‘No. We needn’t lose it. Only stay near me, and I will keep the secret, through everything. You will only need, then, just to support yourself, and that is so easy. I will tell Mary how it is. She can be trusted, I am sure she can. She would do anything for me. She knows that father was not thinking of a man such as you. It would be cruelly wrong if I lost everything. I will tell her, and she will help me. Scarcely any one comes to the house, as it is; and I will pretend to have bad health, and shut myself up. And then, when the time comes, Mary will go away with me, and—and the child shall be taken care of by some people we can trust to be kind to it. Horace is going to live in lodgings; and Mrs. Damerel, I am sure, won’t come to see me again; and I can get rid of other people. The Barmbys shall think I am sulking about the will; I’m sure they think already that I dislike them because of it. Let them think it; I will refuse, presently, to see them at all. It’s only a few months. If I tell people I’m not well, nobody will feel surprised if I go away for a month or two—now—soon. Mary would go with me, of course. I might go for December and January. Father didn’t mean I was never to have change of air. Then there would be February and March at home. And then I might go away again till near the end of May. I’m sure we can manage it.’
She stopped, breathless. Tarrant, who had listened with averted face, turned and spoke judicially.
‘There’s one thing you’re forgetting, Nancy. Do you propose that we shall never acknowledge the child? Remember that even if you were bold enough, after our second marriage, to acknowledge it in the face of scandal—that wouldn’t be safe. Any one, if suspicion is aroused, can find out when we were actually married.’
‘We can’t think of that. The child may not live.’
Tarrant moved, and the movement startled Nancy. It meant that she had pained him, perhaps made him think of her with repugnance.
‘I hardly know what I am saying. You know I don’t wish that. But all I can think of now is to keep you near me. I can’t bear to be separated from you. I love you so much more than you love me.’
‘Let me just tell you what I had in mind, Nancy. Supposing the secret can be kept, we must eventually live abroad, that is to say, if our child is not to grow up a stranger to us, which neither you nor I could wish. Now, at Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, a lot of Americans always spend the winter. If I made acquaintances among them, it might be a very useful step, it would be preparing for the future.’
To Nancy this sounded far from convincing. She argued against it in a perfectly natural way, and as any one else would have done who knew Tarrant. More than once he had declared to her that he would rather die than drag out his life in one of the new countries, that he could not breathe in an atmosphere of commercialism unrelieved by historic associations. Nancy urged that it would be better to make a home on the continent, whither they could go, at any moment, without a sense of exile.
‘So it comes to this,’ he interrupted, with an air of resignation. ‘I must refuse Vawdrey’s offer, and, in doing so, refuse an excellent chance of providing for our future, if—what is by no means improbable—the secret should be discovered. I must turn to journalism, or be a clerk. Well and good. My wife decrees it.’
And he began to hum an air, as if the matter were dismissed. There was a long silence.