Nouna

“ Nouna laughed gently. “I was silly,” she said, “and wicked. In the first moments of surprise one does not know what one says. I don’t mind at all. I would rather be poor in Paris than rich in London.”
He shivered, though Nouna, with some tact, believing he was jealous, had not mentioned her mother again. But she examined his face attentively, and saw that the drawn, hopeless look remained. After a few moments she slipped her shoulder away very tenderly from beneath his head, which she transferred to a cushion; and George heard the door softly shut after her as she went out. ”

“ I can never give you a palace, Nouna, or elephants with golden trappings; if I can ever buy you diamonds it will not be till you are too old to care for them; and you will only have one slave. But you will be a queen to me, my darling, as long as our lives last; and I will get on and make my name famous, so that you shall not envy the proudest maharanee in India, you shall be so happy as the good true wife of a plain English gentleman.”
“Wife!” repeated Nouna wonderingly, raising her head from his shoulder to peer into his eyes. “That is what mamma always says. ”

“ When at last, after having shown in the arrangement of her handsome home some of the skill of an artist, and herself superintended the work of the most intelligent artisans a distinguished firm in Bond Street could furnish, Nouna introduced her husband in triumph to the little palace on the south of the park, poor George was overwhelmed by a crowd of bitter and sorrowful feelings to which Nouna’s half-childish, half-queenly delight in the change from the home of his creating to the home of hers gave scarcely anything more than an added pang. ”

“ Nouna, to her husband’s great comfort and gladness, was behaving beautifully, and putting new life by her gaiety into the whole household, the younger members of which, in spite of Ella’s intelligence and her sisters’ beauty, were a little wanting in those electric high spirits which, in the routine of a quiet country-house, are as sunshine to the crops. ”

“ I love Nouna with all my heart, and my dearest wish is to make her my wife. But I should be glad if you would answer one question. The answer you give will make no difference to my course of action; but it is right and necessary that I should understand Nouna’s position. Am I right in supposing, as circumstances suggest, that Madame di Valdestillas had a secret in her past life, that—Nouna’s father was not her husband? ”

“ She retreated a few paces and showed her teeth at him like an angry ape; then twirling her lamp twice round her head with some muttered, inarticulate words, as if she were repeating an incantation, she turned her back upon him and slunk stealthily up stairs like a wild animal thwarted in a search for its young.
George left the house with shuddering thankfulness that Nouna had escaped from her perilous associations. “Marriage, thank heaven,” thought he, “works such changes in a woman that it will drive them all out of her head and fill her heart and mind with new thoughts and feelings.” ”

“ The impetuous little Irishman dragged the two boats alongside each other, and instantly plunged into conversation with Nouna, who seemed delighted with the incident. George was not a Bluebeard; still, remembering all the circumstances of Nouna’s previous acquaintance with the all round lover, Massey, he by no means desired the friendship to grow closer between them, and he was not pleased by the glances of interest which Nouna exchanged with Captain Pascoe, who had an air of quiet good-breeding particularly attractive to women. ”

“ To do them justice, they gave him no further trouble. Nouna had studied her part in the service, had not only taken off her left glove without being told, but had tucked up the draperies that formed her sleeve, and left her arm bare to the shoulder as if ready to be vaccinated. She tripped off her part of the service glibly, in a clear, bright voice, without waiting for the clergyman, and then looked up at George with a tiny movement of the head that was almost a nod, as much as to say: “You see I’m determined to do you credit.” ”

“ Then he snatched her into his arms and their eyes held each other’s for some minutes in an ecstasy of relief and gratitude. George had loved his wife better than his career, better than his own happiness. Nouna, since the fall of her first idol—her mother—had turned all her devotion to the husband who had cherished her so tenderly. Both, therefore, dreaded life without the other a thousand times worse than death, and when it dawned upon them that they were not to be parted again, there was no further sorrow possible for them in this world. ”

“ Bohun had followed her hostess, and as Nouna rose abruptly from the piano, the old lady said gently:
“You mustn’t be offended by my saying so, but it seems impossible to realise that you are a married woman. You must have been married while you were still in short frocks!”
Nouna, who wore an elaborate dinner-dress of emerald-green velvet, with loose folds of Nile green silk falling straight from her neck to her feet, was for a moment rather crestfallen to find how little dignity a train could give. ”

“ I should think a mouthful of plain roast beef would kill you.”
“Oh no, it wouldn’t, Sir Henry,” cried Nouna, distressed and offended by these doubts cast on her accomplishments. “I eat a great deal, don’t I, George?”
“Well, more than one would expect, to look at you,” admitted her husband, remembering the fiasco of the wedding breakfast.
“Besides,” said Nouna astutely, “everything that one eats comes from the country. The town produces nothing but soot; perhaps you think I live upon that, and that’s what made me half a black woman.” ”

“ I like the gentlemen better.”
“But you mustn’t judge people only by their dress, Nouna,” said the young husband, feeling rather uncomfortable.
“I can’t judge them by anything else till I know them,” said Nouna fretfully.
George was silent. He was disappointed to learn that she was so soon weary of the perpetual tête-à-tête which had lost no charm for him; but he had the sense to own that his ambitions, even the daily meeting with his comrades at parade, made his life fuller than his young wife’s could possibly be. ”

“ I do not blame you. I can even say I am sorry you have come, since to meet me has given you pain. I am not proud for myself, I am only proud for my child—my children. While I kept myself apart from you for your happiness, my soul, all that is best and truest in me, was with you. You are my judge, my son, but remember that.”
Even the high-flown speech was like Nouna in her serious moods. George glanced at her. Her eyes, to which the rest of her face, beautiful as it was, seemed in moments of excitement only a sort of unnoticed setting, were like liquid fire. ”

“ He grew very hot over the occupation, which was new to him, and began to understand why hairdressers are generally of the abler sex. By the time he had reduced the pretty wavy hair to order, and admired its soft silkiness by the light of the candle he had set burning, Nouna had added to his difficulties by falling, like a tired kitten, fast asleep. ”

“ And with a superb gesture Nouna signified her contempt for the ironical laughter her husband could not restrain.
“Oh, little empress,” he said, good-humouredly, “you will have to learn that all magicians have limits, and that even a mother so devoted as yours can’t carry out all the freaks that enter into one little feminine head. The very king of the black art could not move Lady Florencecourt!” ”

“ She thought that the weird prettiness of Nouna’s little wasted face had bewitched even this middle-aged doctor.
“She is scarcely even yet an ideal companion for a man of intellect,” she said with a slight touch of her worst, most priggish manner.
“H’m, I don’t know,” said the doctor. “Your man of intellect is generally a man of something else besides; and the housekeeper-wife and the blue-stocking wife both frequently leave as much to be desired as—well, say, the flower-wife, if once the flower learns to turn to the sun, as, I think, little Mrs. Lauriston has done.” ”

“ And so while we are alive we must just be sweet, we must just fly about and buzz, for when the little grave is made we don’t leave any trace. That is what I think,” ended Nouna with a half-grave, half-playful nod.
But George could not take the speech playfully at all. This light but resolute refusal to take herself in earnest, which he ascribed to the paralysing influence of Eastern traditions, was the great barrier to all higher communion between them than that of caresses. ”

“ But George, whose masculine nature was not so easily melted, persisted quietly but firmly that they were obliged to return to London at once. Whereupon Lady Florencecourt extracted a promise from Nouna that she would come to dinner as soon as they should all return to town.
“Oh yes,” said Nouna readily, “I want to see the dear boys again; I always like boys, but I never liked any so well as Regie and Bertie.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just inside he caught sight of his face in the narrow strip of glass that filled the middle beam of the hat-stand, and was struck by his own pallor, and by the stern expression of his features.
“By Jove!” he said to himself, trying to laugh, and finding with surprise that he was quite cold, and that his teeth were chattering, “here’s a pretty face for a bridegroom. If I were to give Nouna, my poor little Nouna, my first kiss with lips as blue as that,” and he peered at himself mockingly close to the glass, “she’d think she’d married a corpse.” ”

“ The milliner, an artist spoiled by ministering to a long course of puppets, was aghast at the order, and suggested that it would make Mrs. Lauriston look, well—er—brown. Nouna replied, with a great sweep of the eyelashes, that she was brown, and she should be sorry to look anything else. And indeed her beauty was seen to great advantage in this original setting, and its tints might pleasantly have suggested to the fanciful brown woods in the haze of a grey October day. ”

“ George Lauriston’s gloomy forebodings at the entire change in their manner of life brought about by Nouna’s becoming a comparatively rich woman, were not, in the first few weeks at least, fulfilled. The new way of living pleased the volatile child-woman much better than the old; and as she was never happy or miserable by halves, her joy in her good fortune was so strong as to be infectious; it was impossible to live in the neighbourhood of her full sensuous delight in existence without catching some of its radiance ”

“ I was born into the world to protect you and shield you from harm, my darling; and so my love was ready for you at the moment when your innocence might have put you in danger, just as it will be to the end of your life.”
“Supposing you were to die first?” suggested she, not flippantly, but with an awestruck consideration of possibilities.
“A soldier can always last out till his duty’s done,” said George, with quiet conviction.
After this Nouna remained silent a little while, but that her ideas had not been working in quite the desired direction was evident when she next spoke. ”

“ As he spoke, they both heard another light sound lower down; but when they looked into the dimly-lighted hall the eavesdropper had disappeared.
“It was not Rahas; he treads so that you can hear him,” said Nouna.
“It was a woman, I am sure,” said Lauriston.
“A woman,” repeated Nouna. “And it was the end of a woman’s dress, a long black dress, I saw in Fanah’s room. I thought it must be a fancy, for when Rahas sent me to sleep to-day and made me see mamma she wore a long black dress.”
“Rahas sent you to sleep! Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Lauriston rather sharply. ”

“ At dinner at Maple Lodge on the evening of their arrival, George Lauriston and his wife met the gentle Dicky Wood, who had come down the day before, and spent the afternoon riding with the son of Sir Henry’s steward. Nouna was much pleased by this compliance with her wishes, and showed her appreciation of it by flirting very prettily at dinner with the young guardsman. Later in the evening she held in the verandah a little court, and chanted them some half-wild, half-monotonous Indian songs in a tiny thread of sweet voice, with some plaintive low notes that lived in the memory. ”