George Lauriston was not a dull-witted man; but the shock of
astonishment he suffered when Sundran recognised Lord Florencecourt as
“Captain Weston,” for a few moments paralysed his thoughts and
prevented his realising all the complications to which the discovery
gave rise. His first thought was for its effect upon his wife.
He scarcely dared to look at her. But after the train had started she
came to him and forced her face up into his.
“Did you hear what Sundran said?” she asked in a loud whisper.
George nodded.
“Do you think it’s true?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“What shall you do to Lord Florencecourt if it is true?”
“Do? Nothing.”
“Won’t you? I shall.”
“What?”
“Kill him for having been cruel to my mother.”
She was shaking from head to foot with passion, her eyes lurid as
those of a tigress, her white teeth gleaming between thirstily parted
lips, as if they would tear the flesh from the bones of the man whose
imputed offence in being her father was not yet even proved. George
was silent, beset by a crowd of conjectures no less mysterious than
unpleasant. She suddenly leaped upon him, seizing his shoulders with
small hands that griped tight as claws.
“Well!” she said impatiently. “Well! You say nothing! I will have you
say something. This Colonel of yours, who beat my mother, and left her
and let her think he was dead--is he your respected dear friend now,
or do you hate him with your whole soul, as I do?”
“I can’t hate an old friend on the spur of the moment, especially when
I don’t know what he’s done,” said George in a tone which had the
effect of a few drops of water on a fire.
“Don’t know what he’s done! Haven’t I told you all Sundran has said
about the way he used to treat my mother, my beautiful darling mother;
how he was harsh, and wicked, and jealous, and ran away from her when
I was a little baby? Why did he call himself Captain Weston, when his
real name was Lord Florencecourt, if he meant to be a good true
husband to her? Was that like the noble English gentlemen you talk
about, and poor mamma talks about?”
“His name was not always Lord Florencecourt,” said George rather
meekly.
He knew that the Colonel’s name had never been Captain Weston; and
that there were circumstances in this affair of which Lord
Florencecourt was by no means proud had been amply shown by the
mixture of constraint, dislike, and fear which had marked his
behaviour to Nouna since his first meeting with her at the barracks.
“And perhaps Sundran was mistaken,” he suggested in the same tone.
But Nouna laughed this idea to scorn, and he himself had nothing to
offer in support of it. The Indian woman’s recognition was the first
sign he had had of a clue to all the mysterious circumstances
surrounding his marriage; and if it raised new doubts and suggested
new entanglements, at any rate it pointed out one person near at hand
who could, if he would, unravel them. George determined to see Lord
Florencecourt again without delay, and to ask him simply and
straightforwardly whether he was Nouna’s father, and if so, why he had
thought it necessary to conceal the fact from him. The young husband
thought he could now understand the strange reserve of Madame di
Valdestillas, who, as the circumstances seemed to suggest, having been
deceived in early youth by Lord Florencecourt, then masquerading as
Captain Weston, was naturally anxious to conceal the evidence of her
past indiscretion, and had therefore caused her child to be educated
away from her, and had probably concealed Nouna’s very existence from
her husband. In that case, Nouna’s mushroom sprung up fortune could
not have been a testamentary provision of her father, as he was still
alive. Where then did the money come from? George remembered with a
shock Lord Florencecourt’s late complaints of an unexpected and heavy
drain on resources which he knew to be by no means limitless, and the
remarkable incident of the pearl necklace flamed up unpleasantly in
his mind. This, together with the grudgingly given invitation to
Willingham, and the socially important visit extracted by the Colonel
from his sister to Nouna, seemed to point to a considerable influence
being still exerted over Lord Florencecourt by Madame di Valdestillas,
in spite of his unconcealed prejudice against dark-skinned women.
Whether by tickling his remorse or his fear of publicity, the lady
played very skilfully to be able to levy such substantial blackmail
upon her former lover.
These conjectures ran in George’s head and absorbed him so completely,
that Nouna, who was sitting in the opposite corner and gazing out of
window with a pretty imitation of deep abstraction, found, on turning
suddenly to direct his attention to a stack of red-tiled roofs and
towering chimneys nestling, in Christmas-card prettiness, among trees
in a hollow near the line, something deeply fascinating in the fact
that he was, for the first time since their marriage, completely
oblivious of her presence. She paused with her mouth open for speech,
considering him in wonderment, noting the lines of the frown on his
forehead, and the dull, steady outlook of clouded eyes that for once
did not see her. Then she stooped forward, and, with her hands on his
knees, stretched up to peer closely into his face. He started, and his
eyes turned upon her with a look in which she saw, or fancied she saw,
so much sternness, that her hands slipped off his knees, and she fell,
a meek and frightened human bundle, on to the floor of the carriage.
George snatched her up and crushed her tiny limbs against him with a
sudden thrill of passionate tenderness in which she discerned at once
some new and unknown element. She sunned herself in his caresses for a
few moments and then looked inquiringly into his eyes.
“You have begun a new wooing,” she whispered, peeping up with languid
eyes. “You are very sweet to me, but you seem to be asking me
something I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know, my darling, whether I could make you understand.”
“Kiss me again to prepare me, and then try.”
He obeyed the first direction and then set about carrying out the
second.
“What would you do, my darling, if you had to give up your pretty
house, your rooms full of flowers, your dainty marble bath, your
French frocks and your crowds of visitors?”
Her reply was prompt and crushing, spoken with passionate conviction.
“I should die.” Then she turned upon him in alarmed eagerness: “What
has happened that I should give them up? They are my own, they are
natural to me; it is not right that the granddaughter of a Maharajah
should be without these things!”
“But supposing you found out that you were enjoying them at the
expense of others who had a better right to them still, who were born
to them, and had to go without them for your pleasure. Oh, Nouna, you
have a generous little heart, you would not bear that!”
She shook her head incredulously.
“You forget,” said she, “it was through my mother that my fortune came
to me. Mamma would never do anything that was not right and just. What
she says is mine, that I may enjoy without fear of wrong.”
She was secure now behind the rampart of her religion, and he
perceived that he could only convert her through the mother she
adored. So he let the subject drop, inwardly deciding that his next
move, after seeing Lord Florencecourt, must be to find out where
Madame di Valdestillas and her husband were staying, and come to an
understanding with that lady as to the duties owed by a woman to her
daughter’s husband as well as to her own.
Determined not to trouble his wife again with premature hints of such
a desolating kind that she had already burst open her dressing-bag to
shed tears over the portable evidence of her accession to fortune--her
diamonds--he spoke of indifferent things, and asked, for want of
something better, if she knew what had become of Dicky Wood since he
left Maple Lodge a few days before they did. Nouna’s face seemed
suddenly to contract, and she darted at her husband a curiously
cautious glance, shifting immediately back to the contents of her bag.
“I’m afraid--” she began. “They say he has got back into the power
of--of that woman, you know,” she ended with a nod, seeing a cloud
form upon her husband’s face which forbade her to let the name of such
a person pass her lips.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said he, being indeed more grieved at his wife’s
knowledge of and interest in the affair than at the foolish boy’s
falling again into the hot water out of which he had been once so
thoughtfully fished.
“Yes,” she assented, and with unusual and remarkable reticence she
pursued the subject no further.
George’s masculine wits failed to see more in this circumstance than
respect for his prejudice against her interesting herself in such
themes. She had calmed down very suddenly, he thought, from her
outburst of violent indignation against the Colonel. No one could have
imagined, to see her now trifling first with a scent-bottle and then
with a fan, that only half an hour had passed since she learnt, in a
startling manner, a secret concerning her parentage momentous enough
to set the most volatile creature thinking. And then it occurred to
him that this secret, so new to him, might not be altogether new to
her. Candour is not an Oriental virtue, and experience had already
shown him that Nouna was by nature secretive, and much more likely to
keep her own counsel even in hours of amorous confidence than he or
any other babbling foolish Samson of a male lover. He recalled certain
confidential looks and tones he had observed between her and the
lawyer, Mr. Smith, on her wedding-day; he recollected various
injunctions from Madame di Valdestillas that Nouna should in all
things pertaining to the marriage put herself without question into
the old solicitor’s hands. The result of these musings was that
George, determined by yet another flash of remembrance, marked down
for his second step in this matter a visit to the church where he was
married, and an inspection of the register.
The first step he proposed for himself was to question Sundran. It
would depend, he knew, upon her own dull and dogged views of what was
her mistress’s interest whether she would condescend to open her lips
to him either for truth or falsehood. But he thought he might be able
to prove to her by the evidence of his unquestionable devotion that he
could have no aim but her mistress’s happiness, and if this could once
be made clear to the woman, Lord Florencecourt’s careful avoidance of
her was enough to show that she could make important revelations.
But George was met on the very threshold of his investigations by an
undreamt-of difficulty. When the train arrived at Liverpool Street he
put Nouna at once into a cab, and went back to the train to fetch
Sundran, who had not yet found her way to her mistress. But she had
disappeared. In vain he examined every compartment in turn, and
scanned the crowd on the platform. Inquiries of the porter at last
elicited that a dark-skinned woman in white had sprung out of a
compartment before the train stopped, and driven off at once in a cab.
George returned to his wife, saying simply that Sundran had gone off
before them, but as the inspector at the gate of the station took the
number of their cab, George called to the driver to stop, and asked
the official if he had noticed a black woman pass out, adding that she
was his wife’s maid, knew very little English, and he was afraid she
might have made a mistake with the address.
“I saw her, sir. I think the number of the cab was fifty-seven,” said
the man, referring to his list.
George thanked him, and the cab drove off. Nouna looked at her husband
in astonishment.
“She won’t make a mistake, George. Sundran is not so silly.”
“I don’t think she is. But I want to find out where she’s gone.”
“Then you think she’s run away! Why should she? Where would she go?”
asked Nouna breathlessly.
“Well, well, we don’t know yet whether she’s gone at all.”
But when they got home and found that Sundran had not arrived, George
decided that he would wait one hour, filling up the time with a visit
to the parish church; and then, if she still failed to appear, he
would call at 36, Mary Street, where he suspected her to be, on his
way to Liverpool Street station. He intended to return to Willingham
that night, and get through the interview with the Colonel. A packet
of letters was handed to him, in which he found one for his wife.
Seeing that the handwriting was masculine and unknown to him, George
turned it over jealously.
“Who is this from, Nouna?” he asked, holding it over her head, high
above her reach.
A red flood ran at once under the delicate brown skin.
“How can I tell if you hold it all that way off?” she asked, making a
futile spring to reach it.
She was much excited, but by what emotion he could not tell.
“Well, now,” and he held it near to her face, guarding it with both
hands from the expected clutch.
There was enough subdued interest in her manner to make him determined
to know the contents of the letter, but not wishing to give himself
the airs of a Bluebeard, he drew her on to his knee and gave it to
her, at the same time opening one of his own. As he read his he saw
that she slipped hers without opening it into some hiding-place among
the folds of her dress; at first he made no remark upon this, but went
on with his own letters until he had come to the end of the pile by
throwing a couple of circulars into the fireplace. At this point she
tried to get away; she wanted to take her hat off, she said.
“Well, that’s soon done,” said George laughing, tossing off her little
grey cap and passing his fingers through her curls. “And now who is
your letter from?”
“Oh, it’s only from an old schoolfellow.”
“A schoolfellow! A male schoolfellow! I must see it then; I’m
jealous.”
“There’s nothing to be jealous about,” said Nouna lightly, but
beginning to tremble as she saw that, in spite of the playfulness of
his tone, he did not mean to let her go till his curiosity was
satisfied. “I haven’t even opened it yet.”
“Open it now then, and tell me the news.”
He spoke quite gently, and leaned back in the arm-chair they were
sitting on, leaving her perched upon his knees in what she might have
imagined was liberty, if there had not been, to her sharp eyes, a
leonine look of possession and passive power in the strong white hands
that lay quietly on the arms of the chair on each side of her. These
Eastern women have a subtle sense, transmitted to them from
bow-stringing times, of what is best to do in a case of jealousy.
George saw the quick glance round under lowered eyelids, and while
fearing some impish indiscretion, yet with a little smart of rage
admired her self-possession as she crossed her knees carelessly and
drew forth her letter from her breast, after affecting to feel in her
pocket, as if forgetful where she had put it. As she inserted a small
forefinger under the flap of the envelope, George held himself on the
alert to seize the little hands if they should make any attempt to
destroy the missive. But the first glance at the note apparently
relieved her, and she flourished it before him to show that he had
made a fuss about nothing.
“It is only a note from Captain Pascoe to tell me his address, because
he is so anxious to come again to our little suppers,” said she,
making a ball of the note, tossing it dexterously, catching it in her
hand, and posting it between her husband’s lips, opened for a little
lecture.
“Has he written to you before?” asked George frowning.
“No; if he had I should have known the handwriting,” answered she
carelessly, but in the meantime by a clever little movement causing
the injured note to roll from its lodging-place under George’s chin on
to the floor. “And now please may I go and change my shoes?”
“Certainly.”
George let her go, and, all his senses being still awake to
observation, remarked that in searching for a dropped glove she made a
long sweep, and picked up the note from under his chair. His hand
closed over hers, which she immediately opened with a red flush. He
unrolled the crumpled ball of paper and read:
“Grand Hotel, Scarborough.
“Dear Mrs. Lauriston,
“Thames Lawn, Richmond. I hope you and your husband won’t forget me
when you resume your charming evenings. There’s nothing like them in
town or out of it. I am constrained to beg to be remembered, for I
know you have all the world at your feet, and I am but a humble unit.
Always, as you know, very much at your service if I can ever be of use
to you in any way,
“With kind regards, yours very truly,
“Arthur Pascoe.”
“This is an answer, I see,” said George when he had read to the end.
“So you have been writing to Captain Pascoe.”
“Only for his address, that we might invite him,” said Nouna, looking
frightened.
“But how could you write without knowing it?”
“He was going to change it, I knew. He is at Scarborough now.”
George said no more, and tossed the letter into the wastepaper basket.
Nouna, whose eagerness to change her shoes had disappeared, stood
considering her husband, whose reticence she could not understand. She
had braced herself up to meet a long interrogatory, and the simple
silence made her think that something worse was in store for her.
“Haven’t you anything more to say to me?” she asked at last, with her
head on one side in a helpless, birdwitted manner.
“Yes, dear, I have a great deal more to say to you,” burst out poor
George, gliding from his chair down on to his knees before her,
clasping his arms round her waist, and looking up into the beautiful
mask of the spirit it was so hard to reach, so impossible to impress.
“Why won’t you be quite open and frank with me, when it’s all I ask of
you? When I tell you it hurts me so much for you to keep back a trifle
from me that a whole evening’s pretty caresses from you can’t take out
the sting of it? Can’t you see, dearest, that nobody in the world
loves you so much as I, or would do as much for you? Why do you
encourage these fellows to think you can ever want services from them,
when you know that the man in whose bosom you lie every night lives
only in your life, and for your happiness? What do you want of me that
I won’t do? Why won’t you open your little heart wide to me, as you do
your arms? Don’t you love me, Nouna? Don’t you love me?”
His encircling arms trembled with the passion that surged in him, and
the slender little form he held was swayed by the convulsive movement
of his body. These appeals of her husband to something within her of
which she had but a dim consciousness, bewildered and distressed a
creature accustomed to live fully and happily in the day’s emotions,
beautifully unconscious of higher duties, higher claims. She was,
however, moved to a soft sensation of pity for this big, kind,
splendid companion whose passionate affection was, after all, the
kingly crown of all her joys; and she put little tender arms round his
neck in the belief that these mad frenzies after something intangible
were signs of a disorder peculiar to man, of which that dangerous
symptom jealousy was the chief feature.
“Of course I love you, George, my dear old beautiful darling
elephant,” she said, with the soothing accent of an affection which
was indeed perfectly genuine.
And she kissed the waves of his hair with such a winning abandonment
of herself to the pleasure his touch afforded her, and dropped down
into his breast with such a seductive air of meek submission to his
will in every act and thought, that George was carried away from his
doubts, away from his questionings, as he had been a hundred times
before, and so she strengthened her empire over him in the interview
which had at the outset appeared to threaten it.
It was not until he had left her, and was on his way to the church,
that a momentary gloom fell on the glow into which the magic of her
charm had cast him. She had been very sweet, but she had given no word
of explanation of that strange request to Captain Pascoe, a man of a
character so well known, that it was gall to George to think he had in
his possession so much as a line of his wife’s handwriting. With an
effort he put the matter aside in his mind, not without the unpleasant
reflection that, after all his efforts at art-education, the primitive
and impracticable methods of the harem were those best calculated to
keep the husband of the little dark-skinned enchantress in security.
A walk of a few minutes had brought him to the outside of the church
where he was married, but he found the building a true type of Heaven
in the difficulty of getting in. At last he ferreted out the person
authorised to unlock the doors, and admit him to a sight of the
register. It was with trembling fingers that he turned over the pages
to find the signature he wanted. When at last he found the place, he
bit his lip through in a first impulse of hot indignation. He had been
tricked again by the whole gang, as he said to himself bitterly,
within five minutes of his standing with his bride before the altar.
The signature of his wife was “Nouna Kilmorna.”