George Lauriston was very much in love; but all the circumstances of
his love adventure were so strange, so mysterious, that at this
moment, when the supernatural appeared to have come to the aid of the
simply marvellous, the chill of some uncanny horror seemed to check
his passion, and he looked down at the girl by his side rather as on
some fairy changeling than as on the beautiful woman who had lately
usurped such an undue share of his inmost thoughts. After a short
silence Nouna looked up, half timidly, half saucily:
“Have you then nothing to say to me? Is a week so long a time that you
have forgotten I speak your language?”
“I have forgotten nothing about you,” said he, not encouraging her
clinging pressure on his arm, but standing up stiff and straight, with
his eyes fixed on the screen and the curtains behind it. “I will come
and see you and Mrs. Ellis to-morrow, Nouna, it is too late for me to
stay now.”
She followed the glance of his eyes, and suddenly dropping his arm
made a cat-like bound to the screen, and pulled it down. A figure was
seen to move away quickly, like a shadow, from behind the curtains,
and the next moment Rahas came through them.
“Who is in that room?” asked Nouna imperiously.
“My uncle, Nouna. Why are you so excited?”
“Your uncle Fanah? No one else?”
“No one.”
He stepped back and opening the curtains again, said a few words in a
language strange to Lauriston. A little old man with a grey beard and
a dried-up, wrinkled face, wearing a crimson turban and a very simple
Eastern dress, came slowly in and bowed to the stranger.
“Are you satisfied now?” asked Rahas.
“Ye--es,” said the girl doubtfully, passing her hand over her eyes and
shivering, “I suppose so.” Then, turning to Lauriston, she continued,
with the tone of a child playing at royalty, “You will honour me by
coming up stairs to my apartments for a few minutes. I will not detain
you long.”
She curtseyed to the two merchants, and led the way back through the
front room with a gesture to the young Englishman to follow her, as
Lauriston did, after taking a hasty leave of his host. The girl seemed
to be in such a subdued, sleepy mood that he was prepared for her to
behave in a more conventional manner than usual. He was quite off his
guard therefore when, having reached the top of the staircase, she
suddenly swept round, her white garments swirling after her, and threw
herself like a panther upon him, with such electric suddenness and
force that, if his hand had not been upon the stair-rail, he would
have fallen down the stairs. She was curled about him, her feet off
the ground, her arms round his neck, her breast against his. It was
such an altogether unlooked for and bewildering proceeding that
Lauriston, after a moment’s choking sensation, put his arms round her,
carried her to the door of her smaller sitting-room, and attempted to
put her down on her feet. As she resisted and refused to stand, he
looked round him, and seeing a chair against the wall, placed her,
still limp and apparently helpless, very gently upon it, and laid his
fingers on the handle of the sitting-room door. The little lady sprang
back into vigorous life immediately.
“You are not going in!” she said in a hissing whisper, her face full
of alarm and disappointment; “Mrs. Ellis is in there!”
“That is why I’m going in. I came to see Mrs. Ellis, not you.”
For a moment the girl looked ready to burst into tears, but with
another change of mood she slid off her chair and came up to him,
laughing.
“Are all Englishmen like you, all stone and steel? or has poor little
Nouna fallen upon the very hardest?” she asked, her tone changing from
playful to plaintive before she had finished speaking. And she folded
her small hands one in the other and looked up with a face so doleful
that Lauriston wanted to laugh. “Mamma says Englishmen are noble and
brave and good, and so I thought--when I saw you, and you were kind
and sweet to me--that you were perhaps sent to me--coming so suddenly
in the midst of my sleep--the great Rajah mamma said I was to wait for
and obey and humble myself to, as a woman should to her lord. She said
he would come certainly if I was very good, and I had been good for
nearly three weeks, and had given Mrs. Ellis hardly any trouble at
all; so I thought, you see,” she said, looking up into his face
naïvely, “that you were the Rajah. Well, I was wrong, that’s all. You
prefer Mrs. Ellis.”
George Lauriston listened to this harangue with every feeling of
tenderness that can move a man, from that of a father for a wayward
child to that of a lover for a beautiful woman. He saw in her
alternately bold and ingenuous words, in the wondering child looks
that came into her eyes between passionate ebullitions of love, of
anger, and of pride, in the utter absence of a grown woman’s modest
reticence, that the little creature before him was now, whatever time
and her fellow-men might hereafter make of her, nothing but a wild,
untrained, half-grown young thing, with the good and bad impulses of a
savage, and a thousand fascinations which would be so many desperate
dangers to her ill-guarded womanhood.
In those few moments Lauriston made up his mind. The girl had for him
an irresistible attraction which made every other woman insipid and
inane. In spite of her mysterious antecedents, of her equivocal
surroundings, he believed most firmly in her native innocence and
goodness. Her odd sense of her own dignity, her passionate love for
her mother, her plaintive account of her impression of the first
meeting with himself, all tended to confirm this opinion, and also to
give some weight to the shadowy legends which seemed to form her
personal history. He would write to the mother, if possible go and see
her, ask her consent to his engagement to her daughter, and himself
choose some home where the girl might spend a couple of years in good
hands, while he on his side would strain every nerve and save every
penny that he might be able, at the end of that time, to make her his
wife. He had no doubts about the success of his suit; everything
pointed to the fact that this shadowy adored and adoring mother would
be glad to get the half-spoilt, half-neglected, wholly ill-brought-up
girl, off her hands.
He looked down again on the little creature as she, in a fit of
petulance at her inability to pique him, leant against the wall and,
like a mischievous monkey, tore one of the loose muslin sleeves of her
dress into strips. Observing this suggestive occupation, George felt
suddenly appalled by the enormous hardihood of the undertaking to
which he was inwardly pledging himself. She glanced up, saw the look
of consternation on his face, and fell into convulsions of stifled
laughter. The set expression on his features broke up, as he laid his
hand very tenderly upon her shoulder.
“Hush, you mustn’t laugh like that. You will make yourself ill.”
Sensitive to every change of feeling as an Eolian harp is to every
breath of air, she was quiet at once, and putting both her own hands
on his to keep it on her shoulders, she said in a very soft voice,
with earnest eyes that seemed to draw out from his the emotion she
knew how to excite in him:
“Ah, I like to hear you speak to me like that. You must always speak
like that to me, and then I will always be like this.”
She folded her little hands, still with one of his clasped between
them, madonna-like against her breast, and bowed her head low in token
of deep, devoted humility. It was the passionate human warmth within
her, glowing in her impulses of love and hate, and freezing in her
bursts of pride, which had melted so quickly the heart of the reserved
young Englishman, and made her irresistible to him.
In a burst of most deep, most loyal tenderness, he lifted her up in
his arms, and curled her slender limbs about him, and held her like a
cherished pet lamb against his breast.
“My darling,” he whispered in her ear--a little shell-like ear of rose
and ivory tints--“I shall speak to you always as a man speaks to the
creature that lives in his heart, whom he loves, whom he trusts, whom
he worships. And you, Nouna, must be good and gentle, and grow up into
a sweet, noble woman for me, so that my love for you may make me
better. I can never give you a palace, Nouna, or elephants with golden
trappings; if I can ever buy you diamonds it will not be till you are
too old to care for them; and you will only have one slave. But you
will be a queen to me, my darling, as long as our lives last; and I
will get on and make my name famous, so that you shall not envy the
proudest maharanee in India, you shall be so happy as the good true
wife of a plain English gentleman.”
“Wife!” repeated Nouna wonderingly, raising her head from his shoulder
to peer into his eyes. “That is what mamma always says. I must be good
and be the wife of an English gentleman, and then I shall be happy!
Are all the wives of English gentlemen so happy?”
George felt hot. Those gleaming black eyes, though they could not read
thoughts half so quickly and surely as they did feelings, had a
steadiness and persistency that made it hard to look into them and
tell a lie.
“All those that are beautiful and good like you are happy, unless they
marry bad men.”
“How can they tell they’re bad before they’ve married them? You might
be bad, and I shouldn’t know.”
“You will have time to find out in the two years that must pass before
I can marry you.”
“Two years!” She began writhing and wriggling in his arms like an
electric eel. “Put me down, put me down at once!” She enforced her
command with such agile movements that he had to comply. “I’m not
going to wait two years!” And she readjusted her crumpled draperies
with an injured manner. “I shall marry you at once, or else I shall
not marry you at all. I shall have Rahas; he has changed to-day, and
says he only desires my happiness; but he shall change back again and
desire me for a wife. I will not wait two years. You do not love me.
Love is for now, not for two years!”
He has changed to-day! Those words struck Lauriston, and reminded him
again of the strangeness of the circumstances which surrounded the
girl he loved, and of the impossibility of settling anything until he
had heard from her mother.
“Very well, Nouna,” he said gently, “I won’t quarrel with you for
wanting to have me before I am well off. I must leave you now, my
darling, and I will write to your mother in the morning. Tell me her
address.”
“She is in Spain, now travelling about; we always write to her
lawyers.”
“Well, I will write through them.”
He took a note-book from his pocket, and at her dictation wrote down
the name and address of a firm of solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn. During
the slight pause in their talk as he did this, Lauriston heard a sound
upon the stairs, and looked up suddenly, convinced that some one had
been listening.
“What is it?” asked Nouna.
“Somebody on the stairs,” whispered he.
As he spoke, they both heard another light sound lower down; but when
they looked into the dimly-lighted hall the eavesdropper had
disappeared.
“It was not Rahas; he treads so that you can hear him,” said Nouna.
“It was a woman, I am sure,” said Lauriston.
“A woman,” repeated Nouna. “And it was the end of a woman’s dress, a
long black dress, I saw in Fanah’s room. I thought it must be a fancy,
for when Rahas sent me to sleep to-day and made me see mamma she wore
a long black dress.”
“Rahas sent you to sleep! Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Lauriston
rather sharply.
“I had no time; I forgot about it.”
“Tell me now all about it--at least, not here; come into the room.”
Nouna stopped him, requiring to be kissed first. Then she let him open
the sitting-room door, and the reason why Mrs. Ellis had not been
disturbed by the proceedings outside was made manifest: the good lady
was dozing in an armchair. She looked up with a start when they
entered, and listened to Lauriston’s explanations and apologies for
appearing so late in a rather apathetic and somnolent manner. She
awoke, however, into the fullest life of which her vegetable nature
was capable, when Nouna began to describe to her visitor the adventure
of the afternoon.
“You know,” she said, “that Rahas has been teasing me to marry him. He
wanted me to keep all the bracelets out of his warehouse that he lent
me to wear, and I told him I could buy some for myself if I wanted
them. And at last yesterday I told him I would stay no longer in the
same house with him, and I went out with Mrs. Ellis and we engaged new
apartments.”
“I’m sure I had no wish to go away,” broke in the elder lady
plaintively. “The people here are most obliging, the rooms are clean,
and nobody could be more civil or more respectful than Mr. Rahas and
his uncle, Monsieur Fanah.” As the elder merchant spoke with a strong
foreign accent, Mrs. Ellis thought him entitled to a French prefix to
his name. “But there’s no doing anything with Nouna when she’s made up
her mind, I regret to say.”
At this point Nouna put her hand over her governess’s mouth, and went
on with her story.
“When Rahas learnt last night that I had taken this decisive step,”
she said with pompous, old-fashioned deliberateness, “he entreated me
to change my determination. I said no, I would not be persecuted, and
I should leave this house to-day. He declared that my mother would be
much annoyed, to which I replied that he could not tell, as he did not
know her. He then asked if I would stay if I could receive some sign
from my mother that she wished me to remain. I answered that my
mother’s will was law to me, but that what he spoke of was impossible.
And he smiled, and asked me if I would wait until this evening before
leaving the house. I consented, and at eight o’clock he asked me to go
down into his sitting-room, where I found you just now.”
“You ought not to have gone,” broke in Lauriston, in great excitement
and irritation.
“I did not want to. I made Mammy Ellis go too. Didn’t I, Mammy?”
“Mr. Lauriston must think me a very imperfect guardian for a young
girl, if he imagines I would allow my charge to visit a gentleman’s
rooms alone,” said Mrs. Ellis, drawing out the creases of her plump
figure in a slow and impressive manner.
“Certainly, of course, I did not for a moment doubt----” murmured
Lauriston, much relieved.
“Well,” continued Nouna, “we went in, and the room was dark, with only
one light, just as you saw it, and the screen was there, as it was
just now. As Rahas talked to me, very slow and faint his voice seemed
to grow, and then his eyes to grow very large and bright, so that they
seemed like two great lamps, and I could see nothing else. And I got
drowsy, and tried to put up my hands and to cry out that I was
stifling--dying. But I could not; my hands were heavy and my voice
would not come.”
“And as for me,” chimed in poor Mrs. Ellis, whose grey eyes grew round
at the ghastly recollection, “when I turned round--for I was talking
to Monsieur Fanah, little thinking of the heathenish doings which were
taking place in my very presence--and heard the child cry ‘Oh!’ and
saw her fall back on the cushions of the ottoman, I was so
thunderstruck that for the first moment I couldn’t have uttered one
word if you had paid me for it. I was going to throw some water over
her when that man Rahas said: ‘She is not fainting; I have cast her
down into a land of dreams.’ And I said: ‘Then, Mr. Rahas, you will
please to cast her up again.’ And when he looked at me, and saw the
expression of my face,” finished Mrs. Ellis triumphantly, “why he did
so.”
“And what did you dream?” Lauriston asked the girl.
“When the eyes of Rahas grew larger and larger they seemed to fade
away and to leave a great light. And standing up against the light was
my mother, with her own sweet smile upon her face and her grand
bearing. (My mother is like an empress in her walk, in her movements,
Mr. Lauriston.) And she put out her hand towards me and I thought she
said ‘Stay.’ And then, before I could speak to her she faded away, and
I felt a weight at my heart, and tried to sigh, and could not. And
then a blank came, and next I heard the voice of Mammy Ellis, and I
opened my eyes and saw her and Rahas.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Lauriston, who was by no means ready to
acknowledge that another man had an influence, mesmeric or otherwise,
over the girl he loved, “perhaps you really did see a figure that you
took for that of your mother.”
Nouna laughed scornfully at the notion. “As if I could mistake her! I
heard her voice, I saw her smile. It was my mother.”
Lauriston turned to Mrs. Ellis. “Was there no possibility of any one
entering the room and leaving it quickly without your seeing her?”
“Oh no,” said she at once. “Besides, Nouna fell with her head buried
among the cushions, and her eyes were closed the whole time.”
“Nouna,” said Lauriston abruptly, after a pause, “you must not speak
to that man again. The whole proceeding was a most disgraceful piece
of trickery, such as no girl ought to be subjected to. Mrs. Ellis, I
am writing to-night to the Countess di Valdestillas, to ask her to
permit my engagement with her daughter. Now that you know the interest
I take in her, you will forgive my urging you to be careful that she
obeys my earnest wish in this. I shall not wait for a letter to inform
her that her daughter is not in a safe home: I shall go to-morrow to
the Countess’s solicitors, learn her address, and telegraph. And now I
will say good-night, and I hope, Mrs. Ellis, you will forgive me this
second nocturnal visit.”
He shook hands with both ladies, and disregarding Nouna’s undisguised
anxiety to accompany him to the door, asked the elder lady if he could
speak with her a few moments alone. With as much jealous indignation
as if Mrs. Ellis had been eighteen and beautiful, Nouna flung herself
into her American chair in a passion of tears as they left the room.
Lauriston opened his subject in a very low voice as soon as he and the
governess were outside the door.
“You will need no assurance from me, madam,” he began, “of the perfect
loyalty of my motives, now you know that I intend to marry Nouna. But
you will not be surprised at my anxiety to know something more about
the family to which she belongs. As a matter of fact I have not even
heard her surname. Have you any objection to tell me what you know?”
“Not the least,” answered Mrs. Ellis, with perfect openness. “Her name
is Nouna Weston. Her father I never knew, as he died when she was a
little child. Her mother, now the Condesa di Valdestillas, is my ideal
of a perfect gentlewoman. She is religious, perhaps a little bigoted
even, very beautiful, and she has that distinction of manner which is
more uncommon than beauty, to my idea. She is very generous and
impulsive, and dotes upon her daughter. The Count, to whom she is
devoted, I have only seen once; he accompanied his wife on a visit to
the school. He is a small, thin, rather sallow gentleman, with very
courteous manners, who gives one the idea of being rather selfish and
domineering. The Countess dresses very quietly, almost perhaps what
some people would call dowdily, as you know our Englishwomen of high
rank so often do. But she must be well off, I think, for I know the
principal of the school used to say she wished the parents of her
other pupils were all as punctual in their payments as the Countess;
and I must say, though she doesn’t allow much pocket-money to Nouna,
yet her treatment of me is most generous. It is really good-natured of
me to wish the child happily married, for the income of an officer’s
widow who has no friends at court is by no means magnificent, as I
dare say you know.”
Nothing could be more satisfactory than this, as far as it went, and
the authority was unimpeachable; Mrs. Ellis being one of those simple,
honest, unimaginative creatures who can neither invent a story nor
tell an improbable one so as to make it appear probable. But of course
the narrative offered no explanation of the puzzling events of the
evening.
“And you believe the Countess to be still abroad?” he asked.
“Oh yes, if she were in England she would have been to see her
daughter. She only pays flying visits to this country for that
purpose.”
“Oh yes.” He could not get out of his head the idea that the woman of
whom he had caught a glimpse at the window, whose dress Nouna had seen
in the inner room down stairs, and who had certainly listened to their
conversation on the landing, was Nouna’s mother. But what on earth, if
Mrs. Ellis’s account were true, should she be doing paying secret
visits to the house where her daughter was staying, and conspiring
with a man of real or pretended mesmeric powers to play tricks on her?
It was very puzzling, but no suggestion Mrs. Ellis could offer was
likely to throw light on the subject. He however asked her one or two
more questions.
“Are there any ladies in this house besides yourselves? Or have you
noticed any lady-visitors to the other inmates?”
“There is an old Frenchwoman who gives music lessons who has a room on
the top-floor; but I have never seen any other ladies go in or out,”
said Mrs. Ellis, rather surprised by the questions.
“And the gentlemen down stairs, Rahas and Fanah, are not married?”
“I have never heard that they were, and I’m sure I hope Mr. Rahas
would never have the conscience to make up to Nouna if he had another
wife in his own country. I have always set my face against that, and
have kept Madame di Valdestillas informed of his pretensions. For I’ve
heard of these Mahometan gentlemen, that when they take a fancy to a
European wife, they send all their other wives away, and have them
back again within a month. So that I really feel quite thankful to you
for appearing and sending all thoughts of Rahas out of the girl’s
flighty head.”
“She never appeared to care for this black fellow, did she?” asked
Lauriston jealously.
“Well, no, not in that way. Though she’s a born coquette, Mr.
Lauriston, I must warn you, and the man who marries her need have
Job’s virtues as well as his own.”
“But she has a good heart,” urged Lauriston, who felt that there was a
measure of truth in the lady’s warning.
“Oh yes, her heart’s good enough. The only thing is that it must be
for ever shifting its place. However, she may grow more like her
mother in time.”
“Good-night, Mrs. Ellis, it is very good of you to be so patient with
me and my questions,” said Lauriston, feeling that he was in no
present need of further discouragement.
And he left her and ran down stairs. At the front door he was met by
Rahas, who came with bland, unprepossessing smiles and courteous
gestures, from his own apartments, to bid his guest good-night.
Lauriston, who could scarcely treat him civilly since Nouna’s story of
the trick he had played on her, was suddenly struck with an idea. He
turned to the young merchant in a more conciliatory manner.
“By the by,” he said, “in your interesting account of your strange
powers, which you attribute to the planets and I vaguely call
mesmeric, you did not tell me one thing: can you call up in the mind
of a person over whom you have that influence the image of anything
with which that person is acquainted, or can you only raise the images
which are familiar to yourself? In other words: is the picture you
wish to present so strongly present to your own mind that by the mere
force of will you can transfer it to the mind of another? or can you
make the other mind work independently of yours?”
“I cannot do that,” said Rahas, shaking his head. “I think I can
explain my effect by saying that by the exercise of my will I deaden
the forces of the mind I am at work upon, and leave it like the wet
cloth before a magic lantern ready to receive any picture I may choose
to throw upon it.”
“That is very interesting. I understand perfectly,” said Lauriston
heartily.
And after an exchange of lip-courtesies concerning their enjoyment of
each other’s society, Lauriston took his leave and started on his way
back to Hounslow.
One thing was quite clear to him now. Rahas, on his own showing, had
seen Nouna’s mother at some time or other, or he would not have been
able to call up her image in her daughter’s mind. Was there some
mysterious understanding between her and Rahas, who had, however, come
in Nouna’s path by the merest accident? George Lauriston’s romantic
love had certainly all the stimulus of mystery, and this stimulus was
rendered considerably stronger by a discovery he made, walking quickly
through Hyde Park, on his way to Victoria Station. He had been
followed by a woman.
Just before he reached the gates at Hyde Park Corner he glanced back
along the path and noticed a figure he had seen once or twice on his
way. He made one quick step back towards her; but the woman, who was
not very near, disappeared at once among the trees.
“I think I’ve had about adventures enough for one evening,” said he to
himself as he went through the gates instead of pursuing her. “I can
find out what I must know through the lawyer to-morrow.”
But when he left the train at Hounslow Barracks, he was almost sure
that, among the alighting crowd of passengers, he saw the woman again.