George Lauriston was not allowed to make much of his small discovery
that Nouna’s mother was not so far off as she wished it to be
believed. The very morning after his meeting with the strange lady in
the housekeeper’s room he received a private communication to the
effect that Madame di Valdestillas had run over to England from Paris
on purpose to see in the flesh the man upon whom her daughter’s
happiness depended; she had not dared to show herself to Nouna lest
her darling should be overwhelmed at the shortness of her visit, and
ply her with prayers which it would be impossible to resist and cruel
to her invalid husband to grant. She had seen, so she declared,
generosity and all noble qualities imprinted in her son-in-law’s face,
and she begged him to open his heart to receive her as his mother as
well as Nouna’s, when, at two or three months’ time at farthest, she
would induce her husband to settle permanently in England, so that she
might be near her children.
“You must have seen, my dear Mr. Lauriston,” she went on, “that at
sight of you I was almost too much overcome to speak. Think what it is
to be face to face, for the first time, with the person to whose care
you have blindly confided the being you love best in the world, to be
for the first time in seven years under the same roof with the
creature for whose sake alone the world seems bright to you, and the
chill air of this earth worth the breathing. I lead a brilliant life
as the wife of a rich man, a man of rank; but it is empty and dreary
to me without the child whom for her own sake I may not now see. Be
kind to her, cherish her, be to her the tender guardian my other ties
prevented me from being, for what I have entrusted to your care is the
idol of my prayers.
“Ever your affectionate mother,
“Lakshmi di Valdestillas.
“P.S.--Any money you may require for setting up your establishment in
a manner befitting the position in the world I wish my son and
daughter to take I will willingly advance at once through Messrs.
Smith and Angelo. An officer of such a regiment as yours wants no
passport to the best set in London; but if you propose to come to
France, or Spain, or Germany, during the autumn, let me know, and I
will take care to furnish you with the very best introductions.”
This communication was the same curious combination as before of
passionate letter and prosaic postscript, and again the rather flowery
language and gleams of practical sense reminded him of Nouna. The
romantic, hybrid signature, Lakshmi di Valdestillas, had an
undoubtedly strong effect in explaining the eccentricity of the
writer, who, with her Eastern descent and Spanish surroundings, could
not fairly be judged by rules which govern the ordinary Englishwoman.
The Countess did not fail to impress the purport of her postscript on
her daughter’s mind also, and Nouna was not slow to profit by the
injunction. She loved luxury and splendour, had a strong sense of the
picturesque, and would have surrounded herself, if that had been
possible, with the half-barbarous state of an Oriental potentate. That
being out of the question, she snatched readily at the best substitute
that offered itself, and found her husband’s fellow-officers, who made
no delay in calling upon her, more interesting, if less picturesque,
than the turbaned slaves with whom she would have filled her
fancifully-decorated apartments.
George was much astonished by the unexacting rapidity with which his
wife was “taken up” by people to whom her mother’s foreign title meant
nothing. For those officers who were married brought their wives, and
no vagary either in Nouna’s dress or manner, no peculiarity in the
arrangement of her rooms prevented them from making “a lion” of the
fascinating little Indian, from imploring her to come to their
receptions, enshrining her photograph--in an impromptu costume rigged
up hastily with pins, out of a table-cloth and two antimacassars, and
universally pronounced “so deliciously Oriental”--on their cabinets,
and begging her scrawling signature for their birthday-books. It was
not until some days after the stream of calls and invitations had
begun to pour in upon the delighted Nouna that it occurred to George
to remember that the pioneer of this invasion was Lord Florencecourt’s
sister, the Countess of Crediton, a lady who combined her brother’s
hardness of feature with a corresponding rigidity of mind which made
her a pillar of strength to all the uncompromising virtues. When he
did recall this circumstance, George felt more surprise than ever. No
one but the Colonel himself, who had an enormous influence over his
sister, could have induced her to take this step; and yet his attitude
towards Nouna, on that awkward introduction which he had made no
attempt to follow up by a call, had apparently been one of dislike but
faintly tempered with the scantest possible courtesy. Why, his very
endeavour to get Lauriston to exchange and put the Irish Channel
between himself and his old friend was clearly born of the wish to get
rid, not of the promising young lieutenant, but of the
dark-complexioned wife!
An incident which happened when the Colonel did at last make his tardy
call only increased the mystery of his conduct.
It was a hot August afternoon. The wide, tiled hall had in the centre
a marble basin holding a pyramid of great blocks of ice, which melted
and dripped slowly; large-leaved tropical plants filled all the
corners; the walls, which were stencilled in Indian designs, were hung
with huge engraved brass trays, and trophies of Asiatic armour. A low,
broad seat covered with thin printed cotton stuff, so harmoniously
coloured as to suggest some dainty and rare fabric, ran the length of
one side. An Indian carpet covered the staircase, the side of which
was draped with the richest tapestry. The simplicity, beauty, and
coolness of the whole effect was unusual and pleasing to most
unimaginative British eyes, but George, who came out into the hall on
hearing the Colonel’s voice, saw him glance round at plants and
trophies with an expression of shuddering disgust.
“You don’t admire my wife’s freaks of decoration, I see, Lord
Florencecourt,” said George, smiling. Then, a new idea crossing his
mind, he asked quickly: “Have you been to India?”
Lord Florencecourt shot a rapid, piercing look at him.
“Yes, it’s a d--d hole,” he answered briefly.
This was so summary and to the point, that Lauriston’s questions, if
not his interest, were checked, and he led the way up stairs without
pursuing the subject.
If the eccentricity of the hall were not to the Colonel’s taste, it
was easy to predict that the drawing-rooms would have no charms for
him. Here Nouna had let her own conceptions of comfort run riot. No
modern spindle-legged furniture, no bric-a-brac. The floor of both
rooms was covered with matting, strewn with the well-mounted skins of
wild beasts. There the resemblance between the two apartments ended.
For the walls of the first were painted black and lined from floor to
ceiling with queer little shelves, and brackets, and cupboards, like a
Japanese cabinet. The shelves and brackets were filled with vases of
cut flowers, cups and saucers of egg-shell china, dainty baskets
filled with fruit, brass candlesticks, bright blue plates, cut glass
bottles of perfume, hand mirrors from the Palais Royal with frames of
porcelain flowers, screens, fans, a hundred dainty and beautiful
trifles, each one of which, however, had its use and was not “only for
show.” The panels of some of the numerous and oddly-shaped cupboards
were inlaid with Japanese work in ivory, pearl, and gold, while others
were hung with bright-coloured curtains of Indian silk, fastened back
with gold tassels. The ceiling was entirely covered with gold-coloured
silk, drawn together in folds in the centre, where the ends were
gathered into a huge rosette, tied round with a thick gold cord,
finished by tassels which hung downwards a couple of feet. Under this
was a large low ottoman, covered with tapestry squares that seemed to
have been stitched on carelessly according to the fancy of the worker.
From the middle of the seat rose a small pedestal supporting an Indian
female figure in coloured bronze, who held high in her hands two
tinted lamps, which gave the only light used in the room. The curtains
to the windows and doors were gold-coloured silk, edged with gold
fringe. Little Turkish tables inlaid with pearl, and immense cushions
thrown about the floor in twos and threes, formed all the rest of the
furniture.
The second room was as full of flowers and plants as a conservatory.
Between the groups of foliage and blossom were low black wicker seats,
with crimson and gold cushions, and in one corner, hidden by azaleas
and large ferns, was a grand piano, which, whenever Nouna was at home,
a young girl, a professional pianist, was engaged to play. The walls
of this room were bright with unframed sheets of looking-glass,
divided only by long curtains of gold-coloured silk, which reflected
both plants and flowers in never-ending vistas of foliage and bloom.
The ceiling of this room was painted like a pale summer-sky with
little clouds, and the only lighting was by tiny globes of electric
light suspended from it.
When George entered the first of these rooms, ushering in the Colonel,
Nouna was as usual lying indolently on a pile of cushions, an attitude
which she varied for few of her visitors, certainly not for this old
gentleman whom she did not like. She held up to him a condescending
hand, however, which he did not detain long in his. The whole
atmosphere of the place was evidently disagreeable to him; every
object on which his glance rested, from Nouna’s fantastic white
costume with red velvet girdle, cap, and slippers, to the tigers on
the floor, whose glassy eyes and gleaming fangs reminded him of many a
fierce jungle-encounter, seemed to excite in him a new disgust, until
Nouna, to make a diversion in a conversation which her antipathy and
the vagueness of his answers rendered irksome to her, told her husband
to show Lord Florencecourt her new palms, and lazily touching a little
bell on a table by her side, fell back quietly on her cushions as a
gentle intimation that she was not going to throw away her efforts at
entertainment any more. The two gentlemen walked obediently into the
adjoining room, which was divided from the first only by gold-coloured
silk curtains which were never closed.
As they did so, the outer door of the first room was softly opened,
and the swarthy white-robed Sundran, walking with noiseless
flat-footed tread, crossed the room and laid a little brass tray with
porcelain cups and teapot down by her mistress’s side.
The Colonel, who was speaking to George, stopped suddenly, as if the
thought that moved his words had been suddenly frozen in his brain,
while his furrowed face turned at once to that dead greenish grey
which, on sallow faces, is the ghastly sign of some strong and
horrible emotion. Following the direction of his eyes with a swift
glance, George saw that it was the Indian woman who had excited this
feeling, and that this time the Colonel’s disgust was more than a
reminder--it was a recognition. Lauriston’s first impulse was to call
to Sundran, to make her turn, to confront the one with the other, and
tear down at one rough blow the mystery which was beginning to wind
itself about one side of his life. But the expression on his old
friend’s face was too horrible; it was an agony, a terror; for the
Colonel’s sake George dared not interfere. Lord Florencecourt, after
the first moment, recovered enough self-possession to make a step
further back among the plants, as if to admire one of them. But it was
plain to his companion that he was merely seeking a stand-point from
which he could observe the woman without being seen by her. And as
George watched his face under cover of idle remarks about the flowers,
he saw that further scrutiny was bringing about in the Colonel’s mind
not relief, but certainty.
As soon as Sundran had withdrawn, Lord Florencecourt advanced to take
his leave: but as he did so the door opened, and Lady Millard,
accompanied by two of her daughters, was ushered in, and he was
detained with or without his will by pretty chattering Charlotte. It
was not their first visit; but they were so charmed with the
picturesque little bride that they could not keep long away from her;
Ella in particular finding a fascination in George’s wife, which was
perhaps less extraordinary than the interest Nouna took in the plain
abrupt-mannered girl. To Lord Florencecourt, who, in spite of his
forced semi-civility, succeeded very ill in masking his intense
dislike to young Mrs. Lauriston, the fuss his nieces made with the
girl was nothing short of disgusting. Thus when he said, noticing an
unmistakable fragrance prevailing over the perfumes of sandalwood and
attar of roses:
“I observe that you let your husband smoke, Mrs. Lauriston.”
Nouna waved her hand towards a little engraved gold cigarette case,
beside which a tiny lamp was burning, and answered with a bubbling
laugh:
“How can I stop him when I set the example?”
The ladies were enraptured; they begged her to smoke to show them how
she did it, and Nouna, with a sly, mock-frightened glance from under
her eyelashes at Lord Florencecourt, whose expression of rigid
disapproval did not escape her, said, addressing him in the
half-aggrieved, half-deferential air of the man invaded by an elderly
female in a smoking-carriage:
“I hope you don’t object to smoking, sir!”
He did: every line of his face said so. But he could do nothing but
smile galvanically, assure her he thought it charming, and hand her
the cigarette-case with all the easy grace with which a man travelling
first-class produces a third-class ticket.
“You will have to lock up Henry’s cigars from Charlotte and Cicely
before long, Effie,” said he to his sister-in-law in a dry aside.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Horace,” she replied easily.
Being the daughter of an American millionaire who had gathered
together a priceless collection of paintings and then placed them in a
gallery with a magnificent roof of elaborately coloured glass, she was
used to eccentricity, and to allowing a wide latitude to individual
taste. She had not time to say more, for at that moment Nouna herself
crossed the room to her, and joined hands before her in a humbly
suppliant attitude.
“If you please, Lady Millard, I want to ask a great favour. It’s such
a very great favour that George says I ought not to dream of asking it
of any one I haven’t known much longer than I have known you. Now--may
I ask it?”
“With the reservation that if it’s anything penal I may refuse.”
“Certainly. Well, Lady Millard, I want you to help me to cure a poor
man who is suffering for want of change of air.”
“Why, of course I will, with pleasure--”
“Oh, but do you understand? I want you to invite him down to
Norfolk--and while I’m there!”
Every one began to laugh except Lord Florencecourt, and the suppliant
turned to glance round gravely at the mockers.
“Ah, but I’m not in fun,” she continued undeterred. “I am interested
in this poor fellow--” Again Ella was obliged to give vent to an
irrepressible little titter. “And I know that he ought to go out of
town, and he won’t unless he gets an invitation where he feels sure
that he will enjoy himself.” Unmindful of renewed signs of amusement,
she ended: “His own people are clergymen and great-aunts and other
things like that, so of course he will not go to them.”
Lady Millard drew her down on to the ottoman beside her, repressing
her own inclination to laugh.
“And what is the name of the interesting young invalid?”
“Dicky Wood.”
“Dicky Wood!” and the three ladies echoed it in much astonishment.
“Why, he is quite well!” “We saw him only the other day!” they cried.
Nouna nodded sagaciously.
“Of course,” she said, glancing round with a patronising sweep of the
eyes at the two younger ladies, both of whom were considerably older
than she, “your daughters cannot know so well as I do; I am a married
woman, the boys come and talk to me; but I know that he is not well at
all, and if he does not go away soon he will go into a decline, I
believe.” She ended with such tragic solemnity that all the girls’
inclination to laugh at her ingenuousness died suddenly away.
Lady Millard took off Nouna’s cap, smoothed her hair, and kissed her
as if she had been one of her own daughters. She felt a strong
sympathy for this little creature who dared to be impulsive and
unconventional and natural in a country which to her had been full of
iron bonds of strait-laced custom.
“I will see if it can be managed, dear,” she said kindly. “Of course I
can’t promise till I’ve seen Sir Henry.”
Lord Florencecourt’s harsh voice rasped their ears just as the younger
lady was heartily returning the kiss of the elder.
“And pray what does Mrs. Lauriston’s husband say?”
Nouna’s head sprang back with great spirit.
“Mrs. Lauriston’s husband has only to say yes to whatever Mrs.
Lauriston wishes, or he would be no husband for me,” she said
decidedly.
At this neither George nor any one else could help laughing.
“Oh, Nouna, you don’t know what a reputation you’re giving us both!”
he said, as soon as he could command his voice. “They’ll say I’m
henpecked.”
She looked for a moment rather dismayed, as if not quite measuring the
force of the accusation. Then with a sudden turn towards him, her
whole face aglow with affection, she said in a low, impulsive voice:
“Does it matter what they say as long as we’re both so happy?”
“No, child, it doesn’t!” cried Lady Millard, carried away by the young
wife’s frank simplicity.
But on Lord Florencecourt’s prejudiced mind the little scene was only
another display of the most brazen coquetry. He and the ladies left
together, and they were not out of the house before George, in a
transport of passion, snatched into his arms the wife who was always
discovering new charms for him. Presently she said:
“George, that wooden-faced Lord Florencecourt hates me!”
“When you’ve seen Lady Florencecourt, you’ll understand that a taste
for the one type of woman is incompatible with a taste for the other.”
“But why then did he make his sister call upon me? For she said it was
her brother made her call, and everybody thinks a visit from Lady
Crediton a great thing!”
“Well, I suppose it must have been to please me, Nouna,” said her
husband.
But in truth he did not feel sure of it, Lord Florencecourt’s conduct
lately having been in more ways than one a mystery to him.
Two days later, however, he had a conversation with his chief, the end
of which supplied, as he thought, a clue to it. Lord Florencecourt
began by reproaching him for a falling off in the quality of his
ambition.
“I can see it,” said he, “I can see the fire slackening every day,
aims getting lower, if not more sordid. I am an old fool, I suppose,
to begin ‘the service is going to the dogs’ cry; but I, for one,
believe in enthusiasm; a soldier without it is not worth the cost of
his uniform; and I’d sooner see a young officer’s body shot down with
a bullet than his soul gnawed away by a woman.”
“Colonel, you are going too far--”
“No, I’m not. What will you remember of the hardest words an old man
can speak when you are once again in the arms of that--”
“You forget you are speaking of my wife,” interrupted George hastily
in a low hoarse voice.
“Your wife! How many of the duties of a wife will that little thing in
the red cap perform? Will she look after your household, bring up your
children well, keep you up to your work, advance your interests by her
tact, nurse you when you’re laid up? No; she’ll ruin you by her
extravagance, disgrace you by her freaks, and if you ever should be
ill or ordered off and unable to keep your eye on her, ten to one
she’d bolt with some other man.”
“With all respect, Colonel, I think I have chosen my wife as well as
some of my superiors,” said George, at a white heat, scarcely opening
his lips.
Now every one knew that Lady Florencecourt was the soul of
“aggravation,” but Lauriston had no idea that his retort would bowl
the Colonel over so completely. Instead of indignation at the
lieutenant’s turning the tables upon him, his face expressed nothing
but blank horror, and an agony as acute as that which he had suffered
two days before at sight of the Indian woman Sundran. Again the look
was momentary; and in his usual voice, with his eyes fixed upon
George, without any irritation, he said slowly:
“Lady Florencecourt--” He paused. George remained silently facing him,
rather ashamed of himself. The Colonel continued more glibly--“Lady
Florencecourt may be surpassed in amiability, I admit that. But she is
at least above reproach, infirmity of temper in a wife counting rather
on the right side of the balance, as the due of uncompromising
virtue.”
“But, Colonel,” hazarded George apologetically, being moved to some
compassion by these outlines of a gloomy domestic picture, “you would
not expect my wife to be yet as uncompromising as Lady Florencecourt?”
“Isn’t it going rather far when she cannot pass a week’s visit to a
country-house without providing herself with a retinue of young men?”
“Oh, Dicky Wood!” said George cheerfully. “That’s all right; it is the
purest good-nature her wanting to get poor Wood out of town now. He’s
got into--”
He stopped. Lord Florencecourt was his friend, but he was also his
commanding officer, and Dicky’s. He hesitated, grew red, and muttered
something about retrenchment and pulling up. But he had said too much,
and under promise of his communication being treated confidentially,
he had to finish it.
“I’m as sorry about it as I can be, and so’s my wife; for we both like
Wood, as everybody does. But some wretched woman has got hold of
him--you know, sir, he is well off, and as generous as sun in the
tropics, and so we want to get him away, if we can persuade him to go.
And he hasn’t had any leave for ever so long.”
The Colonel listened gravely, and when the account was over he spoke
in a rather less hard tone.
“H’m, if the young fool has once begun on that tack, you may as well
let him be squeezed dry by one as by another,” he said grimly. “And a
young gentleman fond of that kind of society will be a nice sort of
companion for your wife.” His tone still implied also that the wife
would be “a nice sort of companion for him.”
“But, sir, Wood isn’t like an ordinary fellow; he’s such a gentle,
open-hearted creature, it quite knocks one over to see him made a meal
of--and by a woman like Chloris White!”
Lauriston’s first impression, on noting the sudden contraction of his
hearer’s face into greater rigidity than ever, at this contemptuous
mention by name of one of the most notorious persons in London, was
that he had “put his foot in it.” The Colonel’s austerity might not be
so thorough-going as he had imagined. The next moment he was
undeceived as Lord Florencecourt’s eyes moved slowly round, as if by
an effort, till they rested on his face.
“God help the lad! Do your best for him, Lauriston, if you will;
pulling a man out of the hug of a boa-constrictor’s d----d easy work
compared to it!”
Lord Florencecourt shivered, and looked at the windows as he got up
and walked away, so little himself that he began trying to smoke a
cigar he had not lighted.
It was then that by an inspiration an explanation of his late
extraordinary conduct occurred to Lauriston.
“Wonder if he’s going off his head!” he thought with sorrowful
concern. “And it’s taking the form of antipathy to women. First Nouna;
then Sundran; last of all this Chloris White! Poor old chap! Poor dear
old chap! that comes of marrying Lady Florencecourt; or perhaps his
marriage was the first sign of it.”
And George, trying in vain to account in any other way for the strange
behaviour of his friend, went home to renewed raptures over his own
happier choice.