To George Lauriston’s infinite surprise and comfort, his young wife,
instead of dealing him fresh wounds in his misfortune by lamentations
over their altered lot, fell quite naturally into the woman’s part of
helpmeet, and eased the wrench of breaking from his old career by an
unwavering brightness and sweetness which woke in him the fairest
hopes of what their life together might yet be. On the other hand,
this sudden change from winsome wilfulness to still more winsome
womanliness could not fail to rouse in him some anxiety as to its
cause. Had she received any communication from her mother, either
through the hateful Rahas or some other channel? Her secretive nature
made it difficult to discover the truth on such points.
“Why are you so kind to me now, little woman?” he asked her two days
after the memorable return from Norfolk, when their preparations for
departure were already half made.
“Kind! Wasn’t I always kind to you?” she asked, not quite evasively,
yet with more understanding than she affected to have.
“Yes, but not quite in the same sweet way.”
“Ah ha! It’s the pictures and the music and the sermons you’ve taken
me to beginning to have an effect at last,” she said, not flippantly,
for though she laughed her eyes began to glisten.
George was touched, but greatly puzzled.
“Have you heard anything from Sundran since she left?” asked he
carelessly, after allowing an interval to elapse so that the question
might appear to have no connection with what had gone before.
“No,” said Nouna; then, after a pause, she looked up at her husband
mysteriously. “Do you know what I think?”
“Well!”
“I believe she has managed, how I don’t know, to find her way back to
mamma. I’ve been thinking it over a great deal, and I fancy when she
found out the Colonel,”--(she lowered her voice)--“she thought she
ought to let mamma know where to find him.” And Nouna finished with a
slow emphatic nod of her small head.
“That’s a very clever suggestion,” said George, who indeed had reason
to think so. He felt relieved, for Nouna’s want of candour had never
gone the length of deliberately planned deceit, and he decided upon
the strength of this short dialogue that she had heard nothing.
The real reason of his wife’s altered conduct was not likely to occur
to him. Coming of a race which places the one sex in such complete
subjection to the other that confidence between them is impossible,
she possessed, together with that cautious over-reticence which is the
weapon of the weak, its correlative virtue--a delicate tact which
avoided a sensitive place discreetly, and made no attempt to lay bare
a wound which her lord wished to conceal. Something had happened to
make George unhappy--this kind husband who had cherished her so
tenderly, who had denied her no proof of his affection. Her woman’s
heart was deeply touched; if she had any curiosity it could wait for
its satisfaction until by and by when he was better; in the meantime
she would be loyally good to him, even to the extent of checking her
secret sobs over the parting with the plants and perfumes and
knick-knacks which had grown into her frivolity-loving heart.
George got the bank appointment, through the efforts of Lord
Florencecourt, who told him he had had a close race with a connection
of the man who was to be manager of the Paris branch.
“He’s a disagreeable man, the manager, Mr. Gurton,” said the Colonel.
“I hope you’ll get on all right with him. The young fellow he wanted
to get in is a lad he calls his nephew, but by all accounts he is what
nephews have a trick of turning out to be. Gurton is rather savage
over the disappointment; fortunately I was able to prove that the lad
is not so steady as he might be.”
“Thank you, Colonel. It’s very good of you to take so much trouble.
I’m sorry about the mysterious nephew. Unless he’s an exceptionally
just man, it will make him so ready to find fault with me. And of
course I’m quite raw to the work.”
“Oh, I don’t think it’s difficult--mere routine for the most part. My
boy, it is a shame for you to be tied to such work.”
“Well, all work is routine; it can’t be worse for that than the army.
And then there are prizes. Who knows but I may end my days as a
prosperous banker, with an income which would make a General’s mouth
water?”
Between the Colonel’s hearty friendship and help on the one hand, and
Nouna’s unexpected and discreet sympathy on the other, Lauriston was
beginning to realise that the worst stains of the degradation he had
felt so keenly might in time be wiped out, and in this reaction he was
inclined at first to lose remembrance of Chloris White’s threats, and
to look upon the smallness of his means as the present difficulty
which would need the sternest grappling with. He could not bear the
thought of plunging his wife straight from the unbridled extravagance
and luxury which she had lately enjoyed with so keen a zest to an
existence more meagre than that which had palled upon her so soon in
the first days of their marriage. That she was preparing with great
fortitude for such a plunge was proved to him the day before they
started. She was rather silent and abstracted at dinner that evening,
and when it was over she walked with a listless and melancholy tread
into the quaint drawing-rooms, the shelves and brackets of which
George found were bare of their load of fantastic trifles. Fans,
screens, mirrors, ivory carvings, all had disappeared; only half a
dozen small porcelain vases, filled with fresh flowers that morning,
remained.
“You’ve been packing up, I see, busy little woman,” said George,
trying to speak cheerfully, as he stood with his arm round her in the
room which already began to wear a desolate look, as if the soul had
died out of it.
“No, not packing, only making a list of them. Here it is. I thought
they could pack them up themselves after we were gone,” she said,
sadly.
By “they” she indicated with a shudder the mysterious enemies who were
driving forth her and her husband from their beautiful home, and
forcing them to make horrid things called inventories of her little
Turkish tables, and the soft sofas on which she had been so fond of
resting, and the big oak bookcase which was the pride of George’s
heart. She held out two or three half-sheets of her husband’s foolscap
paper, closely scribbled on both sides with her spidery, illegible
writing.
“What’s this?” asked George, running his eyes over it and reading
aloud at random. “‘One pair of pink garters with silver clasps, and
with a little knob come off the clasp of one!’” He turned to the next
page and read: “‘Two fans with pearl handles and one with
tortoiseshell which I have never used. Except once’” was screwed into
the space above as an afterthought. George picked out another item.
“‘A hand-mirror that makes you look pretty, as if you had a crown on,
for the top is a silver coronet.’” Further on the entries grew fuller
and more eloquent, as if the very description of the beauty of her
treasures had become a labour of love. “‘Two lovely embroidered
dresses, one pale blue silk, all over little silver birds with their
little wings spread out as if they were flying in the sky. The other
is pink with white roses and lilies, very nearly as pretty as the
other one, and besides it is less worn.’” Even her velvet slippers,
each pair described with loving minuteness, were faithfully put down.
“They are all there; I haven’t kept back anything, indeed,” explained
Nouna in great haste, as George, after reading some _naïve_ entries
in silence, turned his back upon her, a proceeding which seemed to her
ominous. “I’ve only kept just the things I had before we came here.”
But then he put his arms round her quite suddenly, and held her close
to him as he said:
“And who do you think will be able to get into those little doll’s
garments of yours if you leave them behind? The frocks might do for
babies’ gowns, certainly, and the red velvet slippers might be hung
upside down for watch-pockets, but they will never find grown-up
people small enough to wear them, my word for it!”
Nouna twisted her left shoulder up to her uneasily, and a little
haughtily; she had considered the drawing up of this list as a very
business-like proceeding, and now she was being laughed at for it. Her
husband saw this in time to kiss away the gathering frown. His own
taste would have preferred the sacrifice of the dainty though now most
inappropriate wardrobe; but he knew that during long hours of the day
he should have to be away from his wife, and as experience had taught
him that she could find more entertainment in an embroidered sash than
in the whole literature of the English language, and that moreover her
moral qualities could shine out strongly upon occasion in spite of
this unorthodox taste, he decided that she should have the solace in
exile of all her private treasures except the jewels, which he
intended to despatch to Chloris White at the moment of leaving
England.
“You think I mind giving these things up!” Nouna said superbly. “But I
am not a child; they are nothing to me.”
Nevertheless, when her husband told her he would help her to pack them
up, as they were of no use to any one but her, she leapt about the
room for joy, and rushed off to take advantage of the permission in a
state of frantic excitement.
They got away safely from England within a week of the fateful visit
to “Thames Lawn,” all difficulties being smoothed away by the
co-operation of the Colonel who, while he made no effort to see his
daughter again, did everything in his power to help her and her
husband to get away quickly and quietly. They prided themselves on
managing everything very neatly, and both men hoped that the young
husband and wife would be able to get lost, not only to the world, but
to the vicious and vindictive Chloris White, even without the adoption
of a feigned name, which the Colonel advised, but which Lauriston
declined to resort to.
“If they made up their minds to find me, Nouna’s peculiar beauty would
be clue enough to track me by to the end of the world,” said he. “I
have done nothing to disgrace my name, and it’s one of my deepest
wishes to make my wife so proud of it that she will forget that she
ever had any other.”
They started in the early morning from Charing Cross, Lord
Florencecourt meeting them at the station to see them off. The
greeting between father and daughter was a curious one. Nouna, whose
prejudice against the Colonel had hitherto found vent in avoidance or
in sauciness, now received him with a low bow and humble touch of the
hand of decorous respect, while in her lowered eyes hatred of the man
who had abandoned her mother struggled with her strong native sense of
the majesty of a father. The Colonel’s manner, on the other hand, was
nervous and jerky. He was grieved to lose Lauriston, delighted to lose
his daughter, and haunted by a dread of what his demon-wife might take
it into her head to do now she was foiled in her cherished ambition
for her child. He had brought a beautiful basket of roses for Mrs.
Lauriston, and he insisted on paying for their tickets himself, to
save poor Nouna what he thought might be the shock of travelling
second-class. When, as the train started, Nouna saw that, on shaking
hands with her husband, the Colonel’s eyes grew moist and kindly, she
relented, and leaning far out of the carriage window, bestowed upon
her amazed and unwilling father a kiss which, being justified only by
that relationship which he was trying so hard to conceal, was scarcely
less unwelcome than a charge of grapeshot.
The train was out of sight before he recovered a degree of serenity,
which was shaken immediately afterwards by a glimpse he caught, as he
was leaving the station, of a tall, lean man wearing a red fez, who
came out by a different door, and crossing the inclosure in front with
quick strides, was lost to his sight among the crowd in the Strand.
Although George had not informed him of all he feared from Rahas, he
had told him enough about this dark-skinned agent of Chloris White’s
to make the Colonel suspect that with all their care they had not
succeeded in evading her evil vigilance. At first he thought he would
warn George, but reflecting how common foreign headgear of all sorts
is in London, he decided that he had not enough grounds for disturbing
so soon the poor fellow’s sense of security.
With their arrival in Paris began the third era in the married life of
George and his wife. Nouna’s delight in the bright city was so great
that at first the fact of having to live in two small rooms on the
fourth floor of a house in a narrow street off the Boulevard
Poissonnière was of no account compared with the knowledge of the
pleasures that lay outside, the walks along the lighted boulevards in
the evening before the shops were shut, the expeditions in a tramcar
to the Bois de Boulogne or Saint Cloud, above all the Sunday trips
upon the Seine on a steamer, all joys within the reach of a most
modest purse, were delirious excitements to her susceptible
temperament, in the first ecstasy of which the handsome house at
Kensington, the tropical plants, the supper parties, even the services
of her servant Sundran, were for the time forgotten. On one memorable
Sunday they indulged in a drive round the Bois in a _fiacre_, and in
ices at the little _châlet_ restaurant opposite the cascade, where
the lower middle-class brides come in all their bravery of white satin
and long veil and orange-blossom wreath, looking coquettish, happy,
and at ease in the unaccustomed attire which an English girl of the
same class wears with such shamefaced awkwardness. To Nouna that day
gave a glimpse of Paradise: the _fiacre_ was more comfortable than her
victoria in London had been, Hyde Park could not compare with the
Bois, the passers-by amused, the ice intoxicated her. When the
sunshine had faded into twilight, and they had driven back home
through the lighted streets, she climbed up the long flights of
stairs, still in a silent ecstasy, and sat down in a little low chair
George had bought for her, seeing nothing in the gloom but moving
carriages, and small trees growing thickly round a lake that glittered
in sunshine, and pretty mock _châlets_ and a ridiculous little
waterfall that fell from nothing into nowhere.
Presently she got up and went out on to the broad balcony which,
encroaching upon the size of the rooms, was yet the chief charm of
this little home under the roof. She had hung one corner of it with
curtains, and George had contrived a canvas awning under which, when
the weather was fine, she spent most of the hours of his absence. Her
husband watched without following her as she leaned upon the rail and
looked out at the yellow glow in the west which could still be seen
behind the housetops. Suddenly she turned and came back to him.
Standing just within the window with her back to the fading light, her
face could not be seen; but her voice rang out with a strange
vibration as she called to him, holding her arms towards him:
“George, why don’t you come out to me?”
He was with her in a moment, found her trembling and dry-lipped, and
tried to persuade her to lie down while he called to the old woman
from whom they rented the rooms, to prepare their supper. But Nouna
shook her head, and insisted on his remaining with her by the window.
Yes, she was tired, she admitted, but she wanted the air; she would go
out on the balcony again if he would go with her. As she seemed to
desire it, he let her lead him out, all the time keeping her eyes
fixed in a remarkable manner immovably on his face.
“Look out,” she said, “at the sky--at the houses--at all you can see.”
He let his gaze pass obediently from her face to the pale-starred sky,
the grey-blue of which was merging into the last red rays of the
disappearing sunset: to the house-roofs and chimney-pots, of which
they had a good though not an extensive view, to the street below,
with its little globes of yellow light, and the dark specks which were
all he could see of the moving passengers. Then he turned to her
curiously.
“Well, little one, I have looked at everything.”
“And you see nothing--nothing strange at all?”
“There’s a tabby cat two roofs off,” said the prosaic male doubtfully.
“No, no,” she interrupted impatiently, still without moving her eyes
from his face. “Down below us--on the opposite side--a little to the
left--in the black shade.” Her voice had sunk gradually into a
whisper. Then she stopped.
“Well, I see nothing.”
“Not at the house where they have a floor shut up?”
George stepped forward and leaned over the rail of the balcony as she
had done, Nouna following closely and clinging to his hand. On the
opposite side, about three doors down, there was a flat on the third
floor which had borne during the first days of their residence in
Paris a large board inscribed ‘_A louer_.’ George saw that the board
was gone, and that one of the shutters was thrown back.
“Oh, I see they’ve let it. Well, there’s nothing to be frightened
about in that, my child.”
“You don’t notice anything else--anything strange--you don’t see
any--person?”
George started, and looked down again with searching eagerness along
the line of dead-eyed shuttered windows.
“No, child, there is nobody.”
Nouna heaved a long sigh, and looked timidly down through her
husband’s arm.
“No, it’s--gone,” she whispered.
“What is gone, dear? Tell me what you saw,” said George caressingly,
as he drew her back into the little sitting-room, where a lamp now
shed its soft light over the white table-cloth, and Madame Barbier,
who adored the picturesque young English couple, was arranging the
supper in a dainty and appetising fashion.
Nouna rubbed her eyes, and clinging to her husband’s arm, let the
words of her recital drop from her lips in a slow, hesitating and
faltering manner, as if she were fast asleep, and her brain were
working sluggishly under the half-paralysing influence of a will
stronger than her own.
“I was sitting in here,” she said, “and thinking of all the happiness
we have had to-day--the soft air and the warm sun, and your kind eyes
upon me, and all the lovely things we saw--the beautiful ladies and
the shining water, and the lights among the trees in the Champ
Elysées when we came back. And all at once,” her hands tightened
their hold upon his sleeve, “I felt that I must get up and go
out--there upon the balcony; and I looked out at the sky right in
front where it was yellow like flame, and all the pretty pictures of
the day I saw quite plainly still in my mind. But then--I don’t know
how--I felt my eyes drawn down from the bright sky, and there down
below me--to the left, I saw all black gloom, and in it I seemed to
see Rahas’ room in Mary Street, with all the pretty toys and bright
shawls about just as he used to put them for me to look at. And in the
middle Rahas himself, only not kind and gentle as he used to be, but
with a wicked cruel face, and burning eyes that frightened me. And I
felt afraid, as if I could have screamed. It seemed so strange, for
even when he used to look fierce, as he did sometimes, I never minded,
and I was never frightened. Was it a dream, George, that I saw? And if
it was only a dream, why was I afraid?”
Chiming in so appropriately with his own fears, this vision or fancy
of Nouna’s disturbed George a little. He calmed her excitement as well
as he could, and found some comfort in the fact that the crafty
Oriental had appeared to her, not as the kindly friend he had always
professed to be, but as a person inspiring horror. This seemed the
more remarkable as George had never mentioned the name of Rahas to his
wife since their wedding-day; he came, after a little reflection, to
look upon the vision as a proof of the new sympathy which Nouna began
to show with his own feelings, and to rejoice in the fact that as the
bond between him and his wife grew stronger under the influence of his
patient tenderness, the power of any enemy to disturb their happiness
was proportionately lessened. This home peace, which was attaching
Lauriston to his young wife more strongly every day, was the more
grateful to him, as his duties at the Bank were rendered as irksome as
possible to him through the prejudice of his chief, Mr. Gurton, who
never forgave the rejection of his own candidate for the junior
clerk’s post, and who scarcely concealed his wish to find against him
some lawful ground of dissatisfaction. This George was careful not to
give.
Mr. Gurton was one of those disagreeable brutes who seem to be created
as foils to show up the amiability and sweetness of ordinary humanity.
He was offensive to his few friends; he was unendurable to the far
greater number of people whom nothing but necessity threw in his way.
But as a man of business he was clear-headed, shrewd, and
enterprising, so exact and penetrating that even if he drank, as his
many detractors alleged, there seemed to be no particular reason why
he should not, as his business faculties could not be said to be less
keen at one time than at another. He hated Lauriston from the first,
bullied him on the smallest or on no occasion, and did all in his
power to induce the young fellow to throw up his appointment. George
took soft words and sour with dogged quietness, and applied himself
with all the energy of his character to mastering every detail
connected with his new profession, as serenely as if incivility had
been his daily bread for years. As a matter of fact, the discourtesy
and fault-finding of his chief did not trouble him much; he looked
upon Gurton, not without reason, as an ill-bred brute whom one could
only turn to account by noting the methods by which he had attained
such a splendid dexterity in the management of affairs, and by thus
considering him in the light of a noisy machine it was easy to take
the sting out of his insults. At the same time this constant friction
or avoidance of friction in his business life made home and wife
doubly dear and sweet to him.
On the day following Nouna’s strange vision on the balcony, he came
home at the usual time, and asked her whether she had had any more
“waking dreams.” She answered, reluctantly and shyly, that she had not
been on the balcony at all that day. George laughed at her, and told
her she should go with him, as the presence of such a coarse creature
as a man was a sure preventive of visions. She allowed him to lead her
out, being quite brave with the combined forces of husband and
sunlight. When they got on the balcony, however, and looked to the
left at the house where Nouna had fancied she saw Rahas, a sight met
their eyes which, whether a coincidence or not, was strange enough to
deepen the unpleasant impression of the evening before.
For the shutters of the uninhabited third floor were now thrown back,
and outside the balcony hung a long strip of white calico with this
inscription in broad blue letters: “Bazar Oriental.”
George and Nouna read the words, and looked at each other in troubled
amazement.
“I’ll have this cleared up to-night,” thought George to himself.