Flower Forbidden

Front matter

Flower Forbidden

by

C. N. and A. M. Williamson

Part I

CHAPTER I.

THE END OF THE WORLD.

NORAH LASSELS sat waiting. It seemed years that she had waited. She began to feel that she knew this dingy room in a third-rate London hotel better than any other room in the world. By and by it grew, in her excited fancy, to be the whole world. There had never been anything else for her except this hideous brown room. There never would be anything else.

Sometimes for a minute she would forget that she was waiting for her adored twin brother, Patrick Lassels, to come and bring her news which meant more than life or death—at least, far more than her own life or death. But when she forgot the present, it was only to plunge back into the past, which swallowed her up like a black wave, and let her struggle out, choking for breath, thankful for the ugly brown room again.

Would Pat never come? Dear Pat, so handsome, so brave, once so full of fun and so joyously careless of the future!

She dreaded, yet longed beyond all things, to see him. And he had promised to come the moment he had anything to tell. His quarters were not far away—the barracks of the Grenadier Guards. That was why she had taken a room in this hotel, so that she might be near at hand; and, besides, as it was in a mean street in Westminster—out of the gay, beautiful London which was the only London she had known—there was little danger that she would be recognized there and gossiped about—or Pat, when he came to see her.

The dreadful thing had got into the papers—first the French papers, then the English ones—and the sensational halfpenny dailies had made the most of it, while pretending a discreet reticence and respect for families in high places closely concerned in the affair. Pat, therefore, was sensitive and self-conscious, hating to be looked at, as if every human being who glanced his way must know the disgraceful story that had been invented about the duel, and how his uncle, Lord Grayminster, had turned against him on account of it.

As for Norah, she did not care whether people looked at her or not. She did not matter at all. Nothing mattered but her brother.

A newspaper lay on the table now, given her by the old Irish waiter who had brought her breakfast. “You might like to throw an eye on it, miss,” he had said, overflowing with kindness, because her Celtic eves told him what green island had been the home of her ancestors. She had wondered a little if the queer old fellow could possibly guess who she and Pat were, although she had given the name of Gray, and her twin brother was “Mr. Gray” when he came to see her. But she had not opened the paper. If there were anything there about herself and Pat, or, still worse, about Constantine Prevali, she did not want to read it. Since that horrible interview Constantine Prevali had given the special correspondent of The Daily Messenger in Paris, the very thought of a newspaper had made her heart beat fast.

“Cruel, wicked man!” she said to herself, as his image came up before her; dark, and very Greek, though he and his had called themselves Englishmen for two or three generations. She knew, or believed she knew, that Prevali had lied about Pat to revenge himself upon her. He had guessed that the surest way to hurt her was through her brother! And then the question that would continually ask itself in her mind seemed to scream in her ears: “Does Pat know what happened? Did he insult Constantine Prevali because he found out, or is it really true that they quarreled over a game of bridge?”

As the suspense grew almost unbearable the girl walked about the room, straightening a framed lithograph of some royalty hanging crookedly on the wall, or going to the one window and staring down at the mean street. It was not a great thoroughfare, but jingling hansoms, luggage-loaded four-wheelers, and flashing taxicabs swept along in a constant tide; and it struck her as astonishing that so many people should be comfortably going about their business or amusements under her very eyes, while she and Pat had come to the end of the world.

That was what he had called it in his first passionate outburst, after the newspaper article which had roused the storm, and his interview with Lord Grayminster, who refused to believe his word. “The end of the world!” And of course it would seem like that to them both if Pat must leave the army—leave, not of his own accord, but because the king “no longer required his services.” That was what would happen, Pat said. He would receive such a communication; and when she tried to cheer him up by saying that the war office was surely too wise to throw away a young officer whose life was in his profession, he only laughed—a dreadful, bitter laugh, so different from the young, jolly laughter natural to him, that Norah's heart almost broke in hearing it.

“It's Prevali's word against mine, and he's at death's door—through me,” Pat had said. “Dying men are supposed to tell the truth; while—as for me—one can't help seeing that I've every incentive to lie.”

Often Norah glanced at the bracelet-watch she wore on her wrist, and it seemed that something must have gone wrong, the hands moved so slowly. Pat must know by this time. Then why didn't he come? She asked herself this question with a miserable, helpless impatience; but suddenly an answer flashed into her mind which drove the blood back upon her heart.

“What if he never comes at all? What if he's driven mad with the injustice of his punishment, and kills himself?”

The thought sent her flying to the door, wild to do something—anything rather than wait longer. She threw the door open, with some vague idea of sending a messenger or a telegram, and almost ran into her brother's arms, as he came heavily upstairs.

His step would have told her that the worst had happened, even if she had not seen it in his face. Not that he showed despair in his expression. These Lassels were not of the sort who hoist distress signals; and a stranger might only have thought that here was a handsome young man who had rather a haggard air of having burned the candle at both ends. But Norah knew.

“Oh, Pat, I am thankful to see you!” she stammered, as she retreated into the ugly brown room, he following. “I—I thought—I hardly know what I thought. But I've been expecting you so long! You didn't come, and I was afraid2”

“You needn't have been afraid of that, old girl,” said Pat, guessing instantly what was in her mind, in the mysterious way which twins often have with one another. “I'm a lot of bad things, but not a coward, I hope. And I've given you enough to bear already. I wouldn't add that—or I'd deserve all I've got.”

“Then—then it's bad news?” she faltered, though she knew without asking.

“You can hardly call it news, Noll,” he answered. “It was a foregone conclusion.”

“What a fiendish world!” she exclaimed passionately.

“Not a bit of it,” said Pat—handsome Pat, for whom she would have died in torture if she could have saved him this. And the most horrible part, perhaps, was that it might be in trying to save him she had brought about his ruin. She thought of this, but could not put it in words. It was the secret which stood between them. Each had half the secret. She had hers. He had his. And it seemed to her now that, as these awful weeks had gone by without an understanding, they would never be able to open their hearts to one another. But she meant to try again to-day—perhaps this very hour.

“They couldn't do anything else in the circumstances,” he went on, with a kind of hard cheerfulness. “Sneaking across the Channel and fighting a duel would hardly be considered conduct becoming an officer and a gentleman. Add to that the kind of duel I was fool enough to consent to; and on top of all, Prevali's story2”

“But they oughtn't to believe it!” Norah broke in. “How can anybody believe—anybody, whether they know you or not—that Pat Lassels would run a man through the body when he was disarmed and asking for his life?”

“I said, when a man's dying his word is taken. I deserve this, 1 suppose, for being drawn into such a hole-and-corner affair, with no seconds, no witnesses. I ought to have known he meant playing a trick of some kind—either killing me if he could, or accusing me of treachery if I got the better of him. But he made me furious, hinting I was afraid to trust myself alone with him. It all comes of my Irish temper and foolhardiness, but it's too late to be wise now. I must take my medicine.”

“Uncle Edward could have saved you if he'd chosen to use his influence,” Norah said. “I can't help hating him.”

“He doesn't think I'm worth saving. You know it isn't the first time I've kicked over the traces.”

“What are a few debts?” exclaimed Norah indignantly. “He was very pleased you should be in the Grenadier Guards. What could he expect? You're young and popular, and you have a position to keep up.”

Pat Lassels laughed. “A position! Son of an impecunious Irish baron, and not a penny to bless himself with!”

“But you'll be a baron yourself when Conron dies.”

“Poor old Conron!” said Pat sadly. “I never wished him dead, and less than ever do I wish it now. His death can do me no good after what's happened to me, and will only rake up this story—which I hope to goodness may be an old one by that time.”

Norah was silent. Their half-brother, Lord Conron, twenty years older than they, had broken his back in the hunting field when they were children, and nowadays was not only a hopeless paralytic, but had lost his mind and was in a sanatorium. When their father had died of grief after the wreck of his small fortune in the days of the great South African boom, the Earl of Grayminster, the twins' uncle on their mother's side, had somewhat reluctantly undertaken their bringing up. He had been too proud to leave his dead sister's children unfriended, but he was a cold man, and a mean man. What he gave, he grudged, and he had never understood Pat, to whom he doled out the smallest possible allowance.

Norah had none, and her few bills were grumbled at, though she was expected to dress well, and had played hostess for her uncle in town and country, on the occasions when he chose to entertain, ever since she had said good-by to her last governess, at eighteen. Now, she and Pat were twenty-four. She was not able to call up much gratitude for Lord Grayminster, and she had always half guiltily looked forward to the day when Pat would be Lord Conron, and have the few hundreds a year squeezed out of such Irish land as was left—money which at present kept the invalid in luxury in his sanatorium.

A pang of despair shot through her heart at Pat's words, but she had to acknowledge that they were true. Out of the army, out of the country, perhaps forgotten by his friends, the title when it came would be of no use.

“Oh, Pat!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Tell me—for pity's sake tell me, why you fought that duel with Constantine Prevali?”

Pat turned his eyes on her, surprised at first, then very grave, and curiously secretive for one so frank. He had Irish eyes, blue as sapphires, between thick lines of black lashes; and though his skin would have been fair if sunburn had given it a chance, his short wavy hair was dark brown. Only in strong sunshine it showed red high lights, like a burnished helmet.

Norah had the same coloring, and looked as much like her twin brother as it is possible for a rather small, very feminine girl to look like a tall, strong-featured young man. She was so slender, so pale now, and wistful-eyed, that she appeared much younger than she was, hardly more than nineteen, while Pat, brown and thin, and six feet in height, seemed older than his twenty-four years. In the last few weeks all the boyishness had gone from his face and manner, so that now, when he looked down at his sister after her question, his sternness and sadness frightened her, as if he were her judge, not the darling, happy-go-lucky twin brother who had always been her other self.

“You know very well why we fought,” he said at last slowly.

“I know what you told me—what everybody thinks. But—but do men fight nowadays over cards? Do they take the trouble to cross to France and try to kill each other just because—because one doesn't like the way the other plays bridge?”

“Human nature's about the same that it always was,” said Pat, with the same air of reserve which seemed to put a barrier between them. “When a man insults you, it isn't much trouble to cross the Channel if you don't want to get mixed up with the law of your own country.”

“Still, I can't help thinking that—that2” Norah faltered.

“Don't think any more about it at all. It does no good, only harm—to us both.”

“Think!” she broke out desperately. “I think every minute, day and night. It's never out of my mind for a second. If that man dies, I2”

“You have nothing to do with it,” her brother answered almost coldly. “And if you must think about the thing, think only what Uncle Edward and everybody else who knows you and me, thinks now, and will always think.”

It seemed to Norah that Pat laid careful emphasis upon that word “always”; but, when she glanced up at him searchingly, his eyes were turned away.

Tears sprang to hers.

“I can't bear it, Pat,” she sobbed, in a choked voice. “How can we go on like this—you and I? If there's a secret—you might tell me. I—there are things that are hard to say, but if there is something, and we could talk2”

“We can't,” Pat cut in sharply. “Let it alone, Noll. Don't make things worse for me. I've got about all I can do with comfortably.”

“Forgive me, dear,” the girl whispered, winking away her tears with her long eyelashes. “I won't say any more.”

Perhaps he was right. There was a thing which she could not tell him, for his own sake—unless, somehow, he drew it out, as she had hoped he might. In that way the truth might have been known without painful explanations. But if Pat had a secret, and she was forced to keep hers, she must just bear it—perhaps as long as she lived. “As long as I live,” she repeated to herself. “Why, how odd I've got to go on living, though this is the end of the world!

“What will become of us both?” she asked aloud. “Can't we go away together, to Ireland perhaps, and live—live things down together? I've got heaps of money from selling the pearls—the pearls poor little mother left for me, you know. I was sure she'd think it right for me to sell them, because it's partly for you. And I've sold the diamond tiara, too—I should never have worn it. So we're quite rich. I2”

“You oughtn't to have done that, Noll,” Pat interrupted, “I wouldn't have let you, if2”

“Oh, that's why I didn't tell you beforehand. But I wanted money so much, in case things went wrong, and you were sure they would, so I didn't wait. I'm glad I didn't, now! Of course Uncle Edward was furious when I would come up to town to be near you, instead of hiding myself with him in Warwickshire, and naturally I couldn't expect a penny from him, I'd only enough to pay my fare here, and perhaps a day's board at this wretched place, where I can hide far more easily than at Gray Court. So the first thing I did was to go to Bond Street and bargain—oh, I did bargain, I can tell you!—though, really, the people were quite good, and perfectly honest, of course. They gave me five hundred pounds. Just think of it, Pat—five hundred pounds—the one bright spot in the dark. We can live on it for years, can't we, in some little out-of-the-way place, where we could take a cottage, and I could do the cooking? We wouldn't need any servants, and I'd make my own clothes. Don't you think2” But Pat's face made her break off in discouragement. “Why wouldn't it work?” she asked desperately.

“Do you suppose for a moment, my dear child, that I'd live anywhere on your poor little money?”

“Why not? It's yours as much as mine. Well, then, we might go to America—for I know you'll hate England if—if you're out of the army, my darling. You could find something to do there—oh, lots of things. You could be an army coach, or a riding master; or teach fencing, you're so splendid at that2” She stopped suddenly, seeing his face change. That last suggestion had been unfortunate. It opened a wound not healed yet, a wound which could never heal, if a man now lying in France should die. “I'm sure I could get an engagement as a governess,” she hurried on. Then, seeing no answering light in her brother's eyes, she said humbly “But perhaps you have some other plan?”

He did not answer for a moment. Then he said, with that new gravity of a which made him seem older than she:

“Yes, I have a plan. I've been thinking it over for days—ever since it came into my head, the night I was sure Uncle Edward didn't mean to speak a good word for me, and that my career was finished. It means our parting, Noll, but that's the best thing that could happen to you. Uncle Edward's fond of you in his queer, frozen way. You're useful to him, too. When he's rid of me things will right themselves between you. Not that you'll forget me. Rather not. I should hate to think you could; and I'll remind you of my existence by writing no end of letters.”

Norah had grown very pale.

“Letters from—where?” she asked quietly.

“From Southern Algeria, I hope. That's what I mean to try for. It's out now. My plan's to enlist in the Foreign Legion. At least I'd have adventure, plenty of life and action to help me forget. And I was born a soldier, Noll. A soldier I must be, or rust. Since my own country doesn't want me, another will take me gladly enough, I know, and ask no questions. They never do ask any in the Foreign Legion, I've heard fellows say who know. If you're young and strong it's all they care about. You may be a thief or a murderer, and, if you choose to call yourself Smith or Jones, they won't bother to try and find out if you're really Brown. Oh, it's an opportunity cut out for me, and I've made up my mind to take it as soon as I can.”

All her life Norah Lassels had tried to make it a rule never to urge her brother not to do things he wanted to do, or to do things he wanted not to do. But now, with her whole soul she yearned to persuade Pat into giving up this plan of his.

“I don't know much about the Foreign Legion,” she said heavily, “except that it's French, and that it's stationed in different parts of Africa. But I've read stories—and they make it seem as if the life were awful—not life at all, but a kind of living death. If they accept thieves and murderers you'd have to associate with them2”

“If Prevali dies, that's what Uncle Edward and lots of other good people will call me—a murderer.”

“Oh, don't—don't speak like that. You wouldn't be. You only defended yourself. And maybe he won't die.”

“In some ways it will be better if he does. And—I can't regret what I did. It seems to me still it was the only thing.”

Pat was speaking to himself more than to her; and again the shadow of the secret rose between them. He saw it, and pushed it away, changing the subject quickly.

“Don't be afraid of any such thing. Already I've been informing myself what to do. Southern Algeria is the place I want to get to. The desert has always fascinated me in books—and it's healthy enough there. I believe if you're a desirable sort of person, whom they think likely to make a good soldier, they humor you a bit in the beginning, before they're quite sure of you, and let you take your choice where to go. Besides, I shan't have the hardships and humiliations some fellows go through. Uncle Edward has offered to pay up my debts once for all if I'll get out of his sight and never come back to trouble his virtuous and important existence. He even volunteered, in his astonishing generosity, to give me enough money for a third-class ticket to America. Splendid of him, wasn't it? Well, I didn't accept that offer, though I did the first, for the tradespeople's sake. Rather hard on them to let my pride do them out of their money! I've told him I'd go—somewhere. The rest is my business, not his. And I'm like you. I've two or three things I can sell. Don't look so sick, child! Roughing it a little will do me good, and take my mind off myself. Then, there's a place called Bel Abbès, the great recruiting town of Africa for the Foreign Legion. I've been reading about it; seems to be somewhere between Algiers and Biskra. I'll turn up there and offer my services to France. As soon as everything's settled, and I know what's going to become of me, I'll write to you.”

“Yes, you'll write at once, and let me know where you're to be,” Norah said, in the quiet tone which rather worried him. For he knew the girl too well not to be sure of the storm in her heart.

“You're a thoroughbred, dear,” he said gratefully. “I was sure you'd see me through.”

“Thank you, boy,” she answered. “Yes. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to see you through, whatever happens.”

He held out his arms, and she threw herself into them. Neither spoke for a little while, but the silence of each comforted the other. And Norah did not think it necessary to mention that her way of “seeing him through” was not to be exactly his way.

CHAPTER II.

EASTWARD.

Norah Lassels let her brother leave England supposing that she meant to gather up the dropped threads of her life again, and go on weaving the old pattern. He had enough to trouble him without worrying about her, she reminded herself, when she was tempted to speak out what was in her heart for the future. All she told him at last was that she could not go back to Lord Grayminster's house.

“I wouldn't say anything to bother you before, but now I must, on account of letters,” she confessed, as they were bidding each other good-by at the railway station, two lonely young people in a crowd who passed them by unnoticed. “Uncle Edward forbade me to come and be with you in town, and when I would he said I'd forfeited my right to a home with him. 'Under his roof' were the words he used. So like him! Can't you hear his voice, and see how his eyes looked? Very likely if I begged and crawled, he'd deign to reconsider. Probably he'd say, 'I will forgive, though I can never forget.' That would be like him, too. One always knows he'll be stereotyped, whatever happens.”

“Why, that's what men are for, to do what they can for women,” smiled the American.

“Yes; potted phrases.” Pat smiled grimly. “He invariably has one on a shelf, ready to hand.”

“But I don't want his thin old forgiveness!” went on Norah. “I should know just what it meant: that, as you told me, I was useful to him in a way. So I've made up my mind to live with dear old Pobble. You'll be peaceful in your mind about me there, won't you?”

“Yes,” Pat answered. For “Pobble” was Miss Pobblethwaite, Norah's last and best-loved governess, who had adored sister and brother, and been adored by them. She had left her beloved pupil only because Lord Grayminster had decided that it was a useless expense keeping on a governess after a girl was eighteen.

“There's just one more thing,” said Norah. “You've told me that you mean to take another name. Have you made up your mind what it's to be? I wish you would, without waiting, because whatever it is I want to take it, too.”

“I see,” Pat answered. “No, I hadn't made up my mind. I hadn't thought about it. My idea was to give any name that flitted through my mind when the time came. You're sure you are willing to sacrifice any little kudos you may have through being the Honorable Norah Lassels?”

“Sure,” she returned heartily. “Thank goodness, we're neither of us snobs, whatever else we may be that's stupid. I want to be your sister, and nothing else. So if you're Patrick Smith, I'm Norah Smith.”

Pat laughed. “Choose our name for us. Something a little more interesting than Smith.”

Norah thought a moment.

“Luck,” she said. “It may bring us some, who knows?”

“Heaven knows we need it!” he mumbled. “All right. Luck it is. I wonder how they'll pronounce it in the Foreign Legion?”

Then they said good-by, and Norah kept back her tears, though it seemed that her heart was breaking. Pat was gone from her, forever it might be, swallowed up in the great dark sea of their common misfortune. And Norah went, as she had planned, to live with Miss Pobblethwaite, who was delighted to have her. But the kind old maid would have been still more delighted if Norah had not warned her that the visit would be short.

“Pat doesn't know,” the girl explained. “It would only have worried him horribly; but as soon as I hear where he's likely to be, I'm going to live as near as possible to him. He shan't hear anything about it till I'm there. Then I'll wire him, and you can be sending me on letters which may be arriving while I'm on my journey,”

“How could you live in any such outlandish country?” Miss Pobblethwaite wailed. “A girl, alone, with hardly any money?”

“I wouldn't be alone. I'd get something to do,” Norah said. “Algiers, for instance, can't be so very outlandish. I'm sure I could find work of some sort there. Meantime, while I was looking about, I'd have enough to live on economically; and I'd have the comfort of knowing that if anything happened to Pat I wouldn't be almost at the other end of the world.”

By and by Pat's first letter came to Rose Bank. A blurred postmark, which seemed outlandish to Pobble, was on the envelope, but inside the address was clear. Pat had carried out the plan he had unfolded to his sister, the day when he first broke the news to her of what he meant to do. So far there had been no hitch. He was at Sidi Bel Abbès, the great recruiting station of Algeria for the Foreign Legion. He had been accepted without a question, except such official questions as could be answered as he pleased. He was now a Legionnaire, or rather a “bleu,” as every new recruit was nicknamed by the old soldiers. His number was twenty-eight thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven. It was printed on a card over his bunk in the big dormitory, together with the name of Patrick Luck, which was, by the way, a mere detail, and did not matter. Henceforth he would be known by his number. And Norah was not to be miserable about him. To be sure, accommodation was rather rough, and his new comrades were rougher, but there were two or three gentlemen in his company of the First Battalion of the Legion, and more than two or three characters who promised to be interesting. Everybody was more or less decent to him, and of course he was putting on no airs.

Altogether it was a cheerful letter, but the girl read between the lines. And she had bought every book that she could find about the famous Foreign Legion. There were chapters in those books so terrible that she grew sick and could hardly read to the end. For this very reason she was all the more anxious to go out to Algeria and be within reasonable distance of her brother.

Through Miss Pobblethwaite, who knew some of the “cathedral set,” a letter of introduction was got for Miss Norah Luck to the British consul at Algiers. It stated, on the authority of an archdeacon, who had been told the real story, that Miss Luck was an extremely well-connected and accomplished young person, suitable for the position of private secretary, companion, or governess for advanced pupils. She understood typewriting and shorthand—the girl had learned both at the instigation of Lord Grayminster, who saved a salary by employing her as an unpaid secretary; she spoke French fluently; German, Italian, and Spanish a little. Her musical ability was excellent. She was competent, if desired, to teach singing, the piano, the harp, and—a poor little frivolous accomplishment which the archdeacon hesitated to mention—the banjo. Also she was well grounded in Latin, had a little knowledge of Greek, and was a fair mathematician.