At the table was sitting a matronly lady in black, with a stodgy and
inexpressive face. She was writing letters at a neat little morocco
desk; and on the entrance of her pupil followed by a good-looking but
perfectly unknown gentleman, she drew herself up from her occupation,
and rubbed her nose with her ivory-handled pen in evident dismay.
“Dear me!” she ejaculated softly, in tones of abject consternation,
“who has she picked up now?”
Before the elder lady had time to give any other indication of the
manner in which she intended to receive the stranger, the young girl
flung her uninjured arm from behind round the neck of her less
impulsive fellow-woman, and cried:
“Mammy Ellis, you see--you see I was right. This is the gentleman who
saved me from being burnt. He has come to say he is sorry.”
And with this introduction, uttered in a tone of the utmost triumph,
she made a step back, as if she expected that a full and uninterrupted
view of him would remove all lingering doubts as to the perfect
eligibility of her new acquaintance.
It was rather embarrassing certainly. For the elderly lady, who had
risen from her chair and was taking a good look at the midnight
intruder, continued to glare at him with cold British stolidity, and
Lauriston had none of the _aplomb_ given by a long and varied course
of flirtations.
“I am afraid, madam,” he began humbly, and with a good deal of
hesitation, “that you--that you will not forgive my--er--my appearance
here, I mean my last appearance, in fact my first appearance.” He
paused to gather an idea to go on with, and continued his explanation
more calmly, taking care, with all the signs of conscious guilt, to
avoid the lady’s stony eye. “A comrade of mine (his name is Massey--we
are lieutenants in the same regiment, ----th Hussars) gave me the
address ‘36, Mary Street, West,’ as that of his brother, who is an old
friend of mine. He told me to go right in and up to the first floor.
Of course I must have come to the wrong Mary Street, but I knew of no
other, drove straight here, and carrying out my instructions, had the
misfortune, as you know, to intrude upon this young lady, with the
unhappy consequence of waking her and causing the accident. I cannot
express my regret. I have been ashamed to call. I would bring my
friend to back me up if I thought you would believe him more than me.
But you would not. I am a gentleman, madam, an officer. I hope you
will believe me.”
Whether the eloquence of this speech would have been strong enough to
melt the rigid lady is unknown. But there is magic to feminine ears in
the word “officer”; and as the young fellow brought his explanation to
an end with much brusque fervour, she softened visibly, and glanced
from him to her charge in a wavering and uncertain manner.
“Well, really I don’t know,” she began vaguely, when the girl cut her
short, slipping her slim hand between her guardian’s plump arm and
matronly figure, and resting her head, gently tilted back, on the
lady’s breast in wheedling and seductive fashion.
“Yes, yes, you do know, Mammy Ellis, you know your own husband was an
officer--you’re always telling us so, and you’re only being dignified
for fun, and you must shake hands with this gentleman and thank him
for saving your little Nouna from having her arm burnt off.”
Thus adjured, Mrs. Ellis, still doubtfully murmuring and of rather
distressful visage, did end by holding out a crumby hand, which George
Lauriston shook with reverence and gratitude. He had got his cue now,
and he at once made respectful inquiries about the husband, was
fortunate enough to be able to tell the widow certain details
concerning the regiment to which he had belonged, and soon succeeded
in obtaining the lady’s confidence to such an extent that she
entertained him with a long and minute account of the late officer’s
distinguished though bloodless services to his country, and of the
niggardliness of an ungrateful government to the hero’s family.
George was becomingly overwhelmed with indignation, though the
monotony of the narrator’s delivery, the pleasant atmosphere of the
half-darkened room, the window of which was shaded with thick blinds,
and the sight of Miss Nouna stretched comfortably in an American
well-cushioned chair, waving a palm-leaf lazily to keep the flies off,
and looking at him half shyly, half mischievously from behind it
through long black eyelashes, all tended to lull him into a drowsy
state, in which he half imagined himself to be in some tropical
country where passions spring up in a day to a fervour never felt in
foggy England, where life flows on without energy or effort, and where
woman, instead of being the modest partner of our joys and sorrows, is
the passionate, voluptuous and irresponsible source of them.
The apartment, though far smaller, more commonplace and less gorgeous
than the room which he had seen on his first visit, helped the
illusion. Tall narrow glasses from floor to ceiling on each side of
the door, reflected a long, two-tiered stand full of large-leaved
hothouse plants which ran the whole length of the windowed-wall of the
room. Half-a-dozen of these plants were little orange trees, their
round yellow fruit giving pretty touches of colour to the dark green
mass, while the white blossoms gave forth a faint, sweet perfume. The
glass over the mantelpiece was draped with dark tapestry curtains,
caught up here and there on each side by palm-leaf and peacock fans,
of the kind with which a freak of fashion has lately made us all
familiar. The curtains came down to the ground, while the deep valance
which hung from the mantelpiece over the empty fireplace was caught up
in the middle by a bronze statuette of a Hindoo girl, whose right arm
held high above her head a shaded lamp. A pair of black Persian
kittens were curled up asleep on a cushion at the feet of the statue.
A harp stood in one corner, and a guitar lay on a chair. The rest of
the room did not harmonise with these fantastic arrangements. The best
had been done to conceal a bilious “high art” carpet by means of
handsome rugs, and the table was beautified by an embroidered cover;
but the chairs and side-board breathed forth legends of no more
interesting locality than the Tottenham Court Road, and the walls were
made hideous by an obtrusive and yet melancholy paper.
George Lauriston noted all these things, and his curiosity about this
queer little household grew more intense. Who was this fascinating
young girl? Why was she living in this dingy corner of London with the
garrulous middle-aged lady who must evidently find her impulsive
charge “a handful”? The buzz of Mrs. Ellis’s tedious monologue began
at last to madden him, and he followed the young girl with eager eyes
as she slid off her chair and rang the bell.
“I’m thirsty, Mammy Ellis,” she explained. Then, tired of silence, she
swooped down upon the table, thrust the pen her governess had been
using again into the astonished lady’s hand and said, coaxingly but
imperatively: “Write--write to mamma. This gentleman does not wish to
interrupt you. I will entertain him. Tell her what you think of him.
And then I will read the letter, and see if it may go.”
Mrs. Ellis laughed gently, and obeyed with a protest. Evidently that
was the usual order of things between them. Nouna improvised herself a
low seat beside the plants by piling on the floor the cushions from
her American chair, then she crossed her hands round one knee, and
looked up at Lauriston.
“You have not told us your name,” said she diffidently.
“Nouna,” protested the lady from the table.
“Don’t you want to tell us your name?”
“Certainly. George Lauriston.”
“That is a pretty name. Mine is Nouna.”
“Nouna! That is not an English name.”
“Of course not. It is an Indian name. Do you like Indians?”
“I have only known one West Indian lady.”
“_West_ Indian! That is not Indian at all. I come from the land of the
Rajahs. My grandmother was a Maharanee. She was the most beautiful
woman in all India, and she wore chains of diamonds round her neck
that flashed and sparkled like a thousand suns, and she lived in a
marble palace that was called the Palace of Palms, where the floors
glittered with gold, and soft music came like wind through the halls,
and a great tall tower with a minaret and a spire rose up into the sky
over the room where she slept, to tell all the world that there was
the spot where the Lady of the Seven Stars was resting. And she had a
thousand slaves who knelt and bowed themselves to the earth when she
spoke to them, and her palanquin was all of ebony-wood inlaid with
pearl, and it was hung with silver fringe, and the inside was satin,
the colour of the opening roses; and she travelled on an elephant
whose trappings were of gold. Ah, that is the beautiful land; where
the sun is scorching hot on the fields, and shines bright and
glorious, and throws golden darts through the chinks of the blinds.
And yet there the ladies of high rank--like my grandmother and my
mother and I, lie still and cool in their apartments, or step down
soft-footed into their marble baths where no hot glare can reach them,
only the sense that it is warm and bright outside. Oh, that is the
place to live in, to be happy in. How could my mother leave it to come
to a land like this!”
She had worked herself up as she sang the praises of her own country
to a pitch of glowing excitement, which changed suddenly to an almost
heartbroken wail with her last words. Mrs. Ellis looked up from the
table reprovingly.
“You forget, Nouna, that India is a heathen country, and that your
grandmother probably never had the chance of seeing so much as a
single missionary, and seems to have been very ignorant of her higher
duties.”
“There are no duties out there,” sighed Nouna, with a most plaintive
look into the dream-distance from her black eyes; “at least for the
high-caste women. You have only to live, and love, and grow old, and
die, and nothing to learn but what you breathe in from the flowers and
the sweet scents, and love-songs to please your lord the prince.”
Mrs. Ellis looked scandalised.
“Dear me, Nouna,” she bleated out nervously, “you really don’t know
what you are talking about. You never talked like this before. I don’t
know what Mr. Lauriston will think!”
Mr. Lauriston thought the look of passionate yearning in the young
eyes inexpressibly fascinating, but he did not say so, merely
murmuring something about the allowance to be made for a tropical
temperament. And, Nouna being reduced by the interruption to a silent
trance of regret, the conversation became an intermittent duologue
between the other two until tea was brought in. The manner in which
this was served displayed the same inconsistencies as the furniture of
the room. Sundran, Nouna’s ayah, in her native dress, placed upon the
table an ordinary black and battered tray, on which stood a chased
silver-gilt tea-service of quaint design, cups, saucers, and plates of
a common English pattern, and tiny silver-gilt tea-spoons with
heart-shaped bowls and delicately enamelled dark-blue handles. A great
watermelon lay among vine-leaves in a shallow silver dish.
Mrs. Ellis laid aside her writing materials and poured out the tea,
but she could not forget the young girl’s alarming outburst.
“I’m sure, Nouna, I don’t know what the Countess would say if she
could hear you, so very particular as she is about your religious
education. I am afraid I have given way to you too much; I ought never
to have let Mr. Rahas fit up that room for you; it fills your head
with all sorts of heathen notions, not fit for a Christian young
English lady.”
“Mamma always lets me have my Indian things about me, and sends me
Indian dresses, and she said herself I might have just one room
without the horrid stiff European chairs and tables,” said Nouna, her
voice taking a particularly sweet and tender inflection at the word
“Mamma.” “But I’m going to give it up; I’ve told Mr. Rahas I don’t
want it, and I’ve pulled down half the things. I will not accept gifts
from one I despise.”
Springing in a moment from languor into life, she put her cup down on
the table and went to the door.
“Come and see what I have done,” said she, beckoning to the young
Englishman, her eyes dancing with mischief.
“Really, Nouna, I must say you are very ungrateful,” said Mrs. Ellis
in despairing tones. “Mr. Rahas is always most considerate and
gentlemanly, and when you said you longed for an Indian room he put it
so prettily, asking whether he might fit up one large sitting-room as
a show-room for his things; and then never showing anybody up into it!
I really think you ought----”
But Nouna had flown out of the room, and she was haranguing only
Lauriston, who had risen obediently at the young girl’s imperious
gesture, but did not like to leave the elder lady alone so
unceremoniously.
“She is a wilful little thing,” he said smiling.
“Oh, Mr. Lauriston, what we English people call wilfulness is
lamb-like docility compared to that girl’s! She’s like an eel, like
quicksilver, like a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Or a sunbeam,” suggested he.
“Ah, of course, you’re a young man, you think her charming; and so, I
believe, at the bottom of my heart, do I. But give me a good,
sensible, solid, matter-of-fact English girl to look after, rather
than this creature who is shaking with passion one moment, flashing
her teeth, stamping her foot; and the next suffocating you, and
crushing up your bonnet with kisses. As if kisses could cure the
headaches her wild fits give me, or as if you could squeeze resentment
out of a person, as you do water out of a sponge!”
“Has she been in your charge long?”
“Ever since she left school, six months ago,” said Mrs. Ellis with a
sigh. “Her mother, one of the kindest and most charming women I have
ever met, with all the high-bred ease that nothing will give to Nouna,
wished her to have finishing lessons in music and dancing and
languages in London. Music!” ejaculated the poor lady in a
contemptuous manner. “Nothing would ever induce her to learn the
piano, as every well-educated English girl should do. At school, after
her first lesson, she crept down stairs at night, and undid all the
strings of the instrument; so that had to be given up. I believe she
wanted to learn the tom-tom, or some hideous Indian thing with jam-pot
covers at each end, and they had to compromise by teaching her the
harp and the guitar. Then languages! They only managed to get her to
study French by telling her it was one of the dialects of India. As to
dancing, that came to her like magic, from a waltz to a kind of wild
dance of her own, more like the leaps and bounds of a young animal
than the decorous movements of a young lady! I dare not think what the
Countess would say if she could see her.”
“Why doesn’t she live with her mother, then, who would surely have
more influence over her than any one?”
“You must not blame the Countess,” said Mrs. Ellis, as if he had been
guilty of blasphemy. “A more loving mother never lived. You should
read the beautiful letters she writes to her daughter. But she has
married again; and her husband, the Conde di Valdestillas, a Spanish
nobleman much older than herself, is a great invalid, and she is
obliged to travel about with him wherever he fancies to go.”
“But surely the daughter ought to be considered as well as the
husband.”
“The Countess feels that; and next year, when her daughter’s education
will be finished, she intends settling down either in London or in
Paris, and introducing the young lady to the world. If I can only keep
the girl out of serious mischief so long,” sighed the lady, who seemed
delighted to have a confidant; “but really it is too trying. The first
thing we do after we have left the school (I was a boarder there, and
as Nouna had taken a fancy to me, the Countess requested me to
undertake the duties of _chaperon_) and come to London to look for
apartments, is to pass this house on the way from Paddington to the
Countess’s lawyers, from whom I draw my salary and Nouna’s allowance.
There is a card--‘Apartments, furnished’--in one of the first-floor
windows. Nouna catches sight of the Oriental names on the board
outside, sees Indian lamps in the windows down stairs, and nothing
will satisfy her but to come back to this house and settle here. Then,
of course, the younger gentleman, Mr. Rahas, falls in love with her
and----”
At this point Mrs. Ellis was interrupted by the flinging open of the
door, and Nouna re-appeared, her face distorted with anger, and her
eyes flashing with contempt: like an enraged empress she held open the
door, keeping her head at a very haughty angle, and disdaining to look
at the visitor.
“I know that nothing I can show my guest can have any interest for
him,” she said icily; “but yet I think it would have been more
courteous to me to disguise that fact.”
She made one step towards her American chair, when Lauriston, with an
amused glance at Mrs. Ellis which he might well suppose to be unseen,
hastened to the door, and held it open for her with a bow.
“I beg your pardon,” said he humbly, “I am very much interested in
whatever you like to show me. But you left the room so suddenly that,
before a clumsy man could hope to get up to you, you disappeared like
a wave of the sea.”
She looked up at him with a very intelligent and searching expression,
and was sufficiently mollified to lead the way out, turning sharply
just in time to catch an exchange of glances, amused on the one side,
apologetic on the other, between the visitor and her guardian.
She affected not to notice this, however, but opened the door of the
next room without speaking, lifted the heavy curtain, ushered him in,
and then shut the door and drew the hanging close. Lauriston looked
about him in astonishment. The thick blinds, which were plain canvas
on the outer, and rose-colour and gold puckered silk on the inner
side, were drawn down, and made the room very dark, except for the
chinks of sunlight that crept in at the sides. But there was quite
enough light left to show what a wreck had been made of the luxurious
beauty of the apartment since the night when it had burst on his eyes
like a vision of fairyland. The silk and muslin hangings had been half
torn from the walls, showing the ugly paper underneath; the spears and
weapons had been tossed down on the ground as if they were so much
firewood; the sandalwood screen had been folded and pushed into a
corner; while of the smaller ornaments--cushions, daggers, Moorish
table--a great pile had been made in the middle of the floor, and
covered up with the tiger skins turned inside out. Nothing but the
plants was respected; she had not had the heart to hurt them.
Lauriston could scarcely help laughing; but when he glanced at the
girl, and saw that she was standing against the dismantled wall,
leaning back with an expression of as much triumph as if she had
sacked a city, he felt really rather shocked, and clearing his throat
he shook his head at her gravely.
“I did it all,” she said, nodding proudly and glancing round, as if
anxious that no detail of the noble work should escape him. “Rahas
said that Englishmen were cads, that you were a cad, and so I pulled
the things down. Yes, I saw you and Mrs. Ellis laughing at each other,
as if I were a silly little thing, and couldn’t do anything; but you
see I can.”
It was harder than ever not either to burst out laughing, or to catch
her and kiss her like a spoilt child; but Lauriston resisted both
temptations, and said seriously:
“I think it was very silly and very ungrateful of you.”
She brought her head down to a less aggressive angle, and stared at
him in surprise. He quite expected another outburst of anger, but none
came. She only said “Oh!” reflectively in a soft undertone.
“He has been very kind to you, has he not, this Rahas?”
“Ye--es, he has been kind,” slowly, thoughtfully, and reluctantly. “He
wants”--she laughed shyly--“to marry me!”
“Oh!” Lauriston was disconcerted. A sudden flash of jealousy, acute
and unmistakable, flamed up in his heart at the intelligence,
communicated with this provoking coquetry. “You are going to marry him
then?” he said rashly, on the impulse of the moment, unable to hide
from her sharp eyes an expression of pique.
By quite impalpable changes of tone and attitude, she grew upon the
instant a hundred times more seductive, more bewitching.
“Marry him!” She moved her hand to her head languidly. “I don’t know.
One ought to marry the person one loves best--in England, ought one
not?”
“Certainly,” assented Lauriston, wondering at the power this mere
child possessed of moving him, an altogether unsusceptible mortal, as
he flattered himself, to impulses of passion.
“Then I must wait a little longer and be sure,” she said, twisting her
head upon her neck with the daring, instinctive coquetry of a girl of
five.
“You would rather have a--a--an Oriental like this Rahas, wouldn’t
you?” he said in a low voice, his tone bearing more meaning than he
wished.
“I don’t know,” she said, and stooping, she picked up a string of
beads from among the _débris_ on the floor.
He had come a step nearer to her, and as she stooped, by accident or
design--with such a coquette one could not say which--she stumbled
upon a rug and fell forward against him. He seized her with a gasp,
and held her as she looked up with a laughing, provoking, irresistible
face. She felt him shiver as he withdrew from her with such suddenness
that she, leaning upon his arm, almost staggered.
“What is the matter?” she asked, as he drew out his watch with fingers
so unsteady that he detached the chain.
“I--I beg your pardon,” he stammered, “but I have a most desperately
important appointment with--with my colonel, in fact, which I shall
miss if I don’t fly in the most unceremonious manner.”
Her face changed. A glow, not of anger, but of passionate
disappointment, flushed her face, and the tears welled up into her
eyes. Lauriston grew very hot, and, all in a fever of excitement,
wondered at this.
“When will you come again?” she asked breathlessly, raising her
beautiful face with parted red lips. “You will not come again. Ah, I
know you, you cold Englishman, you will forget me, forget the poor
little girl whom you saw in flames. Oh, no; you must not!” With
another passionate change, her face grew tender and caressing, as she
cooed out the pleading words like music to his unwilling ears.
“Promise you will come again within a week. No, no, a promise won’t
do,” as Lauriston, glad to be let off so easily, opened his mouth.
“Swear, swear that you will come here again--within a week.”
“But--”
“You shall not go till you have sworn.”
The little tigress, with one spring towards the door, locked it and
drew out the key; with another, she had reached the nearest window.
“No, no, don’t. I swear!” cried Lauriston, who saw with stupefaction
that she had raised the blind, and was about to throw the key from the
open window.
She turned round, tossed the key in the air, and caught it in her hand
with a laugh of triumph.
“Now,” she said, “I know you must come. For an English gentleman
always keeps his word.”
She raised the curtain before the door, and put the key in the lock;
before she turned it she twisted herself back towards the young fellow
and said:
“Kiss me!”
He could not hesitate. If she would flirt it was not his fault. He put
his arm round the lithe, bending waist, and pressed a passionate kiss
on her red lips.
“Now I know you will come again,” she whispered as she let him out.
When Lauriston had taken a decorous leave of the innocent guardian in
the next room, and found himself once more in the street, he was
inclined to think that he had changed his identity. Some new power,
horrible in its strength, seemed to have fastened upon him, and to
twist and turn him like an osier. He walked on quickly and firmly,
trying to recall his old, calmer self.
“I will keep my oath and go there again,” he said to himself with
clenched teeth. “But by all I hold sacred, I won’t see that demon-girl
again. Heaven help the man who may ever trust his happiness in her
hands!”