The girl apparently guessed his reluctance, which she was not without means to overcome. Advancing a step further in the doorway, and leaning forward so that her slight grey-and-green-clad figure was visible almost to the waist, she pointed to her left arm, which hung in a picturesque sling of soft orange Indian silk. This gesture was irresistible. He felt that it justified his immediate and hasty return. How could he excuse his boorish conduct in not calling before to ask after the little arm that had been injured through him?
The lady, however, was in forgiving mood. She drew back into the doorway as soon as she saw that her end was gained, and when he reached it she was leaning against the old carved oak banisters, waiting for him, all smiles and laughter.
“Yes, come in,” she whispered, putting her finger to her lips and glancing at the inner door on her right hand.
Again Lauriston thought reluctantly of theArabian Nights, and the lady kept in a cage by the tyrannical genie, but it was too late to retreat now, even if he could have found strength to resist the spell of the dancing eyes, or the dumb eloquence of the wounded arm. She sprang forward as soon as he had entered and shut the door softly. It was cool in the bare hall after the heat of the streets. The girl’s dress was a simple robe of silk, with lights and shades of grey changing into green, made something after the fashion of the so-called æsthetic gowns he had aforetime abhorred, but falling in straight crisp folds instead of clinging to her like damp rags, as did the garments of crumpled South Kensington devotees a few years ago.
She mounted two steps and turned, holding the banister-rail and leaning on it.
“I thought you would have come before,” she said with a first touch of shyness, looking down upon her hand with a most coquettish air of being quite ready to look up again if she were invited to do so.
“I didn’t dare,” said Lauriston at the foot of the stairs, “I was so ashamed of the mischief I had done.”
“You might have called to ask if I had got better.”
“What would Mr. Rahas have said?”
“Rahas!” A great flood of crimson blood mounted to her face, glowed in her cheeks, and heightened the brilliancy of her eyes, which flashed a liquid light of haughty indignation from china-blue white and velvet-brown iris. “Rahas! What right has he to speak? He has no claim in the world upon me!”
Evidently the impetuous little lady and the despised Rahas, whatever their relation to each other might be, had been expressing a mutual difference of opinion. The Englishman watched with equal measure of admiration and astonishment the rise of the sudden wave of passion which seemed almost incredibly strong for such a small creature to sustain. She was struck in the midst of her anger by the expression of his face.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I did not mean to laugh. I was wondering to see you so angry.”
The girl smiled, quite restored to good humour.
“Ah, yes, they used to say that when I was at school. English girls”—with a flash of contempt—“can’t be angry or sorry or happy or anything; they can only eat and drink and sleep and wrangle and giggle.”
“You are not English then?”
“I English! You did not think I was English the other night?”
“No.”
“What did you think I was?”
“A little fairy princess.”
“But when my sleeve caught fire, and you took me in your arms and put it out; you did not think I was a fairy then?”
“No,” said Lauriston, stupefied by the daring of her childish coquetry.
“Well, what did you think I was then?”
“A poor little creature in danger through my blundering.”
“And what did you think of me when I said: ‘Away; leave my presence?’ ” asked she, imitating the stately tone and attitude she had used.
“I thought you a very dignified young lady.”
“You did not think me unkind?” with anxiety.
“Certainly not.”
“Oh!” A pause. “I am very glad you did not think me unkind.”
She looked down for a few moments, and played with the tiny bow at the top of her injured arm’s silken sling. “You see,” she went on earnestly, “when Rahas came up stairs he said you had flung him on one side, and I said you were perfectly right, and he was then very disagreeable. And Mrs. Ellis, my governess, came in, and they both said they did not believe what you said, and you would never dare to show your face here again. And I said”—the girl drew herself up like a queen as she repeated her own words—“ ‘Do you think that I, the daughter of an English gentleman, do not know the signs by which to tell an English gentleman?’ He will come back to ask my pardon for the accident, to learn if it was serious. That is what I said,” she continued, dropping her majestic manner, “and so I have watched for you; oh, how I have watched for you! You see, I was anxious, for my credit’s sake, that you should not long delay.” The last words were uttered in a demure tone, an afterthought evidently.
“I have been very busy,” murmured Lauriston, trying guiltily to look like a Cabinet minister on the eve of a dissolution. “I really couldn’t get away before.”
“Of course not, or you would have come,” said she simply. “And I suppose you did not like to come in because you did not know my people. But you will come up stairs now and know my governess, and she will see that all I have said about you is true. Please follow me. I forgot that it was discourteous to keep you waiting here.”
She was like a child playing a dozen different parts in half an hour. Now, with the manner of a chamberlain, she led the way up stairs and ushered Lauriston into the smaller sitting-room into which on the night of his unexpected visit he had only peeped.
Atthe table was sitting a matronly lady in black, with a stodgy and inexpressive face. She was writing letters at a neat little morocco desk; and on the entrance of her pupil followed by a good-looking but perfectly unknown gentleman, she drew herself up from her occupation, and rubbed her nose with her ivory-handled pen in evident dismay.
“Dear me!” she ejaculated softly, in tones of abject consternation, “who has she picked up now?”
Before the elder lady had time to give any other indication of the manner in which she intended to receive the stranger, the young girl flung her uninjured arm from behind round the neck of her less impulsive fellow-woman, and cried:
“Mammy Ellis, you see—you see I was right. This is the gentleman who saved me from being burnt. He has come to say he is sorry.”
And with this introduction, uttered in a tone of the utmost triumph, she made a step back, as if she expected that a full and uninterrupted view of him would remove all lingering doubts as to the perfect eligibility of her new acquaintance.
It was rather embarrassing certainly. For the elderly lady, who had risen from her chair and was taking a good look at the midnight intruder, continued to glare at him with cold British stolidity, and Lauriston had none of theaplombgiven by a long and varied course of flirtations.
“I am afraid, madam,” he began humbly, and with a good deal of hesitation, “that you—that you will not forgive my—er—my appearance here, I mean my last appearance, in fact my first appearance.” He paused to gather an idea to go on with, and continued his explanation more calmly, taking care, with all the signs of conscious guilt, to avoid the lady’s stony eye. “A comrade of mine (his name is Massey—we are lieutenants in the same regiment, ——th Hussars) gave me the address ‘36, Mary Street, West,’ as that of his brother, who is an old friend of mine. He told me to go right in and up to the first floor. Of course I must have come to the wrong Mary Street, but I knew of no other, drove straight here, and carrying out my instructions, had the misfortune, as you know, to intrude upon this young lady, with the unhappy consequence of waking her and causing the accident. I cannot express my regret. I have been ashamed to call. I would bring my friend to back me up if I thought you would believe him more than me. But you would not. I am a gentleman, madam, an officer. I hope you will believe me.”
Whether the eloquence of this speech would have been strong enough to melt the rigid lady is unknown. But there is magic to feminine ears in the word “officer”; and as the young fellow brought his explanation to an end with much brusque fervour, she softened visibly, and glanced from him to her charge in a wavering and uncertain manner.
“Well, really I don’t know,” she began vaguely, when the girl cut her short, slipping her slim hand between her guardian’s plump arm and matronly figure, and resting her head, gently tilted back, on the lady’s breast in wheedling and seductive fashion.
“Yes, yes, you do know, Mammy Ellis, you know your own husband was an officer—you’re always telling us so, and you’re only being dignified for fun, and you must shake hands with this gentleman and thank him for saving your little Nouna from having her arm burnt off.”
Thus adjured, Mrs. Ellis, still doubtfully murmuring and of rather distressful visage, did end by holding out a crumby hand, which George Lauriston shook with reverence and gratitude. He had got his cue now, and he at once made respectful inquiries about the husband, was fortunate enough to be able to tell the widow certain details concerning the regiment to which he had belonged, and soon succeeded in obtaining the lady’s confidence to such an extent that she entertained him with a long and minute account of the late officer’s distinguished though bloodless services to his country, and of the niggardliness of an ungrateful government to the hero’s family.
George was becomingly overwhelmed with indignation, though the monotony of the narrator’s delivery, the pleasant atmosphere of the half-darkened room, the window of which was shaded with thick blinds, and the sight of Miss Nouna stretched comfortably in an American well-cushioned chair, waving a palm-leaf lazily to keep the flies off, and looking at him half shyly, half mischievously from behind it through long black eyelashes, all tended to lull him into a drowsy state, in which he half imagined himself to be in some tropical country where passions spring up in a day to a fervour never felt in foggy England, where life flows on without energy or effort, and where woman, instead of being the modest partner of our joys and sorrows, is the passionate, voluptuous and irresponsible source of them.
The apartment, though far smaller, more commonplace and less gorgeous than the room which he had seen on his first visit, helped the illusion. Tall narrow glasses from floor to ceiling on each side of the door, reflected a long, two-tiered stand full of large-leaved hothouse plants which ran the whole length of the windowed-wall of the room. Half-a-dozen of these plants were little orange trees, their round yellow fruit giving pretty touches of colour to the dark green mass, while the white blossoms gave forth a faint, sweet perfume. The glass over the mantelpiece was draped with dark tapestry curtains, caught up here and there on each side by palm-leaf and peacock fans, of the kind with which a freak of fashion has lately made us all familiar. The curtains came down to the ground, while the deep valance which hung from the mantelpiece over the empty fireplace was caught up in the middle by a bronze statuette of a Hindoo girl, whose right arm held high above her head a shaded lamp. A pair of black Persian kittens were curled up asleep on a cushion at the feet of the statue. A harp stood in one corner, and a guitar lay on a chair. The rest of the room did not harmonise with these fantastic arrangements. The best had been done to conceal a bilious “high art” carpet by means of handsome rugs, and the table was beautified by an embroidered cover; but the chairs and side-board breathed forth legends of no more interesting locality than the Tottenham Court Road, and the walls were made hideous by an obtrusive and yet melancholy paper.
George Lauriston noted all these things, and his curiosity about this queer little household grew more intense. Who was this fascinating young girl? Why was she living in this dingy corner of London with the garrulous middle-aged lady who must evidently find her impulsive charge “a handful”? The buzz of Mrs. Ellis’s tedious monologue began at last to madden him, and he followed the young girl with eager eyes as she slid off her chair and rang the bell.
“I’m thirsty, Mammy Ellis,” she explained. Then, tired of silence, she swooped down upon the table, thrust the pen her governess had been using again into the astonished lady’s hand and said, coaxingly but imperatively: “Write—write to mamma. This gentleman does not wish to interrupt you. I will entertain him. Tell her what you think of him. And then I will read the letter, and see if it may go.”
Mrs. Ellis laughed gently, and obeyed with a protest. Evidently that was the usual order of things between them. Nouna improvised herself a low seat beside the plants by piling on the floor the cushions from her American chair, then she crossed her hands round one knee, and looked up at Lauriston.
“You have not told us your name,” said she diffidently.
“Nouna,” protested the lady from the table.
“Don’t you want to tell us your name?”
“Certainly. George Lauriston.”
“That is a pretty name. Mine is Nouna.”
“Nouna! That is not an English name.”
“Of course not. It is an Indian name. Do you like Indians?”
“I have only known one West Indian lady.”
“WestIndian! That is not Indian at all. I come from the land of the Rajahs. My grandmother was a Maharanee. She was the most beautiful woman in all India, and she wore chains of diamonds round her neck that flashed and sparkled like a thousand suns, and she lived in a marble palace that was called the Palace of Palms, where the floors glittered with gold, and soft music came like wind through the halls, and a great tall tower with a minaret and a spire rose up into the sky over the room where she slept, to tell all the world that there was the spot where the Lady of the Seven Stars was resting. And she had a thousand slaves who knelt and bowed themselves to the earth when she spoke to them, and her palanquin was all of ebony-wood inlaid with pearl, and it was hung with silver fringe, and the inside was satin, the colour of the opening roses; and she travelled on an elephant whose trappings were of gold. Ah, that is the beautiful land; where the sun is scorching hot on the fields, and shines bright and glorious, and throws golden darts through the chinks of the blinds. And yet there the ladies of high rank—like my grandmother and my mother and I, lie still and cool in their apartments, or step down soft-footed into their marble baths where no hot glare can reach them, only the sense that it is warm and bright outside. Oh, that is the place to live in, to be happy in. How could my mother leave it to come to a land like this!”
She had worked herself up as she sang the praises of her own country to a pitch of glowing excitement, which changed suddenly to an almost heartbroken wail with her last words. Mrs. Ellis looked up from the table reprovingly.
“You forget, Nouna, that India is a heathen country, and that your grandmother probably never had the chance of seeing so much as a single missionary, and seems to have been very ignorant of her higher duties.”
“There are no duties out there,” sighed Nouna, with a most plaintive look into the dream-distance from her black eyes; “at least for the high-caste women. You have only to live, and love, and grow old, and die, and nothing to learn but what you breathe in from the flowers and the sweet scents, and love-songs to please your lord the prince.”
Mrs. Ellis looked scandalised.
“Dear me, Nouna,” she bleated out nervously, “you really don’t know what you are talking about. You never talked like this before. I don’t know what Mr. Lauriston will think!”
Mr. Lauriston thought the look of passionate yearning in the young eyes inexpressibly fascinating, but he did not say so, merely murmuring something about the allowance to be made for a tropical temperament. And, Nouna being reduced by the interruption to a silent trance of regret, the conversation became an intermittent duologue between the other two until tea was brought in. The manner in which this was served displayed the same inconsistencies as the furniture of the room. Sundran, Nouna’s ayah, in her native dress, placed upon the table an ordinary black and battered tray, on which stood a chased silver-gilt tea-service of quaint design, cups, saucers, and plates of a common English pattern, and tiny silver-gilt tea-spoons with heart-shaped bowls and delicately enamelled dark-blue handles. A great watermelon lay among vine-leaves in a shallow silver dish.
Mrs. Ellis laid aside her writing materials and poured out the tea, but she could not forget the young girl’s alarming outburst.
“I’m sure, Nouna, I don’t know what the Countess would say if she could hear you, so very particular as she is about your religious education. I am afraid I have given way to you too much; I ought never to have let Mr. Rahas fit up that room for you; it fills your head with all sorts of heathen notions, not fit for a Christian young English lady.”
“Mamma always lets me have my Indian things about me, and sends me Indian dresses, and she said herself I might have just one room without the horrid stiff European chairs and tables,” said Nouna, her voice taking a particularly sweet and tender inflection at the word “Mamma.” “But I’m going to give it up; I’ve told Mr. Rahas I don’t want it, and I’ve pulled down half the things. I will not accept gifts from one I despise.”
Springing in a moment from languor into life, she put her cup down on the table and went to the door.
“Come and see what I have done,” said she, beckoning to the young Englishman, her eyes dancing with mischief.
“Really, Nouna, I must say you are very ungrateful,” said Mrs. Ellis in despairing tones. “Mr. Rahas is always most considerate and gentlemanly, and when you said you longed for an Indian room he put it so prettily, asking whether he might fit up one large sitting-room as a show-room for his things; and then never showing anybody up into it! I really think you ought——”
But Nouna had flown out of the room, and she was haranguing only Lauriston, who had risen obediently at the young girl’s imperious gesture, but did not like to leave the elder lady alone so unceremoniously.
“She is a wilful little thing,” he said smiling.
“Oh, Mr. Lauriston, what we English people call wilfulness is lamb-like docility compared to that girl’s! She’s like an eel, like quicksilver, like a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Or a sunbeam,” suggested he.
“Ah, of course, you’re a young man, you think her charming; and so, I believe, at the bottom of my heart, do I. But give me a good, sensible, solid, matter-of-fact English girl to look after, rather than this creature who is shaking with passion one moment, flashing her teeth, stamping her foot; and the next suffocating you, and crushing up your bonnet with kisses. As if kisses could cure the headaches her wild fits give me, or as if you could squeeze resentment out of a person, as you do water out of a sponge!”
“Has she been in your charge long?”
“Ever since she left school, six months ago,” said Mrs. Ellis with a sigh. “Her mother, one of the kindest and most charming women I have ever met, with all the high-bred ease that nothing will give to Nouna, wished her to have finishing lessons in music and dancing and languages in London. Music!” ejaculated the poor lady in a contemptuous manner. “Nothing would ever induce her to learn the piano, as every well-educated English girl should do. At school, after her first lesson, she crept down stairs at night, and undid all the strings of the instrument; so that had to be given up. I believe she wanted to learn the tom-tom, or some hideous Indian thing with jam-pot covers at each end, and they had to compromise by teaching her the harp and the guitar. Then languages! They only managed to get her to study French by telling her it was one of the dialects of India. As to dancing, that came to her like magic, from a waltz to a kind of wild dance of her own, more like the leaps and bounds of a young animal than the decorous movements of a young lady! I dare not think what the Countess would say if she could see her.”
“Why doesn’t she live with her mother, then, who would surely have more influence over her than any one?”
“You must not blame the Countess,” said Mrs. Ellis, as if he had been guilty of blasphemy. “A more loving mother never lived. You should read the beautiful letters she writes to her daughter. But she has married again; and her husband, the Conde di Valdestillas, a Spanish nobleman much older than herself, is a great invalid, and she is obliged to travel about with him wherever he fancies to go.”
“But surely the daughter ought to be considered as well as the husband.”
“The Countess feels that; and next year, when her daughter’s education will be finished, she intends settling down either in London or in Paris, and introducing the young lady to the world. If I can only keep the girl out of serious mischief so long,” sighed the lady, who seemed delighted to have a confidant; “but really it is too trying. The first thing we do after we have left the school (I was a boarder there, and as Nouna had taken a fancy to me, the Countess requested me to undertake the duties ofchaperon) and come to London to look for apartments, is to pass this house on the way from Paddington to the Countess’s lawyers, from whom I draw my salary and Nouna’s allowance. There is a card—‘Apartments, furnished’—in one of the first-floor windows. Nouna catches sight of the Oriental names on the board outside, sees Indian lamps in the windows down stairs, and nothing will satisfy her but to come back to this house and settle here. Then, of course, the younger gentleman, Mr. Rahas, falls in love with her and——”
At this point Mrs. Ellis was interrupted by the flinging open of the door, and Nouna re-appeared, her face distorted with anger, and her eyes flashing with contempt: like an enraged empress she held open the door, keeping her head at a very haughty angle, and disdaining to look at the visitor.
“I know that nothing I can show my guest can have any interest for him,” she said icily; “but yet I think it would have been more courteous to me to disguise that fact.”
She made one step towards her American chair, when Lauriston, with an amused glance at Mrs. Ellis which he might well suppose to be unseen, hastened to the door, and held it open for her with a bow.
“I beg your pardon,” said he humbly, “I am very much interested in whatever you like to show me. But you left the room so suddenly that, before a clumsy man could hope to get up to you, you disappeared like a wave of the sea.”
She looked up at him with a very intelligent and searching expression, and was sufficiently mollified to lead the way out, turning sharply just in time to catch an exchange of glances, amused on the one side, apologetic on the other, between the visitor and her guardian.
She affected not to notice this, however, but opened the door of the next room without speaking, lifted the heavy curtain, ushered him in, and then shut the door and drew the hanging close. Lauriston looked about him in astonishment. The thick blinds, which were plain canvas on the outer, and rose-colour and gold puckered silk on the inner side, were drawn down, and made the room very dark, except for the chinks of sunlight that crept in at the sides. But there was quite enough light left to show what a wreck had been made of the luxurious beauty of the apartment since the night when it had burst on his eyes like a vision of fairyland. The silk and muslin hangings had been half torn from the walls, showing the ugly paper underneath; the spears and weapons had been tossed down on the ground as if they were so much firewood; the sandalwood screen had been folded and pushed into a corner; while of the smaller ornaments—cushions, daggers, Moorish table—a great pile had been made in the middle of the floor, and covered up with the tiger skins turned inside out. Nothing but the plants was respected; she had not had the heart to hurt them. Lauriston could scarcely help laughing; but when he glanced at the girl, and saw that she was standing against the dismantled wall, leaning back with an expression of as much triumph as if she had sacked a city, he felt really rather shocked, and clearing his throat he shook his head at her gravely.
“I did it all,” she said, nodding proudly and glancing round, as if anxious that no detail of the noble work should escape him. “Rahas said that Englishmen were cads, that you were a cad, and so I pulled the things down. Yes, I saw you and Mrs. Ellis laughing at each other, as if I were a silly little thing, and couldn’t do anything; but you see I can.”
It was harder than ever not either to burst out laughing, or to catch her and kiss her like a spoilt child; but Lauriston resisted both temptations, and said seriously:
“I think it was very silly and very ungrateful of you.”
She brought her head down to a less aggressive angle, and stared at him in surprise. He quite expected another outburst of anger, but none came. She only said “Oh!” reflectively in a soft undertone.
“He has been very kind to you, has he not, this Rahas?”
“Ye—es, he has been kind,” slowly, thoughtfully, and reluctantly. “He wants”—she laughed shyly—“to marry me!”
“Oh!” Lauriston was disconcerted. A sudden flash of jealousy, acute and unmistakable, flamed up in his heart at the intelligence, communicated with this provoking coquetry. “You are going to marry him then?” he said rashly, on the impulse of the moment, unable to hide from her sharp eyes an expression of pique.
By quite impalpable changes of tone and attitude, she grew upon the instant a hundred times more seductive, more bewitching.
“Marry him!” She moved her hand to her head languidly. “I don’t know. One ought to marry the person one loves best—in England, ought one not?”
“Certainly,” assented Lauriston, wondering at the power this mere child possessed of moving him, an altogether unsusceptible mortal, as he flattered himself, to impulses of passion.
“Then I must wait a little longer and be sure,” she said, twisting her head upon her neck with the daring, instinctive coquetry of a girl of five.
“You would rather have a—a—an Oriental like this Rahas, wouldn’t you?” he said in a low voice, his tone bearing more meaning than he wished.
“I don’t know,” she said, and stooping, she picked up a string of beads from among thedébrison the floor.
He had come a step nearer to her, and as she stooped, by accident or design—with such a coquette one could not say which—she stumbled upon a rug and fell forward against him. He seized her with a gasp, and held her as she looked up with a laughing, provoking, irresistible face. She felt him shiver as he withdrew from her with such suddenness that she, leaning upon his arm, almost staggered.
“What is the matter?” she asked, as he drew out his watch with fingers so unsteady that he detached the chain.
“I—I beg your pardon,” he stammered, “but I have a most desperately important appointment with—with my colonel, in fact, which I shall miss if I don’t fly in the most unceremonious manner.”
Her face changed. A glow, not of anger, but of passionate disappointment, flushed her face, and the tears welled up into her eyes. Lauriston grew very hot, and, all in a fever of excitement, wondered at this.
“When will you come again?” she asked breathlessly, raising her beautiful face with parted red lips. “You will not come again. Ah, I know you, you cold Englishman, you will forget me, forget the poor little girl whom you saw in flames. Oh, no; you must not!” With another passionate change, her face grew tender and caressing, as she cooed out the pleading words like music to his unwilling ears. “Promise you will come again within a week. No, no, a promise won’t do,” as Lauriston, glad to be let off so easily, opened his mouth. “Swear, swear that you will come here again—within a week.”
“But—”
“You shall not go till you have sworn.”
The little tigress, with one spring towards the door, locked it and drew out the key; with another, she had reached the nearest window.
“No, no, don’t. I swear!” cried Lauriston, who saw with stupefaction that she had raised the blind, and was about to throw the key from the open window.
She turned round, tossed the key in the air, and caught it in her hand with a laugh of triumph.
“Now,” she said, “I know you must come. For an English gentleman always keeps his word.”
She raised the curtain before the door, and put the key in the lock; before she turned it she twisted herself back towards the young fellow and said:
“Kiss me!”
He could not hesitate. If she would flirt it was not his fault. He put his arm round the lithe, bending waist, and pressed a passionate kiss on her red lips.
“Now I know you will come again,” she whispered as she let him out.
When Lauriston had taken a decorous leave of the innocent guardian in the next room, and found himself once more in the street, he was inclined to think that he had changed his identity. Some new power, horrible in its strength, seemed to have fastened upon him, and to twist and turn him like an osier. He walked on quickly and firmly, trying to recall his old, calmer self.
“I will keep my oath and go there again,” he said to himself with clenched teeth. “But by all I hold sacred, I won’t see that demon-girl again. Heaven help the man who may ever trust his happiness in her hands!”
Itwas not so easy, after this second interview with the mysterious lady of Mary Street, for George Lauriston to keep the image of the little black-eyed enchantress out of his mind. Her prompt and passionate advances to himself raised strong doubts as to the result of the education which Mrs. Ellis declared to have been so careful, while on the other hand, against his better judgment, he would fain have believed that it was the romantic circumstances of their strangely made acquaintance which had broken down, for the first time, the maidenly reserve of the passionate and wayward girl. In spite of himself, a small, slim, supple form, dark sun-warm complexion, April changing moods, kisses from fresh young lips that clung to your own with frank, passionate enjoyment, had all become attributes of his ideal of womanhood. It came upon him with a shock therefore, when, a few days later, he suddenly discovered that he was expected to find his ideal in a lady who was destitute of any one of them.
It came about in this way. Chief among the houses where George Lauriston was always sure of a welcome was the town establishment of Sir Henry Millard, Lady Florencecourt’s brother, an uninteresting and rather incapable gentleman who had raised himself from poverty and obscurity by marrying, or rather letting himself be married by, an American heiress who was the possessor of a quite incalculable number of dollars. They had three daughters, Cicely, Charlotte, and Ella, all of whom would be well dowered, and who were therefore surfeited with attentions which custom had taught them to rate at their proper value. Lady Millard was a lean, restless, bright-eyed little woman, who had acquired some repose of manner only by putting the strongest constraint upon herself, and who was consumed by an ardent ambition to be the mother-in-law of an English duke. Sir Henry’s whole soul was bound up in a model farm in Norfolk, which his wife’s fortune enabled him to mismanage with impunity. He had never got over his intense disgust with his daughters for not being sons, and he left them and the disposal of them entirely in the hands of his wife and of their uncle Lord Florencecourt, who, having no daughters of his own, took an almost paternal interest in his nieces.
Lord Florencecourt had made up his mind that a marriage between his favourite, George Lauriston, and one of his nieces would be an admirable arrangement, giving to the young officer the money which would do so much to forward his advancement in the world, and to one of the girls an honourable, manly husband, who might some day do great things. The match would, besides, strengthen the bonds of mutual friendship and liking between himself and the young man.
It was one evening when the two men were driving in a hansom to dine at Sir Henry’s, that the elder broached the subject in his usual harsh, abrupt tone, but with a generous fire in his eyes, which showed the depth and the quality of his interest in the matter.
Lauriston, taken by surprise, betrayed a reluctance, almost a repugnance, to the idea which filled the elder man with anger and disappointment.
“I see,” said he, with a short dry laugh. “You have picked up with some pretty chorus-girl, and are not ready for matrimony.”
“You are mistaken, Colonel, I assure you. I have picked up nobody. But it is hardly surprising if your constant jibes at love and matrimony should have taken root in me, who honour your opinions so much.”
He spoke somewhat stiffly, because he had to choose his words, feeling rather guilty. Lord Florencecourt broke in brusquely:
“All d——d nonsense! Jibes at love only take root in a young man to grow into intrigues. There’s an end of the matter; don’t refer to it again.”
They were at their destination. Lord Florencecourt sprang from the hansom first, out of temper for the evening; Lauriston followed very soberly.
Sir Henry’s town house was one of the big mansions of Grosvenor Square. It had a large dome-like arch over the entrance, and was painted a violent staring white, which made the smoke-begrimed houses on either side, with their rusty iron lamp-frames and antiquated extinguishers, quite a refreshing sight. The interior was furnished handsomely, in the prevailing upholsterer’s taste, without any distinguishing features; for Lady Millard, though she still cherished certain luxurious and unconventional notions which in her native country she would have indulged, was too much bound down by the prejudices of her present rank, to dare to infringe ever so little on the rules which governed the rest of her order. So that while she inwardly knew an indiarubber plant by itself in a bilious or livid earthenware vase to be an abomination, she had an indiarubber plant in a bilious yellow vase in front of her middle dining-room window, because the Countess of Redscar had one in a livid blue vase in hers. And in spite of her feeling that to strew a litter of natural flowers over a dinner-table, to fade and wither before one’s eyes in the heated air, is stupid, inconvenient, and ugly, she yielded to that, as she did to every passing fashion set by her higher-born neighbours.
She followed a more sensible English fashion in having two most beautiful girls among her children. Cicely and Charlotte, the two eldest, were tall, fair as lilies, limpid-eyed, small-mouthed, innocent, sweet and rather silly. Dressed as they were on this evening in white muslin dresses, which looked to masculine eyes as if they might have been made by the wearers themselves, though they were in reality a triumph of a Bond Street milliner, they made the dull minutes before dinner interesting by their mere physical loveliness. Unfortunately for her, fortunately perhaps for them, the youngest of the three girls was a foil, not an addition to the family beauty. Small, sallow, and plain, Ella Millard did not attempt to make up for her deficiency in good looks by any special attraction of manner. To most people she seemed shy, abrupt, and almost repellent; such a contrast, as everybody said, to her charming and amiable sisters. But with the minority for whom fools, however beautiful, have no charm, Ella was the favourite; and George Lauriston, anhabituéof the house, had got into the habit of making straight for the chair by her side at every opportunity, with the distinct conviction that she was an awfully nice girl.
On this occasion he took in to dinner the second sister, Charlotte, and he found that her placid, amiable face and wearisome gabble about the Opera, the Academy, and Marion Crawford’s new novel—(Charlotte prided herself on having plenty to say)—irritated him to a degree he had never before thought himself capable of reaching.
When the gentlemen entered the drawing-room after dinner, George Lauriston, seeing Ella in a corner by herself, made at once for the seat by her side. She made way for him almost without looking up, as if she had expected him.
“How cross you looked at dinner,” she said; “I was glad you took Charlotte in and not me.”
“No, you were not. If I had taken you I should not have been cross.”
“That is quite true. Charlotte is sweet-tempered and will put up with a man’s moods; I should have turned my back upon you and let you sulk.”
“Yes; you are a hard, disagreeable creature.”
“But such a relief after my poor Charlotte. Now tell me what is the matter with you.”
“Nothing except ill-temper. At least—to say the truth, I hardly can tell you.”
“Nonsense. You can tell me anything, after the stream of nonsense I have heard at different times from you.”
“But this isn’t nonsense. Lord Florencecourt wants me to marry one of your sisters.”
“Well, I dare say you could get one of them to have you, if I backed you up. You see I am so out of the running that they think a good deal of my advice.”
“Don’t tease. He really has set his heart upon it.”
“And pray, my lord commander-in-chief, don’t you think you might do much worse? They are both as pretty as peaches, perfectly sweet and good, and either would worship you meekly and mildly as a god and a hero; besides which they have other and more substantial advantages, and you would have the satisfaction of cutting out many better men.”
“You are very cheeky this evening.”
“Do you know I used to think you rather admired Charlotte?”
“Admired her! How can one help admiring them both? Only they are such a perfect match that one couldn’t love, honour, and obey—that’s it, isn’t it?—the one without loving, honouring, and obeying the other.”
“That’s an evasion,” said Ella, piercing him with her brown, bead-like eyes. She continued to look at him fixedly while she counted slowly on her fingers. “One—two—three—three weeks ago you were not in the same mind.”
Lauriston started and grew red, and the brown eyes twinkled.
“Three weeks ago, if my uncle had made you this suggestion, you would have taken it differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“That something has happened in the meantime to divert your admiration into another channel. Oh, I know. I am not a ‘silent member’ for nothing; when I am called upon to give my vote, my mind is a good deal clearer on the subject in hand than those of the active debaters.”
“Well, supposing I told you I wanted to marry you?”
“You would not dare to come tomewith such a story.”
“Why not? You like me; you have always shown it. You are nicer to me than you are to almost anybody.”
“I like you certainly, though I think at present you’re rather a prig; but perhaps that is only because it is a case of sour grapes.”
“Sour grapes!”
“Yes. For if I had been handsome I would have married you; I like you enough for that.”
“Then why in heaven’s name won’t you marry me?” asked Lauriston, much excited.
“Simply because you would take me to avoid something worse; and that I have no attractions strong enough to keep you if the ‘something worse’ should try to get hold of you again.”
Lauriston was amazed and shocked at this penetration on the part of a young girl. He gave her a shy look out of the corners of his eyes, and leaned forward on his knees, his handsome brown head bent, playing with his moustache with moist, nervous fingers. She laughed as she looked at him, with a sound in her voice which struck him, though he could not quite make up his mind whether it was tender or bitter.
“I have some astonishing notions for a girl, haven’t I?” she said quietly. “But after all it is not so very surprising if you will consider the facts a little. Here am I, a girl too plain, too unattractive to be worshipped like my sisters, too proud to be married for the only attraction I share with them, and not at all inclined to do homage to a sex that prefers a beautiful wax dolly to—well, to a faithful and intelligent dog.” There was no mistaking the bitterness of her tone now, while the half resentful, half plaintive expression of her eyes made her face at least interesting. “So I have had to carve out a life for myself, with peculiar pleasures and peculiar interests. I read and I study to an extent which would almost disgust you perhaps; and I watch, and listen, and think until I know as much of life and of the people I meet as Charlotte and Cicely know of their ‘points’ and the colours which suit their complexions.”
“I shall begin to be afraid of you,” said George.
“Why?” asked Ella, folding her hands and sitting up stiff and straight as a school-teacher. There was ajardinièrefull of pretty flowering plants near the ottoman on which they were sitting. Charlotte or Cicely would have taken the opportunity to lean forward and play with or gather some of the blossoms, to show off their figure and the pretty curves of their wrists. But Ella, when she chose to talk, always became too much interested in her subject to have thought for petty coquetries, and so she sat, with the calm intent face of a judge, prepared to give an impartial, yet kindly, hearing to George’s answer.
“Because you are so clever.”
“And so are you. But even if you were not, you would have no need to be afraid of me. It would be as reasonable of me to be afraid of you, because I know that if you liked you are strong enough to kill me with one blow of your fist, as for you to think I would use my wits to do you harm. One does not turn one’s strength against one’s friends.”
“That is true,” said George, touched by the girl’s tone. “Ella, why won’t you marry me? Only two women in all my life have ever woke any strong feeling in me: until this evening I could have said ‘only one’—a little wild girl whose influence I dread, though I have only met her twice. You will think me a weak fool, perhaps, but a woman, however clever she may be, cannot in such a case judge a man. There are influences at work in a man’s coarser nature that no sweet and innocent girl could understand. To-night you have given me the first glimpse I have ever been able to catch into the depths of your warm heart and your noble mind; I see in you the type of all that is best in women; and I know that if you would have me all that is best in me would grow and expand until I might in time be worthy of the affection of a good woman. Ella, will you try me?”
The girl was looking away from him, still sitting very upright, and drinking in his words with an intent expression on her face. At last she turned her head slowly, and her eyes, mournful and earnest, gazed full into those of the young man, who had poured out his appeal with passionate excitement, and now sat, flushed and eager, awaiting her answer.
“Can you wait for my reply till to-morrow?” she asked, with a curiously searching expression.
“Why to-morrow? What would you know to-morrow that you don’t know to-night?”
“You are going to see the girl to-night!” said Ella, with a sudden inspiration.
“If you will not have me—yes. It is a promise. If you, now that you know everything, will take me, I hold myself absolved from a promise to another woman, and before Heaven I swear that you will have nothing more to fear; I will never see her again. Only a woman can drive another woman out of a man’s head. Ella, no one has ever crept so near to my heart as you. Will you come right in?”
If she had not cared for him so much, she would have said yes. But the tenderness she had long secretly felt, without owning it to herself, for the handsome young officer, made her timid. If she were to marry him, she, with the fierce depths of unsuspected passion she felt stirring at her heart, would adore him, would be at his mercy, bereft of the shield of sarcasm and reserve with which she could hide her weakness now. She knew that the feeling which brought him to her was not so strong as, though it was probably better than, that which impelled him away. She dared not risk so much on a single stroke. Yearning, doubt, fear, resolution, all passed so quickly through her mind that she had kept him waiting for his reply very few moments when she rose, and with a face as still and set as if she had not for a moment wavered, she said:
“I can give you no answer now. If you are in the same mind a month hence, ask me again.”
George gave a hard laugh as he too rose.
“It will be too late,” he said coldly. “But I thank you for hearing me. Good-night.”
He shook hands with her in a mechanical manner, not even noticing in his agitation the nervous pressure of her fingers. If he had looked again in her face he would have seen that she relented; as it was, he was at the other end of the room taking leave of her father and mother before she had time to realise the decisiveness of the step she had taken. Scourging herself with reproaches, remorseful, miserable, Ella Millard got little sleep that night.
George Lauriston had hardly got half-a-dozen yards from the house when he heard Lord Florencecourt’s short, youthful step behind him, and a moment later the Colonel had slipped his arm through his, with a friendliness he showed to no one but his favourite.
“Well, George, which of the two is it?” he asked in a much more genial tone than usual.
“Which of the two!” repeated Lauriston vaguely.
“Yes, yes, you were talking to the sister all the evening; now there is only one subject which makes a young man so utterly oblivious of everything else. Come, you can confess to me; which of her two sisters were you trying to get her influence with?”
“I was trying to get her influence with Ella Millard.”
The Colonel stopped, pulled the young man face to face with him by a sharp wrench of the arm, and looked up into his face with his most steely expression.
“Are you serious?” he asked in a grating voice.
“Most serious, I assure you, sir.”
“You asked that yellow-skinned, swarthy little girl to marry you?”
“I think, Colonel, the most important thing about a wife is not the colour of her skin.”
“There you’re wrong, entirely wrong. Your fair white woman may be cold, may be irritating, she may henpeck you by day, she may nag at you at night. But for treachery, for unfaithfulness, for every quality which leads a man to ruin, despair and dishonour, go to your dark-complexioned woman. Ella is my niece, and as she is plain, she may go through life without doing much harm. But I would rather see a hump grow on her shoulders, and flames come from her mouth as she talked, than see her marry a man in whom I take an interest, as I do in you, George.”
“You need have no fear in this case, Colonel, for she won’t have me,” said Lauriston, not attempting to combat the Colonel’s superstitious prejudices, which were as strong as those of any old woman.
And as, in his relief on finding that his fears were groundless, Lord Florencecourt let his hand drop from the young man’s arm, the latter took the opportunity to bid him good-night and walk off with the excuse of an appointment.
If even Ella’s skin was too dark to please him, what would the Colonel find to say of Nouna’s, he thought, wondering how the old soldier had picked up his strong prejudice. Could he really have been once under the sway of a woman compared to whom even the present Lady Florencecourt, with all her tyranny, ill-humour and caprices, was as light after darkness? Lauriston had no means of telling, and the question did not trouble him long. For to-night was the last night of the week in the course of which Nouna had made him swear that he would return, and he knew that the girl was even now anxiously on the watch for him. He felt that he would have done better to have made his call that morning, to have seen her under the prosaic influences of daylight and Mrs. Ellis, as he had intended to do. But a friend had called unexpectedly to carry him off to Hurlingham, and had left him no chance of keeping his oath except by slipping a note into the letter-box of 36, Mary Street, in the darkness of the evening. This would satisfy his conscience and save him from the danger of the girl’s alluring eyes.
Yet as he walked quickly through the quiet West-End streets, past brightly-lighted houses, where a strip of carpet was thrown across the pavement, and a seedy, silent old man or a couple of lads waited to see the ladies come out, Lauriston felt his heart beating faster as the image of the little Indian girl came to his mind with a thousandfold additional charm after his evening spent in the commonplaceennuiof a London dinner-party. He honestly tried to think of Ella—good, clever little Ella—whose kindness and sweetness had touched him so much only half-an-hour ago. But then had she not herself rejected his offered homage, thrown him back on the charm that was now drawing him with an attraction which grew stronger with his resistance to it?
He reached Mary Street at last. By this time it had grown so dark that it was reasonable to think he might drop his note in the letter-box and walk away without being seen. But he knew all the same that he should not be allowed to do so. The lights were burning both on the first-floor and the ground-floor of No. 36 when he slipped his little missive into the box; as he did so the blind of one of the ground-floor windows was raised, and a woman looked out and instantly disappeared. He thought he would not ring, but was lingering for one moment on the doorstep almost as if he knew that his presence must be known, when he heard the chain drawn and the door opened. He felt that his whole body was throbbing with fierce excitement.
But it was not Nouna. It was the dark-complexioned Rahas whom he had treated so unceremoniously on his first visit, and who now stood in the same handsome Eastern dress he had worn on that occasion, but with a very different demeanour, holding the door wide open, and with dignified and courteous words inviting the young Englishman to enter. Lauriston, after a moment’s hesitation, accepted the invitation, and passing in stood in the hall while his host closed the door, wondering what were to be his adventures that night. The shutting of the door was accomplished very slowly, with infinite precautions against noise, while Lauriston glanced up the staircase, listened intently for a light footfall, and felt all the enervating rapture which the near neighbourhood of his first passionate love gives to a very young man. Turning rather suddenly again towards his companion, he found the eyes of the Oriental fixed upon him in what struck him as a peculiar manner. As their eyes met, the merchant, with a low bow and a gesture of courteous invitation, held open the door on the left and ushered his visitor in. Lauriston entered with a glance at the doors and a glance at the windows to decide upon the best way of escape should the conduct of the gentleman in the fez be consistent with the sinister expression of his face.
Wehave all met fairly bad people with strikingly good faces, and perhaps fairly good people with strikingly bad faces; but when the eyes of a stranger who has no reason to love you are much nearer together than beauty demands, when his lips are thin, straight, and very close under his nose, moreover when he smiles at you with his mouth only and shows you even more politeness than the occasion requires, you must be more than simple-minded to put implicit trust in him.
Lauriston noted these traits in Rahas, and mistrusted him accordingly. But the meeting itself being an adventure, and therefore welcome to a young man in love, he beamed with perfect good humour and began to apologise for his abrupt conduct on the night of his first visit. Rahas stopped him at once, smiling and waving the subject away as if to be flung over the rail of his own staircase by such a person as his visitor were the highest honour he could wish for. He, for his part, seeing this gentleman pass, could not resist the impulse which prompted him to open the door and beg him to enter, that he might apologise for his obtuseness in not instinctively recognising the gentleman as a person of high honour and distinction, incapable of any but the noblest motives, the most lofty conduct. He bowed to Lauriston, Lauriston bowed to him; they positively overflowed with civility, though from the sly black eyes of the Asiatic, and from the frank brown ones of the Englishman, there peeped out an easily discernible mutual antagonism.
“Will this gentleman, whose name I have not the honour of knowing——”
“My name is Lauriston,” said George, who knew that this cunning-looking person could easily find it out if he were to conceal it.
“Will Mr. Lauriston,” continued the merchant with a bow, “do me the honour to smoke with me? I have narghilis, cigars, cigarettes, such as, if I may make the boast, you could not find in the palaces of your Prince of Wales.”
“Thank you,” said Lauriston, who indeed felt some temptation to stay in the house, but had no fancy for his companion; “it is very kind of you to ask me, but I must be returning to my quarters. We soldiers, you know, are very strictly looked after in England.”
The merchant smiled in a manner which implied that his ignorance of English manners and customs was not so limited as might have been inferred from his slow, pedantic speech, and his retention of the costume of his own country.
“That strictness is, however, somewhat relaxed in the case of favoured officers—at least, they say so in Smyrna,” said he ingenuously. “But perhaps the real reason of Mr. Lauriston’s reluctance to accept my humble invitation is the feeling that to do so would be an unbecoming act of condescension from an English officer to a foreign tradesman.”
“No, I assure you——”
The merchant raised his hand. “Perhaps Mr. Lauriston will allow me to explain. My uncle and I are established here at present in only a very modest manner. We live in what I suppose may be called a back street of your vast city; we have no acre-wide apartments, no gaudy shop-windows in which our treasures are arranged by cunning shopmen to catch the eye of the vulgar. We have only, as you know, a few of the cheaper and simpler products of our own rich land, placed without thought or care in these two small dusty windows, not to attract the casual passer-by, but to let our great clients know that this is where Rahas and Fanah may be found. We are merchants, not shopmen; we have for our customers the chiefs of your great bazaars, the heads of your most renowned London houses. If an English nobleman wants a carpet such as emperors might tread upon, or a millionaire of Manchester seeks a priceless cabinet of carved ivory, delicate as lace, fragile as a fairy’s fingers, it is to us that their agents come, to Rahas and Fanah, who are here merely obscure tradesmen known to a few, but in our country (and all Asia is our country, overrun by our agents, swarming with our depôts) merchant-nobles, the guests and the friends of kings.”
It was not difficult to believe him as he stood, stately and dignified, his black eyes glowing with roused pride, his graceful dress giving an air of distinction to his tall, lean figure. Under the influence of a passion which was at least genuine he appeared to so much greater advantage that George Lauriston did not hesitate to give way to his importunity; and the merchant led him from the little front-room in which they had been standing, where small objects such as those that filled the windows were scattered about on tables and shelves and piled on packing cases, into an apartment of the same size at the back, communicating with the front-room by folding-doors, but showing, as soon as they were passed, the difference between a living-room and a mere workshop or office.
It was furnished with extreme simplicity and hung with the most inexpensive kind of thin Indian curtains. There were two or three small painted tables, on one of which was a common metal coffee-pot surrounded by three or four tiny earthenware cups, while on another stood a small decanter labelled brandy, an ice-pail, a stand with soda-water bottles, two deep tumblers, and a liqueur glass. The seats consisted of ottomans covered with dark striped stuff, a few plain large cushions, and a couple of low chairs, very small in the seat and very wide in the back. A brass lantern took the place formerly filled by a chandelier, and gave forth a soft weak light through orange-tinted glass. The floor was entirely covered by matting, which added to the invitingly cool aspect of the room. To the right as he entered from the front room, Lauriston noticed a tall paper screen placed before the doorway of a third apartment, the door of which had been taken away and replaced by thin coloured curtains, through which there shone a much brighter light than that given by the brass lamp.
“My uncle’s room,” said Rahas, indicating the inner apartment with a movement of his hand, as he brought forth for his guest, from a cupboard in the wall behind the curtains, cigars, cigarettes, and a hookah. “He gives up the best to me, though I am only a junior partner in the firm, by right of my father—a mere clerk in fact.”
Lauriston took a cigar and seated himself in a chair; while his host sat on one of the ottomans, his left elbow buried in a cushion, languidly smoking a long hookah. Something in the atmosphere of the room, its studied coolness, the stately composure of its owner, the faint perfume which began to rise from the bubbling water of the hookah, began to exercise over Lauriston the same enervating influence which he had felt in the far more luxurious chamber above. The soft voice of the merchant, speaking in measured tones, as if speech were spontaneous music, lulled him into a state of dreamy expectancy of some further experience new and strange.
“You would fall very easily and naturally into our Eastern ways, more easily than most of your race, I think,” he said; and Lauriston felt conscious, now that he saw him reclining at his ease, of a charm in the manner of the Oriental which he had not seen before. “You can rest, which is to most of the men of North Europe an impossibility.”
Lauriston sat upright in his chair, consciously struggling against the charm which was ensnaring his senses. “What you call rest,” he said earnestly, “is a temporary torpor necessary to you, a warmer-blooded race, and is the natural reaction from your passionate moods, in which you are all fire. But for us, a colder nation, what you call rest is a dangerous soothing of the mind and stimulating of the senses, an enslaving pleasure to be avoided by those who have a battle to fight, and much to win. The only wholesome rest for us is dead, dreamless sleep.”
“And yet,” said the Oriental, smoking solemnly on, yet observing his companion with attentive eyes, “you give way to the pleasure, and you court the charm.”
Lauriston grew red, though the subdued light did not betray his blushes. “When one suddenly meets with a new experience a little curiosity and interest are only natural,” he said.
“Yes, yes. But the curiosity and interest of Englishmen display themselves in ways so strange to us of another race. For instance, I will tell you a tale: Two young men of your race, men well-born perhaps, clothed in the fashion of your princes and your nobles, hideous and ill-chosen to us, but of the taste which in England is called the very best—see by night in a dark little dusty room where the blinds have not been pulled down, a man and a lady. The lady is beautiful, not dressed as their women are, and neither is English, the young men think. So they stare in until they attract the man’s attention, when for shame they slink off, to return the next day, and the next, and the next, always foolish, trifling, impertinent, spying and prying for another sight of the lady, whom they never behold again. Then a third young Englishman—perhaps I need not say more about his course, but that it is bolder than that of the others——”
Lauriston interrupted him. “I see,” he said in a low voice strongly-controlled, “that you believe me to be merely the accomplice of the two others. I do know who they are, I know they got me here by a trick, although until this moment I never guessed one word of it. Sir,” he rose, very quietly and composedly, but with passion which was unmistakably fierce and strong glowing in his handsome face, “I don’t know how to address a gentleman of your country, but I wish to apologise in the humblest and fullest manner for an offence which I committed in all ignorance. By Heaven, when I meet those two infernal little cads——!” he broke out suddenly, forfeiting all right, in his vehemence, to the praise bestowed by Rahas on his capabilities of repose.
But he was checked in all the heat of his outbreak by sounds behind him which recalled him to the fact that he might have unseen listeners to his very unrestrained language. Turning sharply, he saw the curtains behind the screen move and open against the light, as if some one were retreating between them. Rahas attempted to reassure him by a gesture of the hand.
“My uncle thought we were quarrelling perhaps,” said he in a leisurely manner.
But the knowledge that everything he uttered could be heard by a person who might or might not be a desirable confidant cast a strong constraint on Lauriston, who tossed the end of his cigar into an ash-tray by his side and made at once for the door. The merchant shook his head gently, and with courteous words begged him to return.
“I guessed the truth before, and you must pardon my anxiety to have it confirmed by your own lips,” he said gravely and deferentially. “Or rather,” he went on, as Lauriston turned and hesitated, “I did not guess, I knew.”
In his astonishment at the merchant’s confident tone, his companion came a step nearer to the chair he had left, and at the next words of his host reseated himself, overcome by an attraction he this time made no great effort to resist.
“Between your first and your second visit I learnt the causes and effects of your appearance here; between your second visit and this, the third, I learnt that it was not your intention to appear here again.”
“How did you learn it?” asked Lauriston, with some incredulity, but with the tinge of respect for possibly supernatural agencies to be expected in a man brought up north o’ Tweed.
“You are an Englishman, and would not believe me. Yours is a brave nation, an energetic and a splendid race; but you have no imagination, no religion but faith in beef and bricks and mortar and the Stock Exchange.”
“I believe in beef certainly, and I don’t like humbug,” said the young officer rather shortly. “But I’m not a fool, and when I hear about anything of which I have no experience, I listen and do my best to understand.”
The merchant bowed and went on: “You are doubtless not ignorant, Mr. Lauriston, of the importance we of the East attach to astral influences, nor of the fact that the subject is with us considered a study worthy a high place among the sciences.” Lauriston bowed his head in assent. “It is one of the principles of that science—you understand I speak according to the beliefs of my countrymen, without prejudice to the acumen of yours—that persons born under the ascendency of a particular star, whose name in your tongue I do not know, and whose name in mine would bear no meaning to you, possess a power which I can best describe as magnetic over persons born under the ascendency of another particular planet. Now I am one of the former class, and the lady who lives on the first floor of this house is one of the latter.”
Lauriston felt an impulse of rage at the fellow’s presumption.
“How did you know anything about her planet?” he asked in a constrained tone.
“I cast her nativity two days ago,” answered the merchant, dropping his voice as if from pure laziness, almost to a whisper. “I know something about astrology myself, and as I take in the lady the respectful interest of a friend, I put my services at her disposal, by her own request. I may own that I took a personal interest in finding out whether her destiny would cross my own.” He paused a few moments, during which Lauriston, in spite of the studied incredulity with which he listened to all this, felt his excitement rising. “But I could find nothing to justify my hopes. As far as my skill could serve, I made out that her destiny was bound up with the countrymen of her father, the land of her adoption.”
While setting this down as quackery, the young Englishman was interested and stirred by the Oriental’s measured utterances.
“Yet you say your own planet, horoscope, whatever you call it, gave you an influence over her?” he asked in a careless tone.
“In this way,” the merchant went on: “I can make her sleep, and in her sleep I can bring before her eyes what vision I will; I can learn things concerning her which she herself in her waking hours does not know.”
“Why, that is a sort of mesmerism; they do that over here without any aid from the planets.”
“So you think. So perhaps the sea thinks that her tides advance and recede independently of the moon. And so, in Europe, Nature’s occult marvels are sneered at, and great forces wasted, which we Asiatics turn to account in moulding the courses of our lives.”
“Will you explain?”
“In England a person gifted with this force which his neighbours ignore and he himself cannot understand, casts another into a sleep, a trance. Here is this creature, for good or for ill, at his mercy, in his power. What does he do? Teach him some great truth? Force from him some vital secret? Subdue the acknowledged evil in him to some good end? No. He makes him find a pin, drink a glass of water, blow his nose. Then, having accomplished this noble end at some expenditure of his own vital force, he awakens the sleeper; and what is gained? A dozen fools have gaped, cried: ‘Marvellous!’ or, ‘Well, I never!’ according to their measure of refinement, and gone their ways no whit wiser than before.”
“Yes, well, and you? How do you use this force?”
“In different ways. Sometimes to extort an enemy’s secret, sometimes to test a woman’s faith—but this last not often; for experience and Mahomet teach us that women have no souls, and that by concerning ourselves more with what they do than with what they feel, we shall spare ourselves many disappointments.”
“You are a Mahometan then?”
“With the modifications which result from long contact with men of other faiths. Thus I drink wine, in moderation; I look upon images and statues without horror; and I believe that by springing from a race whose men have for generations believed that women may have spiritual life, the best of your European maids do indeed attain in time to something which may pass for a soul.”
“And Nouna?”
The merchant smiled. “Ask Mrs. Ellis, her guardian, who has known her for some years, what impression the bible-readings, the church-goings, the preachings, the prayings, the exhortations of her Christian teachers have had on her, the letters of her mother, whom she adores, and who never writes to her daughter without an exhortation to religion! All the bishops in the world would not make Nouna more of a Christian than her Persian kittens.”
“You can say as much of many English girls,” said Lauriston hastily and uneasily.
“Of most,” assented the Oriental readily. “And of nine-tenths of the most orthodox of your alms-giving and priest-loving women. What spirit lives in their charity? in their worship? When man no longer cares for their devotion, they yield it to God, the priest, and the respectful poor.”
“And you can see no evidence of a soul in that very capacity for devotion?”
“No more than I see in the much more absorbing devotion of my dog.”
“That seems to me a creed as degrading to the man who holds it as to the woman whose self-respect it kills.”
“And like all creeds, in practice it loses both its best and its worst characteristics. I never go out in London without seeing hundreds of women more vile, more wretched, more miserable, than my more merciful religion would ever allow those weaker creatures to become; while in our harems, which shock you so much, there is many a woman for whose power on earth some of your proud European beauties would willingly exchange their hopes of heaven.”
“Perhaps,” said Lauriston shortly; and, after a pause, he said, “You say Nouna’s destiny is bound up with that of an Englishman; if that is so, and he is one of the right sort, depend upon it he will do more for her than all her teachers and preachers ever did.”