A night, and a day, and a night, and a day, and again a night passed
during which time George heard nothing more of his ministering angel
or her promised comfort. Then on the second day his door opened, and a
lady to see him was announced. The few instants which elapsed before
she appeared were more intensely exciting to him than the pause before
the judge pronounces sentence is to the prisoner. It was not Ella; she
would have been in like a sparrow before the announcement was well out
of the warder’s mouth. His suspense did not last a half-minute. With
slow and hesitating steps a woman entered, oddly dressed in garments
that were obviously never intended to be worn together; a shabby old
grey flannel dressing-gown with scraps of torn lace trailing along the
floor behind her, an opera-cloak of light brown satin embroidered in
gold thread bordered with sable-tails and fastened by a brooch of
sapphires, a battered black bonnet and a lace veil as thick as a mask,
formed a costume so grotesque that at the first moment George failed
to recognise in the odd figure the luxurious and once daintily dressed
Chloris White. The change in her, when she took off her veil as the
warder retreated, was even more striking: it appalled George, who had
not had enough experience of women of her class and their dismal
vagaries to understand this ghastly but common metamorphosis of the
beauty of one day to the hag of the next. He had thought in the glare
of the sunlight, that afternoon when he had carried her off to the
boat, that the liberal daubing of pink and white and black made her
beautiful face hideous; now, as she sat, heedless of her appearance,
in the full light of the little barred window, her face as innocent of
paint as his own, though not so clean, looked, in its withered
yellowness, with its sunken eyes and vicious furrows, so inexpressibly
uncanny and revolting, that he was forced to acknowledge the wisdom of
a practice which disguised in some measure the ugly traces of base
thoughts and foul deeds. He had seen her first in all the pride of her
vogue, of her success in the career she had chosen; now he saw her in
the alternate mood of a degradation, a self-abandonment, a
wretchedness, which mocked the possessor of treasures which would have
made an art-museum rich, and of jewels and furs which now only served,
the former to enhance the weird hideousness of her sallow skin, the
latter to emphasise the slovenliness of her attire.
She seemed ill at ease and frightened: the daughter of an English
gentleman and an Indian princess, her wayward course of life had
reduced her native grace and dignity to mere accidents of mood, and a
check or a disappointment made her destitute of either. George was
horror-struck, and could not speak, but stood waiting for her to
explain the object of her visit. From the moment of her entrance, he
had forgotten her connection with Nouna; he was brought back to
startled recollection by her first words, which were spoken in a
querulous, tearful voice.
“Well, you have sent to ask me where is your wife. It is I who come to
ask where is my child?”
“Nouna!” exclaimed George in a low voice. “You do not know where she
is?”
“No. You have spoilt her for her mother, you have made her look down
upon me, fear me. And what have you done for her yourself? What has
she become through you? How have you kept your fine promises to me?
You were too proud to take my money; it was too base for your fine
fingers to touch; she was to be rich, and honoured, and happy through
you! And what happens? What happens, I say?” Her excitement was
increasing as she talked, until the low tones he had admired in her
voice became shrill and nasal, and the great brown eyes, which had
looked languishing and seductive when she raised and lowered them
artfully between thick fringes of long black lashes, now flamed and
flashed in her dry, parched skin like fires in a desert. “You fling
away all your chances, you go to work as a common clerk, you make
her--my daughter, _my_ beautiful daughter--live like a dressmaker in
two wretched rooms, and then you let her be carried off from you under
your very nose, so that she comes back to me ill, miserable, her
beauty spoilt, her heart breaking--the wife of a criminal.”
In the course of her violent speech this woman had wrung his heart
again and again, not by her reproaches, but by the pictures she had
called up of Nouna. What had the poor child learnt about her mother?
How had she borne it? She had been shocked, disgusted, so he gathered.
Poor little thing, poor little thing! And what had she learnt about
him? So his thoughts ran in a running commentary, and when Chloris
White stopped, moaning to herself in bitter scorn and anger, he had to
clear his throat again and again before he could speak.
“Then she is with you?” he said at last huskily.
The woman raised her head in fierce petulance.
“No, no, no, I tell you. She is not with me--she has left me, and I
don’t know where she has gone.”
A great river of pain, mingled with which ran one tiny current of
sweet sad pleasure, seemed to rush through the heart of the stricken
young husband at the image these words called up before him, of the
poor little wife coming for refuge into her mother’s home, gathering
some inkling of the terrible truth that her idol was not all she had
believed, and shrinking as her husband would have had her do, as her
mother fancied she would not do, from the luxury that bore a taint,
creeping out into the world again, perhaps to come back to Paris alone
in search of himself.
“You don’t know where she has gone!” he repeated in a softer voice,
for he recognised genuine human feeling in the woman’s tones.
“No, I tell you.”
“When did she leave you?”
“Two days ago. I have hunted for her ever since; I came to Paris to
look for her. Then a lady, a Miss Millard, one of Lord Florencecourt’s
nieces--one of _my_ nieces,” she added defiantly, “telegraphed to my
house in London, and the telegram was forwarded to me here; you wanted
to know whether Nouna was with me, she said. She is not with me, she
is lost, wandering about in the world by herself, ill, out of her
mind, perhaps. Are you satisfied? See what your education has done for
her, see the grand result of your virtuous principles. She would have
been safe in my house and happy, and could have been as good as she
pleased, I never prevented her, I never should have prevented her. But
you have touched her with your own infernal cursed coldness and
idiotcy, and nothing would please her. During the two days she was
with me, it was nothing but: ‘When is George coming? Do you think
George will come by the next train?’ You haven’t even made her good
either, for when I offered to take her to church, she wouldn’t go with
me, but let me go alone. You have spoilt her life, you have killed
her.”
She burst into a passion of tears. George paid no attention to her,
but walked up and down, torturing himself by imagining what could have
become of his wife, and wondering when Ella would come again, that he
might consult the bright-brained girl as to the next step to take to
find her. He was deeply anxious to know all that had passed between
Nouna and her mother and Rahas, but he almost despaired of learning
anything from the hysterical creature before him. Gradually, however,
Chloris White seemed to wake to the fact that she was being ignored,
and she tried to recover some calm and a semblance of dignity.
“What have you to say for yourself? Don’t you understand what you have
to answer for?” she asked with asperity.
George stopped short in his walk up and down the narrow space at his
command, and looked at her with a troubled face, but in his voice
there was a quiet and biting contempt as he replied--
“I have to answer for having fostered what was best in her nature till
she was strong enough to resist all the temptations your wicked folly
could suggest, that’s all.”
And he began to walk up and down again. Chloris White sprang from her
chair and stopped him by a violent grip of his arm.
“How dare you say such things to me, you, who are the cause of it
all!”
George removed her hand from his arm and looked down at her sternly.
“Madam, you are talking nonsense,” he said; “your daughter was
perfectly happy with me; you set a mischievous rascal to work to get
us into difficulties, to entice her away from me; and it is through no
fault of yours that the scoundrel didn’t succeed in ruining her as he
has done me. When you came in here just now you seemed human enough to
be ashamed of yourself, and I said nothing to you. Now that you have
overcome your shame, I have overcome my forbearance, and I tell you
plainly you are the most corrupt, depraved and vile creature I ever
met, and it would be better for Nouna to take shelter in a workhouse
than in your home. Now you had better go, I cannot bear the sight of
you.”
The contemptuous brutality with which he shot these rough words at her
and then turned away proved a far more effective mode of treatment
than the courteous composure he had shown at the beginning of the
interview; for self-restraint is a quality little understood or
practised by women of her class and their companions. She at once
became submissive and apologetic, rose and walked meekly towards the
door.
“I am sorry I intruded upon you; I thought you would like to hear what
I knew about your wife; I will go.”
George was immediately shocked at his own savagery, and without
approaching or looking at her said he had not meant to be rude, his
temper was not improved by confinement, and he should be very glad if
she would tell him something--anything, only she must tell him nothing
but the truth.
“Yes, yes, I will tell you the truth indeed,” she said humbly,
clasping her hands with restless impulsiveness, and recognising, with
the shrewdness of long practice in the arts of pleasing men, that to
relate bare facts was her best chance with this one. “She came to me
five days ago--in the early morning--to my house in London. It was the
day after she left you. The person who brought her----”
“Rahas?” interrupted George sharply.
“Yes, Rahas--had told her (I assure you he was not acting by my
authority)----”
“Go on, go on.”
“Rahas had told her that you had come to me--that I was in Paris, that
I was ready to help you (indeed, I should have been, I assure you).”
George moved again brusquely, and Chloris hastened back to the facts.
“He took her to an hotel, but Nouna mistrusted him, and insisted on
remaining in the _fiacre_ while he went in to see if I was there. When
he had gone in she jumped out of the cab, made inquiries of the
proprietress, and found I had never been to the hotel at all. (You
understand, Mr. Lauriston, that all this was without my sanction?)”
“Perfectly,” said George, with the best accent of sincerity he could
muster.
“She was going to drive back home when Rahas ran out of the hotel,
told her the fact was I was ill in England, was dying to see her, and
had sent him to bring her over by a trick, since I knew her husband
would not let her come. Nouna was worked upon so much by this, that,
as they had driven to the Gare du Nord, and were just in time for the
Calais train, she decided on the impulse of the moment to come, but
insisted on travelling in the ladies’ compartment of the train, and in
the ladies’ cabin on board, so that he saw very little of her on the
journey, until they got to Charing Cross, where she got into a hansom
by herself, and refused to come into my house until Sundran went out
to reassure her. Apparently, Mr. Lauriston, marriage had not increased
her trust in human nature.”
“It has taught her to discriminate, madam.”
“I was not up. She was taken into my boudoir, and I dressed and went
to see her. She was standing just inside the door, waiting; she was
flushed, and trembling, and so weak with fatigue and excitement that
she almost fell into my arms. But then--”
Chloris stopped. Something in these vivid memories was keenly painful
to her.
“She knew--you were her mother?” said George in a low voice.
Chloris, who had related her story standing so that he could only see
her side-face, turned the full gaze of her black eyes upon him
defiantly.
“Well, take what pride in it you like, she drew back from my arms, and
looked at me, and the colour went out of her face, and left her quite
white, with dark rings under her eyes, and she asked, in a weak
whisper: ‘Are you really my mother?’ Perhaps I looked angry and spoke
harshly; I thought of you, and how you had poisoned her mind against
me, and she ran to the door with a wild, scared face, and cried:
‘George! Where is George?’ And she glanced round the room like a caged
bird, and fell down crying on to the floor. So I left her, for I saw
you had taken her from me altogether, and Sundran went to her and made
her bathe and rest, and she wrote out a telegram to you, and fell
asleep crying. When I saw her again she was quite meek and subdued,
and sat with me very quietly, not talking, but looking at me with
wondering, inquiring eyes that haunt me. For I tell you I have loved
my child, and it was hard to find that she had no heart left for me.
Then I was sorry that I--sorry that she had come; and when I learnt
what had happened to you, I was angry, furiously angry with Rahas, and
I would not let him come near the house, and I did not know what to do
with the child. She could not be happy with me--you had spoilt her for
that. I gave her a beautiful dress I had had made, and she said: ‘I
will wear it when George comes.’ She would not meet my friends, and I
did not press her; she did just as she liked, and took walks with
Sundran instead of driving with me. And on the third morning she was
gone. Her bed had not been slept in, and the footman said she had gone
out late the night before. She left a note thanking me for being kind,
and saying she could not rest till she saw her husband again. Then I
came over here to look for her, for I love her, and I love her no less
for her not loving me. I went to the rooms where you stayed, but she
had not been there, and all I found of her there was this.”
She handed to George two telegrams, both addressed to himself. They
had been opened by Chloris. Both were from Nouna. One had been sent
from Dover on her journey. It said:
“I have gone to see mamma, who is ill. She will help us. Come at once,
or I shall think you are angry.”
The second was sent from London, and contained these words:
“Come to me quickly, I am frightened and ill. Start at once. I hear
your voice calling to me, and I have not money enough to come.”
As George read these words his sight failed him, and a great sob shook
his whole frame. Chloris tried to take back the two scraps of flimsy
paper, but he thrust them into his breast.
“No, they are mine,” he said in a broken voice.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“As you like,” said she in a hard tone. “After all I have a better
consolation than you have.”
George looked at her inquiringly.
“I was born ambitious,” she continued, “as the unlucky daughter of a
princess had a right to be. I centred my ambition unselfishly on my
daughter; you and she frustrated me. Well, I can still be Viscountess
Florencecourt--and I will.”
George pulled himself together to make a good fight for his old
friend. This devil-may-care creature, who was beginning to find the
oft-tried excitements fail, was just in the mood to plunge head
foremost into the delights of starting a new and sensational scandal.
George took care to speak with the greatest calmness.
“I don’t think you will, though, when you think about it. You are too
clever.”
“I am too clever to fail to do so, I flatter myself.”
“You are quite clever enough, madam, to convince every separate person
you talk to of the justice of your claim, but with the general public,
with society, the bar, the bench, all reason, sympathy, and probably
law, would be against you. I don’t think you could get a firm of
standing to take up your case.”
“Don’t you?” said Chloris, raising her eyebrows incredulously, while
her face assumed an expression of deep cunning. “And what if I assure
you that I have prepared for this contingency by _making_ a firm of
standing ready to my hand?”
George suddenly remembered the utter and rather inexplicable devotion
to her interests shown by Messrs. Smith and Angelo, and listened with
curiosity as she went on:
“Four years ago a son of old Angelo’s went mad about me, and robbed
his father to make me handsome presents. The old man was dreadfully
cut up. I learnt the facts, and knowing the reputation of the firm was
good, I earned the eternal gratitude of the father by throwing over
the son, and making restitution to the extent of some four thousand
pounds. Do you understand?”
“I see that you have gained a solicitor devoted to your interests; but
I maintain that it would be directly against your interest to put
pressure on the Colonel. I know him; I know that he would resist your
claim with such influence to back him as even you could not stand
against; and I know on the other hand”--George lowered his voice, and
spoke with slow significance--“that if you are content to let things
remain as they are, he will be quite ready to make _private_ redress
by making such provision for you, when you choose to ask for it, as
even the daughter of a princess would not refuse.”
Chloris was interested to the extent of evidently occupying herself
with a mental calculation.
“_Ask_ for it! I could _claim_ it!” she said defiantly.
“But as a claim it would not be allowed.”
Chloris shrugged her shoulders, but she was impressed. She knew that
her charms had passed their zenith, and a handsome provision for the
future was not to be despised. George was satisfied with the
impression he had made, and extremely anxious to be rid of her. In
fact they both felt glad that the reappearance of the warder now
brought to a close a visit which had been prompted by no very kindly
feeling. At the last Chloris seemed to feel this, and she lingered at
the door to say, in a voice that had some womanly kindliness and some
self-reproach in it:
“I am sorry I came, for I have done you no good. I was thinking of
nothing but my child--my disappointment. Forgive me. I am not bad all
through, and I thank you for what you have done for her. We can feel
for each other now, you and I, different as we are: we have both lost
her. If I have had any hand in bringing you here, forgive me, for my
life is broken too.”
George held out his hand. Not that he believed much in the permanency
of the capricious creature’s grief, but that it was impossible for him
to refuse pardon to any one who asked for it sincerely. She kissed his
fingers passionately, to his great discomfiture; for not only had he a
Briton’s natural objection to demonstrations of this sort, but his
clemency towards the woman who had done her utmost to cause the wreck
of his life was only the result of a surface sentiment of pity which
thinly covered a very much deeper feeling of disgust and resentment,
and when the door closed behind her he shook himself like a dog, with
an impulse to get free from the very air which she had breathed.
George had no more visits, except from his advocate, for the next two
days; but on the third he received a note from the Colonel, dated from
England, and written in a perturbed and rather constrained tone,
containing a backward shot at his foolishness in marrying a girl of
whom he knew nothing, some sincere condolences and regrets at his
situation, and a useful expression of fear that he, the Colonel, was
“in for it now.” On the whole, the possibility that Chloris White
would now turn her attention entirely to him seemed to have swamped
Lord Florencecourt’s kindliness, and George wrote him the following
answer not without some bitter feelings:
“Dear Lord Florencecourt,
“I thank you very much for the kind things you say. But as for my
marriage, which you deplore as the beginning of the mess I am in, I
assure you I am just in the same mind about it as I was at the time
when I gave my name to the forlorn little creature whose natural
guardians had left her at the mercy of they didn’t care who. I don’t
stand so well in the world now as I did then, but I think I am no
worse a man for having loved something better than my ambition, and
taught my wife to love something better than her trinkets. I have done
my best to secure her nearest male relation from annoyance, and I
think I have succeeded; I hope that this circumstance will induce him
to make every effort to find her and take care of her, if his instinct
does not. I pray you, with the solemn prayer of a man who may be dead
to the world, to persuade him to this. If I were satisfied about her,
they might do what they liked to me and welcome.
“Yours very sincerely,
“George Lauriston.”
Within a fortnight of Chloris White’s visit George, ill and feverish
from neglected cold and reduced to a state of almost imbecile
disquietude not for himself, but for the wife of whose fate no one
could, or no one dared to give him tidings, was examined by the judge,
according to French law, and brought up for trial. The proceedings
produced in him not even a languid appearance of interest; accusation
and defence seemed to his worn-out weary brain only a long monotonous
buzz of unmeaning words, and when the verdict was pronounced, he did
not know whether it was more or less severe than he had expected.
He was acquitted of the charge of wilful murder, but found guilty of
homicide, and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.
George repeated the words to himself, trying to realise them. But all
he knew was that he was thankful the trial was over.