She made no answer, being by this time safe on the bank. She gave him—feeling more at ease already in the shade of the trees—one flashing, enigmatical glance which, while it did not betray her thoughts or her feelings towards him very definitely, yet renewed the impression of evil which her feminine helpless querulousness in the boat had for the time laid in abeyance; then she turned, and letting her golden-coloured gown trail after her on the narrow path, she walked away with the free motion from the hip, and graceful, alluring bearing which had come to her with her Eastern blood. But to George she looked, as she got further and further from his sight in the black and dim recesses of the plantation, like a huge, sinuous serpent, with head and upper part raised from the ground, ready to spring at and coil round its victim.
He remembered with a start that her word was not to be relied on, and bringing the boat with a few strokes back to where he had first found it, he jumped ashore, made fast the painter, and crossed the lawn rapidly to the window of the drawing-room. Nouna was there alone, leaning over a low chair, utterly absorbed in the picture of Guinevere at the window. She turned round on hearing footsteps, and screamed at sight of her husband. He sprang across the floor to her; but, struck suddenly with a terribly vivid sense of the likeness between her and the wretched woman he had just left, he felt his first impulse to take her in his arms freeze up, and merely said that she must come home with him. She cast a last lingering look of admiration at the paintings on the walls, and let her husband lead her out through the hall, where she tried to lag behind him with inquisitive glances into all the corners, burying her head among the hot-house flowers in a subdued ecstasy of enjoyment, and altogether showing a manifest reluctance to leave this strange little paradise of delights. They walked down the avenue in silence, except that he told her to make haste, and rebuked her rather sharply for a stealthy glance behind her at the house.
At the lodge-gates the fly in which he had come was waiting. When he had helped her in there came upon him a strong sense that he and she—an ill-assorted pair enough, with many a struggle and a heart-pang in store for them—were all that was left, each to the other, in a mass of tumbled ruins of fair prospects that had been solid and stately that morning. And as she cowered, very silent and subdued, expecting a scolding for her escapade, he put his arms round her, just before the sheltered road where they were driving joined the highway, and pressed a fervent, throbbing kiss on her lips. She returned it demonstratively, according to her wont, and then, as they were close upon the High Street, they had to calm down their exuberance, and he asked:
“What were you thinking about, Nounday?”
“I was thinking how lovely it would be to live in a house like that,” she answered naïvely.
It was natural enough, and George said so to himself, and would not let himself be tortured by the thought that the innocent remark was significant.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Throughout the journey back to town from Richmond there was, after that brief caress, scarcely more communication between George and his wife than if they had been strangers. Nouna, surprised in a flagrant act of disobedience, was disposed, by the very leniency with which she had been treated, to look upon her husband’s reserve as ominous; while he on his own side was too much absorbed in considering what steps he ought next to take to dispel her fears of punishment by so much as a few gentle words.
The fact was that George, who, like other reserved people of strong feelings, could only control the expression of those feelings, when strongly excited, by mounting over himself the strictest guard, wore on this occasion an unconscious panoply of sternness which was far more alarming to the impressionable Nouna than the most passionate outpouring of invective could have been. As the hansom they had taken from Waterloo Station drove up to the door of their house, and George flung the doors open with a sudden impulsive movement forward as if he would have sprung out without waiting for the driver to pull up, he was recalled to a consciousness of his wife’s presence by a frightened moan at his elbow, and looking round hastily, he saw her huddled up in the corner watching him with eyes full of fear. The sight startled him horribly, for the discovery of the evening had poisoned his mind with evil knowledge and rank suspicions.
“What is the matter? Why are you looking frightened?” he asked with a constrained look and tone which seemed to the frightened creature both fierce and harsh.