Chapter 12

IN WHICH NORRIS TAKES HIS LIGHT FROM UNDER THE BUSHEL

I FOUND Norris in bed, propped up with pillows and looking very pale. His mother and nurse were with him; the ladies had gone out to dinner with Forbes and would spend an hour or so at the ball.

“I had a bad turn at ten o’clock,” said Norris, “but the doctor came and patched me up, and has gone out for a walk. Mother, will you and the nurse go into the other room until I call you? I want to talk with Mr. Potter.”

Mrs. Norris, the elder, was a slim, tender little woman, with a flavor of the old-time Yankee folks in her customs and conversation. When she was not doing something for her “boy,” as she called him, I often found her sitting in her rocking-chair by the window with her fancy-work or her Bible. Once when I sat waiting to see Norris, while he was napping, she sang “The Old, Old Story” in a low voice as she rocked.

Before leaving the room that night, when I had been summoned to his bedside, she went to his bed and leaned over him and looked thoughtfully into his face. Then she gently touched it with her hand.

“How is my boy feeling now?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m better, mother,” he answered, cheerfully.

“You look more and more like your father,” she said, standing by the bed, with her hands on her hips, reluctant to leave him.

“I wish I were as good a man as my father,” said Norris.

“Your father! He is one of the saints of heaven,” she answered.

Then she turned away and went through the door which the nurse had left open in her departure.

“I am glad that you heard her say that,” said Norris. “It will help you to understand my father. I remember hearing a man say once that my father would go to Hades for a friend. Of course that overdrew it, but he was a most generous man, and what a woman my mother is! I often wake in the night and find her looking down at me, and she’s up at daylight every morning. Wherever she is there’s a home—something not made with hands, and it is very dear to me.”

“The old, old sort—there’s not many of them left,” I said.

“Now, for the new sort,” he whispered, as he drew a letter from his breast pocket and passed it to me.

It was from the young Count Carola, and I was not in the least surprised by this message in English which, with all its impurity, was better than the count knew:

It has become possible for me to render you a service, and I am glad to do the same, knowing that you are one of nature’s noblemen. As you know, my income is not large, and I sometimes write articles for a newspaper here in Rome and for another in Naples, being fond of literature and politics. To-day a man asked me to read a story which they had and translate it into the Italian language. I found that it was an account of your career and told of things which, if they were published, would injure you and your family. I could not believe them, knowing, as I do, that you are the soul of honor. I told the man that it was false, and that he had better not publish it. After some arguments he gave up all idea of publishing the story, and gave it over to me. I was glad to do what I did, because I love you and the dear madame and your beautiful daughter, Miss Gwendolyn.

It would not be consistent with the honesty of a gentleman of my standing to take anything from a friend for such a favor, and I ask you to offer me no reward but your friendship. So please do not think of it again. But may I not hope that you will let me try to win your heart. Mine is an ancient name and family, and every member of it has lived honest to this day. I would like to go to America and go to work in some business. I am tired of living idle and would be thankful for your advice. I am also very much worried, and I speak of it with regrets. I hear that Mrs. Norris is favorable to the Count Raspagnetti. You would not, I am sure, permission your daughter to marry him without securing information about his character, which you can accomplish it so easily here in Rome.

I made light of the whole matter to save him worry, but what I saw in it was a conspiracy between Muggs and the count; Muggs had dictated most of the letter. The thumb-print of Muggs was unmistakable. “Nature’s nobleman,” “the soul of honor,” “a gentleman of my standing,” “lived honest!” Who but the nugiferous Muggs, with his cheap, learned-by-rote polish, would express himself in that fashion? Any one who had known Muggs for an hour would see his hand in this letter. There were his stock phrases and that peculiar adverbial weakness of his. Who but Muggs could have written that sentence calculated to answer Norris’s chief objection to such a man—idleness? He had delivered the whip into the hands of the count, but was holding the reins. The business part of the thing being over, Muggs had let him finish the letter in his own way.

“Who is the Count Raspagnetti?” Norris asked.

“I do not know him.”

“A new candidate of whom I have not heard!”

“And another discoverer of wealth and beauty,” I said. “Refer him to me. Above all, don’t have any communication with the slim count.”

“Potter, you are a great friend,” he said. “What the Count Carola wants is to marry my daughter, and I shall not submit to it.” His anger had risen as he spoke. He whispered his determination with a clenched fist.

“At last we have come to a parting of the ways,” he went on. “I don’t know how I shall do it, but I’m going to confess my sins. We’ll get the family together, and I’ll lay my heart bare. It’s the only thing to do. It will be hard on Gwendolyn, but not so hard as marrying a reprobate. It will be hard on my wife, but there are things worse than disgrace.”

“I welcome you back to happiness and sanity,” I said, giving him my hand.

“Do you think I have been crazy?”

“Well, you haven’t been right in your head on this subject, not quite sane about it. You have reminded me of a woman I knew who threw her cat out of a second-story window. The cat with open claws landed on top of a bald-headed gentleman. Then she tumbled down a flight of stairs and broke a clavicle and the nose of a man who was coming up. And what do you think it was all about?”

He smiled as he looked up at me and shook his head.

“Nothing,” I said. “She thought the house was afire when it wasn’t. If you stand up to this thing like a man you’ll be surprised by what happens and by the immensity of your former folly. Women are not playthings. They are built to carry trouble. A good woman can walk off, like a pack-horse, with a burden of trouble. You haven’t been fair to your women. You have treated them as if they were too good to be human. It’s a gross injustice.”

“Call my mother,” said Norris, “and then go down and meet Gwendolyn and Mary and bring them here. I’m going to make an end of this thing to-night.”

“Please remember this—don’t get excited, keep cool, and take it easy. I’ll stand by you.”

“Oh, I’m quite calm now that my mind is made up,” said he. “If it kills me I couldn’t die in a better cause.”

I called his mother and went below stairs. As I waited I thought of the new plan of Muggs. The count’s letter clearly intimated that Norris must be his friend or he would publish the facts. If he could force a marriage he would share the financial end in some manner with Muggs. A little after one o’clock the ladies arrived with Richard Forbes. I took charge of Gwendolyn and her mother, and the boy bade us good night.

We sat down together for a moment.

“We had a wonderful time,” said Gwendolyn. “All the aristocracy of Rome was there.”

“Including the wonderful Count Raspagnetti,” her mother added. “The young Count Carola stood near as we got into our car. He is the most pathetic thing!”

“We must have nothing more to say to him,” I said. “He has discovered another most beautiful woman in the world in Miss Muriel Fraley, of Terre Haute. He is one of the greatest beauty-finders that I have ever seen. But we must have nothing more to say to him. He has resorted to blackmail to achieve his purpose.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Norris. Before I could answer she suddenly opened her heart to me.

“So many things have happened and are happening which I cannot understand,” said she. “My husband has never taken me into his confidence. I have long known that he was troubled about something. It has always seemed to annoy him if I rapped ever so softly on the door of his mystery. Now I do not dare to come near it for fear of making him worse. You seem to know the man Wilton. Who is he? Why does he turn up in Italy? I detest him, and I am sure that my husband does also.”

“Mr. Norris has had business relations with him, but they are now at an end,” I answered.

“So I had hoped,” said she. “But he called here to see my husband yesterday. Of course he didn’t succeed. The nurse gave Mr. Norris the card, and his symptoms changed suddenly and were alarming. I am terribly worried and nervous. I love my husband, and I’ve felt often that I haven’t been a good wife to him, but he would not let me.”

Her eyes had filled with tears.

“Your unhappiness will end this night. Come with me to Whitfield’s room. He has something to tell you. He asked me to meet you here.”

“How strange!” said Mrs. Norris, as she rose with a frightened look.

I led the way, and we proceeded in silence to the room where Norris lay. His mother sat beside him on the bed.

“Mary and Gwendolyn, come here,” he said.

He took a hand of each in his as they stood by his bedside.

“Potter, I want you to stay with us and hear what I have to say,” he called to me.

A little moment of silence followed in which his spirit seemed to be breaking its fetters.

“Mary, I have sinned against you,” he said. “It was your right to know long since what I have now to tell you. But I was a coward. I loved you and feared to lose your love, and so I kept you from knowing the truth about me. Then came Gwendolyn, and the lovelier she grew the more cowardly I became. I hadn’t the heart to tell either of you what I now must tell, that I went to prison long ago for a crime. It was not a very bad crime, but bad enough to disgrace you.”

In a flash the thought came to me that he was not going to tell the whole’ truth; he would protect his father’s good name.

Mrs. Norris put her arm about her husband’s neck and kissed him tenderly. “My love,” said she, “I knew all that years ago, but for fear of hurting you I’ve never spoken of it. Long, long ago I knew all about your trouble.”

His mother rose from the bed where she had been calmly sitting with bowed head and tearful eyes.

“Not all,” said she. “You do not know that he took my husband’s sin upon him, and that all these years he has been suffering in silence for the sake of another. I am sure there is no greater saint in heaven than this man.”

“Oh, Whitfield! Why didn’t you let me help you?” said his wife, as she sank to her knees beside him.

The scene had suddenly become too sacred for any words of mine.

Not one of us spoke for a while, but there was something above all words in the silence. It was feebly expressed at length in these of Norris, and I like to recall them when I begin to feel a bit cynical:

“I’m no saint. I’m just an average American businessman—very human, very foolish! But there are many who would do more than I have done for the love of a friend. My father was such a man.”

Gwendolyn came and kissed me when I bade them good night, and I drew her aside and said to her:

“With such men in America why are we looking for counts in Italy?”

She made no answer, but I understood the little squeeze of gratitude which my hand felt.