Next day, in the cruel but wholesome light of the morning, Lauriston
took a grand review of all the circumstances of his short acquaintance
with Nouna, and felt a growing conviction that he had made an
astonishingly complete fool of himself. He had been foolish to visit
the girl a second time, when he knew the effect her picturesque beauty
and wayward charm had had on a first interview. He had been worse than
foolish, he had been selfish, wicked, to make that wild confession,
that abrupt offer of marriage to good little Ella, when he felt
himself too weak to struggle unaided with the passion that possessed
him. He had crowned his folly last night, when he pledged himself to
marriage with a little wild girl, of somewhat mysterious parentage,
passionate, capricious, in all probability madly extravagant, whom he
hardly knew, whom he scarcely trusted, and who was certainly as
deficient in every quality which goes to the making of the typical
wife for an English gentleman as it is possible for a girl to be. And
yet, in spite of all this, Lauriston felt no faintest pang of regret;
amazement, disgust with himself undoubtedly, but of repentance no
trace.
For the tide of a first passionate love in a young, vigorous nature is
strong enough to tear up scruples by the roots, to bear along
prejudices in its waters like straws, to wash away the old landmarks
in an onrush which is all fierce triumph and tempestuous joy.
To Lauriston, who had been accustomed, from a lofty standpoint of
ambition and devotion to duty, to look down upon love as a gentle
pastime which would amuse and occupy him when the first pangs of his
hungry desire for distinction should be satisfied, the sudden
revelation of some of its keen delights was an experience full of
novel excitement and charm. True at least to one principle while so
much was suffered to go by the board, he did not for one moment waver
in his resolution to marry Nouna. No staid English girl, whose mild
passions would not develop until years after she had attained a full
measure of self-control and self-restraint, would ever have for him
the charm and the fascination of this little barbarian. Who pleased
him best, and no other he would possess.
Having resolved therefore with open eyes upon doing a rash and
hazardous thing, he gave a touch of heroism to his folly by setting
about it as promptly and thoroughly as if it had been a wise one. As
soon as parade was over he started for Lincoln’s Inn, determined to
find out what he could from the lawyers concerning Nouna’s relations,
and to write at once to her mother for the consent which he guessed
would be readily accorded.
Messrs. Smith and Angelo, solicitors, had old-fashioned offices on a
first floor, and there was a reassuring air of steady-going
respectability about their whole surroundings, from the grim bare
orderliness of their outer office to the cut of the coat of the
middle-aged head clerk who courteously asked Lauriston which of the
partners he wished to see. On learning that the visitor had no choice,
the head clerk’s opinion of him seemed to go down a little, and he
said, with the air of a man who is not going to cast his pearls before
swine--
“Then perhaps you had better see Mr. Smith.”
The visitor’s name having been taken in to Mr. Smith, Lauriston heard
it repeated in a happy, caressing voice, as if the announcement had
been that of an old friend; and the next moment he was bowed into the
presence of a tall, genial, jolly-looking man of about
five-and-thirty, with black eyes, curly black hair, and a beautiful
smile, who rose, came forward a step, shook his hand, and pressed him
to take a chair with a warmth and good-humour which seemed to cast
quite a radiance over the tiers of deed-boxes that lined the walls,
with their victims’ names inscribed on them in neat white letters.
“Well, I suppose it is nothing very serious that you want us to do for
you,” said the lawyer, glancing from the card to his visitor’s
handsome face, and mentally deciding that there was a woman in it.
“It is very serious,” said Lauriston. “It is about a lady.”
The lawyer’s smile became broader than ever, and his attitude a shade
more confidential.
“Her name,” continued Lauriston, “is Nouna Weston.”
Mr. Smith’s manner instantly changed; he drew himself up in his chair,
and touched a hand-bell.
“I think, Mr. Lauriston,” he said, with the smile very much reduced,
“that you had better see Mr. Angelo.” He told the boy who entered at
this point to request Mr. Angelo to spare him a few minutes, and
turned again to his visitor. “You see,” he said, “Miss Weston’s
mother, the Countess di Valdestillas, is one of our oldest clients, so
that to any business connected with her we like to give the entire
collective wisdom of the firm.”
At that moment a side-door, the upper part of which was of ground
glass, opened, and an old gentleman, of rather impressive appearance
and manner, came slowly in. He was of the middle height, slight and
spare, with a face and head strikingly like those of the great Duke of
Wellington, a resemblance which his old-fashioned built-up collar and
stock proved to be carefully cultivated. He carried a gold-rimmed
double eyeglass, which he constantly rubbed, during which process his
grey short-sighted eyes would travel steadily round, seeing nothing
but the subject which occupied his mind, helping to put the barrier of
a stately reticence between him and his client. He bowed to Lauriston,
with the air of a man who was entitled to be offended by this
intrusion, but who would graciously consent to listen to a reasonable
excuse; and Mr. Smith, with great deference, placed a chair for the
great man, waited till he was seated, and explained the object of the
young officer’s visit.
“This gentleman, Mr. Angelo, has come to speak to us on some matter
concerning Miss Nouna Weston.”
The old lawyer stopped for a moment in the action of rubbing his
glasses, and then bowed his head slowly. The younger partner glanced
at Lauriston as a sign for him to speak.
“I am here, sir, to-day,” began the young officer, feeling his
confidence rise in this atmosphere of steady, reassuring, middle-class
respectability, “as a suitor for the hand of Miss Nouna Weston. I have
been referred by her guardian, Mrs. Ellis, to you, as I am told that
it is only through you that I can communicate with her mother. I am
anxious to make my wishes known to that lady with as little delay as
possible.”
Mr. Angelo put on his glasses and gave the young fellow a straight,
piercing look. Mr. Smith, who seemed to be swallowed up, smile and
all, in the more imposing presence of his partner, examined the
features, not of his visitor, but of Mr. Angelo.
“You have not known the young lady long, I understand?” said the elder
lawyer, in a mellow though somewhat feeble voice. “When Mrs. Ellis was
last here she made no mention of you as, we being partly guardians to
the young lady, she would certainly have done had you already appeared
in the capacity of suitor.”
“I have not known her three weeks,” said the young man, blushing; “but
if you know how she’s living, in a lodging-house full of other people,
where anybody can meet her on the stairs, you can’t wonder I want to
have a claim over her, so that I can get her into a better home.”
“Then I understand--you see, Mr. Lauriston, I speak as a person of
some authority in this matter--you have a home for her to which you
wish to take her as quickly as possible.”
“I am sorry to say I have not, sir. I am only a lieutenant now in the
--th Hussars.”
Mr. Angelo gave him a sudden, keen look. “Lord Florencecourt’s
regiment!” he said, as if struck by the circumstance.
Lauriston scarcely noticed the interruption. “Yes,” continued he,
“with scarcely anything but my pay. But I hope to get my step next
year, or the year after at latest, when I could marry at once.”
“Pray do not think me impertinent; this is to me a matter of business,
and must be discussed plainly. Miss Weston has some extravagant
notions, and may have given you the idea that her mother would
continue to be indulgent should she marry. It is right to inform you
that this is not the case. The Countess’s income has suffered during
the recent depression in rents, and--”
“I should never marry unless I could keep my wife,” interrupted
Lauriston abruptly. “I have been offered work on two military papers
whenever I care to take it up, so that I shall not only be able to
save, but to pay for Nouna’s maintenance and education in some good
school on the understanding that she is to marry me on leaving it.
Anything that you or the Countess can wish to know about my family--”
The old lawyer raised his hand slowly. “--is easily known. You are a
relation, I suppose, of the late Captain Lauriston of the -- Dragoon
Guards?”
“I am his son.”
“Ah! Your great-uncle, Sir Gordon Lauriston, was a client of my
father’s. You wish, I understand, to communicate with Madame di
Valdestillas? Any letter that you leave in our care will be forwarded
at once to her.”
These words re-awoke Lauriston’s remembrance of the mysterious lady
who had followed him to his quarters the night before.
“As Madame di Valdestillas is now in England,” he said quietly, “why
should I not have her address?”
The old lawyer remained as unmoved as a mummy by this dashing stroke,
but a sudden movement on the part of the less sophisticated Mr. Smith
did not escape the young man’s notice.
“If she is in England--which is very possible, as her movements are as
uncertain as the winds--she has only just arrived, as we have not yet
seen her. But if you will write to her under cover to me, I can
promise you the letter will soon be delivered to her, as her first
visit on coming to England is always to us.”
“But she was at her daughter’s house last night!”
“Indeed! Then why did you not speak to her yourself?”
Lauriston was disconcerted. The manner and voice of the old lawyer
expressed such bland surprise, that he began to think he had
discovered a mare’s nest, and answered in a far less bold tone.
“I saw a lady whom I believed to be the Countess. I may have been
mistaken--”
“You must have been mistaken,” said the lawyer imperturbably. “The
Countess di Valdestillas is not a person whose individuality admits of
doubt. I will write to her, inform her of your visit, tell her that
you would prefer to communicate directly with her, and ask her if she
will authorise us to give you her address. We are forced to take this
course, as, the Countess’s business affairs being all in our hands, we
are empowered to sift all her correspondence from England, that
nothing but what is of real importance should come to her hands. The
Countess has a dash of Eastern blood, like her daughter, and is, well,
shall I say--not madly energetic.”
There was nothing for Lauriston to do but to acquiesce in this
arrangement and to take his leave, scarcely yet knowing whether he was
satisfied or dissatisfied with his interview. As he passed out,
however, condescended to by the senior, made much of by the junior
partner as before, a clerk took in a telegram to the former. Lauriston
had hardly gone two steps from the door of the outer office, when he
heard the soft voice of the old gentleman calling to him from the door
of his private room. He turned back, and with some appearance of
mystery, and a rather less condescending tone than before, Mr. Angelo
ushered him in, and offered him a chair before uttering a word.
“I thought I should like to say a few words to you in my private
capacity, Mr. Lauriston,” said he, when he had softly closed the door.
“As a lawyer, speaking in the presence of my partner, as a member of
the firm, I may have seemed to you somewhat dry and unsympathetic; as
a man, believe me, I should be glad to further an alliance between a
member of such an honourable family as yours, and a young lady in
whose welfare I take an interest.”
Lauriston bowed in acknowledgment, with the conviction that it was the
telegram he had just received which had produced such a softening
effect on Mr. Angelo. He hastened to take advantage of it.
“You are very kind, sir. I love Nouna with all my heart, and my
dearest wish is to make her my wife. But I should be glad if you would
answer one question. The answer you give will make no difference to my
course of action; but it is right and necessary that I should
understand Nouna’s position. Am I right in supposing, as circumstances
suggest, that Madame di Valdestillas had a secret in her past life,
that--Nouna’s father was not her husband?”
Mr. Angelo’s eyes wandered round the room in a reflective manner.
“May I ask what leads you to this supposition?”
“The strange way in which she has been brought up, spoilt and yet
neglected, the daughter of a woman of rank allowed to live in a
lodging-house with a paid companion; it is not the usual education of
a lady, English or foreign.”
“You are right. The circumstances are strange. You are an officer, the
son of a man of known honour. You will of course regard any
communication I make to you on this subject as strictly and inviolably
secret.”
“I hope you have no doubt of that.”
“I have not. You understand that the information I am about to give
you, you are bound in honour never to use, you are to regard as never
having been heard?”
“I understand that perfectly.”
“Well then, Nouna is the legitimately born daughter of an English
gentleman. That, I think, is all you wish to know.”
As his tone said very decidedly that this was all he meant to tell,
Lauriston professed his entire contentment, and once more took his
leave. Upon the whole he was not dissatisfied with the result of his
visit to the lawyers. Nothing he had heard there was inconsistent with
what he had already been told about the Condesa di Valdestillas, and
he began to think that the romantic circumstances in which he had met
Nouna had perhaps inclined him to make mountains of mystery out of
molehills of eccentricity. The only thing which now seemed to baffle
all attempts at explanation was the remarkable way in which Mr. Angelo
had made the simple statement concerning Nouna’s birth. As, however,
it was impossible to learn the reason of this, Lauriston gave up
trying to guess it, and assured of the prosperity of his suit, fell
into a lover’s dream, picturing to himself the joys of moulding this
passionate pliable young creature, under the influence of his love,
into an ideal wife, good as an English woman, fascinating as a French
one, free from the narrowmindedness of the one and the frivolity of
the other, and with a passionate warmth of feeling unknown to either.
But as he recalled the grace of her movements, the delicate beauty of
her face and form, her cooing voice and caressing gestures, the
intoxication of his passion grew stronger than his efforts of reason
and imagination. Why should he not marry her now, as she wished, as he
longed to do? He could then educate her himself, guard her, as no
schoolmistress, or guardian other than a husband could do, from all
influences that were not noble, and pure, and good; whatever she might
have done in imagination, in reality she had not lived in anything
more like a palace than that one room, used for a few weeks, avowedly
fitted up as a show-room, and furnished with treasures that were only
borrowed. True, if he married her now, she would have to live in
London lodgings still, and without the alleviations afforded by
painted ceilings and silk-hung walls. But he would find for her head a
softer pillow than any embroidered cushion, and soothe her with a
lullaby sweeter than the sound of any fountain that ever flowed.
And then in the midst of this fine frenzy, dull common sense put in a
word, and showed him the reverse side of the medal; a young husband
with ambition checked, and study made impossible by growing debt and
premature responsibility; a young wife ill-dressed, ill-amused, with
no companions of her own sex, perhaps a mother before she had left off
being a child, her warm nature chilled by poverty and disappointment,
her love for her husband changing into contempt or hatred. No, it was
not to be thought of. He must find her a home where he could see her
constantly, and keep her under the influence of his own thoughts, and
of his own love, until the day when he could bring her to a little
home such as an English lady of simple tastes could be happy in.
With an inspiration born of these thoughts, he remembered with a shock
that he might have come westward third class on the underground,
instead of in the well-appointed Forder hansom which he had chosen so
carefully. He thrust up his umbrella, told the driver to stop, jumped
out, paid him, and continued on foot from Chancery Lane, along Fleet
Street, till he came to the office of a military paper the editor of
whom, with the friendliness of editors to such writers as are not
dependent upon writing, had asked him to contribute certain articles
on a subject in which Lauriston was well-known to be proficient. He
had sufficient acumen to let the editor think, when he expressed his
readiness to undertake the work at once, that his object was fame
rather than coin; and having settled by what date the first instalment
was to be ready, and ignored the matter of terms with a handsome
indifference he did not feel, Lauriston left the office and returned
to the West End on foot.
He dined that evening at his club with a couple of friends one of whom
gave a rather startling turn to his beatific thoughts by an allusion
to Clarence Massey’s mad infatuation for some girl whom he had “picked
up in a curiosity shop somewhere in the slums.”
Lauriston made no comment, and did not betray by a look that the
remark had an interest for him. The little Irishman had taken care not
to indulge in his ravings over his unknown beauty in the presence of
the comrade whom he had tricked. But the words of Rahas, on the
preceding evening, had given Lauriston a clue to his own visit to 36
Mary Street, and this startling reference to Massey’s share in the
matter strengthened his resolution to give that amorous and artful
young gentleman a lesson.
Lauriston went home early, with the fixed intention of settling up
this matter with as little delay as possible, and on arriving at his
quarters he found his intention strengthened and the means of carrying
it out provided, in a very unexpected manner.
As he was going up the stairs to his rooms, he was met by his
soldier-servant, who told him that a lady had been waiting to see him
for the last two hours. Lauriston hurried on in great excitement.
Neither Nouna nor Mrs. Ellis knew his address, his sisters were in
Scotland, and he had not, like some of his comrades, a circle of
lively and easy-mannered feminine acquaintances. His thoughts flew
directly to the woman who had followed him home the night before:
perhaps the mystery was going to be solved after all; perhaps he
should indeed see Nouna’s mother.
Before he reached his rooms he heard voices; a few steps more and he
could distinguish that of Clarence Massey; arrived at the door of the
sitting-room, the soft tones of Nouna herself struck his ears.
“No,” she was saying, “I shall not kiss you; Mr. Lauriston would be
very angry with you for asking me.”
“Bless you, you little beauty, no, he wouldn’t. He’d be delighted to
know you were enjoying yourself,” answered Massey confidently.
Lauriston threw open the door just as Massey, who had been sitting on
a stool a few paces from the sofa where Nouna half-sat, half-reclined,
sprang up and seized the hand with which she was wearily supporting
her head.
Nouna jumped up, clapping her hands with joy like a child, and ran
towards Lauriston, who, livid, wet, and trembling, did not even look
at her, but striding across to Massey without a word, lifted him up in
his arms with the sullen fury of an enraged bear, and carrying him to
the door, which he opened with a kick, flung him pell-mell, anyhow,
like a heap of soiled clothes against the wall, as far along the
corridor as he could throw him. Then slamming the door to work off the
remains of his rage, he turned to the frightened girl, who had fallen
on her knees and was clinging about his feet.