding his face.

"Any one but Thorndyke – any one but Thorndyke!" he was thinking bitterly. Alas! Mr. Gilbert, would you not have been jealous of the Archbishop of Canterbury had that dignitary been "keeping company" with Miss Bourdon? "And she loves him already – already. A very old story to Laurence Thorndyke. Six-and-twenty years, a well-shaped nose, two blue eyes, a mustache, and the easy insolence of the 'golden youth' of New York. What else has he but that? What else is needed to win any woman's heart? And hers is his, for good or for evil, for ever and ever. He is the Prince Charming of her fairy tale, and she has caught his wandering, artist fancy, as scores have caught it before. And when I tell her the truth, that his plighted wife awaits him, what then? Little Norine! to think that you should fall into the power of Laurence Thorndyke."

Yes, she was in his power – for she loved him. Had it all not been so delightfully romantic, so like a chapter out of one of her pet novels, that first meeting, when Fate itself had flung him wounded and bleeding at her feet? Was it not all photographed forever on her mind, a picture whose vividness time never could dim! It had befallen in this way:

On the afternoon of the third of November Miss Bourdon had driven over in the light wagon from the farm to the city, to receive her usual, eagerly-looked-for package from Mr. Gilbert. It had been dark and windy from early morning. As the afternoon wore on, the sky grew darker, the wind higher. She got her bundle of books, visited one or two stores, one or two friends, and night had fallen before she turned old Kitty's head towards Kent Farm. A faint and watery moon made its way up through the drifts of jagged cloud, and the gale howled through the street as though it had gone mad. It was a lonely and unpleasant ride; but old Kitty could have made her way asleep, and Norine sang to herself as she drove slowly along. They were within a quarter of a mile of the house, when Kitty pricked up her red ears, gave a neigh of alarm, and shied from some long, dark object lying motionless across her path. Norine bent over and looked down. There, she saw, lying on his face, the prostrate form of a man.

Was he drunk, or was he dead? She was out in a twinkling, and bending above him. There was blood on his clothes, and on the dusty road. She turned his face over until the pallid moon shone upon it. Dead, to all seeming, the eyes closed, life and consciousness gone.

Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Laurence Thorndyke was lying in the best bedroom of Kent Farm, with Aunt Hester and Norine bending over him, and Uncle Joe scudding along on horseback for a doctor. All their efforts to bring him out of that fainting fit were vain. White and cold he lay; and so Norine Bourdon, with a great pity in her heart, looked first upon the face of Laurence Thorndyke.

CHAPTER IV.