CHAPTER XXI.
George Lauriston was not a dull-witted man; but the shock of astonishment he suffered when Sundran recognised Lord Florencecourt as “Captain Weston,” for a few moments paralysed his thoughts and prevented his realising all the complications to which the discovery gave rise. His first thought was for its effect upon his wife.
He scarcely dared to look at her. But after the train had started she came to him and forced her face up into his.
“Did you hear what Sundran said?” she asked in a loud whisper.
George nodded.
“Do you think it’s true?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“What shall you do to Lord Florencecourt if it is true?”
“Do? Nothing.”
“Won’t you? I shall.”
“What?”
“Kill him for having been cruel to my mother.”
She was shaking from head to foot with passion, her eyes lurid as those of a tigress, her white teeth gleaming between thirstily parted lips, as if they would tear the flesh from the bones of the man whose imputed offence in being her father was not yet even proved. George was silent, beset by a crowd of conjectures no less mysterious than unpleasant. She suddenly leaped upon him, seizing his shoulders with small hands that griped tight as claws.
“Well!” she said impatiently. “Well! You say nothing! I will have you say something. This Colonel of yours, who beat my mother, and left her and let her think he was dead—is he your respected dear friend now, or do you hate him with your whole soul, as I do?”
“I can’t hate an old friend on the spur of the moment, especially when I don’t know what he’s done,” said George in a tone which had the effect of a few drops of water on a fire.
“Don’t know what he’s done! Haven’t I told you all Sundran has said about the way he used to treat my mother, my beautiful darling mother; how he was harsh, and wicked, and jealous, and ran away from her when I was a little baby? Why did he call himself Captain Weston, when his real name was Lord Florencecourt, if he meant to be a good true husband to her? Was that like the noble English gentlemen you talk about, and poor mamma talks about?”
“His name was not always Lord Florencecourt,” said George rather meekly.
He knew that the Colonel’s name had never been Captain Weston; and that there were circumstances in this affair of which Lord Florencecourt was by no means proud had been amply shown by the mixture of constraint, dislike, and fear which had marked his behaviour to Nouna since his first meeting with her at the barracks. “And perhaps Sundran was mistaken,” he suggested in the same tone.
But Nouna laughed this idea to scorn, and he himself had nothing to offer in support of it. The Indian woman’s recognition was the first sign he had had of a clue to all the mysterious circumstances surrounding his marriage; and if it raised new doubts and suggested new entanglements, at any rate it pointed out one person near at hand who could, if he would, unravel them. George determined to see Lord Florencecourt again without delay, and to ask him simply and straightforwardly whether he was Nouna’s father, and if so, why he had thought it necessary to conceal the fact from him. The young husband thought he could now understand the strange reserve of Madame di Valdestillas, who, as the circumstances seemed to suggest, having been deceived in early youth by Lord Florencecourt, then masquerading as Captain Weston, was naturally anxious to conceal the evidence of her past indiscretion, and had therefore caused her child to be educated away from her, and had probably concealed Nouna’s very existence from her husband. In that case, Nouna’s mushroom sprung up fortune could not have been a testamentary provision of her father, as he was still alive. Where then did the money come from? George remembered with a shock Lord Florencecourt’s late complaints of an unexpected and heavy drain on resources which he knew to be by no means limitless, and the remarkable incident of the pearl necklace flamed up unpleasantly in his mind. This, together with the grudgingly given invitation to Willingham, and the socially important visit extracted by the Colonel from his sister to Nouna, seemed to point to a considerable influence being still exerted over Lord Florencecourt by Madame di Valdestillas, in spite of his unconcealed prejudice against dark-skinned women. Whether by tickling his remorse or his fear of publicity, the lady played very skilfully to be able to levy such substantial blackmail upon her former lover.
These conjectures ran in George’s head and absorbed him so completely, that Nouna, who was sitting in the opposite corner and gazing out of window with a pretty imitation of deep abstraction, found, on turning suddenly to direct his attention to a stack of red-tiled roofs and towering chimneys nestling, in Christmas-card prettiness, among trees in a hollow near the line, something deeply fascinating in the fact that he was, for the first time since their marriage, completely oblivious of her presence. She paused with her mouth open for speech, considering him in wonderment, noting the lines of the frown on his forehead, and the dull, steady outlook of clouded eyes that for once did not see her. Then she stooped forward, and, with her hands on his knees, stretched up to peer closely into his face. He started, and his eyes turned upon her with a look in which she saw, or fancied she saw, so much sternness, that her hands slipped off his knees, and she fell, a meek and frightened human bundle, on to the floor of the carriage. George snatched her up and crushed her tiny limbs against him with a sudden thrill of passionate tenderness in which she discerned at once some new and unknown element. She sunned herself in his caresses for a few moments and then looked inquiringly into his eyes.
“You have begun a new wooing,” she whispered, peeping up with languid eyes. “You are very sweet to me, but you seem to be asking me something I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know, my darling, whether I could make you understand.”
“Kiss me again to prepare me, and then try.”
He obeyed the first direction and then set about carrying out the second.
“What would you do, my darling, if you had to give up your pretty house, your rooms full of flowers, your dainty marble bath, your French frocks and your crowds of visitors?”
Her reply was prompt and crushing, spoken with passionate conviction. “I should die.” Then she turned upon him in alarmed eagerness: “What has happened that I should give them up? They are my own, they are natural to me; it is not right that the granddaughter of a Maharajah should be without these things!”
“But supposing you found out that you were enjoying them at the expense of others who had a better right to them still, who were born to them, and had to go without them for your pleasure. Oh, Nouna, you have a generous little heart, you would not bear that!”
She shook her head incredulously.
“You forget,” said she, “it was through my mother that my fortune came to me. Mamma would never do anything that was not right and just. What she says is mine, that I may enjoy without fear of wrong.”
She was secure now behind the rampart of her religion, and he perceived that he could only convert her through the mother she adored. So he let the subject drop, inwardly deciding that his next move, after seeing Lord Florencecourt, must be to find out where Madame di Valdestillas and her husband were staying, and come to an understanding with that lady as to the duties owed by a woman to her daughter’s husband as well as to her own.
Determined not to trouble his wife again with premature hints of such a desolating kind that she had already burst open her dressing-bag to shed tears over the portable evidence of her accession to fortune—her diamonds—he spoke of indifferent things, and asked, for want of something better, if she knew what had become of Dicky Wood since he left Maple Lodge a few days before they did. Nouna’s face seemed suddenly to contract, and she darted at her husband a curiously cautious glance, shifting immediately back to the contents of her bag.
“I’m afraid—” she began. “They say he has got back into the power of—of that woman, you know,” she ended with a nod, seeing a cloud form upon her husband’s face which forbade her to let the name of such a person pass her lips.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said he, being indeed more grieved at his wife’s knowledge of and interest in the affair than at the foolish boy’s falling again into the hot water out of which he had been once so thoughtfully fished.
“Yes,” she assented, and with unusual and remarkable reticence she pursued the subject no further.
George’s masculine wits failed to see more in this circumstance than respect for his prejudice against her interesting herself in such themes. She had calmed down very suddenly, he thought, from her outburst of violent indignation against the Colonel. No one could have imagined, to see her now trifling first with a scent-bottle and then with a fan, that only half an hour had passed since she learnt, in a startling manner, a secret concerning her parentage momentous enough to set the most volatile creature thinking. And then it occurred to him that this secret, so new to him, might not be altogether new to her. Candour is not an Oriental virtue, and experience had already shown him that Nouna was by nature secretive, and much more likely to keep her own counsel even in hours of amorous confidence than he or any other babbling foolish Samson of a male lover. He recalled certain confidential looks and tones he had observed between her and the lawyer, Mr. Smith, on her wedding-day; he recollected various injunctions from Madame di Valdestillas that Nouna should in all things pertaining to the marriage put herself without question into the old solicitor’s hands. The result of these musings was that George, determined by yet another flash of remembrance, marked down for his second step in this matter a visit to the church where he was married, and an inspection of the register.
The first step he proposed for himself was to question Sundran. It would depend, he knew, upon her own dull and dogged views of what was her mistress’s interest whether she would condescend to open her lips to him either for truth or falsehood. But he thought he might be able to prove to her by the evidence of his unquestionable devotion that he could have no aim but her mistress’s happiness, and if this could once be made clear to the woman, Lord Florencecourt’s careful avoidance of her was enough to show that she could make important revelations.
But George was met on the very threshold of his investigations by an undreamt-of difficulty. When the train arrived at Liverpool Street he put Nouna at once into a cab, and went back to the train to fetch Sundran, who had not yet found her way to her mistress. But she had disappeared. In vain he examined every compartment in turn, and scanned the crowd on the platform. Inquiries of the porter at last elicited that a dark-skinned woman in white had sprung out of a compartment before the train stopped, and driven off at once in a cab. George returned to his wife, saying simply that Sundran had gone off before them, but as the inspector at the gate of the station took the number of their cab, George called to the driver to stop, and asked the official if he had noticed a black woman pass out, adding that she was his wife’s maid, knew very little English, and he was afraid she might have made a mistake with the address.
“I saw her, sir. I think the number of the cab was fifty-seven,” said the man, referring to his list.
George thanked him, and the cab drove off. Nouna looked at her husband in astonishment.
“She won’t make a mistake, George. Sundran is not so silly.”
“I don’t think she is. But I want to find out where she’s gone.”
“Then you think she’s run away! Why should she? Where would she go?” asked Nouna breathlessly.
“Well, well, we don’t know yet whether she’s gone at all.”
But when they got home and found that Sundran had not arrived, George decided that he would wait one hour, filling up the time with a visit to the parish church; and then, if she still failed to appear, he would call at 36, Mary Street, where he suspected her to be, on his way to Liverpool Street station. He intended to return to Willingham that night, and get through the interview with the Colonel. A packet of letters was handed to him, in which he found one for his wife. Seeing that the handwriting was masculine and unknown to him, George turned it over jealously.
“Who is this from, Nouna?” he asked, holding it over her head, high above her reach.
A red flood ran at once under the delicate brown skin.
“How can I tell if you hold it all that way off?” she asked, making a futile spring to reach it.
She was much excited, but by what emotion he could not tell.
“Well, now,” and he held it near to her face, guarding it with both hands from the expected clutch.
There was enough subdued interest in her manner to make him determined to know the contents of the letter, but not wishing to give himself the airs of a Bluebeard, he drew her on to his knee and gave it to her, at the same time opening one of his own. As he read his he saw that she slipped hers without opening it into some hiding-place among the folds of her dress; at first he made no remark upon this, but went on with his own letters until he had come to the end of the pile by throwing a couple of circulars into the fireplace. At this point she tried to get away; she wanted to take her hat off, she said.
“Well, that’s soon done,” said George laughing, tossing off her little grey cap and passing his fingers through her curls. “And now who is your letter from?”
“Oh, it’s only from an old schoolfellow.”
“A schoolfellow! A male schoolfellow! I must see it then; I’m jealous.”
“There’s nothing to be jealous about,” said Nouna lightly, but beginning to tremble as she saw that, in spite of the playfulness of his tone, he did not mean to let her go till his curiosity was satisfied. “I haven’t even opened it yet.”
“Open it now then, and tell me the news.”
He spoke quite gently, and leaned back in the arm-chair they were sitting on, leaving her perched upon his knees in what she might have imagined was liberty, if there had not been, to her sharp eyes, a leonine look of possession and passive power in the strong white hands that lay quietly on the arms of the chair on each side of her. These Eastern women have a subtle sense, transmitted to them from bow-stringing times, of what is best to do in a case of jealousy. George saw the quick glance round under lowered eyelids, and while fearing some impish indiscretion, yet with a little smart of rage admired her self-possession as she crossed her knees carelessly and drew forth her letter from her breast, after affecting to feel in her pocket, as if forgetful where she had put it. As she inserted a small forefinger under the flap of the envelope, George held himself on the alert to seize the little hands if they should make any attempt to destroy the missive. But the first glance at the note apparently relieved her, and she flourished it before him to show that he had made a fuss about nothing.
“It is only a note from Captain Pascoe to tell me his address, because he is so anxious to come again to our little suppers,” said she, making a ball of the note, tossing it dexterously, catching it in her hand, and posting it between her husband’s lips, opened for a little lecture.
“Has he written to you before?” asked George frowning.
“No; if he had I should have known the handwriting,” answered she carelessly, but in the meantime by a clever little movement causing the injured note to roll from its lodging-place under George’s chin on to the floor. “And now please may I go and change my shoes?”
“Certainly.”
George let her go, and, all his senses being still awake to observation, remarked that in searching for a dropped glove she made a long sweep, and picked up the note from under his chair. His hand closed over hers, which she immediately opened with a red flush. He unrolled the crumpled ball of paper and read:
“Grand Hotel, Scarborough.
“Dear Mrs. Lauriston,
“Thames Lawn, Richmond. I hope you and your husband won’t forget me when you resume your charming evenings. There’s nothing like them in town or out of it. I am constrained to beg to be remembered, for I know you have all the world at your feet, and I am but a humble unit. Always, as you know, very much at your service if I can ever be of use to you in any way,
“With kind regards, yours very truly,
“Arthur Pascoe.”
“This is an answer, I see,” said George when he had read to the end. “So you have been writing to Captain Pascoe.”
“Only for his address, that we might invite him,” said Nouna, looking frightened.
“But how could you write without knowing it?”
“He was going to change it, I knew. He is at Scarborough now.”
George said no more, and tossed the letter into the wastepaper basket. Nouna, whose eagerness to change her shoes had disappeared, stood considering her husband, whose reticence she could not understand. She had braced herself up to meet a long interrogatory, and the simple silence made her think that something worse was in store for her.
“Haven’t you anything more to say to me?” she asked at last, with her head on one side in a helpless, birdwitted manner.
“Yes, dear, I have a great deal more to say to you,” burst out poor George, gliding from his chair down on to his knees before her, clasping his arms round her waist, and looking up into the beautiful mask of the spirit it was so hard to reach, so impossible to impress. “Why won’t you be quite open and frank with me, when it’s all I ask of you? When I tell you it hurts me so much for you to keep back a trifle from me that a whole evening’s pretty caresses from you can’t take out the sting of it? Can’t you see, dearest, that nobody in the world loves you so much as I, or would do as much for you? Why do you encourage these fellows to think you can ever want services from them, when you know that the man in whose bosom you lie every night lives only in your life, and for your happiness? What do you want of me that I won’t do? Why won’t you open your little heart wide to me, as you do your arms? Don’t you love me, Nouna? Don’t you love me?”
His encircling arms trembled with the passion that surged in him, and the slender little form he held was swayed by the convulsive movement of his body. These appeals of her husband to something within her of which she had but a dim consciousness, bewildered and distressed a creature accustomed to live fully and happily in the day’s emotions, beautifully unconscious of higher duties, higher claims. She was, however, moved to a soft sensation of pity for this big, kind, splendid companion whose passionate affection was, after all, the kingly crown of all her joys; and she put little tender arms round his neck in the belief that these mad frenzies after something intangible were signs of a disorder peculiar to man, of which that dangerous symptom jealousy was the chief feature.
“Of course I love you, George, my dear old beautiful darling elephant,” she said, with the soothing accent of an affection which was indeed perfectly genuine.
And she kissed the waves of his hair with such a winning abandonment of herself to the pleasure his touch afforded her, and dropped down into his breast with such a seductive air of meek submission to his will in every act and thought, that George was carried away from his doubts, away from his questionings, as he had been a hundred times before, and so she strengthened her empire over him in the interview which had at the outset appeared to threaten it.
It was not until he had left her, and was on his way to the church, that a momentary gloom fell on the glow into which the magic of her charm had cast him. She had been very sweet, but she had given no word of explanation of that strange request to Captain Pascoe, a man of a character so well known, that it was gall to George to think he had in his possession so much as a line of his wife’s handwriting. With an effort he put the matter aside in his mind, not without the unpleasant reflection that, after all his efforts at art-education, the primitive and impracticable methods of the harem were those best calculated to keep the husband of the little dark-skinned enchantress in security.
A walk of a few minutes had brought him to the outside of the church where he was married, but he found the building a true type of Heaven in the difficulty of getting in. At last he ferreted out the person authorised to unlock the doors, and admit him to a sight of the register. It was with trembling fingers that he turned over the pages to find the signature he wanted. When at last he found the place, he bit his lip through in a first impulse of hot indignation. He had been tricked again by the whole gang, as he said to himself bitterly, within five minutes of his standing with his bride before the altar.
The signature of his wife was “Nouna Kilmorna.”