The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ