CHAPTER XII.
The minutes 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 the equal of 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.
“By Jove!” he said to himself, trying to laugh, and finding with surprise that he was quite cold, and that his teeth were chattering, “here’s a pretty face for a bridegroom. If I were to give Nouna, my poor little Nouna, my first kiss with lips as blue as that,” and he peered at himself mockingly close to the glass, “she’d think she’d married a corpse.”
And he pulled himself together, drew down the ends of his moustache, and rearranged his light satin tie, telling himself that he had been a fool to chase the fellow at all instead of going straight to Nouna to learn whether the wretch had really called and attempted to annoy her. But a blight had fallen upon his ecstatic happiness, and he broke off in an attempt to sing as he ran up stairs to the first floor.
As he went he heard voices, which ceased suddenly when his footsteps sounded on the landing; then there was a slight rustling, and a noise as of something thrown over in a hurry. He considered a moment, and then, the key of the bedroom door being on the outside, he quietly turned it in the lock before entering the sitting-room.