CHAPTER XIII.
The apartments George Lauriston had taken for his wife were two bright and pleasantly furnished rooms, not large, but sufficiently lofty, with no aggressive blue glass or china ornaments, crochet antimacassars, or other cherished relics of the professional landlady. There was a piano, not likely to be much of a resource, perhaps, to the player with “an ear”: there was a handsome carved oak book-case, carefully locked, which contained, sandwiched in with old-fashioned trashy gift-books and much futile evangelical literature, some tempting back volumes of the Cornhill and Blackwood, and a beautifully preserved set of Scott’s novels. The mantelpiece was draped with an inexpensive but harmonious imitation of tapestry, the worn places on the carpet were covered with unlined goat-skins, there was the inevitable sideboard with doors that would not keep closed without a neat little wedge of newspaper, there were modern spindle-legged, handsomely covered chairs, and a plush-hung table, and there was a big, broad, luxurious Chesterfield settee, which had evidently been bought a bargain because it was inconveniently large, and on which Lauriston had again and again, during the last few days, pictured the ease-loving Nouna reclining. To add to the attractions of her new home for his bride, George had taken care to fill every available corner with flowers—mignonette and geraniums in pots on the sill of the two windows, cut roses and carnations, sweetpeas and purple and golden heartsease—crammed into every vase and glass the landlady could spare.
On the table he had caused to be spread a wedding-breakfast such as Oberon might have served to Titania. For this great human goose would have shrunk from the suggestion that a healthy girl of sixteen can generally eat anything, and lots of it; and that rounds of bread and butter cut pretty thick, a plentiful helping of dried haddock, or a couple of eggs and a rasher of bacon, all washed down with immoderate draughts of weak tea, will form an acceptable meal at nine in the morning to our fairest maids, and that your delicate appetite—alas, that it should be so!—is generally the result of sickly health. Piled high in the centre was a pyramid of giant strawberries, and round about were plates with French pastry, bonbons, game sandwiches thin as wafers, bananas, limes and a pineapple; the whole guarded by a white porcelain elephant, out of whose houdah small ferns were growing in an unlikely manner. This last introduction was a happy thought of Lauriston’s, and was supposed to remind his bride gracefully of the land of her birth.
He had been extravagant certainly; what churl would not be for his wedding day? But what happiness those preparations had given him! How he had frowningly scrutinised the rooms, to be quite sure that no single corner presented a less pleasing appearance than could by any possible ingenuity be given to it! How, in imagination, he had followed her with his eyes as she tripped through the rooms in her bird-like way, stopping to hover over the flowers, to eat a strawberry, to draw aside the curtains and peep out from her new nest into the street! How he had stood at the door of the bedchamber as in a sanctuary, with his heart full of a wish, devout as a prayer, that the child-woman who was coming to his arms might know no sorrow from which a strong man’s love could save her!
And now by some shadowy calamity that he did not yet understand, it was all changed, the sweet home-coming was spoilt, and he stood before his newly-made wife with no absorbing tenderness in his eyes, but with anxiety, suspicion, and fear struggling under the mask of apparent sternness, which was the outward sign of his efforts at self-control.
Nouna was alone, lying on the couch as he had so often by anticipation pictured her. She was curled up prettily enough, her head back upon the side, which was soft enough to serve for a cushion. The drapery of her arms was drawn carefully down, but the left hand, with its tiny gold ring, was placed proudly en évidence against her white sash. She looked flushed, shy, and rather frightened, and gave a little nervous laugh and a timid smile as he came in, which would have enchanted him but for the unexplained sights and sounds which had preceded his entrance.
“Who was that with you, Nouna?” he asked gently enough, but without coming nearer to her than the door, which he had just shut.
“With me!” she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows very innocently.
“Yes, dear. I heard some one scuffling about in here and talking just as I came in. Now, Nouna, my darling, why don’t you tell me?” he asked very softly, coming a step nearer.
But she curled herself up in the corner of the couch, and looked up at him like a marmoset who has broken a Dresden cup—for a marmoset knows Dresden, and prefers it as a plaything to the ordinary breakfast china.
“Don’t look like that. You frighten me,” she said in a low voice, with an inclination divided between weeping and running away.
George came and knelt by her, but as she shrank back he did not offer to touch her.
“Listen to me, little one. I am not angry, only sorry you will not tell me what I ask. Who was the woman I heard talking to you just now? Was it your mother?”
“Mamma! Oh, no, no, no,” said she with a convincing accent of astonishment. “I tell you there wasn’t anybody; I was singing to myself,” she added with less appearance of sincerity.
George drew back deeply wounded, and looking more stern than he guessed. In the silence between them he heard the rattle of the lock in the next room, and the shaking of the door. He walked up to the folding-doors which led into the bedroom, while Nouna turned her head to watch him anxiously. Crouching down on the other side of the bed, with more of the appearance of an animal than ever now that she was foiled in her attempt to escape, was the Indian servant Sundran.
“Get up,” said George shortly. “No one is going to hurt you. What are you doing here?”
“I was doing no harm, sahib. I came to see my pretty missee, Missee Nouna, my own foster-child that I nurse and love. She send for me, sahib, she send for me; she lonely without me. Sahib, let me stay. I will serve you, only for food to keep me alive if you let me stay.”
She was passionately in earnest, and without rising from her knees she dragged herself to him and tried to kiss his feet. George evaded the unwelcome embrace. He couldn’t bear this woman, and the thought that Nouna could really have missed her unwholesome prattle enough to send for her clandestinely on her wedding day gave him deep pain. He could scarcely help being touched by her animal-like devotion, but to allow her to remain in Nouna’s service now that the latter was his wife and was to begin her nobler education under his influence and guidance, was on every account not to be thought of.
“You never thought of staying, Sundran. You were trying to get away without my seeing you, encouraging my wife to deceive me on her very wedding day. How can you expect me to keep near her such a wicked adviser as that?”
“Sahib, I did not know you would be good to me. I thought you would be cruel and hard and fierce, as the English sahibs are sometimes. Oh, I have known them! But you are good, you are noble; you will not separate the sweet young lady who is the light of my eyes from her poor old Sundran.”
The poor creature’s eyes were indeed full of passionate tears, and George, who was no more proof than the majority of his sex against that form of argument in a woman, said gruffly:
“Nonsense, I tell you it’s impossible. But you can go down stairs and get them to give you some tea if you like, and afterwards you shall see your mistress again. But mind, if you ever attempt these underhand tricks again, you shall never set eyes on her as long as you live.”
She seemed a little comforted, and murmured broken, humble thanks as she got up and dried her eyes on a corner of the white garment which served her as shawl and head-dress. Then George went through the next room, Nouna still watching him in the same attitude as before, and unlocking the bedroom door, let the woman out. As soon as he had seen her get to the bottom of the stairs he re-locked the bedroom door and put the key in his pocket to prevent her hiding herself there again, and went back to his bride in a very chastened mood. This first experience of matrimony was certainly disillusionising. He must get to the bottom of the whole business at once, that was certain; but how was he to begin? It was too cruel to have to ply this little creature whom he loved with questions instead of kisses. He sat down by the table, keeping his eyes resolutely fixed upon the china elephant.
“When did you send for Sundran, Nouna?” he asked huskily.
“To-da—ay.”
There was a mournful little break of her voice upon the last syllable, which was almost too much for him. He took a strawberry from the dish, which now held only three or four, to keep his hands from twitching, and swallowed it ferociously, as his mouth was dry and parched.
“Who brought her here?”
No answer.
“Well, dear?”
She began to sob. George swallowed more strawberries, stalks and all, but found small relief in them.
“It was Rahas who brought her,” said George, trying to be as gentle as possible.
More sobs, so that the unfortunate inquisitor had to get up, walk with a martial tread to the window, and say his next words with his back to her.
“When did he come? What did he come for, Nouna?”
The tears were in George’s eyes too by this time.
“Answer me, answer me, child,” cried he in a frenzy as she began to moan miserably.
Her quick ears caught the breaking sound in his voice, and suddenly ceasing in her signs of grief she called aloud:
“Come and ask me here, and I’ll tell you anything!”
He turned round. She was holding out her arms. George gave a great cry.
“Nouna, my wife, my wife!”
The next moment she was crushed up against his breast.
When out of the intoxication of that first embrace George drifted slowly back to a dim consciousness of earthly things, it came upon him with a sudden sobering shock that there was something new and unaccounted for in the appearance of his bride. For on the little slender arm that encircled his neck with the clinging, vibrating pressure of an absorbing passion, shone and glittered close under his eyes a sparkling mass of precious stones. He drew away from her suddenly, and seizing both her arms almost roughly, pushed up the half transparent sleeves and looked from the one to the other in stupefaction, while Nouna laughed aloud in exuberant, luxurious happiness.
“Where did you get these?” he asked in bewilderment even stronger than his anxiety.
George had but a scant and careless acquaintance with the contents of jewellers’ windows, and his circle of diamond-bedecked duchesses was less than limited. But there was a quiet self-sufficiency about the way in which those white transparent stones allowed themselves to be looked upon as unobtrusive modest things, and then, at a turn of Nouna’s wrist, flashed dazzling rays into his eyes, which told him that these pretty ornaments were not like the innocent and harmless mock jewels in the silver-gilt bracelets that Nouna had been allowed to deck herself out with in Mary Street, but were that bane of the husband—diamonds. What the value of the jewels she was wearing might be he did not even guess; but he could not doubt that the seven bracelets she had on her arms, and a glittering diamond lizard three inches long, with rubies for eyes, which fastened her sash where that morning there had been only a simple pin, and a necklace of large pearls that encircled her throat, had cost more than four or five years of his pay. He looked at them with a very grave and doubtful face, with as much mistrust and misliking as if they had been poisonous insects.
“Ha, ha!” cried Nouna, raising her arms and turning them about that the jewels might flash and sparkle the more in the rays of the afternoon sun struggling through the blinds. “Where did I get them? You must guess that.”
She was for the moment too much absorbed in the delight of watching the changing lights on her trinkets to notice the discontent in his face. Glancing then merrily at him to direct his attention to the play of the sunlight upon the stones, she let her arms fall as she noted his expression.
“Don’t you like to see me wear pretty things?” she asked plaintively; then, as he did not at once answer, she turned petulantly away from him, and threw herself face downwards full-length upon the couch. “It is true what Rahas says,” she cried passionately, “that an Englishman likes jewels on every woman but his wife, that he would rather she should appear ugly in his own eyes than pretty in anybody else’s, that he calls her a goddess to reconcile her to leading the—the—life of a do—og!”
All this she poured out parrot-like amid sobs and floods of tears, while George remained on his knees beside her, and listened as quietly as a statue. Like other open and generous natures with an element of strength in them, he could be as merciful towards the frank confession of weakness as he was hard in the face of deception. He thought Rahas had worked on her by means of her love of finery, and by dark warnings against the husband of whom she had as yet had no experience, and stifling all impulses of rage against the author of the evil, who was absent and could not now be dealt with, he at once set about arriving at a more complete knowledge of what had taken place between his young wife and the wily Oriental. Sitting on the edge of the couch he put his arms round Nouna, drew her to him, and calmed her outburst of tearful petulance with tender, yearning caresses, so fond, so warm, with such depths of almost paternal protectiveness toning down and mingling with the ardent passion of the lover, that her fitful nature was soothed in a very few moments, and her arms made instinctively for his neck again as a baby turns to its mother’s breast, and the tears dried on her cheeks as she began to smile up confidingly into his face.
“Now, little wife, tell me,” he whispered, looking down into her eyes with the steady fire of a man’s noblest, strongest love, before which a woman’s weak fears and suspicions could not but melt and wither, “do you believe I want to make your life unhappy? Do you think I shall be hard and cruel to you, and deprive you of anything that can please you? Look up, look up, and tell me if you think so!”
She looked up, transformed by the love-touch, the love-speech, into a little spirit of fire and light, burning into his heart and flesh with an irresistible, intoxicating strength of feverish, though fitful passion. As her lips pressed his, as her fingers glided with slow, voluptuous touch till they ruffled his curly hair and clasped each other behind his head, he forgot his intention, forgot his suspicious fears, enthralled by the bliss of possession of the first woman he had ever loved and longed for. It was not until the passion-fire began to fade in Nouna’s eyes, and she slid languidly down from his neck, and drawing his arms about her so as to support her best in the position she chose, nestled against him with closing eyes, while a long sigh of perfect and complete happiness rose to her parted lips, seemed to quiver along her form, and then died slowly away, that his doubts and fears surged up again in the midst of his own intoxication of pleasure, and, with difficulty steadying himself to the task, he framed a form of words in which to resume his interrogatory.
“Listen, Nouna,” he said, with an inevitable touch of hardness in his effort at self-control; “I want you to tell me all that happened after you drove off with Mr. Angelo from the church-door to-day.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed in a long wail of weary disgust at the obtrusive inquiry, “you don’t want to worry me about that now, do you? I’ll tell you all about it some other time.”
And she flung her arms back over her head, and laughed up at him through the ivory frame in lazy witchery. Finding, however, that he remained firm and would not look down at her, she changed her attitude, and, by a quick, lithe movement, twined herself coaxingly about him. George gave scarcely a sign of the fierce conflict that was going on within him, between the despotic, wickedly used power this little creature was trying to establish over him, and his own manful determination to assume without delay his rightful lordship. For this once he had the mastery, keeping lip and limb under firm control, and disentangling himself from her arms to hold her away from him, he looked steadily, but with a most loving reserve of tenderness in his eyes, into her half-petulant, half-reproachful face.
“Tell me now, darling, and then we’ll kiss all thoughts of it away.”
Whereat she made a spring at him to anticipate the reward. But seeing that, instead of lighting up with the flame she wanted to see in them again, his eyes retained the steady, searching look, which moreover seemed to become more grimly resolute for her evasions, she turned to tearfulness, and without actually crying, moaned out in a most melancholy voice, and with a woman’s natural love of piling on the agony, that he had better kill her, since it was plain he did not love her.
“Come, darling, you know better than that,” said he gently. “But I am your husband, and you must tell me what I wish to know.”
It may be easily imagined that he was becoming madly anxious and suspicious under all these evasions, which seemed to denote that she had something to hide more serious than he supposed. Finding all her artifices useless, and failing in an angry struggle to escape from his arms, she proceeded to unfasten all her bracelets, to tear out her diamond lizard, and after piling them in a heap in her lap, to toss them all with a sudden, violent jerk on to the floor at her husband’s feet.
“There!” said she triumphantly, “will that satisfy you?”
“Not at all,” said George very quietly. “I should have had them off long ago if I had wanted to. Who gave them to you?”
She noticed the increasing sternness of his tone and answered with a sudden quick change to childish fright.
“I had them all the time. Mamma sent them to me weeks ago, by Mr. Angelo,” she added with a rapid inspiration.
Without any sign or word which seemed to her significant enough for a warning, George’s self-restraint gave way, and grasping her shoulders so firmly in his hands that she could not move to right or left, he forced her to meet his eyes, now flaming with anger, with her own.
“Tell me the truth,” he said in a tone she had never heard him use before.
“I dare not, I dare not,” she whispered in terrible, exaggerated fear that took all colour from her face and lips and made her dark skin an ugly ashy grey.
He relaxed his clasp at once, remorseful and ashamed; but his voice was no softer than before. “Who gave you those jewels? Was it Rahas?”
She looked up rapidly, with a convincing ray of relief in her eyes. “Oh, no, no, no. It was mamma, mamma, mamma. They were her wedding present to me.”
George put his hand up to his forehead, and found that it was wet. A great dread had gone from his mind, yet he remained much puzzled.
“Then why couldn’t you tell me so at once?” he asked doubtfully.
“Why, it’s no use hiding it now. Rahas brought them, and he said I was to say I had had them before, because it would make you so angry to know he’d been here.”
He had got at the truth at last, he believed, but he was still far from satisfied.
“Don’t you know, Nouna,” he said more gently, putting his arm round her again, “that you must not see people your husband doesn’t wish you to see?”
“But I couldn’t help it,” cried Nouna, evidently surprised at seeing him calm down so rapidly. “Mr. Angelo didn’t come in, he drove off at once, and when I had been waiting here a little while all by myself there was a knock and I ran down stairs, thinking it must be you. I had been eating strawberries, so I hadn’t seen who it was coming. And it was Rahas, and when I saw him, I said, ‘No, I must not speak to you,’ and I wanted to shut the door. But he would not let me; he said he had a message and something for me from mamma, and he showed me a packet with her handwriting on it. So I said ‘Oh, give it me,’ and he said he must come in and speak to me. And I said I would not see him alone, I would wait till my husband came. Yes, I said ‘my husband,’ I did, just like that,” and she drew herself up and spoke with great dignity. “And the landlady came up just then to answer the door, so I ran back and called to her, ‘Mrs. Lauriston is not at home,’ and I went up stairs and looked through the curtains and saw him go away looking all doubled up, as he does when he is very angry. And I felt afraid, and wished you would come, and I wished I had brought my kitten—I felt so lonely. Oh, it seemed such a long, long time; I began to think you were sorry you had married me and thought you would never come back at all, and I should be a widow, and I couldn’t eat any more strawberries when I thought that. And I pulled out the roses I had fastened in my dress and tore them to pieces. Look!” And she pointed to a spot near the piano, strewn with crimson and lemon-coloured petals. “Then at last a cab drove up and I rushed to the window; and it was Rahas again, but with Sundran. And I was so wretched and lonely that if he had been alone I must have seen him then. And I ran down and let them in and brought them up. And Sundran—oh, how she cried, poor thing, and told me such dreadful stories about English husbands; how they say they love you, and then if you displease them ever so little they throw you down on the floor and run away, and you never see them again; and she begged me to go away with her, and said Rahas would take care we should not starve.”
At this, George, without interrupting her, decided that his former suspicion that Sundran had been bought by Rahas was confirmed, and resolved to stop all further intercourse between his wife and the Indian woman without delay.
Nouna continued, with her eyes full of tears at the remembrance: “Then she knelt at my feet and kissed them while Rahas gave me the diamonds and a little note inside them from mamma, saying they were her wedding present, and I should have a better one by and by if I was happy with my husband. And I thought this strange, and said out loud: ‘What does she mean?’ And when I looked up I saw Rahas staring at me with his eyes just like the coals in a fire. And I don’t know why, but I was frightened, and I was glad Sundran was there—perhaps it’s being married that makes me feel different, for I never felt like that before. And I read the note to the end, and did not say any more, and just then another ring came at the bell, and Rahas started up and rushed out. But it was only your telegram, and he came back—for he had gone up the stairs; and when he found you were not coming back at once, he asked if he might stay a little, and I should not feel so lonely. And I didn’t want him to, I didn’t indeed, but he stayed, and he made Sundran go to the window and watch for your coming.”
George could not resist a savage exclamation below his breath.
Nouna went on: “He made me hate him, for he said I should be very unhappy presently, he was afraid; for Englishmen were hard and cruel, and not loving. And he told me not to tell you he had been here, because you knew he would do anything for me, and perhaps you would strike me. But if I wanted him or wanted my mother, he could always let me see her at any time, and be always ready to do what I wished, as he had always been. And he said I was to forget his words now, if I liked, but was to remember them if I ever felt lonely and desolate. And he said I need not trouble about knowing where he was, for by the sympathy and power he had over me he should always be near just when I wanted him. And I said: ‘What if I tell my husband?’ And he said it would not matter; you would not find him. But I had better not tell you, because you would be so angry with me. And while he was talking Sundran called out that she saw a cab coming, and quickly like an arrow he kissed my hand and went out of the room; and I saw him go down a little street in front just as you came up. There, now I have told you all, all. Kiss me, tell me you are satisfied.”
He kissed her, and put her on his knee, and smoothed her soft dark hair; but he gave himself up to no abandonment of love, and when he spoke it was in a subdued and rather doubtful tone.
“I am not at all satisfied, Nouna, because I think it is a very bad beginning when a wife tries to deceive her husband on her wedding-day. If I hadn’t caught sight of Rahas and heard you talking to Sundran I should have believed what you pleased to tell me about the jewels, and never have guessed that either of them had been here.”
“Well, that would have been much better, for then you wouldn’t have been worried, and you wouldn’t have made me cry,” said she with conviction.
George had another sudden and vivid perception of the stumbling-blocks that stood in the way of her moral education.
“I would rather, little one,” he said gravely, “pass days full of worry and nights without sleep than think it possible you could tell me a falsehood.”
She looked in his face wonderingly, and then patted his cheek and laughed.
“Well, I don’t want to tell you falsehoods,” she said indifferently, and then paused, having at that moment discovered a new and delightful pastime in brushing up his moustache the wrong way with her finger, and laughing at the effect. “What a beautiful mouth you’ve got!” she exclaimed suddenly, in ardent and sincere admiration. “It’s smaller than mine, I think,” she continued dubiously, and she proceeded gravely to take the measurement of the one against the other, with a wicked look out of her eyes as they came close to his which made George suspect while he yielded to the temptation, that it had been deliberately formed to put an end to a discussion which the little lady found very tedious.