‘O Marian, don’t be so stupid! Of course, in that case, everybody’ll expect me—to—to—accept him.’
Marian looked down deep into her simple, little, girlish eyes with a curious smile of arch womanliness. ‘And why not, Nora?’ she asked at last with perfect simplicity.
Nora blushed. ‘Marian—Marian—dear Marian,’ she said at length, after a long pause, ‘you are so good—you are so kind—you are so helpful to me. I wish I could say to you all I feel, but I can’t; and even if I did, you couldn’t understand it—you couldn’t fathom it. You don’t know what it is, Marian, to be born a West Indian with such a terrible load of surviving prejudices. O darling, darling, we are all so full of wicked, dreadful, unjust feelings! I wish I could be like you, dear, I wish indeed I could; but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, somehow!’
Marian stroked her white little hand with sisterly tenderness in perfect silence for a few minutes; then she said, rather reproachfully: ‘So you wish Mr Noel wasn’t going to be nursed under your father’s roof at all, Nora! That’s a very poor return, isn’t it, my darling, for all his bravery and heroism and devotion?’
Nora drew back like one bitten suddenly by a venomous creature, and putting her hand in haste on her breast, as if it pained her terribly, answered, with a little deep-drawn sigh: ‘It isn’t that, Marian—it isn’t that, darling. You know what it is, dear, as well as I do. Don’t say it’s that, my sweet; oh, don’t say it’s that, or you’ll kill me, you’ll kill me with remorse and anger! You’ll make me hate myself, if you say I’m ungrateful. But I’m not ungrateful, Marian—I’m not ungrateful. I admire, and—and love him; yes, I love him, for the way he acted here last evening.’ And as she spoke, she buried her head fervidly, with shame and fear, in Marian’s bosom.
Marian smoothed her hair tenderly for a few minutes longer, this time again in profound silence, and then she spoke once more very softly, almost at Nora’s ear, in a low whisper. ‘I went this morning into Mr Noel’s room,’ she said, ‘darling, just when he was first beginning to recover consciousness; and as he saw me, he turned his eyes up to me with a beseeching look, and his lips seemed to be moving, as if he wanted ever so much to say something. So I stooped down and listened to catch the words he was trying to frame in his feverish fashion. He said at first just two words—“Miss Dupuy;” and then he spoke again, and said one only—“Nora.” I smiled, and nodded at him to tell him it was all well; and he spoke again, quite audibly: “Have they hurt her? Have they hurt her?” I said: “No; she’s as well as I am!” and his eyes seemed to grow larger as I said it, and filled with tears; and I knew what he meant by them, Nora—I knew what he meant by them. A little later, he spoke to me again, and he said: “Mrs Hawthorn, I may be dying; and if I die, tell her—tell Nora—that last night, when she stood beside me there so bravely, I loved her, I loved her better even than I had ever loved her!” He won’t die, Nora; but still I’ll break his confidence, darling, and tell it you this evening.—O Nora, Nora! you say you wish to goodness you hadn’t got all these dreadful, wicked, West Indian feelings. You’re brave enough—I know that—no woman braver. Why don’t you have the courage to break through them, then, and come away with Edward and me to England, and accept poor Mr Noel, who would gladly give his very life a thousand times over for you, darling?’
Nora burst into tears once more, and nestled, sobbing, closer and closer upon Marian’s shoulder.
‘My darling,’ she cried, ‘I’m too wicked! I only wish I could feel as you do!’
SWIMMING.
The extent to which the power of swimming is cultivated amongst Englishmen is scarcely creditable to the citizens of a country which boasts both that it is the greatest naval power, and that it possesses infinitely the largest mercantile marine on the face of the earth. It is only within recent years that it has been anything but a rare exception for a sailor to be able to swim. Amongst old naval officers it is still remembered as a notable occurrence that some fifty years ago, Lord Ingestre, when in command of a ship on the Mediterranean station, refused to rate as an able seaman any man who could not swim, and that from time to time other captains followed his example. That this should be still recalled to mind shows how rare an accomplishment swimming was amongst sailors in past times; and if this has now been remedied in the royal navy, where, at the present day, swimming is taught, a similar improvement has by no means taken place in the mercantile marine, in which a seaman who can swim is still a curiosity. Probably the same remark would apply to our ‘long-shore’ population, to our lightermen and professional watermen, and to the inhabitants of our numerous canal-boats. And yet English people of both sexes and of the average type seem to take to the water as naturally as a duck. The difference is that they delight to disport themselves on the waves instead of in them. Every seaport, every suitable stretch of river, every lake, has its Rowing Club; Cockneys, whose ideas of rowing are original if not elegant, and whose notions of boat-management constitute a minus quantity, make summer Sundays and the August Bank Holiday hideous on the Thames in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court; and if ’Arry takes his ’Arriet for a day’s excursion to some one of the seaside resorts which they patronise, the enjoyment of both is incomplete if they do not court the woes of sea-sickness by going for a sail.