The minutes that had been wasted in waiting for the vicar before the
wedding, and in conversing with Mr. Angelo after it, had placed George
Lauriston in a singular position: there was not time enough left to
drive with his bride to the apartments he had taken for her in a
street near Wilton Place, and then to return to the barracks and put
on his uniform before parade. He must either risk being late for his
duty for the first time, or miss the pleasure of himself introducing
his young wife to her new home. His mind was made up before he reached
the church-door. He had a superstition, the more influential that he
felt his own weakness where his wife was concerned, against beginning
his married life by a breach of discipline.
Bending down over his little bride, who was leaving the church much
more sedately than she had entered it, as if the solemnity of the
married state had already begun to work its sobering influence upon
her, he said, very low and very tenderly: “Nouna, my darling, what
would you say if I asked you to go to our new home by yourself and
wait for me there? If I told you I could not go there now straight
with you without neglecting my duty?”
“Say!” said the small bride, lifting up a dismayed face suddenly, and
speaking in a tremulous voice above the pitch usually considered
decorous in a church. “Why, I should say, never mind your duty, but
come with me.”
George would not accept such a portent as this, natural as the little
heart-cry undoubtedly was.
“Oh no, darling, you wouldn’t say that,” he urged, in a hurried
whisper. “You wouldn’t like them to say I was a less good soldier
because I was married.”
“I shouldn’t care what they said, as long as I had you with me,”
persisted Nouna piteously, clinging to his arm, while two tears came
to her eyes and allowed themselves to be blinked down her cheeks.
George hesitated. The intoxication was mounting rapidly from heart to
head as he looked at her, felt the magnetic pressure of the small
fingers. Mr. Angelo, seeing the difficulty, came up with his usual
deliberate step and detached the clinging bride with the unemotional
dexterity of a machine.
“The Countess would be much annoyed if she thought you would impede
your husband in the execution of his duty, Nouna,” said he as drily as
ever. “I will take you home, and Mr. Lauriston, I am sure, will need
no urging to join you as speedily as possible.”
George was astonished at the effect this mention of her mother had
upon the wilful girl, and he inwardly noted the fact for future use.
The hansoms in which they had come were waiting outside; he helped her
tenderly into one of them and consigned her to the care of the old
lawyer, assuring her that he would be with her again as soon as ever
he could. Then getting into the second cab, he drove as fast as he
could to Victoria.
Luck was against him, however. It was this day of all days that
Colonel Florencecourt chose for putting an end to the estrangement
which his own acts had brought about between himself and his favourite
officer. No sooner was parade over than the Colonel, who had already
spoken to him more amiably than usual, and told him with ominous
friendliness that he had something to say to him, came up, thrust his
arm through that of the young man, and reminded him that they were
both engaged to lunch with the Millards in Grosvenor Square. George
was thunderstruck. He had of course forgotten all about the
appointment in the absorbing pursuit of matrimony, and his jaw fell
perceptibly at this reminder.
“Eh?” said the Colonel. “Still a little sore at Miss Ella’s treatment?
But supposing her ‘No’ should be no more irrevocable than a lady’s
‘No’ to a good-looking and dashing young fellow usually is? Look here,
Lauriston, I have reason to think the Millards have an invitation in
hand for you down to their place in Norfolk, and probably Ella had a
hand in that, as the clever young lady has in most of the family
affairs.”
“But indeed, Colonel, I have had leave enough for this year, and
couldn’t expect any more. And besides, I really haven’t the least wish
in the world to go out of town at present.”
The Colonel looked at him, as he thought, suspiciously.
“As to the leave, I would guarantee you should get that,” he said with
a degree more of his usual asperity. “You know my own place is close
by the Millards’; I am going there myself for the shooting, and I have
a very particular wish to see more of you this autumn than I have had
time to do lately. Don’t disappoint me in this, Lauriston; there are
not many men whose society I think worth half-a-dozen words of
request.”
His tone, if not absolutely affectionate, was kindly enough as he said
these last words to make George sorry to disappoint him, sorrier still
to think what the elder man’s vexation and even grief would be when he
should learn how far counter to his odd prejudice against brunettes
the younger officer had run in his choice of a bride.
“I gave up all hope of marrying your niece Ella, Colonel, on the
evening when she refused me,” said he, feeling guilty and
uncomfortable. “I should never think of asking her again, and I should
feel so uncomfortable in her presence”--this he said most fervently,
for nothing could be truer--“that I had given up all thought even of
going there this morning, and have made another appointment, which I
am bound to keep.”
“You are bound to keep the one first made,” said the Colonel shortly,
“as I know by a note I got from my sister-in-law that she expects you.
Change your dress as quickly as you can; she wants us to be there
early.”
He turned away abruptly, and George went to his rooms without further
protest, but in a white heat of rage at his own idiotcy in not
remembering this wretched appointment. All he could do was to ask the
Colonel to stay for a moment at a telegraph-office on their way to
Grosvenor Square, and to send off a message to his poor little bride,
telling her not to be lonely, that he should be detained a little
while, but that he would be back as early as possible. Then the
delicious thrill of possession that the writing of the address to
“Mrs. Lauriston” gave him, was so enthralling that he lingered a few
moments, pencil in hand, before rejoining his imperious senior officer
waiting outside. Indeed neither man found great pleasure, on this
occasion, in the other’s society. George guessed that the Colonel had
resigned himself to the thought of his marrying the dark-complexioned
Ella, only to avoid the worse evil of some dangerous entanglement, to
which the young man’s recent conduct ominously pointed. Both were glad
when Grosvenor Square was reached, and a rather intermittent
conversation upon indifferent subjects broke up.
The Millards all reproached George with having neglected them lately,
and Sir Henry at once broached the subject of an invitation to
Norfolk, the suggestion of which had pleased him greatly.
“You must come,” he said hastily, when the young man pleaded something
about “working hard this autumn”; “we won’t take any excuse. The
Colonel says he can get you leave, and if, as you say, you’re going to
take to writing, why everybody knows you can get better inspiration in
the fresh air of the country than you can among the chimney-pots. And
you will enjoy yourself, George, I know you will. It isn’t the
orthodox big country-house, you know, where you can fancy yourself in
London except that it’s duller; we all rough it down there, in a
cottage of my own that we’ve enlarged as we wanted. My wife and I play
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, you know. She has fashion and a carpet up here,
while I have comfort and a sanded floor in Norfolk. Isn’t it so,
Cicely?” he added to his eldest daughter, who had come to lean over
her father’s shoulder, and to smile acquiescence in all he said in the
prettiest possible manner. “I shall set you girls to persuade him.”
Cicely was the one who never had anything to say, and whose dove-like
eyes and gentle, quiet manners roused in you a strong anxiety to know
what she thought and felt, which nobody had as yet succeeded in
discovering.
“Set Ella, papa,” said Cicely, beaming as sweetly as ever. “Charlotte
and I have no influence; it’s always Ella.”
“Ella, come here, you’re wanted,” said her father. And when his
youngest daughter had crossed the room obediently, he put his hand on
Lauriston’s shoulder, and spoke in a playfully magisterial tone. “This
person is accused of wilful disobedience both to his Colonel and to an
old friend, who both desire and command his attendance at Maple Lodge,
in the county of Norfolk, on or about the First of September next. See
what you can do to bring him to reason.”
“Perhaps it will be I who will bring you all to reason when you hear
the powerful arguments I have to urge on my side. Ella shall judge,”
said George.
And he laughingly led Ella, who was as prim and solemn as ever, to a
sofa, where he sat down beside her, and instantly resumed his gravity.
“Of course you don’t want to come,” said Ella with disagreeable
dryness, crossing her knees and clasping her hands round the uppermost
in a masculine manner which constantly shocked her sisters’ sense of
propriety, and recalled to Lady Millard’s mind her own ways in the old
time before she crossed the Atlantic and became the dignified wife of
an English baronet.
“It isn’t that at all,” said George gravely; “I was married this
morning.”
The girl was startled. She looked full in his face as if trying to
read in his eyes all the circumstances of that hasty step, even while
she silenced the cry of her own heart. She had been honest with him
and with herself; she had never allowed herself, except in a rare idle
day-dream, to think that the strong secret inclination towards him of
her suppressed and somewhat neglected affections, would ever blossom
into happy love; but now that even a day-dream was no longer possible,
she felt suddenly that she had lost something precious out of that
storehouse of heart and imagination which holds a woman’s fairest
joys. In the yearning, searching, half-bewildered look she gave him
George, if he did not read quite all that was in her heart, learnt
enough to fill him with self-reproach and yet with a strong sense of
human sympathy.
“It was a rash thing to do, I know,” he said, relieved by feeling that
here at least was a being to whom he could pour out all his heart on
the subject; “but she was in the most dangerous circumstances,
scarcely more than a child, and surrounded by careless and undesirable
companions. The only way to guard her was to marry her, and besides--”
“You love her,” said Ella gently.
“Yes.”
Both were silent for a moment. Then she said, all her ordinary
abruptness of manner melted by kindly feeling:
“I suppose, George, from what you have told me and what you have not
told me, that she was not, well--not in the same rank of life as you
are?”
“No, at least--certainly not in the same circumstances. She is the
daughter of a Spanish Countess, who does not live in England, and you
know we English have a sort of idea that only some half-dozen foreign
titles are well-authenticated, so that a descent from Russian princes,
for instance, is accounted rather less desirable than a descent from
English buttermen.”
“That will hurt you socially then, George, because people will not be
so ready to take her up.”
George shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t care much for society myself,
but it may be hard on the poor child.”
Ella rose, as if moved by a sudden impulse, and saying she must remind
her mother of an appointment, she left George and crossed to her
parents, to each of whom she said a few words in a low voice as
luncheon was announced. They had scarcely all taken their seats in the
dining-room, when Lady Millard, upon a glance from her youngest
daughter, said:
“I don’t think you have treated us quite fairly in keeping us all in
the dark except Ella, George. However, there is nothing left for us
now but to congratulate you, and to insist upon your coming to us at
Maple Lodge in September, and bringing your wife with you.”
“You might have knocked me down with a feather, as the housemaids say,
when Ella told me about it just now, and said I was to hold my tongue
about it till it was announced,” said Sir Henry, while the other two
girls lifted up their gentle voices and clamoured questions about the
bride.
George glanced gratefully at Ella while he answered as much as he
could, thanked Lady Millard for her invitation, was overruled when he
pleaded that his wife was too young and too much of a hoyden to pay
visits until she had sobered down a little, and looked anxiously at
the Colonel, who had received the announcement in dead silence, and
refused to offer the smallest comment. Nobody but himself and Ella
knew how very recent his wedding had been, so George found it
impossible to break away from them until four o’clock, when, much to
his vexation, the Colonel left too. The elder man read the expression
on the face of the younger, and he said, in a cold voice, as he kept
pace with him on the broad pavement of the square:
“I am not going to trouble you either with reproaches or warnings: it
is too late. But I am going to give you two words of advice. You are
young, ardent, generous-blooded; you are in dangers that I can
understand. It is plain that you have married for love, and love only,
in the hottest and most reckless way, some little jade whose face has
bewitched you. Well, listen. Don’t begin by worshipping her as a
goddess, or you will end by having to propitiate her as a devil. Live
two lives; one with her, all sweetness and softness and silliness,
using up all the superfluous sentiment and folly we are all burdened
with, in kisses and sighs at her footstool: but once shut yourself
into your study, or shut her up in her drawing-room with her pug dog
and her needles and snips of canvas and wool, forget her, brace
yourself up to what you have always looked upon as the serious
interests of your life, lock her pretty face and her pretty prattle
right up in your heart, and keep your mind and your soul free from the
sickly contamination. When you are with her, think of nothing but her;
when you are away from her, think of anything else. Never mind what
she does while you’re away. If there’s any harm in her, it would come
out if you kept her under glass, while she’s a thousand times less
likely to get into mischief if she respects you as her master and
superior, instead of despising you as her slave. Remember a man can
never be the _equal_ of a woman. If you only admit the possibility, it
is war between you until the one or the other has come off conqueror.”
He ceased speaking abruptly, and they walked on a few moments in
silence.
At last Lauriston said: “That system might do for a philosopher,
Colonel, but it will not suit the every-day Englishman.”
“I should not recommend it to the every-day Englishman. I recommend it
to you because I wish to save Her Majesty a good officer with a heart
and a brain, both of which, for any purpose outside the mere physical
functions of existence, are imperilled by your marriage. How do you
suppose that I, without some such rule of conduct, should have got
even where I am, weighted with Lady Florencecourt?”
“Ah, Lady Florencecourt!” exclaimed George hastily and deprecatingly,
forgetting ordinary civility in horror at this comparison between
Nouna and a lady who was, without perhaps any clearly specified
reason, the bogey of all her acquaintance.
The Colonel was not at all annoyed; he gave a little quick shake of
the head, and burst out with abrupt vehemence--
“By Jove, Lady Florencecourt’s an angel of light compared to----”
Suddenly, without any warning, he pulled himself up short, and added
after a second’s pause, in a milder and more reserved tone--“compared
to some of the specimens I have known.”
Lauriston glanced at him in surprise. He would have rather liked to
know something about the “specimen” or “specimens” who had made the
fiery little Colonel a woman-hater, and caused that obnoxious woman,
Lady Florencecourt, to appear an ideal wife in his eyes. But the elder
man’s burst of confidence was over. He proceeded to ask in a dry
tone--“You have quite made up your mind to treat my advice as advice
is usually treated, I suppose?”
“You are rather hard upon me, Colonel. You do me the honour to say I
have brains, but you take it for granted that I haven’t used them.
I’ve been on the rack between my thoughts and my feelings ever since I
found out I loved this girl, and I’ve puzzled out for myself some sort
of plan to live upon.”
“And what’s that? To ‘give her the key of your heart,’ I suppose, and
make her ‘the sharer of your thoughts and feelings.’”
“I should be sorry to have a wife that wasn’t!”
The Colonel stopped with a short laugh, and looked at him with
half-closed eyes and hard-set mouth.
“Well, try it!” said he raspingly; and with a half-mocking salute he
turned round and went rapidly off by the way they had come.
George looked after him regretfully; he was inclined, after all, to
put on Lady Florencecourt the whole blame of the souring process which
the Colonel’s really warm and kindly nature had obviously undergone.
He was grateful to the elder officer for a steady liking for and
interest in himself. In the uprooting and tempestuous state of mind
into which the red-hot romance of his marriage had plunged him, it was
with a pang of yearning towards the sincere and steadfast old friend
that he saw him depart disappointed, if not angry. But no man of
three-and-twenty can trouble himself deeply about one of his own sex
when he is on his way to a passionately adored bride; and a minute
later George was in a hansom on his way to ---- Street, in an ecstasy
of anticipation that left no room for a doubt or a fear. Every step
was bringing him nearer to her, making his heart beat faster; the
hansom was turning into Wilton Place, and George, in his fiery
impatience, had flung open the doors and taken a half-sovereign from
his pocket for his shilling fare in the reckless spirit that makes us
anxious to communicate to the meanest mortals (with no disrespect to
the cabbies) the joy that seems too great for one body and soul to
contain, when suddenly his eyes, straining to catch the earliest
possible glimpse of the house that contained his treasure, fell, for
the second time that day, upon the man who of all others seemed to the
young bridegroom the harbinger of ill-luck and disaster. The Eastern
merchant Rahas, not in the costume he had worn that morning, but in
scarlet fez and a long, dark-blue garment, which was a cross between a
frock-coat and a dressing-gown, was crossing the street hastily
exactly in front of Nouna’s new home, as if he had just visited it.
“Stop!” shouted George to the driver, and before the man could obey he
had sprung out, tossed him the half-sovereign, which the recipient
caught with a dexterity he would not have shown for a shilling, and
started in pursuit.
The Oriental had given one look round, and disappeared with the agile
rapidity of a cat up a narrow street a little further on. George
followed, dashed round the corner, and found himself in a stone-paved
alley with stables on each side. There was no human being to be seen;
but a barking dog at the other end seemed to have been lately
disturbed. George traversed the little court at a sharp run, found an
opening, and went through into a street beyond, where a few people
were passing to and fro with no appearance of excitement, and
carriages and cabs were going both ways. He saw that the ingenious
Eastern gentleman had given him the slip, and he returned towards his
new home with his spirits dashed, and his heart full of misgiving.
If Rahas had just visited Nouna, as George suspected, he must have
followed her from the church to her new home, as George had told no
one the address till after his wedding. Then how had he timed his
departure so as just to escape meeting her husband? And then again
came the question which had puzzled him at the church: How did Rahas
know at what time and at what church Nouna would be married?
He took out the latch-key for which, with an old bachelor instinct, he
had at once asked the landlady on taking the rooms, fitted it with an
unsteady hand into the door, and let himself in. Just inside he caught
sight of his face in the narrow strip of glass that filled the middle
beam of the hat-stand, and was struck by his own pallor, and by the
stern expression of his features.
“By Jove!” he said to himself, trying to laugh, and finding with
surprise that he was quite cold, and that his teeth were chattering,
“here’s a pretty face for a bridegroom. If I were to give Nouna, my
poor little Nouna, my first kiss with lips as blue as that,” and he
peered at himself mockingly close to the glass, “she’d think she’d
married a corpse.”
And he pulled himself together, drew down the ends of his moustache,
and rearranged his light satin tie, telling himself that he had been a
fool to chase the fellow at all instead of going straight to Nouna to
learn whether the wretch had really called and attempted to annoy her.
But a blight had fallen upon his ecstatic happiness, and he broke off
in an attempt to sing as he ran up stairs to the first floor.
As he went he heard voices, which ceased suddenly when his footsteps
sounded on the landing; then there was a slight rustling, and a noise
as of something thrown over in a hurry. He considered a moment, and
then, the key of the bedroom door being on the outside, he quietly
turned it in the lock before entering the sitting-room.