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

Norine lifted her face – such a sad, pathetic, patient little face.

"Don't, Miss Waddle," she said, "you mean well, I am sure, but I can't bear it. He does not intend to forget or neglect me. He is ill – I know that. He is ill, and I don't know where he is, or how to go to him. No, I don't wish any tea, a mouthful of food would choke me, I think. I will go down to the beach instead. I – I would rather be alone."

The gentle lips quivered, the gentle voice trembled over the loyal, wifely words. Not neglectful, not faithless, only ill, and unable to write – she crushed every other thought out of her heart but that. She rose, took her hat, and quitted the room. Miss Waddle looked after her, and shook her head dismally.

"Poor dear!" she thought, "only ill, indeed! Mr. Laurence, if that be his name, is a very good-looking young man, and there, it's my opinion, the young man's goodness begins and ends. He may not have deserted her, but it looks uncommonly like it. Why, he was tired of her before they were here a week."

Then Miss Waddle, the elder, went and took "tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy" – tea, and Mrs. Laurence, with all hope and life crushed out of her fair young face, went down along the sands, where so often in the first happy days they had wandered together. Only seven weeks ago since she had left all for him – friends, home, lover, truth and honor – why, it seemed years to look back upon. She felt old and worn and tired – a horrible creeping fear clutched her heart. Why did he not write – why did he not come?

She reached the little grassy hillock and sat down, too weak and spiritless, even to walk on. Cold and gray, the twilight was falling, cold and gray spread the low lying twilight sky, cold and gray the dim sea melted into it in the distance, cold and gray like her life. It was very lonely, no human being besides herself was to be seen, not even a sea bird skimmed the sullen waters. With her hands folded in her lap, her sad, yearning eyes fixed on the dreary sea, she sat still, thinking, thinking. Why did he not write – why did he not come?

Suddenly, coming as if from the cottage, a figure appeared in view, the solitary figure of a man, moving rapidly toward her over the sands. She looked up quickly, uttered a faint cry of recognition and hope. As he had come abruptly upon them once before, Mr. Liston came abruptly upon her again. Then it had been to bear her darling away from her – now it was to bring her news of him, she knew.

She did not rise to meet him. Her heart beat so fast with alternate hope and fear that for an instant she turned faint. In that instant he was beside her. He lifted his hat.

"Mrs. Laurence?" he said, interrogatively, "they told me at the house I should find you here. They wished to call you in, but this is a better place for our meeting, so I sought you out."

She made a breathless, impatient gesture.

"You have a letter for me?" she said, hurriedly; "he sent you – he is well?"

"He sent me – yes. And he is well – oh, yes. I have a note for you, too, from him, but I will not show it to you just yet, if you will allow me. My dear young lady, I have come – he has sent me on a very hard and embarrassing errand, indeed."

Something in the man's face, in the man's tone, even more than his words, made her look quickly up. To his dying day, James Liston never forgot the haunted, terrified look in those dilating, dark eyes. She laid her hand over her fast beating heart, and spoke with an effort.

"He is well, you say?" she panted.

"He is well, Mrs. Laurence. It were better for you he were dead."

"Sir!" she cried, the light leaping to her eyes, the flush to her face; "how dare you! He is my husband – how dare you say such a thing to me!"

"He is not your husband."

The low, level, monotonous voice spoke the dreadful words, the small, light, glimmering eyes were fixed immovably upon her with a look, half-contemptuous, half-compassionate, in their depths.

She rose slowly to her feet, and stood blankly staring at him. Was the man mad?

"Not my – " she paused irresolute. Should she run away from this madman or stand her ground. "Give me my letter!" she said, angrily; "I have nothing more to say to you!"

"Because I tell you Laurence Thorndyke is not your husband? My child, it is true."

His tone was solemn – his face full of compassion. What a child she was, he was thinking; how she loved him. What was there about this young fellow that women should give up all that made their lives most dear, for his sake?

"I told you, Mrs. Laurence, I have been sent here on a hard and painful errand. He sent me. 'Conscience makes cowards of us all.' He is a coward as well as a villain, and he had not the courage to face you himself. You have been watching and waiting for his return, I know. Watch and wait no longer; you will never see Laurence Thorndyke again."

A cry broke from her lips – a cry that rang in his ears his life long – a cry not loud, but exceedingly bitter.

"In Heaven's name, speak and tell me what is it you mean?"

"This: You are not a wife – Laurence Thorndyke never married you. He deceived and betrayed you from the first; he has deserted you forever at the last. That is the task he has set me. I am but a poor diplomat to break bad news, as they call it, to any one, so I blurt out the truth at once. After all, it is the same in the end. He never meant to marry you – he never cared for you enough. He hated Richard Gilbert – that was the beginning and end of it. He hated Gilbert, Gilbert loved you, and was about to make you his wife; to revenge himself on Gilbert, he went back to Kent Hill and carried you off. He knew you loved him, and it would not be a difficult task. It seems easy enough for all women to love Laurence Thorndyke."

The last words, spoken more to himself than to her, were full of bitterness. A great stillness had fallen upon her – her eyes were fixed on his face, her own strained and fixed.

"Go on," she said, her teeth set hard.

"He took you away – how, you know best, and in Boston that mockery of marriage was gone through. Miss Bourdon the man Maggs was an actor, not a clergyman, a besotted drunkard, whom fifty dollars at any time would buy, rotten body and a filthy soul. 'She is as green as the fields she came from'; that is what Thorndyke said to Maggs, 'as innocent as her native daisies. She'll never know the difference, but she's one of the sort that will love a fellow to desperation, and all that sort of thing, and cry like a water-spout at parting, but who won't listen to a word without her wedding ring. Let her have her wedding ring – always take a short cut on a journey if you can.' So you got your wedding ring, and without license or witnesses, and by a half-drunken actor a sham ceremony was gone through. You were married to the scoundrel, for the sake of whose handsome face you gave up home and friends, and the love and honor of such a man as Richard Gilbert – one of the best and noblest men America holds to-day!"

The hand, pressed over her heart, clutched it tighter, as if in a spasm of uncontrollable pain.

"Go on," she said again.

"There's not much to tell. He brought you here, and in a week was bored to death and sick of it all. He was only too glad of the chance to go, and – he will never come back. Here is his note – read it – here is the money he gave me, to pay your board and take you back to your home in Maine. He thinks it is the best thing you can do."

With all the color stricken out of her face – dumb, still, white, tearless, and rigid, she had been standing in her awful despair. But at these last words she came back suddenly as it were from the dead.

"He said that?" she asked hoarsely. "He told you to take me back there – like this?"

"He did."

"My curse upon him – my curse follow him through life!"

The man before her actually recoiled. She had uplifted one arm, and in the gathering darkness of the night, she stood before him white and terrible. So, for a second – then she came back to herself, and tore open the note. Only half a dozen brief lines – the tragedies of life are ever quickly written.

"Believe all that Liston tells you. I have been the greatest scoundrel on earth to you, my poor Norine. I don't ask you to forgive me – that would not be human, I only ask you to go and – if you can – forget."

"L. T."

No more. She looked up – out over the creeping night, on the sea, over the lonely, white sands, and stood fixed and mute. The letter she had looked for, longed for, prayed for, she had got at last!

In the dead stillness that followed, Mr. Liston felt more uncomfortable, perhaps, then he had ever felt before in the whole course of his life. In sheer desperation he broke it.

"You are not angry with me, I hope, Mrs. Laurence; I am but his uncle's servant – when I am ordered I must obey. He was afraid to write all this; it would be a very damaging confession to put on paper, so he sent me. You are not angry with me?"

She put her hand to her head in a lost, dazed sort of way.

"Angry with you? Oh, no – why should I be? My head feels strange – dizzy, – I don't want to hear any more to-night. I think I will go home."

She turned slowly. He stood watching her with an anxious face. What he knew would come, came. She had walked some dozen yards, then suddenly – without warning, word or sound, she fell heavily, face downward, like a stone.

CHAPTER XIII.

MR. LISTON'S STORY

Another autumnal twilight, ghostly and gray is creeping over the Chelsea shore. In her pleasant chamber in the Chelsea cottage, Norine lies on her white bed and looks out upon it. Looks out, but sees nothing. The dark, burning, brilliant eyes might be stone blind for all they see of the windy, fast drifting sky, of the strip of wet and slippery sands, of the white-capped sea beyond. She might be stone deaf for all she hears of the wintry soughing of the wind, of the dull, ceaseless boom of the sea on the shore, or the light patter of the chill rain on the glass. She lies here as she has lain from the first – rigid – stricken soul and body.

Last evening, a little later than this, the Misses Waddle had sprung from their seats with two shrill little shrieks at the apparition of Mr. Liston entering hastily with Mrs. Laurence lying dead in his arms. Dead to all outward semblance, at first, but when they had placed her in bed, and applied the usual restoratives, the eyelids quivered, the dusk eyes opened, and with a strange, shuddering sob, she came back to life. For one instant she gazed up into the kindly, anxious faces of the spinster sisters; then memory came back with a rush. She was not Laurence's wife; he had betrayed and cast her off; she would never look upon his face again in this world. With a low moan of agony the sisters never forgot, she turned her face to the wall and lay still. So she had lain since.

A night and a day had passed. She had neither slept nor eaten – she had scarcely moved – she lay like a stone. All night long the light had burned, all night long the sisters stole softly in and out, always to find the small, rigid figure, as they had left it; the white face gleaming like marble in the dusk; the sleepless black eyes, wild and wide. They spoke to her in fear and trembling. She did not heed, it is doubtful if she heard. In a dull, dumb trance she lay, curiously conscious of the figures flitting to and fro; of whispered words and frightened faces; of the beat of the rain on the glass; of the black night lying on the black sea, her heart like a stone in her bosom. She was not Laurence's wife – Laurence had left her for ever. These two thoughts kept beating, beating, in heart, and brain, and soul, like the ceaseless torment of the lost.

The new day came and went. With it came Mr. Liston – pale, quiet, anxious. The Misses Waddle, angry and curious, at once plied him with questions. What was it all about? What had he said to Mrs. Laurence? Where was Mr. Laurence? Was it ill news of him? And little Mr. Liston, with a face of real pain and distress, had made answer "Yes, it was ill news of Mr. Laurence. Would they please not ask him questions? He couldn't really tell. For Heaven's sake let them try and bring that poor suffering child round. He would pay every cent due them, and take her away the moment she was able to travel."

He sits in the little parlor now, his head on his hand, gazing out at the gloomy evening prospect, with a very downcast and gloomy face. He is alone, a bit of fire flickers and falls in the grate. Miss Waddle the elder is not yet at home from her Chelsea school. Miss Waddle the younger, in a glow of inky inspiration, is skurrying through a thrilling chapter of "The Mystery of the Double Tooth," and within that inner room, at which he gazes with such troubled eyes, "one more unfortunate" lies battling with woman's utter despair.

"Poor soul," Mr. Liston says inwardly. "Will she perish as Lucy West perished, while he lives and marries, is rich, courted, and happy? No, I will tell her the truth sooner, that she is his wife, that the marriage was legal, though he does not suspect it, and when Helen Holmes is his wife she shall come forward and convict him of bigamy, and my lordly Mr. Laurence, how will it be with you then!"

"Mr. Liston."

He had literally leaped to his feet with a nervous cry. He had heard no sound, but the chamber door had opened and she had come forth. Her soft French accented voice spoke his name, in the shadowy gloaming she stood before him, her face white and still, and awfully death-like. As she came forward in her white dressing gown, her loose black hair falling, her great black eyes shining she was so unearthly, so like a spirit, that involuntarily he recoiled.

"I have startled you," she said. "I beg your pardon. I did not know you were here, but I am glad you are. To-morrow I will leave this house – to-night I should like to say a few words to you."

She was very quiet, ominously quiet. She sat down as she spoke, close to the fire; her hands folded in her lap, her weird looking eyes fixed on his face. Nervously Mr. Liston got up and looked around for a bell.

"Shall I ring, I mean call, for lights. I am very glad to see you up, Miss Bour – I mean Mrs. Laurence."

"Thank you" she answered gently "and no, please – don't ask for a lamp. Such a wretch as I am naturally prefers the dark. Mr. Liston," with strange, swift abruptness, "I have lain in there, and within the last few hours I have been able to think. I believe all that you have told me. I know what I am – as utterly lost and forlorn a sinner as the wide earth holds. I know what he is – a greater villain than if, on the night I saw him first, he had stabbed me to the heart. All this I know. Mr. Liston, will you tell me something more. Are you Laurence Thorndyke's friend or enemy?"

In the course of his forty years of life, Mr. Liston had come across a good many incomprehensible women, but perhaps, he had never been quite so completely taken aback before. She spoke the name of her betrayer, of the man she had loved so passionately, and in one moment had lost for ever, without one tremor or falter. The sombre eyes were looking at him full. He drew nearer to her – a great exultation in his soul. This girl was made of sterner stuff than Lucy West. Laurence Thorndyke's hour had come.

"Am I Laurence Thorndyke's friend or enemy? His enemy, Miss Bourdon – his bitterest enemy on earth for the last five years."

"I thought so. I don't know why, but I thought so. Mr. Liston, what has he done to you?"

"Blighted and darkened my life, as he has blighted and darkened yours. He was hardly one-and-twenty then, but the devil was uppermost in him from his cradle. Her name was Lucy West, I had known her from babyhood, was almost double her age, but when I asked her to marry me she consented. I loved her well, she knew that I could take her to the city to live, that was the desire of her heart. I know now she never cared for me, but they were poor and pinched at home, and she was vain of her rose-and-milk skin, of her bright eyes and sparkling teeth.

"I was old, and small, and plain, but I could give her silk dresses and a house in town, a servant to wait upon her, and she was ready to marry me. I was then what I am now, Mr. Darcy's land steward, agent, confidential valet, all in one. Young Mr. Laurence came home from Harvard for his vacation; and full of admiration for this bright young beauty, proud and fond beyond all telling of her, I took him down with me to show him the charming little wife I was going to marry. No thought of distrusting either ever entered my mind, in my way I loved and admired both, with my whole heart. Miss Bourdon, you know this story before I tell it, one of the oldest stories the world has to tell.

"We remained a fortnight. Then I had to go back to New York. It was August, and we were to be married in October. He returned with me, stayed a week with his adopted uncle, then returned to Boston, so he said. One week later, while I was busily furnishing the pretty house I had hired for my little Lucy, came a letter from Lucy's mother. I see at this moment, Mrs. Laurence, the sunny, busy street at which I sat stupidly staring, for hours after I read that letter. I hear the shouts of the children at play, the hot, white quiver of the blazing August noon-day.

"Lucy had gone, run away from home with a young man, nobody knew who for certain, but everybody thought with the young gentleman I had brought there, Mr. Thorndyke. I had trusted her, Mrs. Laurence, as I tell you I had loved and trusted them both entirely. I sat there stupefied, I need not tell you what I suffered. Next day I went down to the village. Her mother was nearly crazed, the whole village was gossiping the shameful story. He – or some one like him, had been seen haunting the outskirts of the village, she had stolen, evening after evening, to some secret tryst.

"She had left a note – 'she couldn't marry old Liston,' she said; 'she had gone away with somebody she liked ten thousand times better. They needn't look for her. If he made her a lady she would come back of herself, if not – but it was no use their looking for her. Tell Mr. Liston she was sorry, and she hoped mother wouldn't make a fuss, and she was her affectionate daughter, Lucy.'

"I sat and read the curiously heartless words, and I knew just as well as if she had said so, that it was with young Laurence she had gone. I knew, too, for the first time, how altogether heartless, base, and worthless was this girl. But there was nothing to be said or done. I went back to New York, to my old life, in a stupid, plodding sort of way. I said nothing to Mr. Darcy. I sold off the pretty furniture. I waited for young Mr. Laurence to return; he did return at Christmas – handsome, high-spirited, and dashing as ever. But he rather shrank from me, and I saw it. I went up to him on the night of his arrival, and calmly asked him the question:

"'Mr. Laurence, what have you done with Lucy West?

"He turned red to his temples, he wasn't too old or too hardened to blush then, but he denied everything. Lying, – cold, barefaced lying, is one of Mr. Thorndyke's principal accomplishments.

"'He knew nothing of Lucy West – how dared I insinuate such a thing.' Straightening himself up haughtily. 'If she had run away from me, with some younger, better looking fellow, it was only what I might have expected. But fools of forty will never be wise;' and then, with a sneering laugh, and his hands in his pockets, my young pasha strolls away, and we spoke of Lucy West no more.

"That was five years ago. One winter night, a year after, walking up Grand street about ten o'clock, three young women came laughing and talking loudly towards me. It needed no second look at their painted faces, their tawdry silks, and gaudy 'jewelry,' to tell what they were. But one face – ah! I had seen it last fresh and innocent, down among the peaceful fields. Our eyes met; the loud laugh, the loud words, seemed to freeze on her lips – she grew white under all the paint she wore. She turned like a flash and tried to run – I followed and caught her in five seconds. I grasped her arm and held her fast, savagely, I suppose, for she trembled as she looked at me.

"'Let me go, Mr. Liston,' she said, in a shaking voice; 'you hurt me!'

"'No, by Heaven,' I said, 'not until you answer me half a dozen questions. The first is: 'Was it Laurence Thorndyke with whom you ran away?'

"Her eyes flashed fire, the color came back to her face, her hands clenched. She burst forth into such a torrent of words, choked with rage, interlarded with oaths, that my blood ran cold, that my passion cooled before it. She had been inveigled away by Thorndyke, there was no sham marriage here – no promise of marriage even; I will do him that justice, and in six months, friendless and penniless, she was adrift in the streets of New York. She was looking for him night and day, if ever she met him she would tear the very eyes out of his head!

"Would she go home? I asked her. I would pay her way – her mother would receive and pardon her.

"She laughed in my face. What! take my money – of all men! go back to the village where once she had queened it over all the girls – like this! She broke from me, and her shrill, mocking laugh came back as she ran and joined her companions. I have never seen her since.

"That is my story, Miss Bourdon. Two years have passed since that night – my dull life goes on – I serve Mr. Darcy – I watch Mr. Thorndyke. I have come to his aid more than once, I have screened his evil deeds from his uncle as I have screened this. He is to be married the first week of December to Miss Helen Holmes, a beautiful girl and an heiress. The last duty I am to perform for him is to hush up this story of yours, to restore you to your friends like a bale of damaged goods. But I think his time has come; I think it should be our turn now. It is for you and me to say whether he shall inherit his uncle's fortune – whether he shall marry Helen Holmes or not."

CHAPTER XIV.

A DARK COMPACT

The twilight had deepened almost into darkness. Mr. Liston unconsciously, in the excitement of the tragedy of his life, told now for the first time, had risen, and was walking up and down the room. His quiet voice, never rising above its usual monotonous level, was yet full of suppressed feeling and passion. Now, as he ceased, he looked toward the still figure sitting so motionless before the smouldering fire. She had not stirred once, the fixed whiteness of her face had not altered. The large, luminous eyes looked into the dying redness in the grate, the lips were set in one tense tight line. Until last night she had been but a child, the veriest child in the tragic drama of life, the sin and shame, the utter misery of the world to her a sealed book. All at once the black, bitter page had opened, she was one of the lost herself, love, truth, honor – there were none on earth. A loathing of herself, of him, of life, filled her – an unspeakable bitterness weighed her down body and soul.

"You do not speak, Miss Bourdon," Mr. Liston said, uneasily. "You – you have not fallen asleep?"

"Asleep!" she laughed a little, strangely sounding laugh. "Not likely, Mr. Liston; I have been listening to your story – not a pleasant story to listen to or to tell. I am sorry for you, I am sorry for her. Our stories are strangely alike – we have both thrown over good and loyal men to become a villain's victim. We have no one to thank but ourselves. More or less, we both richly deserve our fate."

There was a hard, reckless bitterness in the words, in the tone. She had not shed a tear since the blow had fallen.

Mr. Liston paused in his walk and strove to read her face.

"Both?" he said. "No, Miss Bourdon. She, perhaps, but you do not. You believed yourself his wife, in all honor and truth; to you no stain of guilt attaches. But all the blacker is his dastardly betrayal of you. Without even the excuse of loving you, he forced you from home, only to gratify his brutal malice against Richard Gilbert. He told me so himself; out of his own mouth he stands condemned."

She shivered suddenly, she shrank as though he had struck her. From first to last she had been fooled; that was, perhaps, the cruelest, sharpest blow of all, to know that Laurence Thorndyke had never for one poor instant loved her, that hatred, not love, had been at the bottom of it all.