‘I’m quite sure he doesn’t; hasn’t
the least suspicion.’
’Of course not. But it’s wonderful
how she has escaped. Your informant—how
did she find it out? You say she had the story
from the girl’s own lips. But why?
She must have shown that she knew something.’
Crewe imparted such details as had come to his knowledge;
they were meagre, and left many obscurities, but Mrs.
Damerel rewarded him with effusive gratitude, and
strengthened the spell which she had cast upon this
knight of Farringdon Street.
Every day Tarrant said to himself: ’I am
a free man; I was only married in a dream.’
Every night he thought of Nancy, and suffered heartache.
He thought, too, of Nancy’s child, his own son.
That Nancy was a tender mother, he knew from the letter
she had written him after the baby’s birth,—a
letter he would have liked to read again, but forbore.
Must not the separation from her child be hard?
If he saw the poor little mortal, how would the sight
affect him? At moments he felt a longing perhaps
definable as the instinct of paternity; but he was
not the man to grow sentimental over babies, his own
or other people’s. Irony and sarcasm—very
agreeable to a certain class of newspaper readers—were
just now his stock-in-trade, and he could not afford
to indulge any softer mode of meditation.
His acquaintances agreed that the year of absence
had not improved him. He was alarmingly clever;
he talked well; but his amiability, the poetry of
his mind, seemed to have been lost in America.
He could no longer admire or praise.
For his own part, he did not clearly perceive this
change. It struck him only that the old friends
were less interesting than he had thought them; and
he looked for reception in circles better able to
appreciate his epigrams and paradoxes.
A few weeks of such life broke him so completely to
harness, that he forgot the seasonable miseries which
had been wont to drive him from London at the approach
of November. When the first fog blackened against
his windows, he merely lit the lamp and wrote on,
indifferent. Two years ago he had declared that
a London November would fatally blight his soul; that
he must flee to a land of sunshine, or perish.
There was little time, now, to think about his soul.
One Monday morning arrived a letter which surprised
and disturbed him. It ran thus:
’Mrs. Eustace Damerel presents her compliments
to Mr. Tarrant, and would take it as a great favour
if he could call upon her, either to-morrow or Tuesday,
at any hour between three and seven. She particularly
desires to see Mr. Tarrant on a private matter of mutual
interest.’
Now this could have but one meaning. Mrs. Eustace
Damerel was, of course, Nancy’s relative; from
Nancy herself, or in some other way, she must have
learnt the fact of his marriage. Probably from
Nancy, since she knew where he lived. He was
summoned to a judicial interview. Happily, attendance
was not compulsory.
