And his lecture had to die away into endearing words, and when the hansom stopped, George found it difficult to resist the temptation, urged upon him in a soft whisper by his companion, to tell the cabman to “drive on.” But he nerved himself to a sense of duty and propriety, jumped out and rang the bell of a well-kept house, at the door of which appeared a neat servant who informed him that Miss Glass was at home.
Miss Glass was a woman of five and forty, with an honest fresh-coloured face, who insisted on kissing George because she had nursed him when he was a baby, and who willingly consented to do all she could for his bride-elect. The eccentric appearance of that lady when she was brought inside the house seemed somewhat to shock her ideas of propriety; but when, after George had bidden her good-night and gone to the door, the poor child ran out after him and entreated him not to leave her—she was so lonely—she had never been all by herself among strangers before—Miss Glass put her arms round the girl in very kindly fashion, and soothed her into some sort of despondent and melancholy resignation.
“You’ll come early, won’t you?” Nouna cried from the doorstep in heart-broken tones. “If you don’t come before ten I shall come to the barracks after you.”
George assured her that he would come before breakfast, and drove off, excited by the rapidity with which this important step of marriage was forcing itself upon him. He had surprised himself lately by developing an infinite capacity for doing rash things, but he was saved by his native obstinacy from the weakness of regretting them; therefore, although he acknowledged to himself that this headlong plunge into matrimony was the rashest act of all, and that his chances of domestic happiness were about the same as if he had decided to unite himself for life to a Cherokee squaw, he was resolved in dare-devil fashion to stick to his colours and make the best of it, and this state of mind left him calm enough to think of a little act of kind consideration towards poor Mrs. Ellis who, he knew, must by this time be half crazy with anxiety about her charge. So he drove to Mary Street, and after satisfying the governess that Nouna was safe, though he declined, for fear of Rahas, to give her address, he went down stairs and knocked at the door of the Oriental merchant’s apartments. The grey-haired Fanah opened it, however, and with a real or affected ignorance of English, explained, chiefly by gestures and incoherent noises that his nephew was “gone away.” So that George, who was burning for some short and sharp vengeance, he hardly knew what, upon Rahas for his infamous advice to Nouna, was forced to retire with that praiseworthy wish unsatisfied.
Scarcely, however, had the old merchant, with a low bow, closed the door of his apartments, when a little lamp, borne by a figure in white, cast a feeble light upon the walls above, which shifted rapidly downwards until it was flashed in George’s eyes by the bearer, who proved to be no other than Nouna’s Indian servant Sundran. The young man started when he saw the bronze-coloured face peering up into his. It was a most unprepossessing countenance, bearing the impress of mean passions and low cunning, which not even the brown dog’s eyes, full of affection and a certain sagacity, could redeem. The woman might have been of any age between thirty-five and fifty, though the supple agility of her movements seemed to prove that the wrinkles and lines in her dark face were premature. She looked up into Lauriston’s face with eager anxiety.
“Missee, little missee, my mistress, where is she?” she asked in a whisper.
“She’s all right, quite safe; I came to tell Mrs. Ellis so.”
“But me want to see her, she not sleep till I come to her and sing and tell her the old stories. Take me to her, sahib, take me, and Sundran love you very dear.”
“I can’t do that, Sundran; she is a long way from here. But she is quite safe. I am going to marry her, so you may be quite sure she is safe. Mrs. Ellis trusts me, so you can.”
“But, sahib, Missee Ellis not know her so long as me. I come with her from her country with the Mammee Countess, her mother. She always have me, she love her old nurse. Sahib, take me to her.”
But George was looking upon the woman with more and more distaste. Hers was the pernicious influence which, working by the spells of early association, of wild fable, of romantic devotion, had filled Nouna’s young mind with its prejudices, had excited her imagination by its dangerous pictures, and had made her blind and deaf to all the better influences around her.
“I cannot indeed,” he said gravely. “I am going straight back to my own rooms now. It would take me another hour to drive you first to the house where she is staying, and by that time your mistress would be fast asleep.”
The woman noticed the increased coldness of his tone, and recognised the uselessness of further entreaty. She tried another tack.
“Sahib,” she whispered lower than ever, in a wheedling tone, with a glance all round the hall and a particularly careful scrutiny, by the light of the lamp, of the chinks of the doors, “if you take me to Missee Nuna, if you tell me where she is, I take you to Sahib Rahas, I tell you where he is.”
George started, and the offer confirmed him in his resolution to have nothing to do with this woman. He thought it proved conclusively that she had been bought by Rahas, but that she was willing to betray him if she could get her price; and though he did her the justice to believe in the sincerity of her devotion to her young mistress, he knew how much more harm than good it was likely to do his poor littlefiancée. As he repeated that it was impossible for him to comply with her request, the dark face of the Indian woman grew hideous with baffled passion. She retreated a few paces and showed her teeth at him like an angry ape; then twirling her lamp twice round her head with some muttered, inarticulate words, as if she were repeating an incantation, she turned her back upon him and slunk stealthily up stairs like a wild animal thwarted in a search for its young.
George left the house with shuddering thankfulness that Nouna had escaped from her perilous associations. “Marriage, thank heaven,” thought he, “works such changes in a woman that it will drive them all out of her head and fill her heart and mind with new thoughts and feelings.”
And of course he forgot that marriage can work changes in a man too.
Thenext morning, before he was up, George Lauriston was surprised by an apparition in a dressing-gown, with a black eye and a strip of sticking-plaister across its upper lip. It proved to be Clarence Massey, who came up to his bedside to offer to smoke the pipe of peace while yet the soft influence of slumber might be supposed to mollify any desire for vengeance which might haply be still burning in his comrade’s breast. As a matter of fact, George had, before retiring to rest the night before, regretted his violence to the little Irish lad, and was ready to meet him more than half-way. So that when Massey humbly made a clean breast of the trick he had played, valiantly omitting all mention of Dicky Wood’s share in it, and apologised for his intrusion into Lauriston’s quarters the evening before, the latter held out his hand from the bed and told him not to think any more about it.
“I’m awfully sorry I was so rough with you, old chap,” said he. “It was all a misunderstanding from beginning to end. Nouna is so young, and knows so little of the world, that she hasn’t dignity enough yet to awe an Irishman. She’ll know better when she’s married; and if you don’t come to our wedding, at least you must be the first to congratulate us afterwards, Massey, since it was you who brought about our first meeting.”
But Massey’s jaw had dropped.
“Wedding! You don’t really mean you’re going to marry her, Lauriston!” he cried in too evident consternation.
“Certainly I mean it; why not?” said George, very quietly, though he had suddenly grown thoroughly awake.
“Oh, no reason, of course. I beg your pardon. I was only surprised because we hadn’t heard anything about it, you know.”
“There is no reason why the whole regiment should know all one’s affairs,” said George quickly. “And look here, Massey, don’t go and talk about it, there’s a good fellow. You know very well how they all begin to croak if a man marries young, and as I don’t want my wife to meet any of them before it’s necessary, I’d rather they didn’t even hear of it till we’ve had time to look about us,” ended George, who had a nervous dread of the effect the neighbourhood of a pretty woman who was somebody else’s wife had upon several of his fellow-officers.
Massey nodded intelligently two or three times in the course of this speech, but at the end of it he hum’d and ha’d rather dubiously and at last spoke out.
“Well, you see, Lauriston, of course I won’t say a word, but the fact is something about it has got to the Colonel’s ears already.”
“What!” cried George, jumping up.
“Yes. You see, when you deposited me on the floor of the corridor outside here last night, neither you nor I took the matter in the quiet and gentlemanly manner we ought to have done. In fact, we made such a row that rumours of it came to the Colonel’s ears, and hearing your name and mine mixed up in it, he sent for me and asked me about it. And—and you see, Laurie, old chap, I didn’t know all you have just told me, and—”
“By Heaven!” said George in a low voice, “you made him think—”
“I give you my word, old man, I didn’tmakehim think anything. But I couldn’t help what he did think. When he heard there was a girl mixed up in it—a sort of creole, I think I said—he went off like soda-water in hot weather, and there was no getting a word in edgeways after that. He asked me finally what the d— I was standing there for like a moonstruck idiot, or a stuck pig, or a something I didn’t exactly catch. For as soon as he showed by his first words that my presence was no longer soothing, I saluted and scuttled away, as one express journey through the air in the course of an evening is enough for anybody. I believe he sent up to your rooms, but you had gone out by that time.”
George listened to this account very gloomily, as the Colonel was the very last person he wished to know anything about his marriage until it was an accomplished fact. He dreaded a summons from Lord Florencecourt; for the next three days he felt a nervous quaking of the heart whenever he was in the neighbourhood of the autocratic little officer. But for some unexplained reason he was not called upon to give an account of himself, and instead, the Colonel seemed to mark his displeasure by the much more welcome means of cold reserve towards him.
In the meantime George had a busy day of it. He dismissed Massey pledged to secrecy on the subject of the marriage and likewise to eternal friendship with himself, called on Nouna, whom he found reconciled to her new abode by means of a kitten and a preliminary lesson in the art of shelling peas. He then went up to the City, saw Mr. Angelo, told him enough of the occurrences of the preceding evening to show him how needful it was that the young girl should find immediately some more efficient protector than the somnolent and stolid Mrs. Ellis, and declared his wish to marry her at once. Mr. Angelo concurred perfectly in all that he said, and only made one stipulation, namely, that George should wait until Madame di Valdestillas’s consent could be got to this decisive step.
“I have not the least doubt of her consent, Mr. Lauriston,” said he. “And as I learnt yesterday, by telegraphing to her last address, that she and her husband are now in Paris, on their way to Spa, you will not have long to wait for her answer. She is accustomed to act a good deal by my advice, and I will say about you enough to turn the scale. She has great faith in my judgment, as she may well have where she is concerned, for, although some of her actions may seem eccentric to us methodical Europeans, she has a most generous and noble nature, and she can always command whatever knowledge and service my partner and I can put at her disposal. But I could not allow this hasty marriage to take place without her full consent. To begin with, it would not be legal, as her daughter is not yet sixteen.”
There was nothing for George Lauriston to do therefore, but to wait, and in the meantime to write a long and earnest letter to the Countess, which he entrusted to her lawyers, without troubling further for her address. During the next two days he spent a great deal of his time with Nouna, whom he took to the South Kensington Museum and to the Zoological Gardens, first stopping with her at different shops in Regent Street, where he provided her with boots, gloves and a hat. She gave a great deal of trouble in all the shops, being quite unable to fix her attention on the subject in hand in her delight at being able to run about and examine all the pretty things; but she charmed the attendants, both men and girls, who allowed her to try on every scarf and bonnet and wrap that suited her fancy, and brought her a cup of tea, when, on hearing two of the girls speak about going to tea, she made a request for one. When, however, her exuberance of spirits had calmed down a little, she chose without an instant’s hesitation the bonnet which suited her best, a puckered ivory-silk hood-like headgear, meant for a child, a pair of long silk gloves of the same shade, which she gathered up in wrinkles on her arms, and a china crape shawl that matched exactly with them, which she arranged most picturesquely about her shoulders, after flinging down on the ground the beaded mantle she had previously worn.
This proceeding, which caused George some consternation, she accomplished with a series of delighted chuckles.
“Ah, ah! That’s the thing Mammy Ellis got for me! I wish she could see it now,” she murmured, casting a look of scorn and hatred at the rejected garment, which was of the kind middle-aged ladies call “handsome” and “lady-like.” And when one of the smiling assistants picked it up and asked for her address that she might send it home, she shook her head disdainfully and said they could keep it, she did not want it sent home. But George, with a serious face, mindful of the expense of ladies’ dress, which began to seem unsuspectedly appalling, said she might be cold presently, and insisted on carrying the prickly bristling mantle, which he regarded with all reverence as having been worn by her, over his arm.
It seemed to him monstrous that the bill for these few trifling things should have come to three pounds fifteen shillings and elevenpence halfpenny—a sum which, when paid, left him scarcely enough for her boots and the cabs to and from the Zoo. For she chose her foot-gear in the same half-royal, half-mad way, turning over a pile of boots and shoes with quick fingers, and running round to inspect the contents of the show-cases until she discovered a pair of tiny, thin walking-shoes with slender, tapering heels, which stood all by themselves under glass in the middle of the shop. She was told they were only for show, and too small for wear.
“But they are large enough for me,” she said, thrusting forward a small, velvet-shod foot imperiously. “I will not wear ugly shoes because your Englishwomen have ugly feet.”
And nothing would satisfy her but to try them on, when, to the surprise of the shopkeeper and the consternation of the unhappy purse-bearer, they proved to fit her perfectly and in every respect to suit her taste. She performed a little fancy dance before the glass to demonstrate their beauty and the fact that they were easy, and George brought down his fortune to a couple of half-crowns and some coppers by the act of paying for them.
“Weren’t there any boots then among the things I brought from Mary Street this morning, Nouna?” he asked diffidently.
“Oh yes, a few old ploughmen’s things—‘strong walking-boots,’ as Mrs. Ellis calls them,” said she carelessly; “but of course I could not come out withyouinthose. You know Mrs. Ellis never will take me with her to buy my things. This is the very first time I have ever bought anything for myself, and oh! I do like it.”
George had no doubt of that: she was absolutely trembling with joyous excitement. But Mrs. Ellis’s judgment seemed to him a less mean thing than it had seemed before. The girl was so happy, however, that it was impossible not to sympathise a little with her pleasure; and when they left the shop and got again into the hansom, and she said, with an ardent squeeze of his hand, “Oh, I do like shopping with you! I’ll go shopping with you whenever you like!” he felt a passionate longing to gather the little butterfly thing up into his arms; and instead of telling her that about a week of this indulgence would land him in the Bankruptcy Court, he told her in a husky whisper that he would have some work in a few days, and when the money for it came she should have it to do what she liked with, “and every penny I can ever earn in all my life, my darling,” he added close to her ear. Whereupon she was with difficulty restrained from embracing him opposite Peter Robinson’s.
This was the day they went to the Zoo, where Nouna, looking quaintly lovely in her hastily-chosen toilette, skipped and frolicked about so that George felt like her grandfather, fed the big bear with buns until even he refused to climb up his pole for them any longer, and excited a mild “sensation” in the school-children and quiet visitors. Not one cage, not one path among the Gardens, would she leave unvisited. George might go home if he pleased—she could find her way back; but she would drink her pleasure to the dregs, ride the elephant and the camels, lunch frugally and hastily at the little restaurant, give nuts to the monkeys and biscuits to the Wapiti deer, pat the seals and shudder at the serpents, till the sun went down and it was time for the closing of the Gardens. By that time the new shoes had begun to feel a little stiff, the white gloves to look more than a little soiled, and at last poor tired Nouna burst into tears on discovering a long rent in the pretty crape shawl.
“It was that nasty monkey, the one with the long ta-a-il,” she sobbed. “Oh, George, isn’t there time to go back and beat him?”
“No, I’m afraid not, darling,” said George, rearranging the shawl as best he could to hide the slit. “And he didn’t know any better, poor thing.”
“But I ought to know better than to be such a baby,” said she suddenly, with great solemnity, stopping her tears. “I shall be different when I’m married,” she went on, very earnestly, “for married women never cry, do they? They have something else to do. I’m afraid I shall not make a very good wife at first, George,” she said, giving herself up to the subject with as much intensity as she had just devoted to the animals, though her voice was tired now and her footsteps very slow. “I was talking it over with Miss Glass this morning, and she told me many things which I meant to write down, only I forgot: how I must find out what you like and what you dislike; she says many a husband’s love is lost by little things such as forgetting pickles, and giving him hare without—without—I don’t remember what. But I’ll ask her again. I mean to be a good wife, much better than people think, and please mamma—and—let me rest a little.”
It was a long way across the park to the nearest point where they could get a cab, and although George half carried her for the greater part of the distance, she fell into his arms with a little exhausted, sobbing cry when at last they got into a hansom, and before they had driven half a mile she was fast asleep. He sat looking down at the red, parted lips, the soft young cheeks, the sweeping eyelashes that defined the voluptuous curve of her long eyelids, with the thoughtfulness of the guardian mingling with the yearning tenderness of the lover. During the long, bright day he had just spent with her it had begun to dawn upon him that some of his dreams of an ideal marriage with this fascinating, tiresome, irresponsible child-woman were very unsubstantial things. If her frivolity were to be improved away, it would take with it a great deal of her charm, if not of her beauty; while underneath all her light-hearted caprice and infectious gaiety, the strongest, stormiest passions would peep out sometimes for a moment and give strange warnings of the tyranny she might exercise over a nature that had not strength and suppleness enough to control hers. Yet for all this, he loved her more than before, while he dreaded the empire she would make a hard struggle to get over him. All the passion of his nature he was holding in leash, feeling that he scarcely yet knew its force, that it was gathering strength with every moment of restraint. Would he be this woman’s ruler and husband, or would he marry her only to be her slave?
He tried to shake off these morbid thoughts, and to reassure himself by looking steadfastly on the beautiful little face that in a few days was to be his own: but he found no comfort there. Capacity for emotion, for passion, he read clearly enough, but of thought or higher feeling no trace. He grew hot, began to be haunted by Rahas’s horrible words: “The women of the East have no souls,” until in a passion of indignation with himself and almost with her he woke her up by a hastily snatched kiss, which, tired as she was, she received with her usual demonstrative responsiveness: and then she insisted on entertaining him with Indian love-songs in a nativepatois, taught her by Sundran, which she crooned in a low, unequal, but rather sweet voice close to his ear for the rest of the way to Miss Glass’s house, where he left her scarcely wide awake enough to bid him good night.
This was his last day of suspense, for on the following morning George received a long letter forwarded by Messrs. Smith and Angelo, and dated simply from “Paris,” in the thin, pointed feminine handwriting of the last generation. This was the letter:—
“My dear Mr. Lauriston,“I begin in this way without the formal ‘Dear Sir’ because, although I do not know you personally, those things which I have heard about you, the simple and manly letter I have received from you, have touched my heart and made me feel as I should feel towards the man who asks to become the husband of my daughter. I am in a strange case, Mr. Lauriston—a passionately loving mother kept apart from her child by a paramount duty. I love Nouna as the plant loves the sun; ask her to show you my letters, ask her what she remembers of me, and you will find that no woman among your English friends loves her children as I love my child, nor fulfils every wish of her daughter’s as I do Nouna’s. When you are her husband—for I wish you to become her husband, you are noble-hearted and honourable, and you will take care of her—you will find that her absent mother has a share in all her memories. Her girl’s treasures are all presents sent by me, her prayer-book is marked by my hand, the very clothes in which she will be married to you were partly made by me. Don’t forget this, don’t forget that the innocence and purity you reverence in her are the result of my care. I could not have kept her mind so child-like if she had been always travelling about from country to country as I must do with my husband, who is an invalid. I think she has suffered no harm since she left school. Mrs. Ellis is a good and pious woman who respects me and loves Nouna. As for the Eastern gentleman Rahas, of whom you speak harshly, Nouna and Mrs. Ellis have written to me very openly about him, and I have also received a very respectful explanatory letter from the gentleman himself, and I have come to the conclusion that your dislike to him is probably the result of misunderstanding. I hope and believe this. I am writing fully to you because I wish you to understand and respect the motives of my conduct, that you may look upon me as a mother to you as well as to Nouna, who will pray for the one as for the other, and who hopes at some not far distant time to see you both together. I yearn for that time to come; I am lonely without my child—without my children. I entreat you to look upon Mr. Angelo as my representative in all things; what he wishes I wish, what he sanctions I sanction. I beg that you will leave all matters connected with your marriage in his hands; I have also written to this effect to Nouna. Whatever he tells you to do, do, in the fullest assurance that it is what I wish. He is an old and trusted friend. It is the manner in which he has written of you that makes me write to you like this. He knows that the dearest wish of my heart for many years has been to marry my daughter to an honourable gentleman of good family and position, able to introduce her into the very best society, as I should have done myself if it had not been for the unfortunate delicacy of my husband the Count. May God bless you both is the earnest desire and prayer of“Your loving mother (per avance),“Lakshmi di Valdestillas.“P.S.—I particularly wish that my daughter may be presented at Court as early as possible next season. I regret very much that it is too late for the last drawing-room this year. I will try to be in London for the occasion, but my movements are altogether dependent on the Count’s state of health.”
“My dear Mr. Lauriston,
“I begin in this way without the formal ‘Dear Sir’ because, although I do not know you personally, those things which I have heard about you, the simple and manly letter I have received from you, have touched my heart and made me feel as I should feel towards the man who asks to become the husband of my daughter. I am in a strange case, Mr. Lauriston—a passionately loving mother kept apart from her child by a paramount duty. I love Nouna as the plant loves the sun; ask her to show you my letters, ask her what she remembers of me, and you will find that no woman among your English friends loves her children as I love my child, nor fulfils every wish of her daughter’s as I do Nouna’s. When you are her husband—for I wish you to become her husband, you are noble-hearted and honourable, and you will take care of her—you will find that her absent mother has a share in all her memories. Her girl’s treasures are all presents sent by me, her prayer-book is marked by my hand, the very clothes in which she will be married to you were partly made by me. Don’t forget this, don’t forget that the innocence and purity you reverence in her are the result of my care. I could not have kept her mind so child-like if she had been always travelling about from country to country as I must do with my husband, who is an invalid. I think she has suffered no harm since she left school. Mrs. Ellis is a good and pious woman who respects me and loves Nouna. As for the Eastern gentleman Rahas, of whom you speak harshly, Nouna and Mrs. Ellis have written to me very openly about him, and I have also received a very respectful explanatory letter from the gentleman himself, and I have come to the conclusion that your dislike to him is probably the result of misunderstanding. I hope and believe this. I am writing fully to you because I wish you to understand and respect the motives of my conduct, that you may look upon me as a mother to you as well as to Nouna, who will pray for the one as for the other, and who hopes at some not far distant time to see you both together. I yearn for that time to come; I am lonely without my child—without my children. I entreat you to look upon Mr. Angelo as my representative in all things; what he wishes I wish, what he sanctions I sanction. I beg that you will leave all matters connected with your marriage in his hands; I have also written to this effect to Nouna. Whatever he tells you to do, do, in the fullest assurance that it is what I wish. He is an old and trusted friend. It is the manner in which he has written of you that makes me write to you like this. He knows that the dearest wish of my heart for many years has been to marry my daughter to an honourable gentleman of good family and position, able to introduce her into the very best society, as I should have done myself if it had not been for the unfortunate delicacy of my husband the Count. May God bless you both is the earnest desire and prayer of
“Your loving mother (per avance),
“Lakshmi di Valdestillas.
“P.S.—I particularly wish that my daughter may be presented at Court as early as possible next season. I regret very much that it is too late for the last drawing-room this year. I will try to be in London for the occasion, but my movements are altogether dependent on the Count’s state of health.”
George Lauriston put this letter down, after reading it through to the end, in a state of paralysing bewilderment. “Position!” “Very best society!” “Presented at Court!” What on earth had he said in his letter to her to cause her to make such a ghastly mistake? For some moments he was too much absorbed by his dismay to notice that an enclosure from Mr. Angelo lay in the envelope that had contained Madame di Valdestillas’ letter. This was the note:—
“George Lauriston, Esq.,“Dear Sir,“We shall be glad if you can make it convenient to come with Miss Nouna Weston to our office as quickly as possible on receipt of this,“We are, dear sir, yours faithfully,“Smith and Angelo.”
“George Lauriston, Esq.,
“Dear Sir,
“We shall be glad if you can make it convenient to come with Miss Nouna Weston to our office as quickly as possible on receipt of this,
“We are, dear sir, yours faithfully,
“Smith and Angelo.”
An hour and a half later George and Nouna were in a hansom, driving towards the City as fast as a good horse could take them.
Nounawas in a state of the highest excitement all the way to the City. She had received a letter from her mother, which she showed to George, after kissing it fervently before she let it go out of her hand. The Countess, after many pious exhortations and affectionate congratulations to her daughter, exhorted her in the most emphatic manner to consult Mr. Angelo in all details connected with her marriage, and yield to him the most explicit obedience, as she would do to herself.
George was struck with this portion of the letter, agreeing so entirely with what the Countess had said to him. The suspicion even flashed across his mind that there might once have been a closer tie between the Countess and Mr. Angelo than that of lawyer and client. When he arrived with hisfiancéeat the solicitors’ office the young man was so nervous and excited that Mr. Smith remarked in his genial and jocular manner that he was anticipating the suffering of the ordeal. Nouna, on the other hand, to whom marriage meant the beginning of an era of eternal kisses and shopping, varied by visits to the Zoo, and unknown delights even more intoxicating, beamed with happiness, smiled shyly and coquettishly upon the young clerks in the office, and invaded Mr. Angelo in his sanctum without even knocking at the door. The old gentleman bore this intrusion well, and beckoned Lauriston in with an unusually bland expression.
“I suppose, Mr. Lauriston,” he began, after waiting for both his visitors to seat themselves, “that you are anxious for your marriage to take place without delay.”
“Yes, yes, he is, we are,” answered Nouna for him readily, tapping on the floor with her little feet.
“Certainly,” said George, with much more deliberation. “But—” Nouna turned sharply round and looked at him with aggrieved astonishment. “But there is one passage in the letter from the Countess which you forwarded to me this morning that I should like to point out to you before we go on to other things, as it seems to argue that there has been some misunderstanding on her part which I can’t account for.”
George got up, and bending down beside Mr. Angelo’s writing-table, pointed out the passages in the Countess’s letter which referred to “position” and “presentation at Court.”
“You see, sir, that Madame di Valdestillas seems to think my pecuniary position is much better than it is, or than it is likely to be,” he said. “And yet you know how plainly I have stated it.”
“But I don’t want to be presented at Court,” chimed in Nouna, who had hopped off her chair to read over Mr. Angelo’s shoulder the passages referred to, and who was evidently in great anxiety lest the much-coveted prize, a real live husband, should slip through her fingers. “One of my school-fellows had a sister who was presented, and she had her dress torn and caught a cold. I would much rather wear my nice dresses at home, where one can keep warm and not have them spoilt. Tell mamma, Mr. Angelo, please, that I don’t want to go to Court.”
The lawyer gave a pale but indulgent little smile.
“I think, Mr. Lauriston, that this little matter will prove no serious obstacle. The wife of an officer with a career before him, such as I am sure you have, will certainly be presented in due course; and if when that time comes, this young lady should wish to indulge in any special extravagance for the occasion, I feel sure the Countess would help her daughter to make a becomingly splendid appearance.”
George listened in perplexity, while Nouna swept across the room, curtseyed low to the iron safe in the corner, and kissed an imaginary royal hand with graceful and fervent loyalty. Then, attracted by the sight of a couple of birds perched on a housetop, she stood on tiptoe to look out of the window, and for a moment left the gentlemen a chance to converse without her assistance.
“You will, I suppose, be married by licence, as that admits of the least delay. By taking out a licence at the Vicar-General’s office to-day, you can be married at your own church on Monday.”
“Yes, I know that,” said George, rather surprised that the lawyer’s eagerness to get the matter settled should keep pace with his own. “I was going this morning to a bank in Lombard Street where I keep a particularly modest account, to get the necessary funds.”
“Ah, very well. As it is Saturday, you will have to make haste to get there before the banks close. One of my clerks shall go with you, if you don’t know your way. And in the meantime I think I had better take this young lady to Doctors’ Commons, where she can make the necessary statement to get the licence as well as you could yourself. But, my dear young lady,” he continued, turning to Nouna, who had sprung back from the window in great excitement at this suggestion, “you must really control your high spirits a little and carry yourself with more gravity, or you will certainly be refused the licence on the ground that you are too young.”
In an instant she had flown to a small square looking-glass that was hanging against the wall in a corner of the room, and had parted the curly bush of soft hair that shaded her forehead, and flattened it down into prim unbecoming bands that made her look a couple of years older.
“That’s what we used to do at school, when we wanted to mimic Mrs. Somers,” said she grimly.
And she threw open the door to intimate that she was ready to start.
As the old lawyer slowly rose and prepared for the excursion, he said to George, as he shook his head with would-be pleasantry:
“He need be twice a man, Mr. Lauriston, who weds a child.”
The warning was not needed; George had already begun to be of that opinion.
When he returned from the bank, George found that Nouna and the lawyer had come back, and before he could ask any questions about their expedition, Mr. Smith was begging the young people to come to luncheon with him, and they were hurried off from the office so quickly that George had scarcely time to notice a sudden and most unusual gravity in Nouna, who did not recover her usual high spirits until she found herself among the garish glories of the Holborn Restaurant.
When they had finished luncheon, and Mr. Smith, with many congratulations and pretty speeches, had left them, to seek the domestic delights of his semi-detached villa at Anerley, George remembered that he had forgotten to ask Mr. Angelo for the licence. Nouna answered with a sudden womanly gravity which made him laugh—
“Mr. Angelo has it. And he is going to give notice at the church and everything, so that we shall have nothing to do but to walk in and get married. I’ve chosen a church Miss Glass told me of, at Kensington.”
George was half amused, half offended, by the scrupulous officiousness with which the old lawyer carried out his instructions of “seeing to everything,” but he thought no more seriously about the matter.
The next day he spent with a very vague consciousness of what went on around him. For he was bound, by a long-standing invitation, to pass this particular Sunday on the river with Massey, Dicky Wood, and a fast Guardsman, one Captain Pascoe, who was a far too intimate friend of the gentle Dicky’s. They would not let him off, as he had wished, because he was by far the best oarsman among them, and the only one who could be depended upon to resist the temptations of champagne-cup sufficiently to keep up the credit of the crew when the sun had been beating mercilessly down upon river and field for half a dozen hours.
It was a beastly day altogether, as they one and all described it afterwards. To begin with, when they arrived by train at Maidenhead, from which place it had been determined to row up to Pangbourne or Streatley and back, they found that the boat, which was the joint property of Massey and Wood, had been left at Kingston some days before by the former, whom the rest fell upon and slanged for his dear little irresponsible ways. Then there was a general wrangle as to what they should do, some being for going down to Kingston, some for hiring a boat, and George being lustily and heartily for going back to town. However, the matter was settled for all of them by the discovery that there was no train to anywhere for two hours, so they got a bad old boat which was the only one at liberty, and started in the worst of humours all round. The numerous defects of the craft supplied them with a subject for invective for the first couple of miles, during which George and Dicky Wood pulled, Captain Pascoe steered, and Massey baled out the water which they had had the pleasure of discovering at the bottom of the boat. Long before they reached Marlow George had had enough of their society, and proposed to tow them up in order that he might be able to indulge his dreams of coming happiness undisturbed.
Captain Pascoe was a fair-haired, pallid man of thirty-five, always well-dressed, almost always good-humoured, popular with women of every rank and of every class, and liked by all men but a few who loathed him as they would a noxious reptile. He was a man of the world in the sense of taking the lowest possible view of it, and was familiar with every phase of fast life; he had any amount of easy philosophy and indubitable pluck, but was selfish,blasé, and corrupt, pointed out as the hero of half a dozen intrigues with women whose position was loftier than their virtue, and of whose favours, it was said, he did not scruple to boast, and at present the slave of one of the most notorious women in London.
George Lauriston hated him, and would have excused himself from this excursion if he had known that Captain Pascoe was to be of the party. On this, the eve of his marriage, when to him the word woman signified all things pure, all things holy, every glance cast by thisrouéat the fair girls in the boats that went by, every slow, soft word with which he passed an opinion on their looks, seemed to George like a sting in a sensitive place. So he lighted his pipe and toiled along bravely in the sun on the towing-path, watching the green trees as they seemed to quiver in the hot air, the velvet bees and the slender dragon-flies that flew across his path, the dry cracking earth at his feet, seeing nothing all the time but a small, ever-changing face, hearing in the hum of the bees only a young girl’s voice. When they came to Temple Lock, and he got back into the boat with the rest, their talk jarred on him more than ever; they were discussing the attraction of a certain Chloris White, a great star of thedemi-monde, to whom Captain Pascoe had introduced the two lads the evening before.
Massey was, of course, raving about the exquisite taste of her dress, the charmingchicof her manners, the sheen of her golden hair, the languid glances of her eyes, and a great deal more of the same sort, giving off as usual in effusive praises the admiration which, if it had been more contained, might have proved dangerous. But Dicky Wood said so little and blushed so much, that George, who knew that he was rich, had heard sensational stories about this woman’s bloodsucking propensities, and knew that she had helped Pascoe himself to gobble up his patrimony, had a burst of rage against the latter for introducing the lads to her. He remained silently and stolidly smoking therefore, while the others talked. Massey, however, insisted on dragging him into the conversation.
“Here, I say, Lauriston, haven’t you got anything to say on the subject? Haven’t you seen Chloris White?” he said, with a gentle kick at his companion from where he lay stretched at full length in the bows.
“Not that I know of,” answered George indifferently.
“Lauriston always looks the other way when he sees one of those ladies coming,” said Captain Pascoe in his soft voice.
“No, I don’t,” said George rather aggressively. “Why should I?”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know why you should,” said the other, in the lazy but effective manner habitual to him, as if he really wished they wouldn’t give him the trouble of talking, but if they insisted on bringing it upon themselves, why there it was, you know. “Only I’d heard you liked something of a milder flavour.”
“You were quite mistaken then,” said George, quietly but with sledge-hammer sincerity, “I admire them and approve of them just as the Dutch do of storks. They are a charming feature of the landscape—what would the park be to look at without them and their turn-outs?—and they live upon the noxious slimy creatures that would otherwise become a pest to decent people.”
And he puffed away again at his pipe.
The two younger men laughed awkwardly, rather ashamed of their late extravagance of adulation, and afraid of Lauriston’s contempt. But Captain Pascoe, who felt venomously angry, said it was very smart, if it hadn’t been said before, as he rather fancied. And from that moment the want of harmony between the elements of the party became more and more apparent until it is a question whether all did not feel when they got back to town that it was worth while to have gone through the day together for the sake of the relief and delight of parting.
George hurried to the street where Nouna was staying, only for the rapture of gazing upon the dead eyes of the windows behind which she was sleeping. He walked up and down on the opposite side of the way for hours, in that irrational ecstasy of anticipation trembling on the borders of fulfilment which the devotees of long engagements—whatever their compensating advantages of better knowledge and calmer reason may be—never know. It was to be a perfect life, this new life of his and hers, humanised, not vulgarised, by comparative poverty, with no trials less ennobling than the struggles of his just ambition, and his endeavours to bring his young wife’s extravagant views into conformity with the smallness of their fortune. At that moment the prospect seemed almost too radiant, and George at last went reluctantly away with a superstitious fear that something must happen on the morrow to dash down the fabric of so much supernatural happiness.
However, when, on the following morning, after a sleepless night of feverish imaginings, George fell at last into a doze, and waking sprang out of bed in crazy terror lest he should have overslept himself, everything went as smoothly as possible. He was in plenty of time to go to the apartments he had taken, to see that all was ready for his bride’s reception, then to be at the church at eight o’clock, as they had arranged; even as he drove up to the door he saw another hansom approaching with Nouna and Mr. Angelo, who was to give the bride away; and, lastly, he had not forgotten the ring. He waited at the door for them, and helped Nouna to descend with a tremor in his limbs and a tumultuous upheaval of all the forces of his nature as she laid her small hand lightly on his arm and sprang to the ground with indecorous haste, and a face beaming with happy, light-hearted excitement.
She was most oddly dressed in white mull muslin draperies that appeared to be kept together only by a broad sash of soft white silk that was swathed several times round her body, and the wide ends of which hung on the left side nearly to her feet. Long white silk gloves covered her arms and met the hanging draperies, while her head was crowned, not covered, by a white silk fez. Her dark skin glowed with an unusual and beautiful tinge of pink, her black eyes danced with excitement, and between her vividly crimson lips two straight rows of strong ivory teeth gleamed as she laughed. A handsome, graceful, untamed creature, with all the instincts and scarcely more than the capacity for thought of a healthy young animal, skipping into a Christian church to bind herself with lifelong vows in exactly the same spirit with which she had entered the draper’s shop the week before to enjoy the delicious excitement of buying a new bonnet.
A baker’s boy, who happened to be passing, put down his basket to watch her in open-mouthed admiration and astonishment. George himself, intoxicated as he was by his passion, felt a sudden misgiving, not as to the wisdom, but as to the generosity, of entering with this eager child into a compact, the nature and terms of which, it now occurred to him for the first time, she did not in the least understand. Instead of sobering her by its solemn significance, marriage seemed to be turning her head, and to have by anticipation dispersed even those pretty little moods of dignity and of languid silence with which she had formerly varied the monotony of her childish gaiety. Her very greeting was sufficiently suggestive of her views of the impending ceremony.
“You see I’m all in white,” she began as she sprang down upon the pavement. “I thought you would like me to be dressed in white, so I made this dress myself last night, and sat up so late making the cap—for I made it all myself, fancy that!—that I overslept myself this morning and was nearly late. What would you have done if I hadn’t come at all?”
“I should have come and fetched you,” said George, as he shook hands with Mr. Angelo, and then drew the little bride’s hand through his arm to lead her into the church.
“Isn’t this a queer wedding?” she chattered on as they went through the great outer door which the pew-opener had just thrown open, and by which she now stood curtseying. “I’ve been thinking how hard it seems that I should be married without any cake or any bridesmaids, and mamma not here, nor anybody I know. But I’m not going to cry, no, I’m not going to cry.” As they got inside the church she looked up from George’s arm to his face and saw that his eyes were moist. “Why, it’s you who are crying, and you are trembling too! What’s the matter?” she whispered anxiously.
“Nothing, my darling,” he whispered back, as he pressed her hand against his side, “I was only thinking how good I must be to you, to make up for your having neither mother, nor cake, nor bridesmaids.”
They were walking up the middle aisle by this time and, perhaps for a moment a little awed by Lauriston’s solemn manner, or by the cold hollow bareness of the large, almost empty church, Nouna made no further remark until they reached the altar-rails, when she took an exhaustive look round, and observed that there was “a very funny window.” The pew-opener, who had followed them up the aisle as quickly as decency permitted, now suggested to the bridegroom that he and the lady should seat themselves in one of the front pews until the vicar, who had not yet arrived, should be ready. But the bride dismissed her with dignity, saying, “No, we will wait, so tell him to make haste”; and George, who felt that Nouna would look upon any inclination to take advantage of the suggestion as a desire to retract, stood up manfully with his back to the few spectators who at this early hour had trickled in to see the wedding, and began in the midst of his nervous excitement to be tormented by a fear of being late for parade. Mr. Angelo, who had, according to his own and the Countess’s express wish, arranged all the details of the marriage, now appeared from the vestry with the clergyman, who looked blue about the chin and rather cross, as if he had come out in a hurry, without having had time to shave or breakfast.
Just as George turned at the sound of their footsteps, he caught sight of a figure among the scanty congregation which made him start forward, forgetful of everything else. A low but indignant “St, st, what is the matter with you, sir?” from the clergyman, who glared at him in a manner which seemed to say that if they couldn’t keep their minds on what they were about he wouldn’t marry them at all, recalled him to himself, and the service began.
To do them justice, they gave him no further trouble. Nouna had studied her part in the service, had not only taken off her left glove without being told, but had tucked up the draperies that formed her sleeve, and left her arm bare to the shoulder as if ready to be vaccinated. She tripped off her part of the service glibly, in a clear, bright voice, without waiting for the clergyman, and then looked up at George with a tiny movement of the head that was almost a nod, as much as to say: “You see I’m determined to do you credit.” The only thing that puzzled her was the difficulty of knowing when to kneel down and when to stand up; in this, and in this alone, she was obliged to accept the clergyman’s guidance, and for this she kept her eyes fixed carefully upon him all the time.
Lauriston’s nervousness, increased by the sight of the figure he felt sure he recognised as that of Rahas, was so great that he became the victim of what he believed to be a most strange delusion of the ear. It seemed to him that every word of the prayers of the service was repeated, as the clergyman uttered it, in a soft, distinct tone, away in the body of the church behind them. As soon as the service was over, the bridegroom turned round with machine-like rapidity, and was just in time to see the figure he had noticed go down the further end of the south aisle and out at the door. Although the man wore a European overcoat and carried in his hand an English hat, George felt more than ever convinced that it was Rahas. He was accompanied by a woman, of whose appearance Lauriston could only note two details: she wore dark clothing and was small of stature. It was not Mrs. Ellis, certainly. Sundran? He thought not. While the young man stood, as if transfixed, staring after these two disappearing figures with straining eyes, unmindful of the touch of his newly-made wife on his arm, Mr. Angelo’s precise tones, close at his ear, roused him from his stupefaction.
“Come, Mr. Lauriston,” he said in a low but rather peremptory tone, “we have to go into the vestry.”
The old lawyer’s face was, as usual, impassive; but it occurred to Lauriston, a man rendered by his profession observant of details, that the steadiness with which Mr. Angelo ignored his persistent stare at the side-door argued that he was himself aware of the objects of interest there. He said nothing, however, but followed the clergyman into the vestry, and signed his name in the register.
“Come, now it’s your turn, little one,” he said tenderly to Nouna, who had slipped from his arm and was standing very quietly beside Mr. Angelo.
She glanced up at the old lawyer, who gave her his arm with great ceremony, led her to the desk, and turned immediately to the bridegroom.
“You saw, or thought you saw some one you knew among the congregation, I fancy,” said he in his quiet dry manner.
Lauriston looked up quickly from the page over which he was bending.
“Yes, I certainly did think so, in fact I am almost sure of it,” he said, turning to notice the old man’s expression.
“I imagined that to be the case from your expression as we left the altar,” said the lawyer, keeping Lauriston’s eyes fixed by the steady gaze of his own. “Who do you think it was?”
“I feel sure it was Rahas,” said George in a low voice, still watching the face of the lawyer, who now took Nouna’s place to sign the register as a witness to the marriage. “Did you see him too?”
The old gentleman did not answer at once; he was bending low over the open page before him to finish his signature with a careful flourish. When he had done this, he placed the blotting-paper over it, put his arm through that of the bridegroom, and moved away with him.
“My eyes are not as good as yours, Mr. Lauriston,” he said; “I should not know my own son at that distance.”
“There was a lady—a woman with him,” said George.
“A woman whom you know?” asked the lawyer, whose interest in the matter, however, seemed to have diminished.
“I think not.”
“Then there is nothing extraordinary in the circumstance.”
“What does the man want at my wedding?”
“All friends of the parties find weddings interesting. Perhaps you misjudge this Eastern gentleman. He has called at my office to give me a letter for the Countess, and he expressed the most kindly sentiments towards you. See, Mrs. Lauriston seems impatient.”
The two gentlemen were conversing in a low voice just within the vestry door. Nouna had slipped past them into the body of the church, and stood in an unusually quiet and pensive mood gazing at the altar where she had lately knelt. George shook himself free from a crowd of bewildering questions that were forcing themselves into his mind, and called to her.
“Nouna, come and sign the register.”
“I’ve done it,” “She has done so,” answered she and the lawyer together.
“I didn’t see you.”
“I did it while you were talking,” said she, quickly.
“Yes, yes, it’s all right; the lady signed her name,” broke in the vicar, who thought he was never going to get rid of them.
So George, hurried away by wife, lawyer, and vicar, did not see Nouna’s first and last signature of her maiden name.
Theminutes that had been wasted in waiting for the vicar before the wedding, and in conversing with Mr. Angelo after it, had placed George Lauriston in a singular position: there was not time enough left to drive with his bride to the apartments he had taken for her in a street near Wilton Place, and then to return to the barracks and put on his uniform before parade. He must either risk being late for his duty for the first time, or miss the pleasure of himself introducing his young wife to her new home. His mind was made up before he reached the church-door. He had a superstition, the more influential that he felt his own weakness where his wife was concerned, against beginning his married life by a breach of discipline.
Bending down over his little bride, who was leaving the church much more sedately than she had entered it, as if the solemnity of the married state had already begun to work its sobering influence upon her, he said, very low and very tenderly: “Nouna, my darling, what would you say if I asked you to go to our new home by yourself and wait for me there? If I told you I could not go there now straight with you without neglecting my duty?”
“Say!” said the small bride, lifting up a dismayed face suddenly, and speaking in a tremulous voice above the pitch usually considered decorous in a church. “Why, I should say, never mind your duty, but come with me.”
George would not accept such a portent as this, natural as the little heart-cry undoubtedly was.
“Oh no, darling, you wouldn’t say that,” he urged, in a hurried whisper. “You wouldn’t like them to say I was a less good soldier because I was married.”
“I shouldn’t care what they said, as long as I had you with me,” persisted Nouna piteously, clinging to his arm, while two tears came to her eyes and allowed themselves to be blinked down her cheeks.
George hesitated. The intoxication was mounting rapidly from heart to head as he looked at her, felt the magnetic pressure of the small fingers. Mr. Angelo, seeing the difficulty, came up with his usual deliberate step and detached the clinging bride with the unemotional dexterity of a machine.
“The Countess would be much annoyed if she thought you would impede your husband in the execution of his duty, Nouna,” said he as drily as ever. “I will take you home, and Mr. Lauriston, I am sure, will need no urging to join you as speedily as possible.”
George was astonished at the effect this mention of her mother had upon the wilful girl, and he inwardly noted the fact for future use. The hansoms in which they had come were waiting outside; he helped her tenderly into one of them and consigned her to the care of the old lawyer, assuring her that he would be with her again as soon as ever he could. Then getting into the second cab, he drove as fast as he could to Victoria.
Luck was against him, however. It was this day of all days that Colonel Florencecourt chose for putting an end to the estrangement which his own acts had brought about between himself and his favourite officer. No sooner was parade over than the Colonel, who had already spoken to him more amiably than usual, and told him with ominous friendliness that he had something to say to him, came up, thrust his arm through that of the young man, and reminded him that they were both engaged to lunch with the Millards in Grosvenor Square. George was thunderstruck. He had of course forgotten all about the appointment in the absorbing pursuit of matrimony, and his jaw fell perceptibly at this reminder.
“Eh?” said the Colonel. “Still a little sore at Miss Ella’s treatment? But supposing her ‘No’ should be no more irrevocable than a lady’s ‘No’ to a good-looking and dashing young fellow usually is? Look here, Lauriston, I have reason to think the Millards have an invitation in hand for you down to their place in Norfolk, and probably Ella had a hand in that, as the clever young lady has in most of the family affairs.”
“But indeed, Colonel, I have had leave enough for this year, and couldn’t expect any more. And besides, I really haven’t the least wish in the world to go out of town at present.”
The Colonel looked at him, as he thought, suspiciously.
“As to the leave, I would guarantee you should get that,” he said with a degree more of his usual asperity. “You know my own place is close by the Millards’; I am going there myself for the shooting, and I have a very particular wish to see more of you this autumn than I have had time to do lately. Don’t disappoint me in this, Lauriston; there are not many men whose society I think worth half-a-dozen words of request.”
His tone, if not absolutely affectionate, was kindly enough as he said these last words to make George sorry to disappoint him, sorrier still to think what the elder man’s vexation and even grief would be when he should learn how far counter to his odd prejudice against brunettes the younger officer had run in his choice of a bride.
“I gave up all hope of marrying your niece Ella, Colonel, on the evening when she refused me,” said he, feeling guilty and uncomfortable. “I should never think of asking her again, and I should feel so uncomfortable in her presence”—this he said most fervently, for nothing could be truer—“that I had given up all thought even of going there this morning, and have made another appointment, which I am bound to keep.”
“You are bound to keep the one first made,” said the Colonel shortly, “as I know by a note I got from my sister-in-law that she expects you. Change your dress as quickly as you can; she wants us to be there early.”
He turned away abruptly, and George went to his rooms without further protest, but in a white heat of rage at his own idiotcy in not remembering this wretched appointment. All he could do was to ask the Colonel to stay for a moment at a telegraph-office on their way to Grosvenor Square, and to send off a message to his poor little bride, telling her not to be lonely, that he should be detained a little while, but that he would be back as early as possible. Then the delicious thrill of possession that the writing of the address to “Mrs. Lauriston” gave him, was so enthralling that he lingered a few moments, pencil in hand, before rejoining his imperious senior officer waiting outside. Indeed neither man found great pleasure, on this occasion, in the other’s society. George guessed that the Colonel had resigned himself to the thought of his marrying the dark-complexioned Ella, only to avoid the worse evil of some dangerous entanglement, to which the young man’s recent conduct ominously pointed. Both were glad when Grosvenor Square was reached, and a rather intermittent conversation upon indifferent subjects broke up.
The Millards all reproached George with having neglected them lately, and Sir Henry at once broached the subject of an invitation to Norfolk, the suggestion of which had pleased him greatly.
“You must come,” he said hastily, when the young man pleaded something about “working hard this autumn”; “we won’t take any excuse. The Colonel says he can get you leave, and if, as you say, you’re going to take to writing, why everybody knows you can get better inspiration in the fresh air of the country than you can among the chimney-pots. And you will enjoy yourself, George, I know you will. It isn’t the orthodox big country-house, you know, where you can fancy yourself in London except that it’s duller; we all rough it down there, in a cottage of my own that we’ve enlarged as we wanted. My wife and I play Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, you know. She has fashion and a carpet up here, while I have comfort and a sanded floor in Norfolk. Isn’t it so, Cicely?” he added to his eldest daughter, who had come to lean over her father’s shoulder, and to smile acquiescence in all he said in the prettiest possible manner. “I shall set you girls to persuade him.”
Cicely was the one who never had anything to say, and whose dove-like eyes and gentle, quiet manners roused in you a strong anxiety to know what she thought and felt, which nobody had as yet succeeded in discovering.
“Set Ella, papa,” said Cicely, beaming as sweetly as ever. “Charlotte and I have no influence; it’s always Ella.”
“Ella, come here, you’re wanted,” said her father. And when his youngest daughter had crossed the room obediently, he put his hand on Lauriston’s shoulder, and spoke in a playfully magisterial tone. “This person is accused of wilful disobedience both to his Colonel and to an old friend, who both desire and command his attendance at Maple Lodge, in the county of Norfolk, on or about the First of September next. See what you can do to bring him to reason.”
“Perhaps it will be I who will bring you all to reason when you hear the powerful arguments I have to urge on my side. Ella shall judge,” said George.
And he laughingly led Ella, who was as prim and solemn as ever, to a sofa, where he sat down beside her, and instantly resumed his gravity.
“Of course you don’t want to come,” said Ella with disagreeable dryness, crossing her knees and clasping her hands round the uppermost in a masculine manner which constantly shocked her sisters’ sense of propriety, and recalled to Lady Millard’s mind her own ways in the old time before she crossed the Atlantic and became the dignified wife of an English baronet.
“It isn’t that at all,” said George gravely; “I was married this morning.”
The girl was startled. She looked full in his face as if trying to read in his eyes all the circumstances of that hasty step, even while she silenced the cry of her own heart. She had been honest with him and with herself; she had never allowed herself, except in a rare idle day-dream, to think that the strong secret inclination towards him of her suppressed and somewhat neglected affections, would ever blossom into happy love; but now that even a day-dream was no longer possible, she felt suddenly that she had lost something precious out of that storehouse of heart and imagination which holds a woman’s fairest joys. In the yearning, searching, half-bewildered look she gave him George, if he did not read quite all that was in her heart, learnt enough to fill him with self-reproach and yet with a strong sense of human sympathy.
“It was a rash thing to do, I know,” he said, relieved by feeling that here at least was a being to whom he could pour out all his heart on the subject; “but she was in the most dangerous circumstances, scarcely more than a child, and surrounded by careless and undesirable companions. The only way to guard her was to marry her, and besides—”
“You love her,” said Ella gently.
“Yes.”
Both were silent for a moment. Then she said, all her ordinary abruptness of manner melted by kindly feeling:
“I suppose, George, from what you have told me and what you have not told me, that she was not, well—not in the same rank of life as you are?”
“No, at least—certainly not in the same circumstances. She is the daughter of a Spanish Countess, who does not live in England, and you know we English have a sort of idea that only some half-dozen foreign titles are well-authenticated, so that a descent from Russian princes, for instance, is accounted rather less desirable than a descent from English buttermen.”
“That will hurt you socially then, George, because people will not be so ready to take her up.”
George shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t care much for society myself, but it may be hard on the poor child.”
Ella rose, as if moved by a sudden impulse, and saying she must remind her mother of an appointment, she left George and crossed to her parents, to each of whom she said a few words in a low voice as luncheon was announced. They had scarcely all taken their seats in the dining-room, when Lady Millard, upon a glance from her youngest daughter, said:
“I don’t think you have treated us quite fairly in keeping us all in the dark except Ella, George. However, there is nothing left for us now but to congratulate you, and to insist upon your coming to us at Maple Lodge in September, and bringing your wife with you.”
“You might have knocked me down with a feather, as the housemaids say, when Ella told me about it just now, and said I was to hold my tongue about it till it was announced,” said Sir Henry, while the other two girls lifted up their gentle voices and clamoured questions about the bride.
George glanced gratefully at Ella while he answered as much as he could, thanked Lady Millard for her invitation, was overruled when he pleaded that his wife was too young and too much of a hoyden to pay visits until she had sobered down a little, and looked anxiously at the Colonel, who had received the announcement in dead silence, and refused to offer the smallest comment. Nobody but himself and Ella knew how very recent his wedding had been, so George found it impossible to break away from them until four o’clock, when, much to his vexation, the Colonel left too. The elder man read the expression on the face of the younger, and he said, in a cold voice, as he kept pace with him on the broad pavement of the square:
“I am not going to trouble you either with reproaches or warnings: it is too late. But I am going to give you two words of advice. You are young, ardent, generous-blooded; you are in dangers that I can understand. It is plain that you have married for love, and love only, in the hottest and most reckless way, some little jade whose face has bewitched you. Well, listen. Don’t begin by worshipping her as a goddess, or you will end by having to propitiate her as a devil. Live two lives; one with her, all sweetness and softness and silliness, using up all the superfluous sentiment and folly we are all burdened with, in kisses and sighs at her footstool: but once shut yourself into your study, or shut her up in her drawing-room with her pug dog and her needles and snips of canvas and wool, forget her, brace yourself up to what you have always looked upon as the serious interests of your life, lock her pretty face and her pretty prattle right up in your heart, and keep your mind and your soul free from the sickly contamination. When you are with her, think of nothing but her; when you are away from her, think of anything else. Never mind what she does while you’re away. If there’s any harm in her, it would come out if you kept her under glass, while she’s a thousand times less likely to get into mischief if she respects you as her master and superior, instead of despising you as her slave. Remember a man can never be theequalof a woman. If you only admit the possibility, it is war between you until the one or the other has come off conqueror.”
He ceased speaking abruptly, and they walked on a few moments in silence.
At last Lauriston said: “That system might do for a philosopher, Colonel, but it will not suit the every-day Englishman.”
“I should not recommend it to the every-day Englishman. I recommend it to you because I wish to save Her Majesty a good officer with a heart and a brain, both of which, for any purpose outside the mere physical functions of existence, are imperilled by your marriage. How do you suppose that I, without some such rule of conduct, should have got even where I am, weighted with Lady Florencecourt?”
“Ah, Lady Florencecourt!” exclaimed George hastily and deprecatingly, forgetting ordinary civility in horror at this comparison between Nouna and a lady who was, without perhaps any clearly specified reason, the bogey of all her acquaintance.
The Colonel was not at all annoyed; he gave a little quick shake of the head, and burst out with abrupt vehemence—
“By Jove, Lady Florencecourt’s an angel of light compared to——” Suddenly, without any warning, he pulled himself up short, and added after a second’s pause, in a milder and more reserved tone—“compared to some of the specimens I have known.”
Lauriston glanced at him in surprise. He would have rather liked to know something about the “specimen” or “specimens” who had made the fiery little Colonel a woman-hater, and caused that obnoxious woman, Lady Florencecourt, to appear an ideal wife in his eyes. But the elder man’s burst of confidence was over. He proceeded to ask in a dry tone—“You have quite made up your mind to treat my advice as advice is usually treated, I suppose?”
“You are rather hard upon me, Colonel. You do me the honour to say I have brains, but you take it for granted that I haven’t used them. I’ve been on the rack between my thoughts and my feelings ever since I found out I loved this girl, and I’ve puzzled out for myself some sort of plan to live upon.”
“And what’s that? To ‘give her the key of your heart,’ I suppose, and make her ‘the sharer of your thoughts and feelings.’ ”
“I should be sorry to have a wife that wasn’t!”
The Colonel stopped with a short laugh, and looked at him with half-closed eyes and hard-set mouth.
“Well, try it!” said he raspingly; and with a half-mocking salute he turned round and went rapidly off by the way they had come.
George looked after him regretfully; he was inclined, after all, to put on Lady Florencecourt the whole blame of the souring process which the Colonel’s really warm and kindly nature had obviously undergone. He was grateful to the elder officer for a steady liking for and interest in himself. In the uprooting and tempestuous state of mind into which the red-hot romance of his marriage had plunged him, it was with a pang of yearning towards the sincere and steadfast old friend that he saw him depart disappointed, if not angry. But no man of three-and-twenty can trouble himself deeply about one of his own sex when he is on his way to a passionately adored bride; and a minute later George was in a hansom on his way to —— Street, in an ecstasy of anticipation that left no room for a doubt or a fear. Every step was bringing him nearer to her, making his heart beat faster; the hansom was turning into Wilton Place, and George, in his fiery impatience, had flung open the doors and taken a half-sovereign from his pocket for his shilling fare in the reckless spirit that makes us anxious to communicate to the meanest mortals (with no disrespect to the cabbies) the joy that seems too great for one body and soul to contain, when suddenly his eyes, straining to catch the earliest possible glimpse of the house that contained his treasure, fell, for the second time that day, upon the man who of all others seemed to the young bridegroom the harbinger of ill-luck and disaster. The Eastern merchant Rahas, not in the costume he had worn that morning, but in scarlet fez and a long, dark-blue garment, which was a cross between a frock-coat and a dressing-gown, was crossing the street hastily exactly in front of Nouna’s new home, as if he had just visited it.
“Stop!” shouted George to the driver, and before the man could obey he had sprung out, tossed him the half-sovereign, which the recipient caught with a dexterity he would not have shown for a shilling, and started in pursuit.
The Oriental had given one look round, and disappeared with the agile rapidity of a cat up a narrow street a little further on. George followed, dashed round the corner, and found himself in a stone-paved alley with stables on each side. There was no human being to be seen; but a barking dog at the other end seemed to have been lately disturbed. George traversed the little court at a sharp run, found an opening, and went through into a street beyond, where a few people were passing to and fro with no appearance of excitement, and carriages and cabs were going both ways. He saw that the ingenious Eastern gentleman had given him the slip, and he returned towards his new home with his spirits dashed, and his heart full of misgiving.
If Rahas had just visited Nouna, as George suspected, he must have followed her from the church to her new home, as George had told no one the address till after his wedding. Then how had he timed his departure so as just to escape meeting her husband? And then again came the question which had puzzled him at the church: How did Rahas know at what time and at what church Nouna would be married?
He took out the latch-key for which, with an old bachelor instinct, he had at once asked the landlady on taking the rooms, fitted it with an unsteady hand into the door, and let himself in. Just inside he caught sight of his face in the narrow strip of glass that filled the middle beam of the hat-stand, and was struck by his own pallor, and by the stern expression of his features.