THE END OF HER HONEYMOON. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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to be making a very good income, too! Yet, artists being such eccentric, extravagant fellows, doubtless Nancy's modest little fortune would come in useful--so those about them argued carelessly.
Then one of her acquaintances, a thought more good-natured than the rest, arranged that lovely, happy Nancy should be married from a pleasant country house, in a dear little country church. Braving superstition, the wedding took place in the last week of May, and bride and bridegroom had gone to Italy--though, to be sure, it was rather late for Italy--for three happy weeks.
Now they were about to settle down in Dampier's Paris studio.
Unluckily it was an Exhibition Year, one of those years, that is, which, hateful as they may be to your true Parisian, pour steady streams of gold into the pockets of fortunate hotel and shop keepers, and which bring a great many foreigners to Paris who otherwise might never have come. Quite a number of such comfortable English folk were now looking forward to going and seeing Nancy Dampier in her new home--of which the very address was quaint and unusual, for Dampier's studio was situated Impasse des Nonnes.
They were now speeding under and across the vast embracing shadow of the Opera House. And again Dampier slipped his arm round his young wife. It seemed to this happy man as if Paris to-night had put on her gala dress to welcome him, devout lover and maker of beauty, back to her bosom.
"Isn't it pleasant to think," he whispered, "that Paris is the more beautiful because you now are in it and of it, Nancy?"
And Nancy smiled, well pleased at the fantastic compliment.
She pressed more closely to him.
"I wish--I wish--" and then she stopped, for she was unselfish, shy of expressing her wishes, but that made Dampier ever the more eager to hear, and, if possible, to gratify them.
"What is it that you wish, dear heart?" he asked.
"I wish, Jack, that we were going straight home to the studio now--instead of to an hotel."
"We'll get in very soon," he answered quickly. "Believe me, darling, you wouldn't like going in before everything is ready for you. Mère Bideau has her good points, but she could never make the place look as I want it to look when you first see it. I'll get up early to-morrow morning and go and see to it all. I wouldn't for the world you saw our home as it must look now--the poor little living rooms dusty and shabby, and our boxes sitting sadly in the middle of the studio itself!"
They had sent their heavy luggage on from England, and for the honeymoon Nancy had contented herself with one modest little trunk, while Dampier had taken the large portmanteau which had been the useful wedding present of the new friend and patron in whose house he had first seen his wife.
Swiftly they shot through the triple arch which leads from the Rue de Rivoli to the Carousel. How splendid and solitary was the vast dimly-lit space. "I like this," whispered Nancy dreamily, gazing up at the dark, star-powdered sky.
And then Dampier turned and caught her, this time unresisting, yielding joyfully, to his breast. "Nancy?" he murmured thickly. "Nancy? I'm afraid!"
"Afraid?" she repeated wonderingly.
"Yes, horribly afraid! Pray, my pure angel, pray that the gods may indulge their cruel sport elsewhere. I haven't always been happy, Nancy."
And she clung to him, full of vague, unsubstantial fears. "Don't talk like that," she murmured. "It--it isn't right to make fun of such things."
"Make fun? Good God!" was all he said.
And then his mood changed. They were now being shaken across the huge, uneven paving stones of the quays, and so on to a bridge. "I never really feel at home in Paris till I've crossed the Seine," he cried joyously. "Cheer up, darling, we shall soon be at the Hôtel Saint Ange!"
"Have you ever stayed in the Hôtel Saint Ange?" she said, with a touch of curiosity in her voice.
"I used to know a fellow who lived there," he said carelessly. "But what made me pick it out was the fact that it's such a queer, beautiful old house, and with a delightful garden. Also we shall meet no English there."
"Don't you like English people?" she asked, a little protestingly.
And Dampier laughed. "I like them everywhere but in Paris," he said: and then, "But you won't be quite lonely, little lady, for a good many Americans go to the Hôtel Saint Ange. And for such a funny reason--"
"What reason?"
"It was there that Edgar Allan Poe stayed when he was in Paris."
Their carriage was now engaged in threading narrow, shadowed thoroughfares which wound through what might have been a city of the dead. From midnight till cock-crow old-world Paris sleeps, and the windows of the high houses on either side of the deserted streets through which they were now driving were all closely shuttered.
"Here we have the ceremonious, the well-bred, the tactful Paris of other days," exclaimed Dampier whimsically. "This Paris understands without any words that what we now want is to be quiet, and by ourselves, little girl!"
A gas lamp, burning feebly in a corner wine shop, lit up his exultant face for a flashing moment.
"You don't look well, Jack," Nancy said suddenly. "It was awfully hot in Lyons this morning--"
"We stayed just a thought too long in that carpet warehouse," he said gaily,--"And then--and then that prayer carpet, which might have belonged to Ali Baba of Ispahan, has made me feel ill with envy ever since! But joy! Here we are at last!"
After emerging into a square of which one side was formed by an old Gothic church, they had engaged in a dark and narrow street the further end of which was bastioned by one of the flying buttresses of the church they had just passed.
The cab drew up with a jerk. "C'est ici, monsieur."
The man had drawn up before a broad oak porte cochère which, sunk far back into a thick wall, was now inhospitably shut.
"They go to bed betimes this side of the river!" exclaimed Dampier ruefully.
Nancy felt a little troubled. The hotel people knew they were coming, for Jack had written from Marseilles: it was odd no one had sat up for them.
But their driver gave the wrought-iron bell-handle a mighty pull, and after what seemed to the two travellers a very long pause the great doors swung slowly back on their hinges, while a hearty voice called out, "C'est vous, Monsieur Gerald? C'est vous, mademoiselle?"
And Dampier shouted back in French, "It's Mr. and Mrs. Dampier. Surely you expect us? I wrote from Marseilles three days ago!"
He helped his wife out of the cab, and they passed through into the broad, vaulted passage which connected the street with the courtyard of the hotel. By the dim light afforded by an old-fashioned hanging lamp Nancy Dampier saw that three people had answered the bell; they were a middle-aged man (evidently mine host), his stout better half, and a youth who rubbed his eyes as if sleepy, and who stared at the newcomers with a dull, ruminating stare.
As is generally the case in a French hotel, it was Madame who took command. She poured forth a torrent of eager, excited words, and at last Dampier turned to his wife:--"They got my letter, but of course had no address to which they could answer, and--and it's rather a bore, darling--but they don't seem to have any rooms vacant."
But even as he spoke the fat, cheerful-looking Frenchwoman put her hand on the young Englishman's arm. She had seen the smart-looking box of the bride, the handsome crocodile skin bag of the bridegroom, and again she burst forth, uttering again and again the word "arranger."
Dampier turned once more, this time much relieved, to his wife: "Madame Poulain (that's her name, it seems) thinks she can manage to put us up all right to-night, if we don't mind two very small rooms--unluckily not on the same floor. But some people are going away to-morrow and then she'll have free some charming rooms overlooking the garden."
He took a ten-franc piece out of his pocket as he spoke, and handed it to the gratified cabman:--"It doesn't seem too much for a drive through fairyland"--he