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

“I told my father last night that I doubted if you would ever consent to such a thing.”

And then she asks an imprudent question:—“And what did he say then?” she says in a troubled, unhappy voice.

“D’you really want to know what he said?”

She creeps a little nearer to him, she even takes his hand. “Yes, Gerald. Tell me.”

“He said that if you wouldn’t consent to do some such thing, why then I should be doing wrong to stay in Europe. He said—I little knew how true it was—that soon you would learn that I loved you, and that then—that then the situation would become intolerable.”

“Intolerable?” she repeats in a low, strained tone. “Oh no, not intolerable, Gerald! Surely you don’t feel that?”

And this time it is Gerald who winces, who draws back; but suddenly his heart fills up, brims over with a great, an unselfish tenderness—for Nancy, gazing up at him, looks disappointed as a child, not a woman, looks, when disappointed of a caress; and so he puts his arms round her and kisses her very gently, very softly, in what he tells himself is a kind, brotherly fashion. “You know I’ll do just whatever you wish,” he murmurs.

And contentedly she nestles against him. “Oh, Gerald,” she whispers back, “how good you are to me! Can’t we always be reasonable—like this?”

And he smiles, a little wryly. “Why, yes,” he says, “of course we can! And now, Nancy, it’s surely breakfast time. Let’s go back to the house.”

And Nancy, perhaps a little surprised, a little taken aback at his sudden, cheerful acceptance of her point of view, follows him through the dark passage cut in the yew hedge. She supposes—perhaps she even hopes—that before they emerge into the sun light he will turn and again kiss her in the reasonable, tender way he did just now.

But Gerald does not even turn round and grasp her two hands as he did before. He leaves her to grope her way behind him as best she can, and as they walk across the lawn he talks to her in a more cheerful, indifferent way than he has ever done before. Once they come close up to the house, however, he falls into a deep silence.

III

It is by the merest chance that they stay in that afternoon, for it has been a long, a wretched day for them all.

Senator Burton and his daughter are consumed with anxiety, with a desire to know what has taken place, but all they can see is that Gerald and Nancy both look restless, miserable, and ill at ease with one another. Daisy further suspects that Nancy is avoiding Gerald, and the suspicion makes her feel anxious and uncomfortable.

As for the Senator, he begins to feel that he hates this beautiful old house and its lovely gardens; he has never seen Gerald look as unhappy anywhere as he looks here.

At last he seeks his son out, and, in a sense, forces his confidence. “Well, my boy?”

“Well, father, she doesn’t feel she can do it! She thinks that Dampier may be alive after all. If you don’t mind I’d rather not talk about her just now.”

And then the Senator tells himself, for the hundredth time in the last two years, that they have now come to the breaking point—that if Nancy will not take the only reasonable course open to her, then that Gerald must be nerved to make, as men have so often had to make, the great renouncement. To go on as he is now doing is not only wrong as regards himself, it is wrong as regards his sister Daisy.

There is a man in America who loves Daisy—a man too of whom the Senator approves as much as he can of anyone who is anxious to take his daughter from him. And Daisy, were her heart only at leisure, might respond; but alas! her heart is not at leisure, it is wholly absorbed in the affairs of her brother and of her friend.

At last the high ritual of English afternoon tea brings them out all together on the lawn in front of the house.

Deferentially consulted by the solemn-faced, suave-mannered butler, who seems as much part of Barwell Moat as do the gabled dormer windows, Daisy Burton decides that tea is to be set out wherever it generally is set out by the owners of the house. Weightily she is informed that “her ladyship” has tea served sometimes in that part of the garden which is called the rosery, sometimes on the front lawn, and the butler adds the cryptic information, “according as to whether her ladyship desires to see visitors or not.”

Daisy does not quite see what difference the fact of tea being served in one place or another can make to apocryphal visitors, so, with what cheerfulness she can muster, she asks the others which they would prefer. And at once, a little to her surprise, Nancy and Gerald answer simultaneously, “Oh, let us have tea on the lawn, not—not in the rosery!”

And it is there, in front of the house, that within a very few minutes they are all gathered together, and for the first time that day Senator Burton’s heart lightens a little.

He is amused at the sight of those three men—the butler and his two footmen satellites—gravely making their elaborate preparations. Chairs are brought out, piles of cushions are flung about in bounteous profusion, even two hammocks are slung up—all in an incredibly short space of time: and the American tenant of Barwell Moat tells himself that the scene before him might be taken from one of the stories of his favourite British novelist, good old Anthony Trollope.

Ah me! How happy they all might be this afternoon were it not for the ever present unspoken hopes and fears which fill their hearts!

Daisy sits down behind the tea-table; and the cloud lifts a little from Gerald’s stern, set face; the three young people even laugh and joke a little together.

The Senator glances at Nancy Dampier; she is looking very lovely this afternoon, but her face is flushed, her manner is restless, agitated, she looks what he has never seen her look till to-day, thoroughly ill at ease, and yet, yes, certainly less listless, more alive than she looked yesterday—before Gerald’s arrival.

What strange creatures women are! The Senator does not exactly disapprove of Nancy’s decision, but he regrets it bitterly. If only she would throw in her lot with Gerald—come to America, her mind made up never to return to Europe again, why then even now they might all be happy.

But her face, soft though it be in repose, is not that of a weak woman; it is that of one who, thinking she knows what should be her duty, will be faithful to it; and it is also the face of a woman reserved in the expression of her feelings. Senator Burton cannot make up his mind whether Nancy realises Gerald’s measureless, generous devotion. Is she even aware of all that he has sacrificed for her? Daisy says yes—Daisy declares that Nancy “cares” for Gerald—but then Daisy herself is open-hearted and generous like her brother.

And while these painful thoughts, these half-formed questions and answers, weave in and out through Senator Burton’s brain, there suddenly falls a loud grinding sound on his ears, and a motor-car sweeps into view.

Now, at last, Daisy Burton understands the butler’s cryptic remark! Here, in front of the house, escape from visitors is, of course, impossible. She feels a pang of annoyance at her own stupidity for not having understood, but there is no help for it—and very soon three people, a middle-aged lady and two gentlemen, are advancing over the green sward.

The Senator and his daughter rise, and walk forward to meet them. Gerald and Nancy remain behind. Indeed the young man hardly sees the strangers; he is only conscious of a deep feeling of relief that the solicitous eyes of his father and sister are withdrawn from him and Nancy.

Since this morning he has been in a strange state of alternating rapture and despair. He feels as if he and Nancy, having just found one another, are now doomed to part. Ever since he held her in his arms he has ached with loneliness and with thwarted longing; during the whole of this long day Nancy has eluded him; not for a single moment have they been alone together. And now all his good resolutions—the resolutions which stood him in such good stead in that dark, leafy tunnel—have vanished. He now faces the fact that they cannot hope, when once more alone and heart to heart, to be what Nancy calls “reasonable.”…

Suddenly he comes back to the drab realities of every-day life. His father is introducing him to the visitors—first to the lady: “Mrs. Arbuthnot—my son, Gerald Burton. Mrs. Dampier—Mrs. Arbuthnot.” And then to the two men, Mr. Arbuthnot and a Mr. Dallas.

There is a quick interchange of talk. The newcomers are explaining who and what they are. Mr. Robert Arbuthnot is a retired Anglo-Indian official, and he and his wife have now lived for two years in the dower house which forms part of the Barwell Moat estate.

“I should not have called quite so soon had it not been that our friend, Mr. Dallas, is only staying with us for two or three days, and he is most anxious to meet you, Mr. Senator. Mr. Dallas is one of the Officers of Health for the Port of London. He read some years ago”—she turns smilingly to the gentleman in question—“a very interesting pamphlet with which you seem to have been in some way concerned, about the Port of New York.”

The Senator is flattered to find how well Mr. Dallas remembers that old report of which he was one of the signatories. For a moment he forgets his troubles; and the younger people—Mrs. Arbuthnot also—remain silent while these three men, who have each had a considerable experience of great affairs, begin talking of the problems which face those who have vast masses of human beings to consider and legislate for.

Mr. Dallas talks the most; he is one of those cheerful, eager Englishmen who like the sound of their own voices: he is also one of those fortunate people who take an intense interest in the work they are set to do. In Mr. Dallas’s ears there is no pleasanter sounding word than the word “sanitation.”

“Ah,” he says, turning smilingly to the Senator, “how I envy my New York colleagues! They have plenary powers. They are real autocrats!”

“They would be but for our press,” answers the Senator. “I wonder if you heard anything of the scrape Dr. Cranebrook got into last year?”

“Of course I did! I heard all about it, and I felt very sorry for him. But our London press is getting almost as bad! Government by newspaper—” he shakes his head expressively. “And my friend Arbuthnot tells me that it’s becoming really serious in India; there the native press is getting more and more power. Ah well! They do those things better in France.”

And then Mrs. Arbuthnot’s voice is heard at last. “My husband and Mr. Dallas have only just come back from Paris, Miss Burton. Mr. Dallas went over on business, and my husband accompanied him. They had a most interesting time: they spent a whole day at the Prefecture of Police with the Prefect himself—”

She stops speaking, and wonders a little why a sudden silence has fallen over the whole group of these pleasant Americans—for she takes Nancy to be an American too.

But the sudden silence—so deep, so absolute that it reminds Mrs. Arbuthnot of the old saying that when such a stillness falls on any company someone must be walking over