The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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      Chapter IV

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      The afternoon wore itself away, and to two out of the four people who spent it together in the pleasant salon of the Burtons' suite of rooms the hours, nay the very minutes, dragged as they had never dragged before.

      Looking back to that first day of distress and bewilderment, Nancy later sometimes asked herself what would have happened, what she would have done, had she lacked the protection, the kindness--and what with Daisy Burton almost at once became the warm affection--of this American family?

      Daisy and Gerald Burton not only made her feel that they understood, and, in a measure, shared in her distress, but they also helped her to bear her anguish and suspense.

      Although she was not aware of it very different was the mental attitude of their father.

      Senator Burton was one of those public men of whom modern America has a right to be proud. He was a hard worker--chairman of one Senate committee and a member of four others; he had never been a brilliant debater, but his more brilliant colleagues respected his sense of logic and force of character. He had always been unyielding in his convictions, absolutely independent in his views, a man to whom many of his fellow-countrymen would have turned in any kind of trouble or perplexity sure of clear and honest counsel.

      And yet now, as to this simple matter, the Senator, try as he might, could not make up his mind. Nothing, in his long life, had puzzled him as he was puzzled now. No happening, connected with another human being, had ever so filled him with the discomfort born of uncertainty.

      But the object of his--well, yes, his suspicions, was evidently quite unconscious of the mingled feelings with which he regarded her, and he was half ashamed of the ease with which he concealed his trouble both from his children and from their new friend.

      Nancy Dampier was far too ill at ease herself to give any thought as to how others regarded her. She had now become dreadfully anxious, dreadfully troubled about Jack.

      Much of her time was spent standing at a window of the corridor which formed a portion of the Burtons' "appartement." This corridor overlooked the square, sunny courtyard below; but during that first dreary afternoon of suspense and waiting the Hôtel Saint Ange might have been an enchanted palace of sleep. Not a creature came in or out through the porte cochère--with one insignificant exception: two workmen, dressed in picturesque blue smocks, clattered across the big white stones, the one swinging a pail of quaking lime in his hand, and whistling gaily as he went.

      When a carriage stopped, or seemed to stop, in the street which lay beyond the other side of the quadrangular group of buildings, then Nancy's heart would leap, and she would lean out, dangerously far over the grey bar of the window; but the beloved, and now familiar figure of her husband never followed on the sound, as she hoped against hope, it would do.

      At last, when the long afternoon was drawing to a close, Senator Burton went down and had another long conversation with the Poulains.

      The hotel-keeper and his wife by now had changed their tone; they were quite respectful, even sympathetic:

      "Of course it is possible," observed Madame Poulain hesitatingly, "that this young lady, as you yourself suggested this morning, Monsieur le Sénateur, is suffering from loss of memory, and that she has imagined her arrival here with this artist gentleman. But if so, what a strange thing to fancy about oneself! Is it not more likely--I say it with all respect, Monsieur le Sénateur--that for some reason unknown to us she is acting a part?"

      And with a heavy heart "Monsieur le Sénateur" had to admit that Madame Poulain's view might be the correct one. Nancy's charm of manner, even her fragile and delicate beauty, told against her in the kindly but shrewd American's mind. True, Mrs. Dampier--if indeed she were Mrs. Dampier--did not look like an adventuress: but then does any adventuress look like an adventuress till she is found to be one?

      The Frenchwoman suggested yet another theory. "I have been asking myself," she said, smiling a little wryly, "another question. Is it not possible that this young lady and her husband had a quarrel? Such incidents do occur, even during honeymoons. If the two had a little quarrel he may have left her at our door--just to punish her, Monsieur le Sénateur. He would know she was safe in our respectable hotel. Your sex, if I may say so, Monsieur le Sénateur, is sometimes very unkind, very unfeeling, in their dealings with mine."

      Monsieur Poulain, who had said nothing, here intervened. "How you do run on," he said crossly. "You talk too much, my wife. We haven't to account for what has happened!"

      But Senator Burton had been struck by Madame Poulain's notion. Men, and if all the Senator had heard was true, especially Englishmen, do behave very strangely sometimes to their women-folk. It was an Englishman who conceived the character of Petruchio. He remembered Mrs. Dampier's flushed face, the shy, embarrassed manner with which she had come forward to meet him that morning. She had seemed rather unnecessarily distressed at not being able to make the hotel people understand her: she had evidently been much disappointed that her husband had not left a message for her.

      "My son thinks it possible that Mr. Dampier may have met with an accident on his way to the studio."

      A long questioning look flashed from Madame Poulain to her husband, but Poulain was a cautious soul, and he gave his wife no lead.

      "Well," she said at last, "of course that could be ascertained," and the Senator with satisfaction told himself that she was at last taking a proper part in what had become his trouble, "but I cannot help thinking, Monsieur le Sénateur, that we might give this naughty husband a little longer--at any rate till to-morrow--to come back to the fold."

      And the Senator, perplexed and disturbed, told himself that after all this might be good advice.

      But when he again went upstairs and joined the young people, he found that this was not at all a plan to which any one of the three was likely to consent. In fact as he came into the sitting-room where Nancy Dampier was now restlessly walking up and down, he noticed that his son's hat and his son's stick were already in his son's hands.

      "I think I ought to go off, father, to the local Commissaire of Police. There's one in every Paris district," said Gerald Burton abruptly. "Mrs. Dampier is convinced that her husband did go out this morning, even if the Poulains did not see him doing so; and she and I think it possible, in fact, we are afraid, that he may have met with an accident on his way to the studio."

      As he saw by his father's face that this theory did not commend itself to the Senator, the young man went on quickly:--"At any rate my doing this can do no harm. I might just inform the Commissaire that a gentleman has been missing since this morning from the Hôtel Saint Ange, and that СКАЧАТЬ