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, pa.s.sionately, 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 amba.s.sador.
"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 pa.s.sage 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 s.p.a.ce 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.