"Regretted it so little she"d do it again next day," he grumbled. Nora went steadily on.
"It grew to be the one spring and impulse of her whole nature--the necessity of her existence--to stand _first_ with the ruling spirit wherever she was, whoever it might be. At school I have known her to sit up all night to make sure that she would be letter-perfect in her lessons the following morning. Not because she cared for her studies so much as because she _must_ feel that she stood first in the estimation of her teachers. And then, too, her grandfather would know and be proud of her. It got to be nature with her (I do not know how much of the tendency may have been born in her) to need to stand on the top wherever she was. (It has always seemed to me that the conditions surrounding her were quite enough to explain this characteristic without an appeal to a possible heredity of which I can know nothing.) Even where we boarded, although she disliked the women and looked down upon the young men, she made them all like her, and even went the length of allowing one young fellow to ask her to marry him simply because she saw that he was interested in me."
"Humph! She--" began Cuthbert, but his wife held up her hand to check him, and did not pause in her story.
"Up to that time she had not given him a thought, and she was very angry when he finally asked the great question. She thought that he should have known that such a girl as she was could not be for a man of his limitations. She felt insulted. She flew up stairs and cried with indignation. "The mere idea!" she said to me. "How dared he! The common little biped!" I told her that she had encouraged him, and had brought unnecessary pain upon him as well as regret upon herself. Then she was angry with me. By and by she put her hand out in the darkness and took mine and pressed it. Then she said, "Nora, it _was_ my fault; but--but--" and then she began to sob again. "But, Nora, I don"t--know--why--I--did--it--and," there was a long pause. "And, beside, I _thought_ he was in love with you,"" she sobbed out.
"That was the whole story," said Cuthbert, resentfully. "She simply wanted to supplant you and--"
"Yes, that _was_ the whole story, as you say, dear," said his wife, gently; "but the poor girl could not help it. And--and she did not understand it herself at all."
"You make me provoked, Nora," said Cuthbert, almost sharply. "She wasn"t a fool. She tried the same game on me a year or two later; but that time it didn"t work. She even went the length of talking ill of you to me--saying little cutting things--when she found I had utterly succ.u.mbed to your attractions. I have to laugh yet when I think of it,--that is, when it don"t make me too angry to laugh,--how I gave her a good round talking to." He laughed now at the recollection.
"She must have taken me for her delightful old grandparent the way I lectured her. But when I remembered how loyal you were to her, it just made my blood boil and I told her so."
Mr. Bailey shifted his position and began to contemplate giving a verdict emphatically against the absent lady, when Nora checked him by a wave of her fan.
"Yes, I know she did, Cuthbert, and I know everything you said to her.
You were very cruel--if you had understood, as you did not and do not yet. She came and told me all about it." Cuthbert Wagner gave a low, incredulous whistle, and even Mr. Bailey looked sceptical.
"She came back from that drive with you the most wretched girl you ever saw. Her humiliation was pitiful to see. Her self-reproach was touching and real. I believe she would have killed herself if I had seemed to blame her."
Cuthbert snapped out:
"Humph! Very likely; and gone and done the same thing again the next day."
"Possibly that is true--if there had been a next day with a new temptation that was too strong for her on the sh.o.r.e where she landed after death If--"
"If the Almighty had shown a preference for some one else, hey?" asked Mr. Bailey, flippantly.
"No doubt, no doubt," acquiesced Nora. "But suppose you had a weak leg and it gave way at a critical moment--say just when you were entering an opera box to greet a lady. Suppose it dropped you in a ridiculous or humiliating manner. You would rage and be distressed, and make up your mind not to let it occur again, except in the seclusion of your own apartments; but--well, it would be quite as likely to serve you the same trick the following week, in church."
"The ill.u.s.tration does not strike me as quite fair," said Mr. Bailey, judicially.
"Good, Ned! Don"t let her argue you into an interest in that little cat.
She was simply a malicious little--"
"Wait, then," said Nora, ignoring her husband"s outburst and looking steadily at Margaret Mintem"s new judge, who was showing signs of pa.s.sing a sentence no less severe than if it were delivered by Cuthbert Wagner himself.
"Suppose we take your memory. Are there not some names or dates that _will_ drop out at times and leave you awkwardly in the lurch?"
"Well, rather," said Mr. Bailey, disgustedly. This was his weak spot.
"Now, don"t you see that a person who has a perfect memory might be as unfair to you as you are to my old school friend in her little moral weakness--if we may call it by so harsh a term as that? That was her one vulnerable spot. It may have been born in her. That I do not know; but I insist that it _was_ trained and drilled into her as much as her arithmetic or her catechism were, and with a result as inevitable. She loathed her fault, but it was too strong for her. Her resolution to conquer it dropped just short of success very often, indeed; and oh! how it did hurt her when she realized it and thought it all over, for her motives were unusually pure, and her moral sense was really very high indeed."
"Moral sense was a little frayed at the edges, I think."
"Don"t, Cuthbert. You are such a cruelly severe judge. I know Mr. Bailey is on my side, now, and will think you very unfair. He does not mean to be, I a.s.sure you, Mr. Bailey, and if she had not spoken ill of me he would see the case fairly. But what _are_ you thinking?"
"That it is a rather big question. That I--that I have overstayed my time. I just came over to ask you to dine with us next Thursday. My mother has some friends and wants you to meet them. May I leave my judicial decision open until then?"
"Certainly. Pray over it," said Cuthbert, rising; "and if you don"t come out on my side, openly,--as I know you are in your mind,--buy a wire mask. I won"t have any dodging."
"Come early. There is a secret to tell," laughed Mr. Bailey as he withdrew, and then he blushed furiously. "Mother"s secret," he added, as he closed the door behind him.
The evening of the dinner the Wagners were later than they had intended to be, and Mrs. Bailey took Nora aside and said quite abruptly:
"I"ve got to pop it at you rather suddenly. Why didn"t you come earlier?
The lady whom Ned is to marry is here, and it is for her I have given the dinner. Ned went to your house to tell you last week, but his heart failed him. He said you were all in such a gale of nonsense that he concluded to wait. It is a very tender subject with him, I a.s.sure you.
His case is quite hopeless. He is madly in love, and I am very much pleased with his choice. She seems as nearly perfect as they ever are, and she is unusually talented. But here is Ned now. I have told her all about it, my son, come and be congratulated."
He came forward shyly enough for a man of his years and experience, and took Nora"s hand in a helpless way. But Cuthbert relieved matters at once by a hearty "Well, it is splendid, old fellow. I"m delighted. I--"
"But before the others come down," broke in Mr. Bailey, as if to get away from the subject, "I want to get my discharge papers in that case you plead before me last week. It lies heavy on my soul, for I am very sorry to say, Mrs. Wagner, that I am compelled to give judgment against you and your client. I think she was--I"m with Cuthbert this time. She impresses me as almost without redeeming qualities. I do not wish to make her acquaintance. I am sure that I could never force myself to take even a pa.s.sing interest in that sort of a moral acrobat. Really, the lovely but selfish Julia would be my choice in a team of vicious little pacers like that. I"m sure I should detect your friend"s fatal weakness in her every action. I should be unable to see anything but the hideous green-eyed monster even in the folds of her lace gowns or the coils of her shining hair. He would appear to me, ghost-like, peering over her shoulder in the midst of her most fascinating conversation. I should feel his fangs and see the glitter of his wicked eyes while I tried to say small nothings to her, and--"
"Oh, not at all," protested Nora. "You would never detect it at all unless she happened to be fighting for your esteem or admiration where she felt that odds were against her. She--"
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wagner, but I am quite sure that I should.
Envy is to me the very worst trait in the human character. I could more easily excuse or be blinded to anything else. I _know_ that I should detect it at once. I always do--especially in a woman."
"Certainly. Anybody could. You know very well, Nora, that I saw--" began Cuthbert quite gleefully; but as a salve to her wounded feelings Mr.
Bailey added in a tone of conciliation to Nora:
"However, I shall agree to let you test me some day. Present your friend to me, _incog._, and I"ll wager--oh, _anything_ that I shall read her like a book on sight. I"m a splendid judge of a woman. Always was from childhood. I"m sure that I should feel creepy the moment I saw the brilliant but envious granddaughter of the unfortunate old warrior. And by the way, _he_ continues to be the one for whom you have enlisted my sympathy. I wonder that he was able to live two weeks in the same house with such a--"
"Cat," said Cuthbert, with a vicious jab at a paper-weight which represented a solemn-looking Chinese G.o.d in brocade trousers. He was just turning to enter into a cheerful and elaborate statement of his side of the controversy, as Mrs. Bailey swept down the room with her son"s betrothed upon her arm, smiling and happy.
"Margaret Mintern!" exclaimed Nora, in dismay, and then--
"I am so glad to see you again, dear, and to be able to congratulate you, instead of some fair unknown, upon the fact that you are to have so dear a friend of ours for a husband. We think everything of Mr. Bailey.
He is Bert"s best friend and--"
Cuthbert had turned half away in utter confusion when he saw the ladies coming down the room, and feigned an absorption in the rotund Chinese deity which he had never displayed for the one of his own nation. But he bowed now, and mumbled some inarticulate sounds as he looked, not at the future Mrs. Bailey, but at the ridiculously happy face of her lover, whose usually ready tongue was silent as he hung upon the lightest tone of the brilliant woman beside him. As they pa.s.sed into the dining-room, Nora managed to say to her husband:
"Thank heaven we did not mention her name to him, and he evidently does not suspect. Pull yourself together and stumble through your part the best you can, dear, without attracting his attention. And then you know that he and you agree perfectly about the--cat," she added wickedly, and then she smiled quietly as she took her seat next to the blissful lover and the relentless judge of the school friend of her youth.
THE LADY OF THE CLUB.
"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe"er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides, Your loop"d, and window"d raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta"en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel; That thou may"st shake the super flux to them, Show the heavens more just."
Shakespeare.
I.