The End of Her Honeymoon by Marie Belloc Lowndes (literature books to read .TXT) 📖

them for a brother and sister) were here on business, not, as he had supposed, on pleasure.

“Come in and wait here,” he said gravely. “This is the doctors’ room, but madame can sit here for a moment while the formalities are gone through.”

He flung open a door, and showed them into a curious, old-fashioned looking sitting-room, strangely unlike the waiting-room which would have been found attached, say, to an American or British mortuary.

An ornate writing-table filled up one corner of the room, and, opposite the two windows, covering the whole of the blank wall, was a narrow glass case running from floor to ceiling.

From this case young Burton quickly averted his eyes, for it was filled with wax models of heads which might have been modelled from the denizens of Dante’s Inferno.

“I’m afraid I must now leave you for a moment,” he said gently; “sit over here, Mrs. Dampier, and look out on the river.”

And Nancy obeyed with dull submission. She gazed on the bright, moving panorama before her, aware, in a misty, indifferent way, that the view was beautiful, that Jack would have thought it so.

This bend of the Seine is always laden with queer, picturesque craft, and just below the window by which she sat was moored a flat-bottomed barge which evidently served as dwelling place for a very happy little family. One end of the barge had been turned into a kind of garden, there was even a vine-covered arbour, under which two tiny children were now playing some absorbing game.

And this glimpse of ordinary normal life gradually brought a feeling of peace, almost of comfort, to Nancy’s sore heart. She wondered if she would ever be happy again—happy as those little children playing outside were happy, without a thought of care in the world: that had been the kind of simple, unquestioning happiness she too had thoughtlessly enjoyed till the last three days.

When Gerald Burton came back he was glad rather than grieved to see that tears were running down her face.

But a moment later, as they followed their guide down a humid, dark passage her tears stopped, and a look of pinched terror came into her eyes.

Suddenly there fell on their ears loud, whirring, jarring sounds.

“What’s that?” cried Nancy in a loud voice. Her nerves were taut with suspense, quivering with fear of what she was about to see.

And the janitor, as if he understood her question, turned round reassuringly. “Only our refrigerating machines, madame. We think them wonderfully quiet, considering. They whirr on night and day, they are never stilled. As for me—” he added jovially—“I would miss the noise very much. But as I lie in bed listening to the sound I know that all is well. It would be a very serious thing indeed for us if the machines stopped, even for ten minutes—” he shook his head mysteriously.

Nancy breathed a little more easily. She had not understood what it was exactly that he had said, but his voice had sounded cheerful and kind: and she remained for a while ignorant of the meaning and object of the machines by which they passed quickly in a great room filled with moving wheels, and, even on this hot June day, full of icy breaths.

As they came to the end of the engine-room their guide turned round and gave the young American a quick, warning look. “C’est ici,” he said, under his breath. And Gerald stepped quickly in front of Mrs. Dampier.

“Is what we are going to see very horrible?” he whispered hurriedly. “I wish this lady to be spared as far as may be from seeing anything especially painful.”

“As to horrible—well, it depends, monsieur, on what is thought horrible! A good many of my pensioners have been dangerous customers in their time—but now? Fortunately, monsieur, the dead cannot bite!” and he smiled at his own grim joke.

Gerald Burton shuddered involuntarily, but as he and Nancy followed the man from the engine-room he gave a sigh of relief, for they had emerged into a wide, airy shed.

The place looked like a workshop of sorts, for it was lined, on one side, with what looked like gigantic chests of drawers, painted black; while standing about on the stone pavement were long white deal packing cases. Over in a corner was a black box, of which the lid was loose.

“You said Number 4, monsieur?” said the man in a business-like tone. “Well, I will get you out Number 4. Kindly stand just over there—not in the sunlight, that might prevent your seeing clearly.” He added, speaking far more gently and kindly than he had yet done, “Madame must not be frightened. It will be all over in a moment.”

Gerald looked down at his companion. Her face seemed to have become quite small, like that of a child, but the pupils of her eyes had dilated: as she stared up at him fearfully he likened them, in his heart, to deep unfathomable pools.

She came close up to him, and then, without stopping to think, simply following a natural instinct, he put his arm round her shoulder; so would he have done to his sister in a moment of similar distress.

“Don’t be too frightened,” he whispered, “it will all be over very, very soon, Mrs. Dampier. Somehow I don’t think you have anything to fear.”

“Please stand over in that corner,” said the janitor, pointing towards the black box Gerald Burton had noticed when they had first come into the yard. “We have a poor lady in that box who was only brought in an hour ago! She was run over, killed by an omnibus—such a pity, for she is such a nice fresh-looking lady: not more than about thirty years of age. We expect her family any moment; they will know her by her wedding ring, and by a little locket with a child’s hair in it.”

Even as he was speaking the man was opening a small, inconspicuous door, situated close to that which gave into the refrigerating-engine room.

Gerald’s arm slipped down from Nancy’s shoulder. She had put out her hand gropingly, as a blind child might have done, and he was now holding the poor little hand tightly clasped in his firm grasp.

There came a harsh rumbling sound, and then there was wheeled out into the open yard an inclined plane hitched up on huge iron wheels. To the inclined plane was bound a swathed, rigid figure.

“Here is Number 4,” said the man in a subdued tone. “I will uncover his face so that madame and monsieur may see if it is the gentleman for whom they are seeking.”

A strange tremor shot through Gerald Burton. He was shaken with a variety of sensations of which the predominant feeling was that of repulsion. Was he at last about to gaze at the dead face of the man who, with the one paramount exception of that same man’s wife, had filled his mind and thoughts to the exclusion of all else since he had first heard the name of John Dampier? Was he now to make acquaintance with the stranger who had yet in so curious and sinister a way become his familiar?

Nancy gently withdrew her hand from his: leaning slightly forward, she gazed at the swathed stark form which might possibly—so much she had told herself at once—be that of John Dampier.

Very slowly the man drew off that portion of the sheet which covered the upper part of the body, and, as he did so, Gerald Burton heard the woman standing by his side utter a long, fluttering sigh of relief.

Thank God it was not Jack—not her Jack!

The fine, well-cut face was that of a man about Gerald Burton’s own age. The features were stilled in the awful immobility of death: but for that immobility, the dead man lying there before them might have been asleep.

“An Englishman,” said the janitor thoughtfully, “or perchance an American? A finely built fellow, monsieur. A true athlete. Not a wound, not a touch! Just dropped dead yesterday afternoon in a public gymnasium.”

“How extraordinary it is,” observed Gerald Burton in a low voice, “that he has not yet been claimed by his friends—”

“Oh no, monsieur, not extraordinary at all! We in this country write to our children every day when we are separated from them—that is if we can afford the stamps. Not so English or American people. They think their children are sure to be all right. In about a fortnight we shall have enquiries for Number 4, hardly before then.”

“And by that time,” said Gerald slowly, “I suppose the poor fellow will have been buried.”

“Oh no, monsieur—” the man laughed, as if the other’s remark struck him as being really very funny. “Why, we keep some of them as long as fifteen months! Those drawers are full of them—” he pointed to the long black chests which lined one side of the shed. “Would monsieur like to see some of my pensioners? I have men, women, ay, and children too, cosily tucked away in there.”

A low exclamation of horror escaped from Nancy Dampier’s lips. She turned ashily pale. At last she understood what it was the janitor was saying….

The man looked at her with kindly concern. “Tiens!” he said, “isn’t that strange? It happens again and again! People like madame come here—quite quiet, quite brave; and then, though overjoyed at not finding the person they came to seek—they suddenly shudder and turn pale; sometimes I have known them faint!”

“Kindly let us out by the shortest and quickest way,” said Gerald quickly.

“Pardon, monsieur, the law exacts that Number 4 must remain in your presence for a quarter of an hour.” The man shrugged his shoulders. “You see some people, especially ladies, are apt to think afterwards that they may have made a mistake: that their sight was at fault, and so on. That is why this tiresome regulation is now in force. I should like to oblige monsieur, but to do so would get me into trouble.”

He stopped speaking, and stood waiting, at attention.

And then, as they stood there in silence, Gerald, looking beyond the still, swathed figure stretched out before him, allowed his eyes to rest on these black boxes, each containing one poor tenantless shell of humanity, from which the unquenchable spirit of man had been suddenly, violently expelled: and as he looked, he missed something that should have been there—the sign, the symbol, of the cross.

A flood of memories came surging through his mind—memories of childish prayers learnt at his mother’s knee, of certain revisions which time had brought to his first innocent, unquestioning faith. And with those memories came anger and a sense of humiliation. For there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to show that these boxes before him held what had once been the dwelling-place of that daily miracle, the sentient soul of man. These defenceless dead had been subjected to a last, continuous, intolerable insult; in their flesh he felt that his own humanity was degraded. Here was nothing to separate the human dead from the beasts of the field; these boxes would have looked the same had they held merely the bodies of animals prepared for the inquisitive, probing research of science.

His young imagination, strung to the highest pitch, penetrated those shuttered receptacles and showed him on the face of each occupant that strange ironic smile with which the dead husk of man seems often to betray the full knowledge now possessed by the spirit which has fled. That riddle of existence, of which through the ages philosophers and kings had sought the key, was now an open book to all those who lay here in the still majesty of death. Yes, they could well afford to smile—to smile at