The apartments George Lauriston had taken for his wife were two
bright and pleasantly furnished rooms, not large, but sufficiently
lofty, with no aggressive blue glass or china ornaments, crochet
antimacassars, or other cherished relics of the professional landlady.
There was a piano, not likely to be much of a resource, perhaps, to
the player with “an ear”: there was a handsome carved oak book-case,
carefully locked, which contained, sandwiched in with old-fashioned
trashy gift-books and much futile evangelical literature, some
tempting back volumes of the _Cornhill_ and _Blackwood_, and a
beautifully preserved set of Scott’s novels. The mantelpiece was
draped with an inexpensive but harmonious imitation of tapestry, the
worn places on the carpet were covered with unlined goat-skins, there
was the inevitable sideboard with doors that _would_ not keep closed
without a neat little wedge of newspaper, there were modern
spindle-legged, handsomely covered chairs, and a plush-hung table, and
there was a big, broad, luxurious Chesterfield settee, which had
evidently been bought a bargain because it was inconveniently large,
and on which Lauriston had again and again, during the last few days,
pictured the ease-loving Nouna reclining. To add to the attractions of
her new home for his bride, George had taken care to fill every
available corner with flowers--mignonette and geraniums in pots on the
sill of the two windows, cut roses and carnations, sweetpeas and
purple and golden heartsease--crammed into every vase and glass the
landlady could spare.
On the table he had caused to be spread a wedding-breakfast such as
Oberon might have served to Titania. For this great human goose would
have shrunk from the suggestion that a healthy girl of sixteen can
generally eat anything, and lots of it; and that rounds of bread and
butter cut pretty thick, a plentiful helping of dried haddock, or a
couple of eggs and a rasher of bacon, all washed down with immoderate
draughts of weak tea, will form an acceptable meal at nine in the
morning to our fairest maids, and that your delicate appetite--alas,
that it should be so!--is generally the result of sickly health. Piled
high in the centre was a pyramid of giant strawberries, and round
about were plates with French pastry, bonbons, game sandwiches thin as
wafers, bananas, limes and a pineapple; the whole guarded by a white
porcelain elephant, out of whose houdah small ferns were growing in an
unlikely manner. This last introduction was a happy thought of
Lauriston’s, and was supposed to remind his bride gracefully of the
land of her birth.
He had been extravagant certainly; what churl would not be for his
wedding day? But what happiness those preparations had given him! How
he had frowningly scrutinised the rooms, to be quite sure that no
single corner presented a less pleasing appearance than could by any
possible ingenuity be given to it! How, in imagination, he had
followed her with his eyes as she tripped through the rooms in her
bird-like way, stopping to hover over the flowers, to eat a
strawberry, to draw aside the curtains and peep out from her new nest
into the street! How he had stood at the door of the bedchamber as in
a sanctuary, with his heart full of a wish, devout as a prayer, that
the child-woman who was coming to his arms might know no sorrow from
which a strong man’s love could save her!
And now by some shadowy calamity that he did not yet understand, it
was all changed, the sweet home-coming was spoilt, and he stood before
his newly-made wife with no absorbing tenderness in his eyes, but with
anxiety, suspicion, and fear struggling under the mask of apparent
sternness, which was the outward sign of his efforts at self-control.
Nouna was alone, lying on the couch as he had so often by anticipation
pictured her. She was curled up prettily enough, her head back upon
the side, which was soft enough to serve for a cushion. The drapery of
her arms was drawn carefully down, but the left hand, with its tiny
gold ring, was placed proudly _en évidence_ against her white sash.
She looked flushed, shy, and rather frightened, and gave a little
nervous laugh and a timid smile as he came in, which would have
enchanted him but for the unexplained sights and sounds which had
preceded his entrance.
“Who was that with you, Nouna?” he asked gently enough, but without
coming nearer to her than the door, which he had just shut.
“With me!” she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows very innocently.
“Yes, dear. I heard some one scuffling about in here and talking just
as I came in. Now, Nouna, my darling, why don’t you tell me?” he asked
very softly, coming a step nearer.
But she curled herself up in the corner of the couch, and looked up at
him like a marmoset who has broken a Dresden cup--for a marmoset knows
Dresden, and prefers it as a plaything to the ordinary breakfast
china.
“Don’t look like that. You frighten me,” she said in a low voice, with
an inclination divided between weeping and running away.
George came and knelt by her, but as she shrank back he did not offer
to touch her.
“Listen to me, little one. I am not angry, only sorry you will not
tell me what I ask. Who was the woman I heard talking to you just now?
Was it your mother?”
“Mamma! Oh, no, no, no,” said she with a convincing accent of
astonishment. “I tell you there wasn’t anybody; I was singing to
myself,” she added with less appearance of sincerity.
George drew back deeply wounded, and looking more stern than he
guessed. In the silence between them he heard the rattle of the lock
in the next room, and the shaking of the door. He walked up to the
folding-doors which led into the bedroom, while Nouna turned her head
to watch him anxiously. Crouching down on the other side of the bed,
with more of the appearance of an animal than ever now that she was
foiled in her attempt to escape, was the Indian servant Sundran.
“Get up,” said George shortly. “No one is going to hurt you. What are
you doing here?”
“I was doing no harm, sahib. I came to see my pretty missee, Missee
Nouna, my own foster-child that I nurse and love. She send for me,
sahib, she send for me; she lonely without me. Sahib, let me stay. I
will serve you, only for food to keep me alive if you let me stay.”
She was passionately in earnest, and without rising from her knees she
dragged herself to him and tried to kiss his feet. George evaded the
unwelcome embrace. He couldn’t bear this woman, and the thought that
Nouna could really have missed her unwholesome prattle enough to send
for her clandestinely on her wedding day gave him deep pain. He could
scarcely help being touched by her animal-like devotion, but to allow
her to remain in Nouna’s service now that the latter was his wife and
was to begin her nobler education under his influence and guidance,
was on every account not to be thought of.
“You never thought of staying, Sundran. You were trying to get away
without my seeing you, encouraging my wife to deceive me on her very
wedding day. How can you expect me to keep near her such a wicked
adviser as that?”
“Sahib, I did not know you would be good to me. I thought you would be
cruel and hard and fierce, as the English sahibs are sometimes. Oh, I
have known them! But you are good, you are noble; you will not
separate the sweet young lady who is the light of my eyes from her
poor old Sundran.”
The poor creature’s eyes were indeed full of passionate tears, and
George, who was no more proof than the majority of his sex against
that form of argument in a woman, said gruffly:
“Nonsense, I tell you it’s impossible. But you can go down stairs and
get them to give you some tea if you like, and afterwards you shall
see your mistress again. But mind, if you ever attempt these underhand
tricks again, you shall never set eyes on her as long as you live.”
She seemed a little comforted, and murmured broken, humble thanks as
she got up and dried her eyes on a corner of the white garment which
served her as shawl and head-dress. Then George went through the next
room, Nouna still watching him in the same attitude as before, and
unlocking the bedroom door, let the woman out. As soon as he had seen
her get to the bottom of the stairs he re-locked the bedroom door and
put the key in his pocket to prevent her hiding herself there again,
and went back to his bride in a very chastened mood. This first
experience of matrimony was certainly disillusionising. He must get to
the bottom of the whole business at once, that was certain; but how
was he to begin? It was too cruel to have to ply this little creature
whom he loved with questions instead of kisses. He sat down by the
table, keeping his eyes resolutely fixed upon the china elephant.
“When did you send for Sundran, Nouna?” he asked huskily.
“To-da--ay.”
There was a mournful little break of her voice upon the last syllable,
which was almost too much for him. He took a strawberry from the dish,
which now held only three or four, to keep his hands from twitching,
and swallowed it ferociously, as his mouth was dry and parched.
“Who brought her here?”
No answer.
“Well, dear?”
She began to sob. George swallowed more strawberries, stalks and all,
but found small relief in them.
“It was Rahas who brought her,” said George, trying to be as gentle as
possible.
More sobs, so that the unfortunate inquisitor had to get up, walk with
a martial tread to the window, and say his next words with his back to
her.
“When did he come? What did he come for, Nouna?”
The tears were in George’s eyes too by this time.
“Answer me, answer me, child,” cried he in a frenzy as she began to
moan miserably.
Her quick ears caught the breaking sound in his voice, and suddenly
ceasing in her signs of grief she called aloud:
“Come and ask me _here_, and I’ll tell you anything!”
He turned round. She was holding out her arms. George gave a great
cry.
“Nouna, my wife, my wife!”
The next moment she was crushed up against his breast.
When out of the intoxication of that first embrace George drifted
slowly back to a dim consciousness of earthly things, it came upon him
with a sudden sobering shock that there was something new and
unaccounted for in the appearance of his bride. For on the little
slender arm that encircled his neck with the clinging, vibrating
pressure of an absorbing passion, shone and glittered close under his
eyes a sparkling mass of precious stones. He drew away from her
suddenly, and seizing both her arms almost roughly, pushed up the half
transparent sleeves and looked from the one to the other in
stupefaction, while Nouna laughed aloud in exuberant, luxurious
happiness.
“Where did you get these?” he asked in bewilderment even stronger than
his anxiety.
George had but a scant and careless acquaintance with the contents of
jewellers’ windows, and his circle of diamond-bedecked duchesses was
less than limited. But there was a quiet self-sufficiency about the
way in which those white transparent stones allowed themselves to be
looked upon as unobtrusive modest things, and then, at a turn of
Nouna’s wrist, flashed dazzling rays into his eyes, which told him
that these pretty ornaments were not like the innocent and harmless
mock jewels in the silver-gilt bracelets that Nouna had been allowed
to deck herself out with in Mary Street, but were that bane of the
husband--diamonds. What the value of the jewels she was wearing might
be he did not even guess; but he could not doubt that the seven
bracelets she had on her arms, and a glittering diamond lizard three
inches long, with rubies for eyes, which fastened her sash where that
morning there had been only a simple pin, and a necklace of large
pearls that encircled her throat, had cost more than four or five
years of his pay. He looked at them with a very grave and doubtful
face, with as much mistrust and misliking as if they had been
poisonous insects.
“Ha, ha!” cried Nouna, raising her arms and turning them about that
the jewels might flash and sparkle the more in the rays of the
afternoon sun struggling through the blinds. “Where did I get them?
You must guess that.”
She was for the moment too much absorbed in the delight of watching
the changing lights on her trinkets to notice the discontent in his
face. Glancing then merrily at him to direct his attention to the play
of the sunlight upon the stones, she let her arms fall as she noted
his expression.
“Don’t you like to see me wear pretty things?” she asked plaintively;
then, as he did not at once answer, she turned petulantly away from
him, and threw herself face downwards full-length upon the couch. “It
is true what Rahas says,” she cried passionately, “that an Englishman
likes jewels on every woman but his wife, that he would rather she
should appear ugly in his own eyes than pretty in anybody else’s, that
he calls her a goddess to reconcile her to leading the--the--life of a
do--og!”
All this she poured out parrot-like amid sobs and floods of tears,
while George remained on his knees beside her, and listened as quietly
as a statue. Like other open and generous natures with an element of
strength in them, he could be as merciful towards the frank confession
of weakness as he was hard in the face of deception. He thought Rahas
had worked on her by means of her love of finery, and by dark warnings
against the husband of whom she had as yet had no experience, and
stifling all impulses of rage against the author of the evil, who was
absent and could not now be dealt with, he at once set about arriving
at a more complete knowledge of what had taken place between his young
wife and the wily Oriental. Sitting on the edge of the couch he put
his arms round Nouna, drew her to him, and calmed her outburst of
tearful petulance with tender, yearning caresses, so fond, so warm,
with such depths of almost paternal protectiveness toning down and
mingling with the ardent passion of the lover, that her fitful nature
was soothed in a very few moments, and her arms made instinctively for
his neck again as a baby turns to its mother’s breast, and the tears
dried on her cheeks as she began to smile up confidingly into his
face.
“Now, little wife, tell me,” he whispered, looking down into her eyes
with the steady fire of a man’s noblest, strongest love, before which
a woman’s weak fears and suspicions could not but melt and wither, “do
you believe I want to make your life unhappy? Do you think I shall be
hard and cruel to you, and deprive you of anything that can please
you? Look up, look up, and tell me if you think so!”
She looked up, transformed by the love-touch, the love-speech, into a
little spirit of fire and light, burning into his heart and flesh with
an irresistible, intoxicating strength of feverish, though fitful
passion. As her lips pressed his, as her fingers glided with slow,
voluptuous touch till they ruffled his curly hair and clasped each
other behind his head, he forgot his intention, forgot his suspicious
fears, enthralled by the bliss of possession of the first woman he had
ever loved and longed for. It was not until the passion-fire began to
fade in Nouna’s eyes, and she slid languidly down from his neck, and
drawing his arms about her so as to support her best in the position
she chose, nestled against him with closing eyes, while a long sigh of
perfect and complete happiness rose to her parted lips, seemed to
quiver along her form, and then died slowly away, that his doubts and
fears surged up again in the midst of his own intoxication of
pleasure, and, with difficulty steadying himself to the task, he
framed a form of words in which to resume his interrogatory.
“Listen, Nouna,” he said, with an inevitable touch of hardness in his
effort at self-control; “I want you to tell me all that happened after
you drove off with Mr. Angelo from the church-door to-day.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed in a long wail of weary disgust at the obtrusive
inquiry, “you don’t want to worry me about that _now_, do you? I’ll
tell you all about it some other time.”
And she flung her arms back over her head, and laughed up at him
through the ivory frame in lazy witchery. Finding, however, that he
remained firm and would not look down at her, she changed her
attitude, and, by a quick, lithe movement, twined herself coaxingly
about him. George gave scarcely a sign of the fierce conflict that was
going on within him, between the despotic, wickedly used power this
little creature was trying to establish over him, and his own manful
determination to assume without delay his rightful lordship. For this
once he had the mastery, keeping lip and limb under firm control, and
disentangling himself from her arms to hold her away from him, he
looked steadily, but with a most loving reserve of tenderness in his
eyes, into her half-petulant, half-reproachful face.
“Tell me now, darling, and then we’ll kiss all thoughts of it away.”
Whereat she made a spring at him to anticipate the reward. But seeing
that, instead of lighting up with the flame she wanted to see in them
again, his eyes retained the steady, searching look, which moreover
seemed to become more grimly resolute for her evasions, she turned to
tearfulness, and without actually crying, moaned out in a most
melancholy voice, and with a woman’s natural love of piling on the
agony, that he had better kill her, since it was plain he did not love
her.
“Come, darling, you know better than that,” said he gently. “But I am
your husband, and you must tell me what I wish to know.”
It may be easily imagined that he was becoming madly anxious and
suspicious under all these evasions, which seemed to denote that she
had something to hide more serious than he supposed. Finding all her
artifices useless, and failing in an angry struggle to escape from his
arms, she proceeded to unfasten all her bracelets, to tear out her
diamond lizard, and after piling them in a heap in her lap, to toss
them all with a sudden, violent jerk on to the floor at her husband’s
feet.
“There!” said she triumphantly, “will that satisfy you?”
“Not at all,” said George very quietly. “I should have had them off
long ago if I had wanted to. Who gave them to you?”
She noticed the increasing sternness of his tone and answered with a
sudden quick change to childish fright.
“I had them all the time. Mamma sent them to me weeks ago, by Mr.
Angelo,” she added with a rapid inspiration.
Without any sign or word which seemed to her significant enough for a
warning, George’s self-restraint gave way, and grasping her shoulders
so firmly in his hands that she could not move to right or left, he
forced her to meet his eyes, now flaming with anger, with her own.
“Tell me the truth,” he said in a tone she had never heard him use
before.
“I dare not, I dare not,” she whispered in terrible, exaggerated fear
that took all colour from her face and lips and made her dark skin an
ugly ashy grey.
He relaxed his clasp at once, remorseful and ashamed; but his voice
was no softer than before. “Who gave you those jewels? Was it Rahas?”
She looked up rapidly, with a convincing ray of relief in her eyes.
“Oh, no, no, no. It was mamma, mamma, mamma. They were her wedding
present to me.”
George put his hand up to his forehead, and found that it was wet. A
great dread had gone from his mind, yet he remained much puzzled.
“Then why couldn’t you tell me so at once?” he asked doubtfully.
“Why, it’s no use hiding it now. Rahas brought them, and he said I was
to say I had had them before, because it would make you so angry to
know he’d been here.”
He had got at the truth at last, he believed, but he was still far
from satisfied.
“Don’t you know, Nouna,” he said more gently, putting his arm round
her again, “that you must not see people your husband doesn’t wish you
to see?”
“But I couldn’t help it,” cried Nouna, evidently surprised at seeing
him calm down so rapidly. “Mr. Angelo didn’t come in, he drove off at
once, and when I had been waiting here a little while all by myself
there was a knock and I ran down stairs, thinking it must be you. I
had been eating strawberries, so I hadn’t seen who it was coming. And
it was Rahas, and when I saw him, I said, ‘No, I must not speak to
you,’ and I wanted to shut the door. But he would not let me; he said
he had a message and something for me from mamma, and he showed me a
packet with her handwriting on it. So I said ‘Oh, give it me,’ and he
said he must come in and speak to me. And I said I would not see him
alone, I would wait till my husband came. Yes, I said ‘my husband,’ I
did, just like that,” and she drew herself up and spoke with great
dignity. “And the landlady came up just then to answer the door, so I
ran back and called to her, ‘Mrs. Lauriston is not at home,’ and I
went up stairs and looked through the curtains and saw him go away
looking all doubled up, as he does when he is very angry. And I felt
afraid, and wished you would come, and I wished I had brought my
kitten--I felt so lonely. Oh, it seemed such a long, long time; I
began to think you were sorry you had married me and thought you would
never come back at all, and I should be a widow, and I couldn’t eat
any more strawberries when I thought that. And I pulled out the roses
I had fastened in my dress and tore them to pieces. Look!” And she
pointed to a spot near the piano, strewn with crimson and
lemon-coloured petals. “Then at last a cab drove up and I rushed to
the window; and it was Rahas again, but with Sundran. And I was so
wretched and lonely that if he had been alone I must have seen him
then. And I ran down and let them in and brought them up. And
Sundran--oh, how she cried, poor thing, and told me such dreadful
stories about English husbands; how they say they love you, and then
if you displease them ever so little they throw you down on the floor
and run away, and you never see them again; and she begged me to go
away with her, and said Rahas would take care we should not starve.”
At this, George, without interrupting her, decided that his former
suspicion that Sundran had been bought by Rahas was confirmed, and
resolved to stop all further intercourse between his wife and the
Indian woman without delay.
Nouna continued, with her eyes full of tears at the remembrance: “Then
she knelt at my feet and kissed them while Rahas gave me the diamonds
and a little note inside them from mamma, saying they were her wedding
present, and I should have a better one by and by if I was happy with
my husband. And I thought this strange, and said out loud: ‘What does
she mean?’ And when I looked up I saw Rahas staring at me with his
eyes just like the coals in a fire. And I don’t know why, but I was
frightened, and I was glad Sundran was there--perhaps it’s being
married that makes me feel different, for I never felt like that
before. And I read the note to the end, and did not say any more, and
just then another ring came at the bell, and Rahas started up and
rushed out. But it was only your telegram, and he came back--for he
had gone up the stairs; and when he found you were not coming back at
once, he asked if he might stay a little, and I should not feel so
lonely. And I didn’t want him to, I didn’t indeed, but he stayed, and
he made Sundran go to the window and watch for your coming.”
George could not resist a savage exclamation below his breath.
Nouna went on: “He made me hate him, for he said I should be very
unhappy presently, he was afraid; for Englishmen were hard and cruel,
and not loving. And he told me not to tell you he had been here,
because you knew he would do anything for me, and perhaps you would
strike me. But if I wanted him or wanted my mother, he could always
let me see her at any time, and be always ready to do what I wished,
as he had always been. And he said I was to forget his words now, if I
liked, but was to remember them if I ever felt lonely and desolate.
And he said I need not trouble about knowing where he was, for by the
sympathy and power he had over me he should always be near just when I
wanted him. And I said: ‘What if I tell my husband?’ And he said it
would not matter; you would not find him. But I had better not tell
you, because you would be so angry with me. And while he was talking
Sundran called out that she saw a cab coming, and quickly like an
arrow he kissed my hand and went out of the room; and I saw him go
down a little street in front just as you came up. There, now I have
told you all, all. Kiss me, tell me you are satisfied.”
He kissed her, and put her on his knee, and smoothed her soft dark
hair; but he gave himself up to no abandonment of love, and when he
spoke it was in a subdued and rather doubtful tone.
“I am not at all satisfied, Nouna, because I think it is a very bad
beginning when a wife tries to deceive her husband on her wedding-day.
If I hadn’t caught sight of Rahas and heard you talking to Sundran I
should have believed what you pleased to tell me about the jewels, and
never have guessed that either of them had been here.”
“Well, that would have been much better, for then you wouldn’t have
been worried, and you wouldn’t have made me cry,” said she with
conviction.
George had another sudden and vivid perception of the stumbling-blocks
that stood in the way of her moral education.
“I would rather, little one,” he said gravely, “pass days full of
worry and nights without sleep than think it possible you could tell
me a falsehood.”
She looked in his face wonderingly, and then patted his cheek and
laughed.
“Well, I don’t want to tell you falsehoods,” she said indifferently,
and then paused, having at that moment discovered a new and delightful
pastime in brushing up his moustache the wrong way with her finger,
and laughing at the effect. “What a beautiful mouth you’ve got!” she
exclaimed suddenly, in ardent and sincere admiration. “It’s smaller
than mine, I think,” she continued dubiously, and she proceeded
gravely to take the measurement of the one against the other, with a
wicked look out of her eyes as they came close to his which made
George suspect while he yielded to the temptation, that it had been
deliberately formed to put an end to a discussion which the little
lady found very tedious.