Small wonder that Senator Burton found it hard to sleep last night, small wonder he has risen so early. He knows that his son is going to speak to Nancy, to tell her what Mr. Stephens has suggested she should do, and he suspects that now, at this very moment, the decisive conversation may be taking place.

II

Though unconscious that anxious, yearning eyes are following them, both Nancy Dampier and Gerald Burton feel an instinctive desire to get away from the house, and as far as may be from possible eavesdroppers. They walk across the stretch of lawn which separates the moat from the gardens in a constrained silence, she following rather than guiding her companion.

But as if this charming old-world plesaunce were quite familiar to him, Gerald goes straight on, down a grass path ending in what appears to be a high impenetrable wall of yew, and Nancy, surprised, then sees that a narrow, shaft-like way leads straight through the green leafy depths.

"Why, Gerald?" she says a little nervously—they have long ago abandoned any more formal mode of address, though between them there stands ever the spectre of poor John Dampier, as present to one of the two, and he the man, as if the menacing shadow were in very truth a tangible presence. "Why, Gerald, where does this lead? Have you ever been here before?"

And for the first time since they met the night before, the young man smiles. "I thought I'd like to see an English sunrise, Nancy, so I've been up a long time. I found a rose garden through here, and I thought it would be a quiet place for our talk."

It is strangely dark and still under the dense evergreen arch of the slanting way carved through the yew hedge; Nancy can only grope her way along. Turning round, Gerald holds out his strong hands, and taking hers in what seems so cool, so impersonal a grasp, he draws her after him. And Nancy flushes in the half darkness; it is the first time that she and Gerald Burton have ever been alone together as they are alone now, and that though they have met so very, very often in the last two years.

Nancy is at once glad and sorry when he suddenly loosens his grasp of her hands. The shadowed way terminates in a narrow wrought-iron gate; and beyond the gate is the rose garden of Barwell Moat, a tangle of exquisite colouring, jealously guarded and hidden away from those to whom the more familiar beauties of the place are free.

It is one of the oldest of English roseries, planned by some Elizabethan dame who loved solitude rather than the sun. And if the roses bloom a little less freely in this quiet, still enclosure than they would do in greater light and wilder air, this gives the rosery, in these hot June days, a touch of austere and more fragile beauty than that to be seen beyond its enlacing yews.

A hundred years after the Elizabethan lady had designed the rosery of Barwell Moat a Jacobean dame had added to her rose garden a fountain—one brought maybe from Italy or France, for the fat stone Cupids now shaking slender jets of water from their rose-leaved cornucopias are full of a roguish, Southern grace.

When they have passed through into this fragrant, enchanted looking retreat, Nancy cries out in real delight: "What an exquisite and lovely place! How strange that Daisy and I never found it!"

And then, as Gerald remains silent, she looks, for the first time this morning, straight up into his face, and her heart is filled with a sudden overwhelming sensation of suspense—and yes, fear, for there is the strangest expression on the young man's countenance, indeed it is full of deep, of violent emotion—emotion his companion finds contagious.

She tells herself that at last he has brought news. That if he did not tell her so last night it was because he wished her to have one more night of peace—of late poor Nancy's nights have become very peaceful.

John Dampier? There was a time—it now seems long, long ago—when Nancy would have given not only her life but her very soul to have known that her husband was safe, that he would come back to her. But now? Alas! Alas! Now she realises with an agonised feeling of horror, of self-loathing, that she no longer wishes to hear Gerald Burton say that he has kept his word—that he has found Dampier.

She prays God that nothing of what she is feeling shows in her face; and Gerald is far too moved, far too doubtful as to what he is to say to her, and as to the answer she will make to him, to see that she looks in any way different from what she always does look in his eyes—the most beautiful as well as the most loved and worshipped of human creatures.

"Tell me!" she gasps. "Tell me, Gerald? What is it you want to say to me? Don't keep me in suspense—" and then, as he is still dumb, she adds with a cry, "Have you come to tell me that at last you have found Jack?"

And he pulls himself together with a mighty effort. Nancy's words have rudely dispelled the hopes with which his heart has been filled ever since his father came to his room last night and told him what Mr. Stephens had suggested as a possible way out of the present, intolerable situation.

"No," he says sombrely, "no, Nancy, I have brought you no good news, and I am beginning to fear I never shall."

And he does not see even now that the long quivering sigh which escapes from her pale lips is a sigh of unutterable—if of pained and shamed—relief.

But what is this he is now saying, in a voice which is so unsteady, so oddly unlike his own?

"I think—God forgive me for thinking so if I am wrong—that I have always been right, Nancy, that your husband is dead—that he was killed two years ago, the night he disappeared—"

She bends her head. Yes, she too believes that, though there was a time when she fought, with desperate strength, against the belief.

He goes on breathlessly, hoarsely, aware that he is making what Mr. Stephens would call a bad job of it all: "I am now beginning to doubt whether we shall ever discover the truth as to what did happen. His body may still lie concealed somewhere in the Hotel Saint Ange, and if that is so, there's but small chance indeed that we shall ever, ever learn the truth."

And again she bends her head.

"I fear the time is come, Nancy, when the search must be given up."

He utters the fateful words very quietly, very gently, but even so she feels a pang of startled fear. Does that mean—yes, of course it must mean, that Gerald is going away, back to America?

A feeling of dreadful desolation fills her heart. "Yes," she says in a low tone, "I think you are right. I think the search should be given up."

She would like to utter words of thanks, the conventional words of gratitude she has uttered innumerable times in the last two years—but now they stick in her throat.

Tears smart into her eyes, stifled sobs burst from her lips.

And Gerald again misunderstands—misunderstands her tears, the sobs which tear and shake her slender body. But he is only too familiar with the feeling which now grips him—the feeling that he must rush forward and take her in his arms. It has never gripped him quite as strongly as it does now; and so he steps abruptly back, and puts more of the stone rim of the fountain between himself and that forlorn little figure.

"Nancy?" he cries. "I was a brute to say that. Of course I will go on! Of course we won't give up hope! It's natural that I should sometimes become disheartened."

He is telling himself resolutely that never, never will he propose to her the plan his father revealed to him last night. How little either his father or Mr. Stephens had understood the relation between himself and Nancy if they supposed that he, of all men, could make to her such a suggestion.

And then he suddenly sees in Nancy's sensitive face, in her large blue eyes that unconscious beckoning, calling look every lover longs to see in the face of his beloved....

They each instinctively move towards the other, and in a flash Nancy is in his arms and he is holding her strained to his heart, while his lips seek, find, cling to her sweet, tremulous mouth.

But the moment of rapture, of almost unendurable bliss is short indeed, for suddenly he feels her shrinking from him, and though for yet another moment he holds her against her will, the struggle soon ends, and he releases her, feeling what he has never yet felt when with her, that is, bewildered, hurt, and yes, angry.

And then, when she sees that new alien glance of anger in eyes which have never looked at her but kindly, Nancy feels a dreadful pang of pain, as well as of shamed distress. She creeps up nearer to him, and puts her hand imploringly on his arm—that arm which a moment ago held her so closely to him, but which now hangs, apparently nerveless, by his side.

"Gerald!" she whispers imploringly. "Don't be angry with me," and her voice drops still lower as she adds piteously, "You see, I knew we were doing wrong. I—I felt wicked."

And then, as he still makes no answer, she grows more keenly distressed. "Gerald?" she says again. "You may kiss me if you like." And as he only looks down at her, taking no advantage of the reluctant permission, she falters out the ill-chosen words, "Don't you know how grateful I am to you?"

And then, stung past endurance, he turns on her savagely:—"Does that mean that I have bought the right to kiss you?"

But as, at this, she bursts into bitter tears, he again takes her in his arms, and he does kiss her, violently, passionately, hungrily. He is only a man after all.

But alas! These other kisses leave behind them a bitter taste. They lack the wild, exquisite flavour of the first.

At last he tells her, haltingly, slowly, of Mr. Stephens' suggestion, but carefully as he chooses his words he feels her shrinking, wincing at the images they conjure up; and he tells himself with impatient self-reproach that he has been too quick, too abrupt—that he ought to have allowed the notion to sink into her mind slowly, that he should have made Daisy, or even his father, be his ambassador.

"I couldn't do that!" she whispers at last, and he sees that she has turned very white. "I don't think I could ever do that! Think how awful it would be if—if after I had done such a thing I found that poor Jack was not dead? Some time ago—I have never told you of this—some friend, meaning to be kind, sent me a cutting from a paper telling of a foreigner who had been taken up for mad in Italy, and confined in a lunatic asylum for years and years! You don't know how that story haunted me. It haunted me for weeks. You wouldn't like me to do anything I thought wrong, Gerald?"

"No," he says moodily. "No, Nancy—I will never ask you to do anything you think wrong." He adds with an effort, "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 their graves—is suddenly broken.

Mr. Dallas jumps to his feet. He is one of those men who never like sitting still very long. "May I have another lump of sugar, Miss Burton? We were speaking of Paris,—talk of muzzling the press, they know how to muzzle their press in grim earnest in Paris! Talk of suppressing the truth, they don't even begin to tell the truth there. The Tsar of Russia as an autocrat isn't in it with the Paris Prefect of Police!"

And two of his listeners say drearily to themselves that Mr. Dallas is a very ignorant man after all. He is evidently one of the many foolish people who believe the French police omnipotent.

But the Englishman goes happily on, quite unconscious that he is treading on what has become forbidden ground in the Burton family circle. "The present man's name is Beaucourt, a very pleasant fellow! He told me some astounding stories. I wonder if you'd like to hear the one which struck me most?"

He looks round, pleased at their attention, at the silence which has again fallen on them all, and which he naturally takes for consent.

Eagerly he begins: "It was two years ago, at the height of their Exhibition season, and of course Paris was crammed—every house full, from cellar to attic! Monsieur Beaucourt tells me that there were more than five hundred thousand strangers in the city for whose safety, and incidentally for whose health, he was responsible!"

He waits a moment, that thought naturally impresses him more than it does his audience.

"Well, into that gay maelstrom there suddenly arrived a couple of young foreigners. They were well-to-do, and what impressed the little story particularly on Monsieur Beaucourt's mind was the fact that they were on their honeymoon—you know how sentimental the French are!"

Mr. Dallas looks around. They are all gazing at him with upturned faces—never had he a more polite, a more attentive circle of listeners. There is, however, one exception: his old friend, Mr. Arbuthnot, puts his hand up to conceal a yawn; he has heard the story before.

"Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, these young people—Monsieur Beaucourt thinks they were Americans—had gone to Italy for their honeymoon, and they were ending up in Paris. They arrived late at night—I think form Marseilles—and most providentially they were put on different floors in the hotel they had chosen in the Latin Quarter. Well, that very night—"

Mr. Dallas looks round him triumphantly. He does not exactly smile, for what he is going to say is really rather dreadful, but he has the eager, pleased look which all good story-tellers have when they have come to the point of their story.

"I don't believe that one man in a million would guess what happened!" He looks round him again, and has time to note complacently that the son of his host, who has risen, and whose hands grip the back of the chair from which he has risen, is staring, fascinated, across at him.

"A very, very strange and terrible thing befell this young couple. That first night of their stay in Paris, between two and three the bridegroom developed plague! Monsieur Beaucourt tells me that the poor fellow behaved with the greatest presence of mind; although he cannot of course have known what exactly was the matter with him, he gave orders that his wife was not to be disturbed, and that the hotel people were to send for a doctor at once. Luckily there was a medical man living in the same street; he leapt on the dreadful truth, sent for an ambulance, and within less than half an hour of the poor fellow's seizure he was whisked away to the nearest public hospital, where he died five hours later."

Mr. Dallas waits a moment, he is a little disappointed that no one speaks, and he hurries on:—

"And now comes the point of my story! Monsieur Beaucourt assures me that the fact was kept absolutely secret. He told me that had it leaked out it might have half emptied Paris. French people have a perfect terror of what they call 'la Peste.' But not a whisper of the truth got about, and that though a considerable number of people had to know, including many of the officials connected with the Prefecture of Police. The Prefect showed me the poor fellow's watch and bunch of seals, the only things, of course, that they were able to keep; he really spoke very nicely, very movingly about it—"

And then, at last, the speaker stops abruptly. He has seen his host's son reel a little, sway as does a man who is drunk, and then fall heavily to the ground.

It is hours later. The sun has long set. Gerald opens his eyes; and then he shuts them again, for he wants to go on dreaming. He is vaguely aware that he is lying in the magnificent Jacobean four-post bed which he had been far too miserable, too agitated to notice when his father had brought him up the night before. But now the restful beauty of the spacious room, the fantastic old coloured maps lining the walls, affect him agreeably, soothe his tired mind and brain.

During that dreamy moment of half-waking he has seen in the shadowed room, for the lights are heavily shaded, the figures of his father and of Daisy; he now hears his father's whisper:—"The doctor says he is only suffering from shock, but that when he wakes he must be kept very quiet."

And Daisy's clear, low voice, "Oh, yes, father. When he opens his eyes perhaps we'd better leave him with Nancy."

Nancy? Then Nancy really is here, close to him, sitting on a low chair by the side of the bed. And when he opened his eyes just now she really had bent her dear head forward and laid her soft lips on his hand. It was no dream—no dream—

And then there comes over him an overwhelming rush of mingled feelings and emotions. He tries to remember what it was that had happened this afternoon—he sees the active, restless figure of the Englishman dancing queerly up and down as it had seemed to dance just before he, Gerald, fell, and he feels again the horrible wish to laugh which had seized him when that dancing figure had said something about Beaucourt having spoken "very nicely—"

"Curse Beaucourt! Such a fiend is only fit for the lowest depths of Hell."

Again he opens his eyes. Did he say the ugly words aloud? He thinks not, he hopes not, for Daisy only takes their father's hand in hers and leads him from the room.

"Nancy?" he says, trying to turn towards her. "Do we know the truth now? Is my search at an end?"

"Yes," she whispers. "We know the truth now—my dearest. Your search is at an end."

And as she gets up and bends over him, he feels her tears dropping on his face.

THE END



BOOKS BY MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

THE LODGER net, $1.25 THE END OF HER HONEYMOON net, $1.25 STUDIES IN LOVE AND TERROR net, $1.30 MARY PECHELL net, $1.30 THE CHINK IN THE ARMOUR net, $1.30 JANE OGLANDER net, $1.30