George had not known until this meeting with his old friends how
much ill-health and confinement had pulled him down. He scarcely dared
to look at Ella, for there came a lump in his throat whenever his eyes
fell on her brave, steadfast face. Sir Henry’s presence was a great
relief to them both. The baronet’s comments on the situation was so
inapposite, and he had such a strong sense that he was rendered
ridiculous by this journey to France to chaperon his daughter in her
efforts on behalf of another woman’s husband, that he gave them
something to laugh at when they were only too ready to cry. Ella was
as practical as ever.
“What are you going to do?” asked she, drawing George aside with her
usual _brusquerie_ when the first greetings were over.
“I am going to find Nouna,” said he. “She has been here, and she went
away ill a fortnight ago; I have found that out, and that her black
servant Sundran was with her. I must start to-night.”
“You are too ill for the journey.”
“I am too ill to stay here. I have some work to do in England
besides.”
“What work?”
He did not answer, and there was a pause, during which she considered
him attentively.
“George,” she said at last in a low voice, “you are changed. You have
lost the ‘good’ look you used to have. The work you speak of is
something unworthy of you.”
“It must be something very degrading then; you forget I am a----”
She stopped him imperatively.
“You are my ideal of an Englishman, as honest as any and not so stupid
as some. If you hadn’t been unlucky, I should never have told you so,
but now that you know what a surpassingly lofty opinion I have of you,
I expect you to live up to it.”
“You must let me be human though.”
“That depends. There is good and bad humanity. What do you want to
do?”
“I want to--well--I want to--get at that scoundrel Rahas!”
“You may--on one condition.”
“Well?”
“You musn’t lay a hand on him until you have seen Nouna.”
George looked at her wonderingly.
“Tell me why you make that condition.”
Her answer came at once in a full, deep, steady voice, that betrayed
even more than her words did.
“Because I know that the sight of a face one loves and has longed to
see can extinguish all hatred and anger, everything but happiness;
just as your coming to-night has calmed down all my wicked feelings
towards my uncle and towards--your poor little wife. I can forgive you
for marrying her now--for the first time.”
George was thunderstruck. All the passionate intensity with which the
small, plain girl had loved him and longed for his success in life,
had compassionated him and worked to retrieve his errors, blazed in
her black eyes and seemed to cast a glow over her sallow face. Men are
so much accustomed by reason and experience to associate women’s
fragility of frame with frivolity of mind, that any sudden discovery
of devoted singleness of purpose in one of the soft and foolish sex
strikes them into as much distant awe and reverent worshipfulness as a
manifestation of godhead in the flesh would do. So that George
remained quite silent before Ella, with no inclination to thank her,
but a strong impulse to fall on his knees.
After nearly a minute’s silence, she said, in the same deep voice:
“Will you promise me to see her first?”
George looked at her in a sidelong, shamefaced way.
“I will promise anything in the world you like,” he said huskily.
She smiled happily, and taking his hand, made him sit down beside her.
The joy of having procured his release had thrown her this evening
into an exaltation of feeling which banished her usual awkwardness,
and made her unreserved as only a shy person unusually moved can be.
“Remember,” she said, “you have to save yourself up for a journey.”
And she turned upon him the motherly look which shines out in the
tenderness of all the best women.
Ella was perfectly happy this evening, and had not an atom of jealousy
that the thoughts of the man, in whose interest she could forget all
scruples of prudery, were bent on another woman. She had done for him
what his wife could not do; there was pride enough in that knowledge.
There had been from the first so little selfishness in her love that
by this time there was none--a not uncommon beauty of character in the
plain of person who, expecting nothing, are more than content with a
little. So she arranged all the details of the journey, and within a
couple of hours she and her father and George were on their way back
to England.
They did not reach London until the second morning after their
departure from Toulon. George was disgusted and alarmed to find that
he could scarcely stand; but he resisted the suggestion that he should
take a day’s rest, being afraid that if he once yielded to his bodily
weakness, it would be a long time before he was able to get about
again. So he left Ella and her father at the hotel where they put up,
and drove to Mary Street to learn whether Rahas still lived there.
This step he took with Ella’s full knowledge; he should fulfil his
promise, he told her, and keep his hands off the Oriental merchant
until after he had found Nouna; but he must set about his search in
his own way.
No. 36, Mary Street looked the same as ever, except that, during the
eleven months which had passed since George first drove up to the door
and dashing up the dingy staircase came suddenly upon an _Arabian
Nights_’ nook in murky London, the lower windows had acquired a
thicker coating of grime, and the board with the names “Rahas and
Fanah” had lost its freshness of new paint; the brass vases and
lanterns, the Arabian gun, the inlaid table, the Indian figures were
still there, and the fact that the firm did not depend upon the chance
custom of passers-by was more patent than ever.
George stumbled as he got out of the hansom, and felt, almost without
seeing, for the bell. Fatigue, weakness, and the sleeplessness caused
by intense excitement had preyed upon his body and stimulated his
imagination till on this, the first day of his return to his own
country, he was like a man walking in his sleep, and saw faces and
heard voices invisible and inaudible to all but him. Nouna, as he saw
her first, sleeping like a fairy princess, amidst gorgeous
surroundings; the strange doctor, whose warning against the girl’s
dangerous charms rang again in his ears; the dark-faced Rahas and his
pretensions to occult powers--all these recollections chasing each
other through his feverishly excited mind, dulled his faculties to the
cold reality of present experience, and when the door was opened by a
woman whose face was unknown to him, he stood before her stupidly,
without realising that it was he who had summoned her. When she asked
him what he wanted, he pulled himself together, and asked if Rahas,
the merchant, still lived there.
“Yes, he lives here, but he ain’t here to-day; he’s gone to Plymouth,
and won’t be home for a week or so. You can see the old gentleman if
you like, or letters are sent to him.”
Plymouth! The name sent an old suggestion into George’s mind. He
suddenly remembered that Miss Glass, the old servant of his family who
had given Nouna shelter between her leaving Mary Street and her
wedding-day, came from Plymouth, where her parents had kept a
lodging-house. He had never doubted that he should find Nouna easily,
and now he knew in a moment, without further reasoning, that she was
at Plymouth, and that Rahas had gone down to see her there. So sure
did he feel, that he did not even call at Miss Glass’s house in
Filborough Road to make inquiries; but obtaining from the servant at
No. 36 the final information that Rahas had not long started, George
jumped hastily back into his hansom and drove to Paddington. He found
he had just missed the 11.45 train, and there was not another till
three o’clock; so he drove to Waterloo, and learning that there was a
train at 2.30, he resolved to go by that in order to be on the road as
soon as possible, although it arrived no earlier than the three
o’clock express from Paddington. This left him time to go back to the
Charing Cross Hotel to say good-bye to his friends.
Whether she was frightened by the thought of a possible collision
between George in his weakness and the unprincipled Arabian, or
whether she was stung by a feeling of jealousy that the time of her
generous devotion to him was over, her work done, Ella grew ghastly
pale on hearing of his intended journey, and tried to dissuade him
from it. When she found him immovable, she endeavoured to induce her
father to go with him; but both the men laughed this suggestion to
scorn, and the most she could obtain was permission for her and her
father to see him off at the station.
George was absorbed, as he stood at the window of the compartment in
which he was to travel, by a strong feeling of gratitude towards the
young girl on the platform below him, in whose eyes he read a steady,
unwavering friendship and affection, free from the advancing and
receding tide of passion, without coquetry, without caprice, the
noblest love a human creature can give, the one also which in either
sex is sure never to have an adequate return. George looked down at
her pale face reverently, and tried to find some words to express the
overflowing feelings inspired by her goodness to him; but she would
not hear. Stepping back from the carriage-door with a blush, she
affected to interest herself in the rest of the passengers, when
suddenly the flush died away from her face, and she came hastily back.
Looking up at George with an expression of strong anxiety, she said in
a whisper:
“George, for Heaven’s sake be careful; I believe the man himself is in
the next carriage!”
Lauriston, much startled, his face lighting up, tried to open the
door: but she stopped him, saying: “Remember--your promise!”
The next moment the train had started, and George, overcome by the
rush of feelings evoked by the thought that the man whom he hated was
so near to him, sank down into his corner seat in the wet white heat
which strong excitement causes to the bodily weak. He hoped that
Rahas, if indeed it was he whom Ella had seen, had not caught sight of
him; in that case George was sure that he had only to follow the wily
Arabian to be taken straight to the house where Nouna was. The journey
seemed endless; he fell from time to time into fits of stupor, in
which he heard the tramp of the warder through the rattle of the
train, and Nouna calling to him in hoarse, broken accents unlike her
own, and a rasping voice shrieking out to the beat of the wheels:
“Never to meet! Never to meet!” With a start he would find that
prison-walls and darkness had melted back into the cushioned carriage
and the light of day, and remember in a vague, half-incredulous way
that he was on his way to Nouna. Then the train would stop at a
station, and he would look out eagerly, furtively, scanning the
passengers who got out, searching for the man he wanted. At last, at
Salisbury, where the train waited a quarter of an hour, his anxiety
was set at rest. Wrapped in a long overcoat, and wearing a
travelling-cap pulled low over his eyes, Rahas descended to the
platform, walked two or three times up and down with his eyes on the
ground as if in deep thought, and got in again without having given
one glance at any of the other compartments. George had felt pretty
safe from recognition, as he was much altered by illness and the loss
of his moustache, and as, moreover, he was believed to be still a
prisoner in France. Now he was altogether sure that Rahas was off his
guard, and the knowledge gave him confidence. When, therefore, the
Oriental merchant left the train at a little station a few miles from
Plymouth, George only allowed him time to get through the door before
he jumped out after him, and turning up his coat-collar, as the
coolness of the evening gave him an excuse for doing, gave up his
ticket and followed.
Once out of the station, Rahas, without a glance behind him, struck
straight across the fields by a narrow path that led to the distant
light of what George supposed must be some little village. It was
half-past eight; the showers of an April day had saturated the grass,
and a thick damp mist lingered among the trees, most of which as yet
had but a thin spring covering. The moon had not yet risen, and George
had to hurry after Rahas, fearing in the obscurity to lose sight of
him altogether. The numbness which had seized his tired faculties from
time to time on the railway journey now again began to creep over him,
so that the surprise he would at another time have felt, the questions
he would have asked himself as to the merchant’s leaving the train
before he came to Plymouth, now merged into a dull confusion of ideas,
the most prominent of which was that Rahas was trying to escape him.
As the path descended into a little valley dark with trees, and the
figure before him, now indistinct against the dark background,
disappeared over a stile into the shadows of the copse beyond, this
fancy grew stronger and, feeling that his limbs were unsteady with
ever-increasing fatigue, which made him hot and wet from head to foot,
he broke into a run, reached the stile in his turn, got over it, and
stumbling over some unseen obstacle, slipped on the soft, muddy earth,
and fell to the ground. The next moment he felt himself seized as he
lay on his face, bound with a stout cord that cut into his flesh in
his struggles to free himself, and then dragged through brambles and
wet grass into the little wood. This last was a slow operation, for
George was a big man, and though no longer in the full vigour of his
health, he was too heavy for his dead weight to be pulled along with
ease. He lay quite still, without uttering a sound, recognising, after
a valiant but vain attempt to get free, that he was quite at the mercy
of his assailant, he decided that entire passivity was his best chance
of escaping such a quieting as would save him all further exertion.
The first result of this was that Rahas, when he had continued his
slow and tedious progress with his victim for what seemed a long time,
stopped and peered into his face closely enough for George to make
quite sure of his identity. To his surprise, the Oriental seemed quite
relieved to find that he was not dead.
“Ah ha, you know me,” he muttered, as he encountered the shining of
living eyes in the gloom. “You are not hurt. That is all right. I do
not want to hurt you, be sure of that. I bear you no ill-will.”
“Thank you,” said George quietly. “That is satisfactory as far as it
goes; but I should like to know whether this is the manner in which
you treat chance acquaintances, for example.”
“No,” answered Rahas, quite simply; “I am forced to this last means of
keeping you from the woman whom Heaven, as the planets declare, has
given to me, and whom you have ruined by instilling into her your own
soul, which is killing her fair body day by day. Do you understand?
Her mother has given her to me, is only waiting for me to take her
away to give her the dower you, in your proud folly, refused. I have
waited long, I have tried many ways, to get what Allah intended for
me. Nouna herself, weary of waiting, dying by inches, has at last
given me permission to see her. Must I, at the last, with success in
my very grasp after a year of waiting, see it wrung from me by the man
whose touch has been fatal to this fair flower of the East? No. The
will of Allah must be done. There are women enough in the world for
you; there is only one for me. Nouna must come to my arms to-night;
and for you, after to-night, I am at your disposal in any way you
please.”
There was a strange mixture of cupidity, fanaticism and ferocious
courage in his speech and manner which struck horror into George’s
heart, at the thought that his wife might to-night have to come face
to face, without a husband’s protection, with this man. He uttered a
loud shout and made a sudden effort to rise, which the Arabian
frustrated with a movement as nimble as a hare’s, accompanied by a
short laugh.
“Keep still,” he said more harshly, “and keep your shouting until I am
out of earshot.”
He made no threat in words, but his tone was so significant that
George, to whom danger had restored his full faculties, resolved to
save up his lungs. In a business-like manner Rahas then, with his knee
on the young man’s chest, assured himself that the cord which bound
him was secure, and with a civil and dispassionate “good-night,” to
which the Englishman was in no humour to respond, he turned and walked
rapidly away; his steps scarcely sounded on the soft, damp earth, and
only the crackle of dead branches and the rustle of living ones,
growing fainter and fainter until the sounds faded quite away, told
George that he was retreating rapidly.
Then came a time for the poor fellow when he prayed for death at last.
With the rotting leaves of the previous autumn forming a slimy pillow
for his head, his body sinking slowly into the damp earth, while a
rising wind moaned a low dirge among the surrounding hills and swept
over the thinly-leaved branches above his head with a sepulchral
“hush!” he felt all the horrors of the grave, all its loneliness, all
its impotence, without the one blessing--peace, which we hope for
there in spite of the clergy, who are ferocious as regards the next
world to counter-balance their meekness in this. The deft Rahas had
bound him sailor-fashion, beginning with the middle of the rope; and
the knots were immovable as iron; he began to feel cramped and
benumbed by the cold, the rising moisture amid the undergrowth of the
wood, and the impeded circulation of his blood. Still his head
remained hot as fire, his brain reeling in a mad dance of fantastic
tortures, until at last frenzy came, and pictures of the past chased
each other through his memory, but with a lurid light of horror upon
them which distorted his fairest recollections, and turned them into
ugly nightmares. Then in turn the pictures faded and his senses began
to grow dull, and strange cries to sound in his ears to which he tried
to reply; but his voice would not come, and even as his lips moved in
this effort, the last gleam of sense left him, and he fell into
unconsciousness.
As upon the blackness of night the fair, pure dawn comes gradually, so
George, from the stupor of a deadly lethargy, woke by slow degrees to
sensations of warmth, and light, and joy; and feeling, before the
sense of sight came back to him, a soft touch on his flesh that set
him quivering, and a breath against his lips that exhaled the very
perfume of love, he fancied in the first moments of a still feebly
moving brain, that his prayer had been granted, that he was dead, and
in Heaven. Until suddenly there burst upon his ears a wild, joyous
cry: “He is breathing! He has come back to me--back, thank God! thank
God!”
And his heart leapt up, and an ember of the old fire warmed his veins.
Opening his eyes, which were blinded and dazzled still, he whispered
huskily, “Nouna, my little wife!” and groped about with weak,
trembling arms until she came to him, and lying down by his side,
pressed her lips to his with warm, clinging kisses that carried a
world of loyalty and love straight from her soul to his. Then, while
he felt her soft mouth strained against his, he knew, all dazed and
half benumbed as he still was, that a change had come upon her. It was
not the restless butterfly kiss of a passionate caprice that she gave
him, as in the old days when she would fly from his knee to the window
and back again half a dozen times in five minutes; it was not the
embrace of sincere but timid affection she had learnt to give him when
they lived their struggling life in Paris; it was the seal of patient
and faithful love satisfied at last. From that moment he had no
questions to ask, no explanations to hear. What did it matter where he
was, how he came there, how she came there? But Nouna, drawing her
head back to look at him, saw his lips move, and she watched them and
listened, holding her breath, to his weak whisper:
“Cold, darkness, pain, and the long windy nights--all over now!”
And he drew her closer to him, and fell asleep.