Читать книгу A Son of Ishmael - L. T. Meade - Страница 10

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The next day, true to his word, Rowton took Nancy to the shops. They went to the Bon Marché, and to many other places where finery the most fascinating, dresses the most bizarre, articles of toilet the most chic in the world, were to be found. Rowton consulted one of the shopwomen whose taste was supposed to be absolute: she brought out one costume after another and fitted them on Nancy, while her husband looked on and criticised and admired. Morning dresses, afternoon dresses, tea gowns, evening dresses, were bought in variety and abundance. With a mere nod of his head Rowton would signify to the attendant that such a thing was to be sent to Mrs. Rowton to the Grand Hotel; he never even enquired the price.

“You want shoes and dainty stockings and handkerchiefs and ribbons, and feathers and flowers,” he said, just laying his hand for an instant on Nancy’s shoulder. “Oh, I know how women ought to be dressed.”

“See here,” he said to the attendant, “fit Mrs. Rowton with all that is necessary. Let her have some dozen of this, and of this, and this—” he indicated costly things with his hand. “Now then, Nancy, we will go to the millinery department.”

Nancy found herself furnished with small velvet caps, with fascinating toques, with hats adorned with great plumes of ostrich feathers, which made her look, Rowton said, with eyes of passionate love, as if she had just stepped out of a Gainsborough picture. The morning passed in a perfect whirl, and when finally the pair returned to the hotel for lunch, Nancy said frankly that she felt as if she had been going about all the morning with a fairy godmother.

“Ah! you will have a good deal more of that sensation,” replied her husband. “Hurry with your lunch, now, for afterwards we must go to the Palais Royal to look at trinkets.”

“Trinkets?” she said; “you don’t mean jewels?”

“I mean a few rings and necklaces, and ornaments for your hair,” he said. “I have taken a box at the opera to-night and you shall look—ah! I’ll not be the only one to look at you to-night, Nancy mine; no woman will look fairer, more divine than my little girl.”

The trinkets were bought and Nancy’s slender fingers were laden with sparkling rings. A necklace consisting of a single row of magnificent pearls was secured to encircle her dainty throat.

“Not that these are much,” said Rowton; “I have diamonds which you shall wear. They are too valuable to take away from home. We will have a house in town next season, Nance, and you shall wear them then; I won’t show them to you until then. Pearls suit you best however, you are so maidenly, so delicate, so youthful. Heavens! to think that one like you should belong to one like me. My darling, my treasure, what have I done that Providence should be so good to me?”

“And what have I done to deserve such a husband?” she answered.

“Do not say that,” he said, his tone completely changing; “you do not really know me.”

“I know what you are to me; I know that in all the world no more gallant gentleman, no braver prince amongst men could live.”

“Come, come, Nancy, it is bad to flatter,” he said; but his eyes shone and his lips trembled.

“If she only knew!” he said to himself.

They drove in the Bois in the afternoon and after dinner went to the opera. Nancy was dressed for the opera in one of her new costumes; it was white, shaded off to the faintest tinge of rose. She looked something like a summer cloud when she was dressed in these billows of diaphanous texture; the pearls round her neck gave the last touch to the dazzling effect.

“You look like the heart of a sea-shell,” said her husband; “there, let me look at you from this distance; yes, the effect is perfect. Now again, favour me by standing so. Now you resemble a sunset cloud; you are all poetry, you are a dream. In fact you are a living, walking poem.”

“Don’t, Adrian,” she said.

“Why do you say ‘don’t’? it is my delight to see how much can be made of unique beauty like yours. To-morrow night you shall be dressed quite differently; to-morrow night that pale sweet face, those dark deep eyes shall gleam in more sombre surroundings, and then my princess will look like a star. Give me my delight, Nancy; don’t refuse it to me.”

“But my father is not dead a fortnight,” she said; “I ought to be in mourning for him.”

“Tut! not a bit of it; no mourning during our wedding tour. Afterwards you shall be up to your throat in crêpe if you like.”

“It is strange of you, Adrian, to say so very much about afterwards; when you say ‘afterwards,’ a cold shiver seems to go through me.”

“Faith, child,” he replied, pulling himself together with an effort, “I don’t mean anything. You shall, if I can manage it, walk on roses as long as you live; and now, now, Nance—during our glorious honeymoon, we will not think for one moment of the possibility of a shadow. Come, darling, the carriage must be waiting for us in the courtyard.”

They went downstairs in the lift.

Rowton’s prophecy was abundantly fulfilled: there was not a man in the place who did not look with more than admiration at the lovely girl who walked by his side. They went to the opera and Rowton watched the faces of his fellow-men and women. Some acquaintance in a distant box recognised him and bowed. Rowton returned their salutations icily; he did not want old friends to crop up here; he was determined to share Nance with no one during the golden four weeks which he had allowed himself. But when a Frenchman of the name of D’Escourt knocked at the door of the Rowtons’ box, Rowton felt forced to admit him and to introduce him to Nance. The two men talked for a little time in French, and D’Escourt promised himself the pleasure of calling on Mrs. Rowton early the following day. He sat down presently by her side, and began to talk. He was a man of the world, extremely polished, and with a perfect knowledge of English as well as French. Nancy’s French was not her strong point, and she was glad to talk to the stranger in English.

“By the way,” he said suddenly, turning and looking at Rowton, who with a frown between his brows gazed gloomily into the house, “it is some years now since I saw you in our gay capital, my friend; not since 18⸺” He mentioned a date; it was the year of Anthony Follett’s death.

“I wonder,” thought Nance to herself, “if Adrian could help me in my strange and awful search. I will not think to-night of that terrible fate which hangs over me.”

She tried to force her thoughts from the subject, but try as she would, they hovered round it. She suddenly felt cold and miserable; her conscience seemed to reproach her for her present extraordinary bliss; she thought of her dead father, the desolate Grange, and the long six years of misery. Her present life seemed like a dream; she might awaken any moment to find herself back at the Grange; Rowton not allowed to visit her, her father there, and the dreadful, stingy, starved existence once more her own.

She started, hearing Adrian’s voice in her ears.

“A penny for your thoughts,” he said.

“I was trying to pinch myself,” she said.

She looked up and saw that D’Escourt had left them. “I was trying to pinch myself,” she continued, “to find out whether I was really in a dream or not.”

“You are not in a dream; at least, if you are, I am in it too; and I vote we stay in dream-land, for it is monstrous pleasant,” said Adrian. “Now listen to that music, Nance; does it not uplift your soul?”

She turned and looked vaguely at the performers on the stage. The opera was one of Rossini’s; the scene now represented was a harvest festival; the stage was full of motion and brilliant colour; the gay, light, uplifting music rose to the very roof of the magnificent opera house.

“It is almost too much,” said Nance, with something like a sob in her throat. She looked suddenly so white and weary that Rowton insisted on her returning to the hotel without seeing the piece out.

The next day, to her astonishment, he proposed that they should leave Paris and go on to the Riviera.

“We will go to Nice,” he said; “it is gay enough there, and we shall have warmth and sunshine; we will visit Monte Carlo, too. Oh! I don’t gamble, you need not fear anything of that sort, but for all that we will have one exciting evening at the roulette tables.”

“I am sorry,” said Nance. “I am interested in Paris now that I am here, and I should like to see more of it. M. D’Escourt said, too, that he would call, and he promised to arrange to take us to Versailles; don’t you remember, Adrian?”

“Yes, I remember,” said Rowton; “but that fact can scarcely influence my movements.” He spoke with the faintest sneer. “I want to get on, Nance. Paris is all very well; it satisfies me in one sense, and yet in another it does not.”

“Do you know Paris? Have you been often here?”

“Yes; I spent two years in this gay capital; the liveliest and yet the most wretched time of my life.”

“I heard you mention a certain date last night,” said Nancy in a low voice, which slightly trembled. “You mentioned the year 18⸺. It so happened that I am interested in that date. It was just then the cloud came which changed father’s life and mine.”

“We need not go into that subject now, need we?” asked Rowton with manifest uneasiness. “I want you to forget those six dreadful years of famine. You have now, to borrow a Bible simile, come into the seven years of plenty.”

“So I have,” she replied, running to him and kissing him with passion. “How happy you make me; how more than willing I am to do anything you wish.”

“Then we will take the Mediterranean express from the Gare de Lyon this evening,” said Rowton. “I will go now to try and secure a sleeping carriage. You can begin to pack some of your pretty things while I am away from you, Nance.”

Rowton left the salon and hailing a fiacre, drove straight to the Gare de Lyon.

“I don’t want D’Escourt to have much to say to Nance,” he said to himself. “We were good friends in 18⸺. Heaven! When I remember that time; can I possibly be the same man? Yes, I was a gay dog then; but upright and honourable, notwithstanding all my pranks. I could look men straight in the face. Now things are different. D’Escourt knew me intimately at that time. Yes, we were great friends. He was glad to see me last night; he evidently knows nothing; but if he comes often he may begin to ask questions. His questions would be highly inconvenient. Not that Nance, bless her, could answer one of them. But suppose he asks me straight out, while that child is looking on, ‘What have you done with yourself since 18⸺? How have you passed your life?’ I might, it is just possible, with the clear eyes of that angel looking into mine, I might show confusion. There! confound the horrible thing! D’Escourt and I must not meet again. D’Escourt and Nancy must have nothing to do with each other. My sweetheart and I go to Nice to-night and have a right gay time.”

Rowton, arrived at his destination, secured the last sleeping compartment on the train, and went quickly back to the Grand Hotel.

Nancy was waiting for him.

“I have not been dull,” she said, her eyes dancing with excitement and pleasure. “M. D’Escourt called: I like him extremely; he has only just left. He is quite put out at our going to Nice.”

“You told him that?” said Rowton.

“Yes; why not? Dearest, how thick your brows look when you frown.”

“I was not aware that I had frowned, sweet Nance.”

“But are you vexed with me for telling him where we are going?”

“Not in the least; all the world may know our movements. Now let us pack. We will leave some of our boxes here, but we must take plenty of your finery with us. I intend you to be the most beautiful woman at the Casino when we visit Monte Carlo.”

Nancy began to pull her different beautiful dresses out of their boxes.

Rowton stood and watched her.

“M. D’Escourt seems to have been a great friend of yours, Adrian,” she said; “he has the highest opinion of you.” She glanced up at him as she spoke.

“He would be sure to praise me to you,” said Rowton in a would-be careless tone. “We will go for a drive after déjeûner; I find that I must get several small things on my own account. Are you not hungry, little woman?”

“No, I feel too excited to be hungry. You don’t know what this life is to me after my starved existence; but, Adrian, I am really sorry you missed your friend.”

“Well, I am not,” said Rowton. “On a honeymoon one only wants one’s wife, particularly when she is such a wife as mine; but you seem fascinated with the fellow, Nancy.”

“Only because he praised you so much,” she said, with a sweet smile.

They went down to déjeûner.

As they were finishing the meal, Nancy again reverted to D’Escourt.

“He was really disappointed,” she said. “He was quite certain we were going to stay in Paris for another week at least.”

“I have ordered the carriage to be round by now,” said Rowton without replying, and glancing at the clock as he spoke. “Put on your prettiest cloak and your most becoming hat and come out with me.”

They spent the afternoon shopping and afterwards drove in the Bois. By eight o’clock that evening they had left the Grand Hotel and were on their way to the Gare de Lyon. They reached it in good time to catch the Mediterranean express.

At the booking office Nancy was much astonished to hear her husband ask for tickets for San Remo.

“You are making a mistake,” she exclaimed. “We are going to Nice.”

“I have changed my mind,” he answered. “San Remo will suit us better.”

“What a pity,” cried Nancy. “M. D’Escourt said he might visit Nice in a few days.”

“The very reason why we go to San Remo, sweetheart. Now take your place. Here we are. You will admire the olive woods and the flowers before many more hours are over, cara mia.”