Noreen

“ Noreen cried. "We—Gabrielle and Joey and I—settled this afternoon that someone ought to look into the matter of the Professor's hatefulness, and it's us that are going to," she added cheerfully and ungrammatically, for the benefit of Syb and Barbara. "If he's all right our charade won't hurt him—he'll like it; if he's not...."
The gong sounded.
"Soufflez! Regardez glissant, mes enfants," Noreen cried, tying her hair-ribbon with desperate speed. "We must fix up our charade after supper; and look here! we must get some of the others to perform first, while we're fixing it. ”

“ I'm crying partly because I'm tired—and partly because I've got my overshoes on—but mostly"—her voice began to catch again—"but mostly—because there's a man waiting to see me in the parlor."
The Political Economist shifted uneasily in his rain coat and stared into Noreen's eyes.
"Great Heavens!" he stammered. "Do you always cry when men come to see you? Is that why you never invited me to call?"
Noreen shook her head. "I never have men come to see me," she answered quite simply. "I go to see them. I study in their studios. I work on their newspapers. I caricature their enemies. ”

“ It must be understood that Noreen’s conviction of her father’s integrity had never been shaken. It was more than a family faith. His life had been as a record accessible to all men. It did not even occur to her to build a system of reasoning upon the hypothesis of any guilt of his, even though much was strange and foreboding. She had heard her father mutter that a war would bring Routledge out of his lair. She could not forget that her father had come back from India on the day of the Reception, all consumed and brain-numbed from strain. ”

“ I simply do not rhyme.—That is all!"
"Will you marry me?" persisted the Political Economist.
Noreen shook her head. "No!" she repeated. "You don't seem to understand. Marriage is not for me. I tell you that I am Blank Verse. I am Talent, and I do not rhyme with Love. I am Talent and I do not rhyme with Man. There is no place in my life for you. You can not come into my verse and rhyme with me!"
"Aren't you a little bit exclusive?" goaded the Political Economist.
Noreen nodded gravely. "Yes," she said, "I am brutally exclusive. But everybody isn't. Life is so easy for some women. ”

“ One art of his that had found the heart of her was his conception of the inner loveliness of life. He caught the finer relation of things. He could love the lowliest, hunger with them, and realize in their midst the brotherhood of man. He perceived the great truths everywhere which purely physical men, of necessity, must miss. His discovery of Rawder was great with meaning to Noreen, and his adoration for those silent sacrifices which summed into a life of glory unobserved by the world. ”

“ Noreen sat down on her bed.
"You're rather a young sport, Jocelyn. I say, it was rather a shame about the Lab; was the Professor a frightful beast about it?"
"He was rather; I think he needn't have been so bad considering the French and we are allies for evermore," Joey said.
"He's only French-Swiss; daresay he can't be as nice as pure French," Noreen suggested soothingly. "Anyhow, Ingrid has settled him up—she can tackle any professor born: you should see her with our literature prof: disagrees with him and that sort of thing. ”

“ Noreen said. "They just hold forth, and tell you carelessness is a sort of dishonesty and that sort of thing. You'll have to say you're sorry."
"Well, I am."
"And Matron will point out you've behaved like a kindergarten kid, and if she were Tiddles she wouldn't be surprised at your wanting to throw your shoes about. Comprenny?"
"Righto—I shall stick it," Joey assured her.
"They don't nag here—much," added the experienced Noreen for her comfort; "when you've been jawed or punished or both, it's over and done with. What about the French? Think you could do anything?" ”

“ Noreen leaned forward confidentially. "Of course I will. There's not much to tell; just two or three little things that are always done by the scholarship winner."
The others all displayed a sudden and flattering interest in Joey. They leaned forward too, so as not to miss a word.
"Tidying the Lab is the most important [Pg 34] thing," Noreen went on gravely. "We've got a jolly old French Stinks Professor, Monsieur Trouville; frightfully brainy over stinks, but untidy—oh! my Sunday hat and Dublin Castle!—untidy isn't the word for it!" ”

“ It was that suggestion which gave Joey her idea. "I say," she burst out, "why shouldn't we do a charade on the lines of Hamlet's player-people? You know—where the poison was poured into the poor chap's ear—and ask all the Staff to come, and see whether the Professor looks guilty and shrieks, 'Lights!' because he's doing something evil with his stinks, as Noreen says, or just has a war-strain appearance. It needn't be a noisy charade to upset him if it's just strain."
Noreen thumped Joey on the back. "Topping plan! What word shall we have?"
"German?" suggested Joey. ”

“ Life and Nature are harder to the woman than to the man. But in those golden days in the mountains, Noreen Daleham was happy, happier far than she had ever been; albeit she did not realise that love was the magician that made her so. She only felt that the world was a very delightful place and that the lonely outpost the most attractive spot in it.
Even when the day came to quit Ranga Duar she was not depressed. For was not her friend—so she named him now in her thoughts—to bring her on his wonderful elephant through the leagues of enchanted forest to her home? ”

“ An idyll of two women ends tragically with the marriage of the younger.
WELLS, KERMIT. Reformatory Women. Bedside Books pbo 1959. Surprisingly good for this publisher of rubbish. After escaping from a sadistic lesbian matron in the reformatory, Noreen works as a fake butch in a Greenwich Village Gay bar and tourist trap; later goes to work for gangsters in a roadhouse, falls for a nice boy and goes back to serve her reformatory sentence and marry him when she gets out. Pleasant evening waster. ”

“ I'm not a helpless person. I came across India by myself to get here; and surely I'll be able to manage to do a twenty-four hours' journey alone."
"Very well, dear," he replied with an inward, unacknowledged feeling of relief that the decisive step had not to be taken yet. "I'll come down from Ranga Duar with an elephant to meet you at the railway station when you arrive. Now, while you're changing for breakfast, I'll rush round to the Oriental and see if Mrs. Dermot has more news."
When he reached the hotel he found Noreen busily packing. ”

“ A second more, and again Miss Hester Kent was shrilly to be heard.
"Land of hope! whatever ails you. Norry? You are whiter than the dead. Oh, I know how it will be after to-night—you'll be laid up for a week."
He heard the house door close. Then he was alone with the rustling trees, and the bright, countless stars. As he stepped out into the crystal radiance, his face shone with exultant delight—alas! for Norine! not with happy love.
"I knew it!" he thought to himself in his triumph; "I knew I could take her from him at the very church door. Now, Richard Gilbert! ”

“ She stands looking, with that white change in her face, over the sunny sea.
"Come, Norine!" he exclaims, impatiently, "you're not going to be a baby, I hope. If you love me, as you say you do—" She turns and looks at him, and he alters the phrase suddenly, with an uneasy laugh. "Well, since you love me so well, Norry, you must try and have a little common sense. Common sense and pretty girls are incompatible, I know; but really, my dear child, you can't expect that our whole lives are to be spent billing and cooing here. ”

“ The city street, the gaping, curious crowd around her faded away, and there arose before Norine a far different and never-to-be-forgotten picture—a desolate autumn evening; a gray, complaining sea, creeping up on its gray sands, a low, fast-drifting sky lying over it, and on the shore a girl standing, reading a few brief lines in Laurence Thorndyke's writing—lines that branded her as a thing of sin and shame for life—that broke her heart as she read. And now—her enemy lay here at her mercy. Why should she lift a finger to save him? Why not let him go to the hospital and take his chance? ”

“ Gilbert!"
"I love you, Norine. It seems strange you have not known it until I tell it. I am double your age, but I will do my best to make you happy. Ah, Norine, if you knew how long I have thought of this—how dearly I love you, you would surely not refuse. I am a rich man, and all I have is yours. The world you have longed to see, you shall see. Be my wife Norine, and come with me to New York." ”

“ Dread of her approaching marriage, maiden timidity, or worst of all—was the thought of another man haunting her still?
Tea time came and was a relief; after tea, Mr. Gilbert proposed a walk. Norine took her hat passively, and went out with him into the hushed and placid twilight. The pale primrose light was fading out of the western sky, and a rising wind was tossing the arms of the hemlocks where she stood with another lover last night. ”

“ I am not deceiving you Norine—why should I? There is but one whom I love; if she will be my wife I will marry—not unless. Can you not guess who it is, Norine? Can you not guess what I have come from New York to say before it is too late? I only heard of your projected marriage last week—heard it then by merest accident. Ah, Norine! if you knew what a shock that announcement was. Ever since I left here I have been trying to school myself to forget you, but in vain. I never knew how utterly in vain until I heard you were the promised wife of Richard Gilbert. ”

“ There is no forgiveness needed, Norine. I admire your truthful and plain-spoken spirit. Only you see I thought Norine Bourdon a loving, gentle, forgiving little soul, who cared for me so much that she was ready to forgive me seventy-times-seven, and I find, according to her own showing, she is a strong-minded woman, ready to wreak vengeance for the first wrong done her—ready for love or hatred at a moment's notice. It is well you told me—it is always best to understand one another. ”

“ With a little fluttering sigh Norine obeyed, clinging close to her hero's side in the darkness. [Pg 104]
"But you'll let me write home when we are married, and tell them, Laurence, won't you? They have been so good to me, always—always, and they will think, oh yes, they will think such dreadful things of me now."
"They will forget and forgive, never fear, Norry. People always come round when they can't do anything else. ”

“ Even if you refused me with scorn, I felt I must come and hear my doom from your lips. They have urged me to marry another, an heiress she is, and a ward of my uncle's—he even threatens to disinherit me if I do not. But I will be disinherited, I will brave poverty and face the future boldly so that the girl I love is by my side. Helen is beautiful, and will not say no, they tell me, if I ask, but what is that to me since I love only you. Norine, tell me I have not come too late. You don't, you can't care for this elderly lawyer, old enough to be your father. ”

“ And smiling a little to himself, as he lit his cigar and sauntered to his friend Saroni's studio, Mr. Thorndyke mused: [Pg 205]
"They're all alike—all! Ready to forgive a man seventy times seven, let him do as he may. Ready to sell themselves body and soul for a kiss! And what is true of Helen shall be true of Norine." ”

“ Dying! Yes, even to Norine's own inexperienced eyes the dreadful seal was yonder on the face among the pillows. His wife's arm encircled his neck, her face was hidden on his bosom, a dull, dumb, moaning sound coming from her lips. He lay there rigid—as if dead already—all unconscious of that last agonized embrace of love, and forgiveness, and remorse.
The doctor left the room, waiting without in case his services should be needed. Norine dispatched a messenger to Mr. Gilbert, another for a clergyman. He might return to reason, if only for a moment before the spirit passed away. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Norine's bright voice called, "you know everything. Come and tell me what is this botanical specimen I have found growing here in the cleft of the rocks."
She held up a spray of blue blossom. Laurence looked at it languidly.
"I know everything, I admit, but I don't know that. If you had married old Gilbert now, my darling, your thirst for information might have been quenched. There isn't anything, from the laws of the nations down to the name of every weed that grows, he hasn't at his learned legal finger ends. Oh, Lord, Norry, what a long day this has been—fifty-eight hours if one." ”

“ At the parlor-window of Sea View Cottage, Norine stands looking wistfully, wearily out. Three weeks have passed since her husband left her—it is seven weeks altogether since the memorable night of her elopement. These last three, lonely weeks have wrought their sad, inevitable change. The small face has grown smaller the large dark eyes seem unnaturally large for the wan face. A sad, patient light fills them. The slight form has grown fragile, the hands that hang loosely clasped before her are almost transparent. ”