The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 cochère of the Hôtel 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 СКАЧАТЬ