The End of Her Honeymoon by Marie Belloc Lowndes

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"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 Hotel 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 Senateur, 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
Hotel 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 spoken, which suddenly and most rudely opened the Senator's eyes to a
truth which the English lawyer had seen almost from the first moment of his
stay in Paris.

Gerald Burton started up. His face was curiously pale under its healthy
tan, but the Senator noticed that his son's eyes were extraordinarily
bright.

"Father?" He leant across the round table. "I am not going home with you.
In fact I am now writing to Mr. Webb to tell him that he must not expect me
back at the office for the present: I will cable as soon as I can give
him a date."

"Not going home?" repeated Senator Burton. "What do you mean, Gerald? What
is it that should keep you here after we have gone?" but a curious
sensation of fear and dismay was already clutching at the older
man's heart.

"I am never going back--not till John Dampier is found. I have promised
Mrs. Dampier to find him, and that whether he be alive or dead!"

Even then the Senator tried not to understand. Even then he tried to tell
himself that his son was only actuated by some chivalrous notion of keeping
his word, in determining on a course which might seriously damage
his career.

He tried quiet expostulation: "Surely, Gerald, you are not serious in
making such a decision? Mrs. Dampier, from what I know of her, would be.
the last to exact from you the fulfilment of so--so unreasonable a promise.
Why, you and I both know quite well that the Paris police, and also Mr.
Stephens, are convinced that this man Dampier just left his wife of his own
free will."

"I know they think that! But it's a lie!" cried Gerald with blazing eyes.
"An infamous lie! I should like to see Mr. Stephens dare suggest such a
notion to John Dampier's wife. Not that she is his wife, father, for I'm
sure the man is dead--and I believe--I hope that she's beginning to
think so too!"

"But if Dampier is dead, Gerald, then--" the Senator was beginning to lose
patience, but he was anxious not to lose his temper too, not to make
himself more unpleasant than he must do. "Surely you see yourself, my boy,
that if the man is dead, there's nothing more for you to do here,
in Paris?"

"Father, there's everything! The day I make sure that John Dampier is dead
will be the happiest day of my life." His voice had sunk low, he muttered
the last words between his teeth; but alas! the Senator heard them all
too clearly.

"Gerald!" he said gravely. "Gerald? Am I to understand--"

"Father--don't say anything you might be sorry for afterwards! Yes, you
have guessed truly. I love Nancy! If the man is dead--and I trust to God he
is--I hope to marry her some day. If--if you and Mr. Stephens are right--if
he is still alive--well then--" he waited a moment, and that moment was the
longest the Senator had ever known--"then, father, I promise you I will
come home. But in that case I shall never, never marry anybody else. Daisy
knows," went on the young man, unconsciously dealing his father another
bitter blow. "Daisy knows--she guessed, and--she understands."

"And does she approve?" asked the Senator sternly.

"I don't know--I don't care!" cried Gerald fiercely. "I am not looking for
anyone's approval. And, father?" His voice altered, it became what the
other had never heard his son's voice be, suppliant:--"I have trusted you
with my secret--but let it be from now as if I had not spoken. I beg of you
not to discuss it with Daisy--I need not ask you not to speak of it to
anybody else."

The Senator nodded. He was too agitated, too horror-stricken to speak, and
his agitation was not lessened by his son's final words.

EPILOGUE

I

It is two years to a day since John Dampier disappeared, and it is only
owing to one man's inflexible determination that the search for him has not
been abandoned long ago.

And now we meet Senator Burton far in body, if not in mind, from the place
where we last met him.

He is standing by an open window, gazing down on one of the fairest sights
civilised nature has to offer--that of an old English garden filled with
fragrant flowers which form scented boundaries of soft brilliant colour to
wide lawns shaded by great cedar trees.

But as he stands there in the early morning sunlight, for it is only six
o'clock, he does not look in harmony with the tranquil beauty of the scene
before him. There is a stern, troubled expression on his face, for he has
just espied two figures walking side by side across the dewy grass; the one
is his son Gerald, the other Nancy Dampier, still in the delicate and
dangerous position of a woman who is neither wife, maid, nor widow.

The Senator's whole expression has changed in the two years. He used to
look a happy, contented man; now, especially when he is alone and his face
is in repose, he has the disturbed, bewildered expression men's faces bear
when Providence or Fate--call it which you will--has treated them in a way
they feel to be unbearably unfair, as well as unexpected.

And yet the majority of mankind would consider this American to be
supremely blessed. The two children he loves so dearly are as fondly
attached to him as ever they were; and there has also befallen him a piece
of quite unexpected good fortune. A distant relation, from whom he had no
expectations, has left him a fortune "as a token of admiration for his high
integrity."

Senator Burton is now a very rich man, and because Daisy fancied it would
please her brother they have taken for the summer this historic English
manor house, famed all the world over to those interested in mediaeval
architecture, as Barwell Moat.

Here he, Daisy, and Nancy Dampier have already been settled for a week;
Gerald only joined them yesterday from Paris.

Early though it is, the Senator has already been up and dressed over an
hour; and he has spent the time unprofitably, in glancing over his diary of
two years ago, in conning, that is, the record of that strange, exciting
fortnight which so changed his own and his children's lives.

He has read over with pain and distaste the brief words in which he
chronicled that first chance meeting with Nancy Dampier. What excitement,
what adventures, and yes, what bitter sorrow had that chance meeting under
the porte cochere of the Hotel Saint Ange brought in its train! If only he
and Daisy had started out an hour earlier on that June morning just two
years ago how much they would have been spared.

As for the fortune left to him, Senator Burton is now inclined to think
that it has brought him less than no good. It has only provided Gerald with
an excuse, which to an American father is no excuse, for neglecting his
profession. Further, it has enabled the young man to spend money in a
prodigal fashion over what even he now acknowledges to have been a hopeless
quest, though even at the present moment detectives in every capital in
Europe are watching for a clue which may afford some notion as to the
whereabouts of John Dampier.

John Dampier? Grim, relentless spectre who pursues them unceasingly, and
from whose menacing, shadowy presence they are never free--from whom, so
the Senator has now despairingly come to believe, they never, never will
be free....

He had stopped his diary abruptly on the evening of that now far-off day
when his eyes had been so rudely opened to his son's state of mind and
heart. But though he has no written record to guide him the Senator finds
it only too easy, on this beautiful June morning, to go back, in dreary
retrospective, over these two long years.

Gerald had not found it possible to keep his rash vow; there had come a day
when he had had to go back to America--indeed, he has been home three
times. But those brief visits of his son to his own country brought the
father no comfort, for each time Gerald left behind him in Europe not only
his heart, but everything else that matters to a man--his interests, his
longings, his hopes.

Small wonder that in time Senator Burton and Daisy had also fallen into the
way of spending nearly the whole of the Senator's spare time in Europe, and
with Nancy Dampier.

Nancy? The mind of the watcher by the window turns to her too, as he
visions the slender, graceful figure now pacing slowly by his son's side.

Is it unreasonable that, gradually withdrawing herself from her old
friends, those friends who did not believe that Dampier had left her save
of his own free will, Nancy should cling closer and closer to her new
friends? No, not at all unreasonable, but, from the Senator's point of
view, very unfortunate. Daisy and Nancy are now like sisters, and to the
Senator himself she shows the loving deference, the affection of a
daughter, but with regard to the all-important point of her relations to
Gerald, none of them know the truth--indeed, it may be doubted if she knows
it herself.

But the situation gets more difficult, more strained every month, every
week, almost every day. Senator Burton feels that the time has come when
something must be done to end it--one way or the other--and the day before
yesterday he sought out Mr. Stephens, now one of his closest friends and
advisers, in order that they might confer together on the matter. As he
stands there looking down at the two figures walking across the dewy grass,
he remembers with a sense of boding fear the conversation with
Nancy's lawyer.

"There's nothing to be done, my poor friend, nothing at all! Our English
marriage laws are perfectly clear, and though this is a very, very hard
case, I for my part have no wish to see them altered."

And the Senator had answered with heat, "I cannot follow you there at all!
The law which ties a living woman to a man who may be dead, nay, probably
is dead, is a monstrous law."

And Mr. Stephens had answered very quietly, "What if John Dampier be
alive?"

"And is this all I can tell my poor son?"

And then it was that Mr. Stephens, looking at him doubtfully, had answered,
"Well no, for there is a way out. It is not a good way--I doubt if it is a
right way--but still it is a way. It is open to poor little Nancy to go to
America, to become naturalized there, and then to divorce her husband, in
one of your States, for desertion. The divorce so obtained would be no
divorce in England, but many Englishmen and Englishwomen have taken that
course as a last resort--" He had waited a moment, and then added, "I
doubt, however, very, very much if Nancy would consent to do such a thing,
even if she reciprocates--which is by no means sure--your
son's--er--feeling for her."

"Feeling?" Senator Burton's voice had broken, and then he had cried out
fiercely, "Why use such an ambiguous word, when we both know that Gerald is
killing himself for love of her--and giving up the finest career ever
opened to a man? If Mrs. Dampier does not reciprocate what you choose to
call his 'feeling' for bet, then she is the coldest and most ungrateful
of women!"

"I don't think she is either the one or the other," had observed Mr.
Stephens mildly; and he had added under his breath, "It would be the better
for her if she were--Believe me the only way to force her to consider the
expedient I have suggested--" he had hesitated as if rather ashamed of what
he was about to say, "would be for Gerald to tell her the search for Mr.
Dampier must now end--and that the time has come when he must go back to
America--and work."

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.

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