CHAPTER XXVI.
When, true to his determination, George Lauriston visited the new establishment that evening and insisted on seeing the proprietor, an explanation offered itself which robbed Nouna’s vision of most of the mystery attaching to it. For a dapper little Frenchman, who tried to live up to his obviously assumed business title of Ben Hassan by wearing a scarlet fez and a pair of Turkish slippers, immediately appeared behind the servant who opened the door, and announcing himself with a flourishing bow as the proprietor, thrust into Lauriston’s hand a business card, and begged him to inspect his stock, adding that perhaps Monsieur would do him the honour to inaugurate his business and bring him good luck by purchasing some trifle. George consented. The Oriental bazaar consisted of three rooms fitted up with trestles on which were placed trays full of trumpery, gilt sequin necklaces, cheap scarves, and other so-called Eastern wares, such as may be bought for a very small sum in the smaller shops along the Rue de Rivoli. George bought a little feather hand-screen, obviously an “article de Paris,” and returned to his wife quite satisfied that it was the sight of Monsieur Ben Hassan’s red fez at one of the windows which had conjured up in her excited imagination the ground-floor in Mary Street and its younger occupant.
In order to convince his wife of her mistake, George took her next day to the establishment of Monsieur Ben Hassan, and was pleased to find that the nervous fear which had haunted her since her supposed vision faded away in the amusement of turning over the cheap trinkets and toys around her, as the obsequious proprietor, an active and voluble little Parisian, who would have been invaluable as a showman at a country fair, encouraged her to do. George asked him, to satisfy Nouna, whether he had not had a friend with him on the balcony two evenings before, a foreign gentleman, in whom, he said, he thought he recognised an old acquaintance. Ben Hassan said No, he had been working by himself to prepare his “Bazaar” for opening on the following day, and he had been alone except for the occasional assistance of the servant. He admitted also, with a charmingly candid shrug of the shoulders, that his name of Ben Hassan was assumed, that in private life he was simply Jules Dubois, and that there was no gentleman in the business who came from further East than the Faubourg Saint Antoine.
Nouna, to tell the truth, hardly listened to this explanation. She was at heart still so much a child as to find, in trying on Tunisian earrings at a franc and a half a pair, and gold crescent brooches that could not be warranted to retain their colour a second time of wearing, as much pleasure as she had felt, a few weeks back, in decking herself with her wedding diamonds. Noticing this, the artful Ben Hassan informed the lady that he expected, in the course of a few days, a consignment of Indian jewellery which would be well worthy of Madame’s attention, as it was the most marvellously cheap and beautiful assortment that had ever been seen in France. Nouna’s face glowed with interest, which was repressed for the moment by her husband, who said coldly that Madame did not wear imitation jewellery; a statement which seemed calculated to be received with doubt, as Madame, now hung from head to foot with gilt chains and spangled handkerchiefs, was evidently very well satisfied with herself. However, the tactful Parisian bowed low and apologised, humbly observing that the wares in question were continually mounted, by desire of well-known ladies of the Boulevard Saint Germains, with real gems of the highest value. Nouna divested herself of the trinkets with manifest regret, and was with difficulty persuaded by her husband to buy a string of sandalwood beads instead of the barbaric rows of eye-dazzling brass on which her choice had first fallen. George was rather shocked; a taste for cheap finery in his wife seemed quite a new and startling development. As soon as they got on the stairs outside he said, in a low and puzzled voice:
“You wouldn’t really care to have those gimcrack things, would you, Nouna?”
She wanted to sit down on the stairs and take the paper off her beads: stopping in the act, she looked up at him with a laugh, but yet showing a gleam of serious meaning in her red-brown eyes.
“Why not, if I can’t have real ones?” she said with a note of pathos in her voice. “If I had rich things I should sell them to give you money. But these poor ones I can keep and do you no harm.”
And George had a lump in his throat, as he often had now at innocent speeches like this from his wife, which showed the dawnings of a new womanly sympathy with him side by side with the old childish love of finery and glitter.
She showed, by certain impulsive remarks in the course of the next few days, a deep interest in the “marvellously cheap and beautiful assortment of Indian jewellery,” of which the sham Arabian had spoken; and when, towards the end of the week, Monsieur Ben Hassan called one evening, not, as he assured the young Englishman, with the intention of persuading him to buy the mock gems which he had been informed Madame did not wear, but merely to justify in the eyes of Monsieur the praises which he had lavished on his own wares, Nouna showed so much eagerness to see them that George had not the heart to deny her the pleasure. Ben Hassan proceeded, by the light of the lamp which stood on the table amidst the remnants of the dessert, to unfasten a little flat box which he carried, to take out a layer of cotton-wool, and to display, against the velvet lining, rows of flashing white gems which caused Nouna to cry out with irrepressible admiration and longing.
“I flatter myself,” said the Parisian, laying the box on the table and retreating a few paces with a bow, as if trusting his wares to speak for themselves, “that there is not another firm in France which can produce such a class of jewel for the same price.”
“Yes, yes,” said George hastily, with a shrewd guess that to see these sparkling ornaments hidden away again in the little box and carried off without leaving her so much as a single gem to remember them by, would break Nouna’s heart. “But they are only sham jewels, Monsieur Ben Hassan, and a lady who has had diamonds of her own could not condescend to wear these.”
Nouna, who was leaning over the table, fingering the ornaments delicately, and considering them with the intelligent interest of a connoisseur, glanced up at her husband with a twinkle of demure humour in her eyes, and instantly returned to her amusement with condescension so infinite that it was not to be distinguished from the most extravagant admiration. The astute Ben Hassan saw the look, and bowed again with great humility.
“Monsieur, it is true an imitation is but a poor thing when you know it is an imitation,” he said with shoulders raised and hands outstretched in modest pleading. “But I appeal to Madame, who is evidently a judge, if she would have known these stones from real ones?”
Nouna hesitated, then quietly picked out a pair of diamond solitaire earrings, and held them out under the lamp in her little pink palm.
“I should not have known these from real ones,” she said doubtfully, and she looked up with an inquiring glance into the Parisian’s face.
Ben Hassan drew himself up with much satisfaction.
“You hear, Monsieur,” he said proudly, “Madame would not have known these earrings from real diamonds, and the cost of the pair is only ten francs!”
“Ten francs!” echoed Nouna with incredulous delight.
And as she turned to her husband with a low murmur, “Oh, George!” the paymaster saw that he was doomed. Without further show of resistance he paid the ten francs, and signed to the bowing, smirking Ben Hassan to pack up his traps and take himself off, which the Parisian did, departing with a torrent of high-flown thanks for their patronage and with every appearance of being highly satisfied with the transaction. So contented did he seem indeed, that so soon as the door closed behind him, and Nouna rushed into the bedroom to try on her purchase, George instinctively took stock of all the portable property which had been within the lively Ben Hassan’s reach, to make sure that his ostensible occupation had not been a cover for a predatory one. He had scarcely reassured himself on this point when Nouna rushed in like a radiant little fire-fly, her new ornaments twinkling in her ears, her eyes dancing with mysterious excitement, her dress changed from a simple muslin to a ball-dress of yellow gauzy material in honour of her brilliant bargain. She flitted up to him almost breathlessly, and pulled his head down to her level that she might whisper into his ear a communication which appeared to be of vital importance.
“Do you think,” she suggested solemnly, “that he could have made a mistake, and that they are real?”
George laughed, and said No, he did not think it at all likely, whereupon she was silent for a little while, and then began again in the same tone, but with much hesitation.
“You know, George, he told me that day we went to his bazaar that he had some real diamonds in his stock, and said that, that——”
“Well, that what?” asked her husband, keeping his voice at a gently subdued pitch, with a intuitive feeling that a confession was coming.
“That if I would call in—some day—by myself—he would show them to me.”
“By yourself!” cried George, all his blood on fire in a moment.
Nouna seemed at once to become a mere terror-struck heap, and her husband saw his fatal mistake.
“Did you go? Did you ever go?” he asked in the softest tones he could produce. But for a few minutes she was too much frightened even to speak, except for a muttered, “No, no, no,” as she shook and shivered. When at last by patient gentleness he had mastered her fear, he extracted from her, little by little, the avowal that she had met Ben Hassan one day outside the door of the house where he lived as she was returning home from her marketing, and that he had persuaded her to go up stairs and see some diamonds he had just received. At the door, however, Nouna declared that she had been frightened by hearing another man’s voice inside, and had refused to go in, and that Ben Hassan had brought out some earrings to show her, and had declared that if she would like to take a pair he would be satisfied with only a small payment to start with, and she could pay off the rest in instalments at her convenience.
“But I was frightened, and would not, and I tossed his hand up with the diamonds, and they fell on the floor and on the stairs, and I ran down and left him, and have never seen him since until this evening,” finished Nouna, hurrying to the end of her confession. “And I know it was wrong to go up, but I didn’t go in. And now I have done all I could by telling you everything. And you can take the earrings back if you like, only don’t be angry with me, because I can’t bear it.”
She burst out crying hysterically, and it was some time before she was calm enough for her husband to be able to ask her one more question. Did she know the voice of the man she heard talking inside the bazaar? At first she professed she did not, but presently she acknowledged, when asked whether it was like the voice of Rahas, that she thought it was. Then George was very sweet to her, and said she mustn’t trouble herself any more about the matter, that she was a very good dear girl to tell him everything, and that it would have been better still if she had told him at first; that she must give up the earrings, as it was evident the man was a treacherous beast who might get them into trouble. He added that she was tired, and must go to bed, and fall asleep as fast as she could, and dream of the real jewels she should have some day if she continued to be the sweet and good little wife she now was. And so, amidst tears from the wife and consoling kisses, the little shining ear-studs were taken out, and George having become by this time a promising lady’s maid, brushed out her curls for her, and tucked her up in bed, as composedly as if nothing in the world had happened to disturb the calm course of their daily life.
But no sooner was his wife thus disposed of than George, saying he must write a letter and take it to the post, went out of the bedroom, closed the door, and after waiting just long enough, as he thought, to make Nouna think, if she was listening, that he had written a letter, he went out and down the stairs. But Nouna had too much native subtlety herself to be easily tricked. As soon as she heard the outer door of the flat close, she leapt out of bed, muffled herself up in a wrapper, and stepped out on to the balcony. She could see that there were lights in the rooms occupied by the Oriental Bazaar, and that the shadows of men passed and repassed quickly on the inner side of the striped blinds. Leaning over the iron railing, she watched in much excitement for her husband’s appearance in the street below. In a very few minutes she heard the wicket-gate in the porte cochére open, saw George cross the street, and enter the house where Ben Hassan was established. She could have cried out to him from where she stood, frozen by a great terror lest these men, whom he had gone to punish, should be too strong for him and should do him harm. But then, would they dare, would they be able, even if they dared, to hurt him, the king of men? Little by little the seed sown by patient kindness, by conscientious effort, was moving in the earth and beginning to show itself alive. George was not now merely the handsomest, straightest, gentlest of voice among the men she knew, he was also the one person who never did wrong, who if he was angry proved in the end to have what she acknowledged to be a just cause at the bottom of his anger, whose rather surprising notions of what one ought and ought not to do were at least simple when one came to know him well; and whose opinion was now beginning to have so much weight with her that this evening it had even urged her in the strangest way to break through her habits and make an uncomfortable confession of her own accord. So she reasoned, arguing with herself as he crossed the road whether or not she should try from the height of the fourth floor to attract his attention. It would not be difficult, she felt. The influence she was secure in possessing over him would make him stop and look up at a call of her voice such as would scarcely be heard by the neighbours in the adjoining flats. Suddenly she drew herself erect, a thrill of passionate pride vibrating through her heart, and she laughed aloud and stretched her little hands to the dark sky.
“He does not need my help, for he is one of God’s own sons,” she whispered, and looking up steadily into the eye of night she waited, with heart beating violently, but with head erect in valiant confidence.
He had to get up those long flights of stairs, but he would not be long, she knew. She counted the steps he would take, picturing him with grave, earnest face, wearing that look which, when she had done something of which he disapproved, made her want to slide along against the wall with her head turned away from him. The entresol, first floor, second floor; surely by this time he must be at the third. She clenched her fingers till the nails made red marks in her soft palms, and strained her eyes in keen staring at the striped blinds. The moving shadows behind them had disappeared. Ben Hassan and Rahas—if it was he—had gone to the door when the sharp ring came at the bell. Nouna held her breath. Surely, surely, she heard sounds from the rooms; yes, yes, a noise of something overturned, and then the lights were put out. The moment after, one of the windows was burst open with a crash, and two people, whose figures she could only see dimly in the darkness, sprang quickly, the one after the other, out on to the balcony, climbed over on to that of the next house, and disappeared through one of the windows. Then there was silence for a time which seemed long to her, and she saw a dim light reappear in the windows of the Oriental Bazaar. She guessed that it was her husband, searching; in a few minutes the light moved, and disappeared. She watched until she saw him reappear in the street below, then she went back into her room, and crept into bed again. When he came softly into the room, holding a candle he had lit in the next room, he crept up to the bedside and shaded the flame to look at her. As he did so, her face quivered, and he touched her forehead lightly with his fingers. The muscles of her mouth instinctively relaxed, and by the thrill that ran through her frame and communicated itself to his he knew that she was awake.
“You are cold, dearest,” he whispered.
She sprang up, wide awake, full of life and love, with the bright blood rushing up into her cheeks, and tender, passion-dark eyes.
“No, no, not now, not now,” she cried incoherently, as she threw her arms about him. “I was cold when I thought you were going to face those wicked men, all through my foolishness. But now you are safe I am warm, warm, and listen, George, I am always going to be good and tell you everything, so that you may never get into danger through me any more.”
But George was frightened, for her feet were cold as marble, and her lips hot and parched, and he sat up a long time beside her, afraid lest her imprudence should have brought on a fever. Next morning she insisted against his will on getting up. She did not feel well and was very fanciful, astonishing him by the announcement that she wanted to go to church. The day being Sunday, the Oriental Bazaar was closed, and there was nothing for George to do but to gratify her desire. He wished, as in duty bound, to take her to the English church; but Nouna was not particular to a creed, and she had set her heart on going to the Madeleine. So, with some scruples of conscience, he took her to High Mass; and as she remained perfectly quiet and attentive during the entire service, he comforted himself with the reflection that, as what he had been taught to call the “errors of Rome” were matters of the deepest ignorance and indifference to her, it was hardly an ethical mistake to let her see religion in an attractive light. When they came out he asked her rather curiously what she thought of it.
“Oh, I liked it very, very much; I shouldn’t mind going to church there every day,” she answered with enthusiasm.
“Why,” said George, “the service isn’t much more beautiful than that at St. ——’s,” and he named an English ritualistic church to which he had twice taken her in London.
“There is a difference,” she said thoughtfully.
“Well, what is it?”
Nouna considered a moment. “You know those friends of yours that you took me to see acting in a piece at Saint George’s Hall?”
“Yes; well?”
“And then I saw the same piece acted at the Court Theatre just before we left London?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the difference is just like that.”
George laughed. “I’ve heard people say something like that before, Nouna.”
“Isn’t it right, then?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“George, may I be a Roman Catholic if I like?”
“No, Nouna.”
“Why not?”
“You mustn’t choose a religion in a hurry, any more than you may a husband. In both cases, one ought to be enough for a lifetime; and if you once begin to change your mind about either, you never know when to stop.”
“But I had my choice of a husband, and I didn’t of a religion; I had to take what was given me.”
“You would never do for a Catholic, Nouna. They have to confess all their sins, even very little ones that you think nothing of.”
“Well, that’s what you’re always wanting me to do.”
“See then. You shall go to Mass every Sunday and then confess your sins to me, and you will be the very best of Catholics.”
“But, George, George,” she began, almost in a whisper, holding his arm tighter, and looking away over the Place de la Concorde, which they were now crossing, to the trees of the Tuileries, “there are some things—not sins—that one doesn’t—like—to tell—I don’t know why—but they make one think of so many things—that all seem new—and make one feel—like a different person. I suppose a man—never feels like that, but I’m a woman—quite a woman—now, George.”
They walked on without speaking after that, till they got among the trees; then both stopped and looked at each other—shy, for that little whispered suggestion made each appear to the other in a new and sanctified light. The influence of the solemn and impressive Church rites was upon them still, and the bright sun was playing upon their earnest faces through a moving trellis-work of leaves. They had come to a moment which was to be the sweetest in all their lives but one; a moment of perfect confidence, perfect happiness, perfect hope. So they stood quite silently in an ecstasy of contented love, each reading beautiful meanings in the other’s steadfast eyes, each seeing and worshipping, in this moment of exalted human feeling, what was best and most worshipful in the other. They felt so strong, so radiant as they walked home, she leaning upon him and not talking at all, that every evil which had been a burden yesterday and would be a burden to-morrow, became a mere shadow slinking into corners and dwindling into insignificance before the flood of sunshine in their hearts. Chloris White, Rahas, Ben Hassan, and the odious Gurton were mere names to George that day, and even when with the following morning the drudgery and petty annoyances of workaday life began again, he carried in his heart such a spring of sweet human happiness that he received the snubs of his chief as cheerfully as if they had been compliments, and bore with fortitude the discovery that Monsieur Ben Hassan had “gone away for a few days on business,” leaving his premises in the charge of a stolid boy of thirteen or so, who knew nothing definite about his employer’s movements. George therefore kept the earrings in his possession and waited for some claim to be made. It came at the end of a week in the shape of a bill for twelve hundred and fifty francs, ten of which had been paid on account, for a pair of diamond ear-studs supplied to Monsieur Lauriston. George sent back the ear-studs by registered post with a letter threatening Ben Hassan with the police court. In a few days he got back the ear-studs from the post-office, as the person Ben Hassan was not to be found at the address given. George took no further steps until he was summoned before the Civil Tribunal, where he appeared in the full belief that he had only to relate the facts of the case to confound Ben Hassan and lay him open to the charge of perjury. To his great astonishment and indignation, however, Ben Hassan solemnly swore that he had sold the diamonds as real stones, and calling upon George to produce them, challenged any one in the court to assert that it was possible to suppose they could be bought for ten francs. Could the Englishman’s wife assert that she did not know them to be real? George had not dared to bring his wife into court, fearing the effects of the excitement upon her. He weakened his case by asserting emphatically that Ben Hassan was in the pay of a man who wished to ruin him: for he had no proofs to bring forward, and the foreigner’s halting French in which he made the accusation compared so unfavourably with the torrent of eloquence with which the artful Parisian refuted it, that, on Ben Hassan’s refusing to take back the jewels, the magistrate ordered the Englishman to pay the amount claimed, in monthly instalments of five hundred francs.
With the stolid resistance to unpleasant facts characteristic of his nation, George treated this decision with utter contempt, and indeed believed that Ben Hassan would not dare to push the case further. But on arriving home one rainy day early in the following month, he found his apartments occupied by two huissiers, who were busily employed in dragging out into the hall poor Nouna’s trunks and such furniture as they had bought themselves, which the landlady, anxious to save her own things, was pointing out to them. Nouna, deathly white and shaking from head to foot, was crouching on the sofa, drawing her breath heavily, and watching them with bright and burning eyes. Fear of what the consequences of this scene might be to her sobered George in his first fierce outburst of indignation. She had hardly moved when he came in, only glancing up at him in shame and terror at what she knew to be the result of her own indiscretion. He went up to the sofa and reassured her by the kind, firm, protecting pressure of his hand upon her head, while he asked the men by what authority they were acting. They showed him their warrant; nothing could be more correct. He asked them whether they would desist from their work and remain in the hall outside for half an hour, while he went to a friend to try to raise the money. The men consented at once, and retired while George, soothing his agitated wife as well as he could, carried her into the next room, laid her on the bed, and covering her with a rug, told her not to worry herself, as it would be all right in half an hour, when he would be back again with her, and the men would go away satisfied.
With his hand on the door he looked back yearningly. She was quieter now, but as she leaned on her elbows and watched him with feverish eyes, it seemed to him that her gaze was wandering and unintelligent, and that the real matter-of-fact trouble which was sending him on his unpleasant errand had melted in her excited mind to a dim and horrible dread.
“George, don’t go, don’t go!” rang in his ears as he went down the stairs and out of the house.
Poor George felt that he had never in his life had anything quite so distasteful to do as the task he had before him now of asking a favour of Mr. Gurton. But there was no help for it, and so he put the best face he could upon the matter, got to the bank, where his chief was, he knew, still at this hour to be found, and knocked at the door of his private room.
“Come in,” called out the well-known husky voice.
Mr. Gurton was reading a letter. His face was flushed and his eyes were dull, but he had as much command of himself as usual.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? What do you want?” he asked with the extra shade of surliness which he used towards the people he did not like.
“Yes, sir,” said George. “I am sorry to disturb you after office hours, but it is upon a matter of so much importance to me that I hope you will excuse my coming to you.”
“Well, what is it? Be quick.”
The words, the appeal, stuck in the young man’s throat; but out they must come.
“I am in pressing difficulties, sir; I can’t explain to you how now, but it was through no fault of mine. Just now when I went home I found a couple of men seizing my wife’s things. She is in a delicate state of health, and I am afraid of the shock for her. Will you be so kind as to advance me twenty pounds of my salary? I will write to my friends in England to-night, and I shall have the money next week, and will return it to you at once, if you please. It is a very difficult thing for me to ask, but I hope you won’t refuse me.”
He hurried out the words, not daring to look at Mr. Gurton, who had risen from his chair and walked over to the fireplace with a tread which in its pompous heaviness told George before he looked up that he had failed. There was a slight pause when he finished speaking, Mr. Gurton rattling his watch-chain and clearing his throat. George raised his eyes, and saw that his chief’s bloated face expressed nothing but complacent satisfaction. Then the devil woke in the lad with such a hungry fury that he turned hastily to the door, afraid of himself. Mr. Gurton, unluckily, could not resist a little play with his fish, and he called him back. George hesitated, and at last turned slowly. Mr. Gurton paused again to find some particularly offensive form of expression, for he thought he saw his opportunity, by insulting the young fellow past endurance, to force him to resign his post, and so make room for his own reputed nephew. He had been put in possession, too, of a damaging fact against George, and here was the occasion made to his hand, to use it.
“I’m sorry for this little misfortune, Lauriston, deuced sorry; not only because it is quite beyond my powers to assist you, but because, you see, it’s so particularly bad for a House that’s just starting, for anything disreputable to be known about its employés.”
“Disreputable!” echoed George in a low voice, starting erect. “You have no right to use such a word without knowing the facts, Mr. Gurton.”
“Oh, I know all about the facts, and so does everybody,” said Mr. Gurton with confidential familiarity. “You’ve got an extravagant little madam for your wife, and somebody of course must pay the piper.”
George turned again to leave the room. Mr. Gurton, who was a big, muscular man of six feet two, with two strides reached the door first, admitted a lad with despatches who was waiting outside, and held the door close as he continued:
“You must listen, sir, to what I have to say. You were received in this House simply because we were informed that you were highly connected, and that your social position would be an advantage to the firm. What follows? You go nowhere, you know nobody; you are seen in omnibuses, on penny steamers with a little oddly-dressed girl—”
“Take care; you are speaking of my wife,” said George, in a low tremulous voice which, with his bowed head, gave an utterly wrong impression that he was cowed.
Mr. Gurton put his hands in his pockets.
“Well, sir, and if you choose to marry a courtesan’s daughter whom you picked up in the slums—it is——”
Like a wild beast suddenly loosed George had him by the throat, and with hands to which his mad anger gave a grip of steel, he swayed the man’s huge frame once forward and flung him back with all his force. Gasping, choking, without time to cry out, Mr. Gurton staggered backwards, his head struck against the corner of an iron safe that stood behind him, and he fell heavily to the floor. Lauriston left the frightened errand-boy to pick him up, and rushed out of the room. He had suddenly remembered that there was one more chance; a fellow-clerk who was pretty well off lodged in the Rue Saint Honoré. He made his way in that direction, through the still heavily-falling rain, without another thought of the man he had just left, except a savage wish that he had not humiliated himself by applying to the cur.
But Mr. Gurton remained on the floor of his private room, and neither spoke nor moved.