The End of Her Honeymoon, Marie Belloc Lowndes [desktop ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Nancy Dampier sat up in bed.

Long rays of bright sunlight filtering in between deep blue curtains showed her a large, lofty room, with panelled walls, and furniture covered with blue damask silk.

It was more like an elegant boudoir in an old English country house than a bedroom, and for a moment she wondered, bewildered, where she could be.

Then suddenly she remembered—remembered everything; and her heart filled, brimmed over, with seething pain and a sharp, overwhelming sensation of fear.

Jack had gone: disappeared: vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up! And she, Nancy, was alone in a foreign city where she did not know a single soul, with the paramount exception of the American strangers who had come to her help in so kindly and so generous a fashion.

She pushed her soft hair back from her forehead, and tried to recall, step by step, all that had happened yesterday.

Two facts started out clearly—her almost painful gratitude to the Burtons and her shrinking terror of the Poulains, or rather of Madame Poulain, the woman who had looked fixedly into her face and lied.

As to what had happened to Dampier, Nancy’s imagination began to whisper things of unutterable dread. If her Jack had been possessed of a large sum of money she would have suspected the hotel people of having murdered him….

But no, she and Jack had come to the end of the ample provision of gold and bank-notes with which they had started for Italy. As is the way with most prosperous newly-married folk, they had spent a good deal more on their short honeymoon than they had reckoned to do. He had said so the day before yesterday, in the train, when within an hour of Paris. Indeed he had added that one of the first things they must do the next day must be to call at the English bank where he kept an account.

She now told herself that she had to face the possibility, nay the probability, that her husband had met with some serious accident on his way to the Impasse des Nonnes. Nancy knew that this had been Gerald Burton’s theory, and of her three new kind friends it was Gerald Burton who impressed her with the greatest trust and confidence. He, unlike his father, had at once implicitly believed her version of what had taken place when she and Jack arrived at the Hôtel Saint Ange.

The bedroom door opened, cautiously, quietly, and Daisy Burton came in carrying a tray in her pretty graceful hands.

Poor Nancy! She felt confused, grateful, and a little awkward. She had not realised that her nervous dread of Madame Poulain would mean that this kind girl must wait on her.

“I came in before, but you were sound asleep. Still, I thought I must wake you now, for father wants to know if you would mind him going to our Embassy about your husband? It’s really my brother’s idea. As you know, Gerald thinks it almost certain that Mr. Dampier met with some kind of accident yesterday morning, and he isn’t a bit satisfied with the way the local Commissaire de Police answered his enquiries. Gerald thinks the only way to get attended to in Paris is to make people feel that you are important, and that they will get into trouble if they don’t attend to you promptly!”

Even as she was speaking Daisy Burton smiled rather nervously, for both she and Gerald had just gone through a very disagreeable half-hour with their generally docile and obedient father.

The Senator did not wish to go to the American Embassy—at any rate not yet—about this strange business. He had pleaded with both his young people to wait, at any rate, till the afternoon: at any moment, so he pointed out, they might have news of the missing man: but Gerald was inexorable.

“No, father, that’s no use; if we do nothing we shan’t get proper attention from the police officials till to-morrow. If you will only go and see Mr. Curtis about this business I promise to take all other trouble off your hands.”

And then the Senator had actually groaned—as if he minded trouble!

“Mr. Curtis will do for you what he certainly wouldn’t do for me, father. Daisy can go with you to the Embassy: I’ll stay and look after Mrs. Dampier: she mustn’t be left alone, exposed to the Poulains’ insolence.”

And so the matter had been settled. But Senator Burton had made one stipulation:—

“I won’t go to the Embassy,” he said firmly, “without hearing from Mrs. Dampier’s own lips that such is her wish. And, Daisy? Gerald? Hearken to me—neither of you is to say anything to influence her in the matter, one way or the other.”

And so it was with a certain relief that Daisy Burton now heard her new friend say eagerly:

“Why of course! I shall only be too grateful if your father will do anything he thinks may help me to find Jack. Oh, you don’t know how bewildered and how frightened I feel!”

And the other answered soothingly, “Yes, indeed I do know how you must feel. But I expect it will be all right soon. After all, Gerald said—”—she hesitated a moment, and then went on more firmly—“Gerald said that probably Mr. Dampier met with quite a slight accident, and that might be the reason why the tiresome Commissaire de Police knew nothing about it.”

“But if it was a slight accident,” Nancy objected quickly, “Jack would have let me know at once! You don’t know my husband: he would move heaven and earth to save me a minute’s anxiety or trouble.”

“I am sure of that. But Gerald says that if Mr. Dampier did try and arrange for you to be sent a message at once, the message miscarried—”

It was an hour later. The Senator had listened in silence while his young English guest had expressed in faltering, but seemingly very sincere, tones, her gratitude for his projected visit to the American Embassy. Nay, she had done more. Very earnestly Mrs. Dampier had begged Senator Burton and his daughter not to give themselves more trouble over her affairs than was absolutely necessary.

And her youth, her beauty, her expression of pitiful distress had touched the Senator, though it had not shaken his belief in the Poulains’ story. He did however assure her, very kindly and courteously, that he grudged no time spent in her service.

And then, while Gerald Burton accompanied his father and his sister downstairs, Nancy Dampier was left alone for a few minutes with her own troubled and bewildered thoughts.

She walked restlessly over to one of the high windows of the sitting-room, and looked down into the shady garden below. Then her eyes wandered over the picturesque grey and red roofs of the old Paris Jack Dampier loved so well.

Somehow the cheerful, bright beauty of this June morning disturbed and even angered poor Nancy. She remembered with distaste, even with painful wonder, the sensations of pleasure, of amusement, of admiration with which she had first come through into this formal, harmoniously furnished salon, which was so unlike any hotel sitting-room she had ever seen before.

But that had been yesterday morning—infinitely long ago.

Now, each of the First Empire pieces of furniture seemed burnt into her brain: and the human faces of the dull gold sphinxes which jutted from each of the corners of the long, low settee seemed to grin at her maliciously.

She felt unutterably forlorn and wretched. If only she could do something! She told herself, with a sensation of recoil and revolt, that she could never face another day of suspense and waiting spent as had been the whole of yesterday afternoon and evening.

Going up to the brass-rimmed round table, she took up a book which was lying there. It was a guide to Paris, arranged on the alphabetical principle. Idly she began turning over the leaves, and then suddenly Nancy Dampier’s cheeks, which had become so pale as to arouse Senator Burton’s commiseration, became deeply flushed. She turned over the leaves of the guide-book with feverish haste, anxious to find what it was that she now sought there before the return of Gerald Burton.

At last she came to the page marked M.

Yes, there was what she at once longed and dreaded to find! And she had just read the last line of the paragraph when Gerald Burton came back into the room.

Looking at him fixedly, she said quietly and in what he felt to be an unnaturally still voice, “Mr. Burton? There is a place in Paris called the Morgue. Do you not think that I ought to go there, to-day? It says in this guide-book that people who are killed in the streets of Paris are taken straight to the Morgue.”

The young American nodded gravely. The Commissary of Police had mentioned the Morgue, had in fact suggested that those who were seeking John Dampier would do well to go there within a day or two.

Nancy went on:—“Could I go this morning? I would far rather go by myself, I mean without saying anything about it to either your father or to your sister.”

He answered quickly, but so gently, so kindly, that the tears sprang to her eyes, “Yes, I quite understand that. But of course you must allow me to go with you.”

And she answered, again in that quiet, unnaturally still voice, “Thank you. I shall be grateful if you will.” Then after a moment, “Couldn’t we start soon—I mean now?”

“Why yes, certainly—if you wish it.”

Without saying anything further, she went to put on her hat.

Gerald Burton’s notions as to the Morgue were in a sense at once confused and clear. He had known of the place ever since he could read. He was aware that it was a building where all those who die a violent death are at once taken: he imagined it further to be a place where morbid curiosity drew daily many tourists. In fact in an old guide-book of which his father was fond he remembered that there ran a sentence:—

The Morgue is certainly one of the most curious and extraordinary sights of Paris, but only those who are in the enjoyment of good nerves are advised to visit it.

As he waited for Mrs. Dampier the young man’s face became very, very grave. Till now he had not envisaged the possibility that John Dampier, this unknown man across the current of whose life he, Gerald Burton, had been thrust in so strange and untoward a manner, might be dead.

Sudden death—that dread possibility which is never far from any one of us—never haunts the mind of normal youth.

But now there came to Gerald Burton a sudden overwhelming understanding