In the excitement of a battle, when each man deals blows for his
life, maddened by the clash of sabres, the roar of cannon, fierce
cries, and ghastly sights, he gives and receives wounds of which he
takes no account, absorbed in the struggle to beat the enemy back; so
George, fighting for something dearer than his own safety, forgot his
humiliation at Mr. Gurton’s hands, forgot his own outburst of passion
and the rash act which followed, and still thought of nothing but
Nouna’s wild, terror-struck face, and of the next effort he should
make to remove the cause of her fear. The fellow-clerk, to whom he was
now going to apply, was going out of town for the night; if he should
have started already, there would be nothing to do but to telegraph to
Lord Florencecourt and, while waiting for the help he would be sure to
send immediately, to let the _huissiers_ carry off what they would as
security. This was a terrible contingency, on account of the shock it
might give to Nouna; it had to be faced, however, for, on arriving at
the lodging of his fellow-clerk, George learned that he had been gone
half an hour.
It was not until his last hope of getting immediate help had thus
disappeared that George, returning quickly towards his home,
remembered what had happened in the office, and realised that by an
assault upon his chief, which Mr. Gurton would probably describe as
unprovoked, he had lost his situation, and perhaps got himself into a
worse scrape still, for he had not waited to find out whether Mr.
Gurton had been injured by the fall. George thought he would call at
the bank and make inquiries, but on arriving at the corner of the
street in which the building stood, he saw that a large and excited
crowd had already collected, in spite of the rain, about the doors,
and that some _gendarmes_ were pressing the people back.
“I suppose the boy rushed out, shrieking ‘Murder!’ and brought up the
whole neighbourhood,” thought George. “I hope to heaven he’s not
seriously hurt.”
A sudden chill seized him and his heart seemed to become encased in
stone. When a heavy man falls, striking his head on the way to the
ground--oh, but nonsense, he should have seen, have known what he had
done; he should have realised--What? George left a blank there which
he could not fill. The possibility suggested by the sight of that
swaying, excited mob, thronging, gesticulating fifty yards in front of
him, with morbidly eager faces all upturned towards the windows of the
first floor, where the bank was established, was too ghastly, too
awful. He tried to laugh at himself for entertaining an idea so
fanciful, so ridiculous, but the crowd fascinated him; he could not
turn away without--Ah, yes, by going nearer, by joining the stream of
people that was still flowing rapidly in that direction, he might
learn what sort of a story they had got hold of. The murmurs grew
louder as he got deeper and deeper in the throng, until, when he was
well wedged in a feverishly eager phalanx of horror-mongers against
whom the few _gendarmes_ present were altogether powerless, his
curiosity was satisfied to the full, for the story bandied from mouth
to mouth was very definite indeed. A foreigner--English or German, it
was not certain which, had had a quarrel with his employer, some said
about a woman, some said about money, and had murdered him and
escaped. Every version of the tale, however they might differ as to
other details, contained the two last items--the murder and the escape
of the murderer. George stayed deliberately, looked mechanically up at
the windows with the rest of the crowd, and gathering in every
different turn of the story, with strained keenness of hearing, hoping
desperately to hear some one, brighter-witted and better-informed than
the rest, contradict the spreading report and mock at the
exaggerations of the herd. The moments dragged on; they were expecting
a force of _gendarmes_, and the excitement increased. George, unable
to move in the dense mass, was in a state of frenzied defiance of the
crowd’s surmises, when a quick turn of every head to the left, and
hoarse cry “_Les voilà, les voilà_,” told him that the police were
coming, and the next instant he was being borne off, a helpless unit
in the surging crowd as it retreated before the advancing _gendarmes_.
Struggling to work his way out of the crush of people when free
movement became possible, George stumbled against one of the
_gendarmes_ who had been waiting for assistance to disperse the mob.
He was a slim man, scarcely of middle height, and it was he, and not
the stalwart young Englishman, who suffered in the collision,
staggering a step or two with an oath. But George shrank back with a
great shock. If that ugly rumour should have any touch of truth, then
his relation to the little slim man was already that of the hare to
the hound, and the start would not be long delayed.
He was free from the crowd now, and was hurrying home sick at heart
and giddy of brain, trying to realise the possibility he could no
longer shirk. If Mr. Gurton were dead, he--George Lauriston--was a
murderer. That would be quite clear to any judge and jury; George saw
that, with the apparently passionless clearness with which one vivid
idea can strike the mind in a state of white-hot excitement. He felt
no shock at the act, but only at the consequences, not as they
affected himself, but as they touched Nouna. George was not the man to
waste emotion over the exit from the world of a man who, if he had had
fifty more years of life, would only have used them to add to his
record of evil; he had certainly never wished or intended to send him
out of it, but, always excepting those ugly consequences, he as
certainly did not wish him back. The whole matter presented itself to
him only in one light: if the hideous rumour were true, he must leave
his wife; what then would become of her? It was to him as if his very
heart was pierced and quivering under the point of this torturing
thought. He was not troubled by any imaginings of what might be his
own fate; his whole soul being merely a storehouse for his devotion to
his wife, as his body was a shield to protect and a tool to work for
her, there would be nothing left to him worth a man’s thought if she
were taken away. Taken away! Taken away! The very words as they passed
through his brain turned him coward; the clank of his own boots on the
stones of the street frightened him, and he turned round with the
starting eyes and parted lips of the fugitive, to make sure that he
was not already pursued, that before he could see his wife’s face
again he would not be caught.
He was wet from head to foot and trembling like a leaf by the time he
got inside the gate-way of the house. Everything was quiet; as he
glanced at the wife of the _concierge_, sewing behind the glass door
of her little room, at the children playing in the yard, at the cat
curled up on the stairs, he rebuked himself for his folly in taking a
wild mob-rumour for a truth, and comforted by the homely, every-day
aspect the house seemed to wear, he ran up the stairs and let himself
into the top flat with a lightening heart. At any rate he was sure of
one thing: if the worst came to the worst, they could not take him now
without one more long look at his darling. In the terrible, searing
excitement of the last hour, all George’s habitual self-control had
given way, and the great passion of his life, which was always burning
steadily in the depths of his heart, leapt up in towers of flame,
showing luridly every weak spot in his nature. Like the sailor who
bursts open the spirit-stores when the ship is past saving, George
sprang across the sitting-room with a fierce yearning for his wife’s
lips, with words more eloquent, caresses more tender, than any he had
ever yet showered upon her, ready for one last interview which was to
sum up all the happiness they had enjoyed together, to stamp upon her
heart and mind, once and for ever, the memory of the man who had held
her as the jewel of his soul, who set no value on his own life without
her.
He opened the bedroom door with clammy, trembling hands. Was he
blinded by the rushing blood in his brain, or dazed by the sudden
change from the lamp-light in the hall to the murky dimness of the
fading daylight? Or was Nouna really not there? He crossed the floor
to the bed, calling to her hoarsely by name, and hunting with his
hands over every inch of the tumbled quilt where she had lain that
afternoon. He went out on to the balcony, walking from end to end of
it with his hand along the wet and slippery railing, feeling for her
all the way, as if unable to trust to the senses of sight and sound.
Then he returned to the sitting-room and still groping in the dusk,
gave forth a loud cry that made the roof ring.
“Nouna! Nouna!”
The door opened slowly; but as he rushed towards it he met only Madame
Barbier, the landlady, who, scared and shivering, tried to retreat.
But George caught her by the wrists and forced her to answer him.
“Where is my wife?”
“Oh, monsieur, monsieur, don’t you know? Have you missed her? Don’t
look like that, or I cannot, I will not answer you, monsieur; you
frighten me; it is not my fault, I have done nothing, nothing at all.”
George put his hand to his head with a muttered curse on the woman’s
torturing idiotcy, and then forced himself to speak to her calmly.
“My dear madame, surely you can see I don’t want to frighten you. But
for God’s sake speak out.”
Slowly, hesitatingly, paralysed by a sudden fear that the news she had
would prove even more disquieting than suspense, she spoke.
“When you were gone, monsieur, and the _huissiers_ were still
here”--George started; he had forgotten the _huissiers_, and their
disappearance had not troubled him--“a gentleman called, monsieur,
saying he was a friend of yours, and he asked for you; and when I said
you were out he said he would see madame. She came out to see him,
monsieur, and shrieked when she met him; I know, monsieur, because I
followed her into the room after helping her to dress, and she told me
to stay.”
George held himself as still as stone, afraid of stopping the recital.
“A dark-skinned man,” he said, not questioningly.
“Yes, monsieur. Madame wished to retire, but he would not allow it. I
gathered that he said the mother of madame was waiting to see her, and
that you, monsieur, were with her, and that she had sent money to get
monsieur and madame out of their little difficulty. So he paid the men
and got a receipt from them, and they left. And madame put on her
things and went away with him in a _fiacre_. And I am sure, monsieur,
that if I had supposed you would have any objection----”
George let her hand drop.
“When did they go?” he asked in a strangled whisper.
“Not long after you, monsieur. I am sure I thought every moment that
you would be back together. But, ah! monsieur is ill! Can I not assist
you? Some _eau de vie_----”
George had reeled into a chair and was breathing heavily. This last
shock brought no pang; something began clicking and whirring in his
head, and he thought he felt a hard, cold substance pressing closer
and closer to his neck till he could not breathe, but began to choke
and to gurgle, tearing with both hands at his throat to get the
tightening grip away.
“Ah, the knife! the knife!” he burst out hoarsely, as he staggered up
on to his feet with starting eyes and labouring breath. “Take her
away! take her away! Don’t let her see me!”
And he fell to the floor in a fit, just as a loud knocking began on
the outer door of the flat.
When he came to himself he was in the tender hands of the police. They
treated him very civilly however, told him they could wait while he
changed his clothes, which had been soaked through and through by the
heavy rain, and caused George, who was too much exhausted in mind and
body to feel even his uncertainty about his wife except as a dull
pain, to think kindly of the French allowance for “extenuating
circumstances.” He was quite broken down, and, regardless of the
shivering fits which seized him in rapid succession, was ready to go
with them at once, only asking on what charge he was arrested. On
learning that it was for murderous assault, he seemed scarcely enough
master of himself to feel relieved that it was no worse; and when they
added that it might be changed to a graver one if the injured man, who
had been taken to a hospital, should die before the trial, George
merely nodded without any sign of vivid interest. Indeed, if he had
had complete command of his feelings and his wits, he would not have
cared two straws whether Mr. Gurton lived or died. The sentence George
had incurred would certainly at the best be a term of imprisonment, at
the end of which, whether the period were long or short, Nouna would
be as effectually lost to him as if he were already dead.
George Lauriston was of the highly nervous, imaginative temperament to
which ambition, hope, devotion are as the springs of life; when these
were stopped or dried up, he became at once the withered husk of a
man, a helpless log, not chafing at his confinement, not resigning
himself to it, but living through the dull days like a brute, without
emotion, almost without thought, weighed down by a leaden depression
which threatened to end in the most fearful of all madness--a haunted
melancholy. He learned without interest on the second day after his
arrest that Mr. Gurton was dead. His formal appearance before the
magistrate did him an unrecognised good, by rousing him out of his
torpor into a strong sense of shame which bit into his very bones. To
appear before a crowd, among whom were some of his Paris
acquaintances, a prisoner, a social wreck, with every hope blighted,
every honest ambition killed, was an ordeal for which he had to summon
all his shaken manliness for one last gallant effort to show a
stubborn face to fate. There was a worse experience before him. When
he was brought into court to be formally committed for trial, the
first faces he saw were those of Dicky Wood and Clarence Massey, the
latter of whom wept like a child in open court, and was threatened
with ejection for his repeated offers of bail to the extent of every
penny he possessed. Lord Florencecourt was not present. It gave George
a shock to hear that the charge against him was murder; the presence
of his old comrades seemed to emphasise the gravity of the case, which
he realised for the first time since his arrest. When asked if he had
anything to say, he answered: “I am not guilty. I reserve my defence,”
and remained stoically erect and grave while he was formally committed
for trial and removed from the court.
On the following day, however, he received two visits; the first was
from a well-known Parisian barrister, who had been retained for his
defence by Clarence Massey, and had come to receive his client’s
instructions. The second was from Ella Millard, who was paler,
thinner, plainer than ever, and who trembled from head to foot as her
hand touched his.
“Ella, my dear girl, you should not have come,” said he, more
distressed by her grief than by his own plight; “I can’t understand
how Sir Henry and Lady Millard allowed you to come.”
“They didn’t allow me; I just came,” answered Ella in a shaking voice,
with a little Americanism she had caught from her mother. “And I’ve
given uncle Horace such a talking-to as he never had before, even from
my aunt. I only heard about it yesterday; they kept the papers from
us; but I’ve made up for lost time since.”
She was neither tender nor gentle; perhaps she could not trust herself
to be either. Her eyes wandered quickly from one object to another,
never resting upon his for two seconds at a time; upon her face there
was a fixed scared look, as if her muscles had been frozen at the
moment of some fearful shock. She spoke very rapidly, and scarcely
allowed him a chance of answer or comment.
“It is very sweet and kind of----” he began, when she started off
again.
“Oh, no, I haven’t been sweet at all; I never am, you know. First I
scolded papa and mamma for not letting us know; then, as I told you, I
went for uncle Horace; and now I’ve come to finish by an attack upon
you. You have been ungrateful and foolish towards us, George; you know
we all love----”
Her voice trembled, and she stopped. As for George, the sudden flood
of warm sympathy and friendship was too much for him. He took her hand
in a vehement grasp, and turned his back upon her.
“And now,” she continued briskly, though her fingers twitched in the
clasp of his, “we mustn’t waste time. I didn’t come to make a fool of
myself, but to see if there wasn’t something I could do for you. Where
is Nouna, George?”
He turned round quickly, and looking straight into her eyes, saw how
well she read his heart, and pressed her hands against his breast with
passionate gratitude. She drew them hastily away.
“Well, well, tell me what you know, or what you want to know,” she
cried, stamping her foot impatiently. “We’ve heard all sorts of
stories already, of course.”
“What stories? Yes, yes, tell me, tell me everything.”
“Oh, that she ran away from you, and that was why you quarrelled with
the man.”
“And what did you think?”
“I said it was nonsense. People always think that a little lively
woman who talks fast and has playful ways must be a perfect fool, but
I told them Nouna had quite sense enough to know that she had a good
husband, and that if she had already left off loving you it was
because you had beaten her--which I did not believe.”
“Ella, you’re a--a--brick.”
“That is to say I’m a hard little thing made for use, and not for
ornament. I see,” said she quite saucily. “Well, now tell me what has
become of her.”
“I--don’t--know,” said George slowly, with such laboured utterance
that Ella grew instantly very serious, guessing the gravity of his
fears. “If you--if you could find her--”
Suddenly he gave way, and, dropping on to a chair, hid his face in his
hands. There was a little pause, during which Ella stood so motionless
that he might have fancied himself alone; then he felt her hands on
his head, not with a hesitating timid touch, but with the firm
pressure of fingers that seemed to act as conductors of the human
strength and kindliness that lay in her own heart.
“Tell me all you fancy, or all you fear, George. I wormed everything
out of my poor uncle Horace last night, so you may speak to me quite
freely. Do you think she has gone back to her mother?”
The mere mention of this suggestion in a matter-of-fact tone, without
any affectation of shrinking, or horror, conveyed a vague sense of
comfort. It implied that this was the most likely course to have been
taken, and also the most to be desired. He looked up and fixed his
eyes on hers with the hopeful confidence of a child towards the
stranger who lets it out of the dark cupboard where it has been shut
up for punishment.
“She was taken away by a trick, just before I was arrested. The man
who did it was a wretch who has been in the pay of--of her mother, and
who was in love with her himself. Ella, can you understand?”
She shivered; the look of agony in his eyes was too horrible to be
borne. She wrenched her right hand from his and brought it sharply
down on his shoulder.
“Look here!” she said earnestly, “you are torturing yourself without
cause; I am sure of it. I am a woman, and I can feel what a woman
would do. Nouna is sharp and bright, and even cunning upon occasion.
She would not be ten minutes in that man’s society without knowing
that she must be on her guard; I suppose he promised to take her to
her mother; then depend upon it she would never let him rest until he
had done so.”
“Ah, but you don’t know all, Ella. Her mother hates me----”
“---- quarrelled with you, and threatened all sorts of awful things, I
know; uncle Horace told me. But George, you silly old George, don’t
you know that after all she’s her _mother_, and do you really believe
that when Nouna came to her, flinging her arms about her, worshipping
her, and looking upon her as her refuge, her safety--remember
that!--that she would, or could undo all the work of her life, and use
now to make her daughter miserable means which she would not use
before to make her, according to _her_ notions, happy?”
George’s face grew lighter; he looked up out of the window and then
turned again to the girl.
“Certainly--as you put it--it seems possible--”
“Of course it is possible, probable, and I will stake my word--true.
You men are good creatures, but you can’t reason. Now I will write
direct to the mother----”
“My dear Ella, I don’t think you must do that. Ask Lady Mill----”
“Nonsense. Don’t be old-maidish. To-morrow you shall hear
something--something good, I earnestly believe.”
“Ella, you are killing me,” said George in a stifled voice. “If you
knew--what it is--after these awful days--and nights--to hear----”
“A human voice again? I know,” said she, speaking more hurriedly than
ever to hide the breaks that would come in her clear tones. “Only
don’t trouble, don’t worry yourself. Clarence Massey--bless him!--has
been crawling on the ground for me to walk upon him ever since he
found I--I--I was coming to--to see you. His grandfather is just dead,
and he has come into £4,000 a year, and he wants to bribe all the
prison officials with annuities to let you escape. We caught the
barrister outside when he left you, and when he said they could not
bring it in--the worst----” here her voice gave way, “there was not
evidence enough, we could both have kissed him, George; I’m sure we
could.”
She had talked herself out of breath, and was obliged to stop, panting
and agitated through all her hectic liveliness. George himself was
speechless and could do nothing but wring her hands, so she went on
again after a moment’s pause.
“You mustn’t expect to get off altogether, I’m afraid. I dare not
speak about this much, because it is so dreadful to us all--everybody.
But you must keep a good heart, for you have friends as deep as the
sea and as firm as the rocks, George; and as for your little wife, why
she shall live among us like a qu--queen in exile until her lord comes
back again to make her ha--happy.”
The warder had been clicking the keys outside for some minutes; he now
gently opened the door and gave a respectful cough. George seized the
girl’s hands and pressed upon them kisses that left red marks on the
pale flesh before he could let her go.
“God bless you, Ella,” he whispered hoarsely, “you have saved my heart
from breaking.”
The next moment the door shut upon her, but the radiance shed upon the
bare walls by the pure sweet woman illumined them still.