“No, child, there is nobody.”
Nouna heaved a long sigh, and looked timidly down through her husband’s arm.
“No, it’s—gone,” she whispered.
“What is gone, dear? Tell me what you saw,” said George caressingly, as he drew her back into the little sitting-room, where a lamp now shed its soft light over the white table-cloth, and Madame Barbier, who adored the picturesque young English couple, was arranging the supper in a dainty and appetising fashion.
Nouna rubbed her eyes, and clinging to her husband’s arm, let the words of her recital drop from her lips in a slow, hesitating and faltering manner, as if she were fast asleep, and her brain were working sluggishly under the half-paralysing influence of a will stronger than her own.
“I was sitting in here,” she said, “and thinking of all the happiness we have had to-day—the soft air and the warm sun, and your kind eyes upon me, and all the lovely things we saw—the beautiful ladies and the shining water, and the lights among the trees in the Champ Elysées when we came back. And all at once,” her hands tightened their hold upon his sleeve, “I felt that I must get up and go out—there upon the balcony; and I looked out at the sky right in front where it was yellow like flame, and all the pretty pictures of the day I saw quite plainly still in my mind. But then—I don’t know how—I felt my eyes drawn down from the bright sky, and there down below me—to the left, I saw all black gloom, and in it I seemed to see Rahas’ room in Mary Street, with all the pretty toys and bright shawls about just as he used to put them for me to look at. And in the middle Rahas himself, only not kind and gentle as he used to be, but with a wicked cruel face, and burning eyes that frightened me. And I felt afraid, as if I could have screamed. It seemed so strange, for even when he used to look fierce, as he did sometimes, I never minded, and I was never frightened. Was it a dream, George, that I saw? And if it was only a dream, why was I afraid?”
Chiming in so appropriately with his own fears, this vision or fancy of Nouna’s disturbed George a little. He calmed her excitement as well as he could, and found some comfort in the fact that the crafty Oriental had appeared to her, not as the kindly friend he had always professed to be, but as a person inspiring horror. This seemed the more remarkable as George had never mentioned the name of Rahas to his wife since their wedding-day; he came, after a little reflection, to look upon the vision as a proof of the new sympathy which Nouna began to show with his own feelings, and to rejoice in the fact that as the bond between him and his wife grew stronger under the influence of his patient tenderness, the power of any enemy to disturb their happiness was proportionately lessened. This home peace, which was attaching Lauriston to his young wife more strongly every day, was the more grateful to him, as his duties at the Bank were rendered as irksome as possible to him through the prejudice of his chief, Mr. Gurton, who never forgave the rejection of his own candidate for the junior clerk’s post, and who scarcely concealed his wish to find against him some lawful ground of dissatisfaction. This George was careful not to give.
Mr. Gurton was one of those disagreeable brutes who seem to be created as foils to show up the amiability and sweetness of ordinary humanity. He was offensive to his few friends; he was unendurable to the far greater number of people whom nothing but necessity threw in his way. But as a man of business he was clear-headed, shrewd, and enterprising, so exact and penetrating that even if he drank, as his many detractors alleged, there seemed to be no particular reason why he should not, as his business faculties could not be said to be less keen at one time than at another. He hated Lauriston from the first, bullied him on the smallest or on no occasion, and did all in his power to induce the young fellow to throw up his appointment. George took soft words and sour with dogged quietness, and applied himself with all the energy of his character to mastering every detail connected with his new profession, as serenely as if incivility had been his daily bread for years. As a matter of fact, the discourtesy and fault-finding of his chief did not trouble him much; he looked upon Gurton, not without reason, as an ill-bred brute whom one could only turn to account by noting the methods by which he had attained such a splendid dexterity in the management of affairs, and by thus considering him in the light of a noisy machine it was easy to take the sting out of his insults. At the same time this constant friction or avoidance of friction in his business life made home and wife doubly dear and sweet to him.
On the day following Nouna’s strange vision on the balcony, he came home at the usual time, and asked her whether she had had any more “waking dreams.” She answered, reluctantly and shyly, that she had not been on the balcony at all that day. George laughed at her, and told her she should go with him, as the presence of such a coarse creature as a man was a sure preventive of visions. She allowed him to lead her out, being quite brave with the combined forces of husband and sunlight. When they got on the balcony, however, and looked to the left at the house where Nouna had fancied she saw Rahas, a sight met their eyes which, whether a coincidence or not, was strange enough to deepen the unpleasant impression of the evening before.
For the shutters of the uninhabited third floor were now thrown back, and outside the balcony hung a long strip of white calico with this inscription in broad blue letters: “Bazar Oriental.”