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

sometimes grave, sometimes smiling, Mr. Stephens had eluded their surely legitimate curiosity.

Even now the lawyer hesitated, but at last he spoke out what he believed to be the truth.

“It is my honest opinion that this disappearance of Mr. Dampier is painful rather than mysterious. I believe that poor Nancy Tremain’s bridegroom, actuated by some motive to which we may never have the clue, made up his mind to disappear. When faced with responsibilities for which they have no mind men before now have often disappeared, Mr. Senator. Lawyers and doctors, if their experience extend over a good many years, come across stories even more extraordinary than that which has been concerning us now!”

“I take it,” said Senator Burton slowly, “that you did not form a good impression of this Mr. Dampier?”

The lawyer again hesitated, much as he had hesitated when asked the same question by young Burton, but this time he answered quite truthfully.

“Well, no, I did not! True, he seemed entirely indifferent as to how the money of his future wife was settled; indeed I could not help feeling that he was culpably careless about the whole matter. But even so I had one or two very disagreeable interviews with him. You see, Senator Burton, the man was madly in love; he had persuaded poor Nancy to be married at once—and by at once I mean within a fortnight of their engagement. He seemed strangely afraid of losing her, and I keenly resented this feeling on his part, for a more loyal little soul doesn’t live. She has quite a nice fortune, you know, and for my part I should have liked her to marry some honest country gentleman in her own country—not an artist living in Paris.”

“You don’t attach much importance to love, Mr. Stephens?”

The lawyer laughed. “Quite enough!” he exclaimed. “Love causes more trouble in the world than everything else put together—at any rate it does to members of my profession. But to return to poor Nancy. She’s a fascinating little creature!” He shot a quick glance at Senator Burton, but the latter only said cordially:—

“Yes, as fascinating as she’s pretty!”

“Well, she had plenty of chances of making a good marriage—but no one touched her heart till this big, ugly fellow came along. So of course I had to make the best of it!” He waited a moment and then went on. “I ought to tell you that at my suggestion Dampier took out a large insurance policy on his own life: I didn’t think it right that he should bring, as it were, nothing into settlement, the more so that Nancy had insisted, on her side, that all her money should go to him at her death, and that whether they had any children or not! You know what women are?” he shrugged his shoulders.

“If that be so,” observed the Senator, “then money can have had nothing to do with his disappearance.”

“I’m not so sure of that! In fact I’ve been wondering uneasily during the last few days whether, owing to his being an artist, and to his having lived so much abroad, John Dampier could have been foolish enough to suppose that in the case of his disappearance the insurance money would be paid over to Mrs. Dampier. That, of course, would be one important reason why he should wish to obliterate himself as completely as he seems to have done. I need hardly tell you, Mr. Senator, that the Insurance Office would laugh in my face if I were to try and make them pay. Why, years will have to elapse before our courts would even consider the probability of death.”

“I now understand your view,” said the Senator gravely. “But even if it be the true solution, it does not explain the inexplicable difference between Mrs. Dampier’s statement and that of the Poulains—I mean, their statements as to what happened the night Mr. and Mrs. Dampier arrived in Paris.”

“No,” said the lawyer reluctantly. “I admit that to me this is the one inexplicable part of the whole story. And I also confess that as to that one matter I find it impossible to make up my mind. If I had not known poor little Nancy all her life, I should believe, knowing what women are capable of doing if urged thereto by pride or pain—I should believe, I say, that she had made up this strange story to account for her husband’s having left her! I could tell you more than one tale of a woman having deceived not only her lawyer, but, later, a judge and a jury, as to such a point of fact. But from what I know of Mrs. Dampier she would be quite incapable of inventing, or perhaps what is quite as much to the purpose, of keeping up such a deception.”

“From something my daughter said,” observed Senator Burton, “I think you have been trying to persuade the poor little lady to go back to England?”

“Yes, I tried to make her come back with me to-day. And I am bound to say that I succeeded better than I expected to do, for though she refuses to come now, she does intend to do so when you yourselves leave Paris, Mr. Senator. Fortunately she does not know what sort of a time she will come back to: I fear that most of her friends will feel exactly as I feel; they will not believe that John Dampier has disappeared save of his own free will—and some of them will suppose it their duty to tell her so!”

“It is the view evidently held by the French police,” observed the Senator.

The English lawyer shrugged his shoulders. “Of course it is! The fact that Dampier had hardly any money on him disposes of any crime theory. A wonderful thing the Paris police system, Mr. Burton!”

And the other cordially agreed; nothing could have been more courteous, more kind, more intelligent, than the behaviour of the high police officials, from the Prefect himself downwards, over the whole business.

Mr. Stephens glanced up at the huge station clock. “I have only five minutes left,” he said. “But I want to say again how much I appreciate your extraordinary kindness and goodness to my poor client. And, Mr. Senator? There’s just one thing more I want to say to you—” For the first time the English lawyer looked awkward and ill at ease.

“Why yes, Mr. Stephens! Pray say anything you like.”

“Well, my dear sir, I should like to give you a very sincere piece of advice.” He hesitated. “If I were you I should go back to America as soon as possible. I feel this sad affair has thoroughly spoilt your visit to Paris; and speaking as a man who has children himself, I am sure it has not been well, either for Miss Daisy or for your son, to have become absorbed, as they could hardly help becoming, in this distressing business.”

The American felt slightly puzzled by the seriousness with which the other delivered this well-meant but wholly superfluous advice. What just exactly did the lawyer mean by these solemnly delivered words?

“Why,” said the Senator, “you’re quite right, Mr. Stephens; it has been an ordeal, especially for my girl Daisy: she hasn’t had air and exercise enough during this last fortnight, let alone change of thought and scene. But, as a matter of fact, I am settling about our passages to-day, on my way back to the hotel.”

“I am very glad to hear that!” exclaimed the other, with far more satisfaction and relief in his voice than seemed warranted. “And I presume that your son will find lots of work awaiting him on his return home? There’s nothing like work to chase cobwebs from the brain or—or heart, Mr. Senator.”

“That’s true: not that there are many cobwebs in my boy’s brain, Mr. Stephens,” he smiled broadly at the notion.

“Messieurs! Mesdames! En voiture, s’il vous plait. En voiture—!”

A few minutes later Mr. Stephens waved his hand from his railway carriage, and as he did so he wondered if he himself had ever been as obtuse a father as his new American friend seemed to be.

As he walked away from the station Senator Burton made up his mind to go back on foot, taking the office of the Transatlantic Steamship Company on his way. And while he sauntered through the picturesque, lively streets of the Paris he loved with so familiar and appreciative an admiration, the American found his thoughts dwelling on the events of the last fortnight.

Yes, it had been a strange, an extraordinary experience—one which he and his children would never forget, which they would often talk over in days to come. Poor little Nancy Dampier! His kind, fatherly heart went out to her with a good deal of affection, and yes, of esteem. She had behaved with wonderful courage and good sense—and with dignity too, when one remembered the extraordinary position in which she had been placed with regard to the Poulains.

The Poulains? For the hundredth time he wondered where the truth really lay…. But he soon dismissed the difficult problem, for now he had reached the offices of the French Transatlantic Company. There the Senator’s official rank caused him to be treated with very special civility; at once he was assured that three passages would be reserved for him on practically what boat he liked: he suggested the Lorraine, sailing in ten days time, and he had the satisfaction of seeing good cabins booked in his name.

And as he walked away, slightly cheered, as men are apt to be, by the pleasant deference paid to his wishes, he told himself that before leaving Paris he must arrange for a cable to be at once dispatched should there come any news of the mysterious, and at once unknown and familiar, John Dampier. Mrs. Dampier would surely find his request a natural one, the more so that Daisy and Gerald would be just as eager to hear news as he himself would be. He had never known anything take so firm a hold of his son’s and daughter’s imaginations.

On reaching the Hôtel Saint Ange the Senator went over to Madame Poulain’s kitchen; it was only right to give her the date of their departure as soon as possible.

“Well,” he said with a touch of regret in his voice, “we shall soon be going off now, Madame Poulain. Next Tuesday-week you will have to wish us bon voyage!”

And instead of seeing the good woman’s face cloud over, as it had always hitherto clouded over, when he had sought her out to say that their stay in Paris was drawing to a close, he saw a look of intense relief, of undisguised joy, flash into her dark expressive eyes, and that though she observed civilly, “Quel dommage, Monsieur le Sénateur, that you cannot stay a little longer!”

He moved away abruptly, feeling unreasonably mortified.

But Senator Burton was a very just man; he prided himself on his fairness of outlook; and now he reminded himself quickly that their stay at the Hôtel Saint Ange had not brought unmixed good fortune to the Poulains. It was natural that Madame Poulain should long to see the last of them—at any rate this time.

He found Gerald alone, seated at a table, intent on a letter he was writing. Daisy, it seemed, had persuaded Mrs. Dampier to go out for a walk before luncheon.

“Well, my boy, we shall have to make the best of the short time remaining to us in Paris. I have secured passages in the Lorraine, and so we now only have till Tuesday-week to see everything in Paris which this unhappy affair has prevented our seeing during the last fortnight.”

And then it was that the something happened, that the irreparable words were