The Nymph and the Lamp (13 page)

Her face was pressed against his shoulder, concealed by her disordered hair, and when he attempted to brush the strands aside she murmured, “Don't.”

At last she said, “I'm sorry to be such a nuisance. I didn't want to cry. I was going to be so calm and sober about us—about everything. Will you get up and dress now, Matthew, please? Don't bring up my breakfast—I'd rather not eat until I've washed and dressed. Where can I wash?”

“There's a bathroom just along the hall.”

“I'll join you downstairs. Leave me a brush and comb, please, and give me half an hour.”

“So long?” he said, whimsically.

“My hair's a mess and my face must be frightful. I won't have you see me at my worst.”

“Very well. Shall I put up the blind?”

“No.”

She turned away as he rose. It did not take him long to dress. He returned from the bathroom and then departed once more. When the door closed she sat up and looked about the room. Carney's small leather dressing-case, purchased in Montreal, lay open on the small table by the bed. On the floor beneath the window lay his old worn suitcases, one closed, one open. The furniture was that of a cheap hotel, not quite so cheap as Mrs. Paradee's but quite as worn, as stark and uncomfortable; the footboard of the wooden bed was scratched as if a regiment of bibulous railwaymen had suffered nightmares in their shoes.

She stepped out of bed and ran up the blind. She went at once to the long mirror fastened on the door, and in the revealing flood of sunlight examined her reflection curiously, half expecting to find herself changed in some way by the experiences of the night. Carney's pajama jacket hung about her in enormous folds, and a smile appeared on the tousled creature in the glass. She flung off that ludicrous garment and saw a familiar figure, unaltered, even untouched. Amazing discovery! Often she had marveled at the poise of young married women, wondering how after intimacies and passions that she could only imagine they managed to retain their nonchalant air. Now she knew; but she was still astonished.

With this revelation past she inspected the figure in the glass more critically. What she saw was comforting. There's one thing, she told herself, you've got a nice bust and waist and very good legs. She surveyed them with the satisfaction of a woman whose physical properties have passed the supreme test, the gratifying of a man.

Turning away from this contemplation she was touched to find that Carney had gathered her things and laid them carefully on the chair. She dressed quickly. As she slipped on the frock she blessed her shopping choice of a stuff that did not rumple easily. In the bathroom mirror she found her lower eyelids swollen, leaving a shadowed fold beneath, a mark of last night's ardors or of the morning's tears, she was not sure which. She bathed her eyes carefully with cold water but the shadows remained. Philosophically she decided that they gave her a new and rather interesting look, and she turned to other matters. It took a long time with Carney's severely masculine brush and comb to smooth her tangled hair, and when she returned to the bedroom she had to hunt carefully over the floor and among the pillows for the scattered pins.

When she walked downstairs she found Carney waiting for her in the small lobby, a place reeking of stale tobacco and furnished with worn black-upholstered chairs and an array of brass spittoons. Two or three framed prints on the walls depicted trains of a bygone day, and there was a large and gaudy calendar devoted almost entirely to a nude young woman knee-deep in a pool.

From behind the desk a clerk with oily hair and a lean bilious face gave Isabel a cool stare. When they were seated in the empty dining room she said at once, “That man at the desk—didn't like the way he looked—at me.”

“You mustn't imagine things,” Carney said.

“What,” she persisted, “did you tell him—last night, I mean, when we came in?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“Tell me!”

He hesitated and flushed. “Well, it wasn't much. When I went to get my key he asked if the lady was my wife, and I said yes. He asked if you had any baggage and of course you hadn't, so I said no. I said you'd come unexpectedly. After all it was the truth.”

“Yes, and then?”

“He said it was customary in cases of that kind to give the clerk five dollars.”

“And did you?”

“Of course.”

Her eyes were furious. “I feel like a tart!”

“Don't say that.”

“I wish you'd punched him on the nose.”

“Exactly what I wanted to do at the time, but it would have made a nasty row.”

She sprang to her feet. “Please let's go somewhere else, Matthew, I couldn't eat here—I couldn't stay another minute. Everything's spoiled.”

He rose unhappily, “I'll get my bags and check out. Wait for me in the lobby.” But she would not linger under the cynical gaze of that creature behind the desk.

“I'll wait outside, in the fresh air.”

He phoned for a taxi and it drew up at the curb as he came out with his suitcases. They stepped in, and Carney called, “Drive us to a parson somewhere.”

“Any choice?” the cabby said.

They looked at each other. “Have you?” Isabel asked.

“None.” His eyes were shy and worshipful and she felt another surge of self-confidence.

“Well, so long as you're going to make an honest woman of me, Matthew, I think I'd prefer the Presbyterian kind. There's nothing more respectable. But it seems to me you've got to get a license first, and a ring—I refuse to be a wife without a ring. And what about our breakfast?”

“I hadn't thought of anything,” he admitted, with a boyish smile.

“It's a good thing one of us is sensible.”

With a rich extravagance they kept the cab waiting outside a restaurant while they consumed a leisurely breakfast, and it took them on their further pilgrimage to Carney's bank and to a jewelry shop. As they entered the shop Isabel determined on something cheap and simple; but she found what everyone finds in jewelry shops, that the cheap things are not simple and the simple things not cheap. Carney wanted to buy the best in the shop at once and without quibbling; but she objected.

“Those white gold things—they're too expensive, and I don't like them anyway. I daresay I'm old-fashioned but it seems to me I'd feel much more respectably married if the ring were plain yellow gold, like my mother's.”

The jeweler looked at her naked third finger, “Wouldn't you like a nice engagement ring as well?” he suggested shrewdly, “A nice diamond, now?”

“No.”

“Do!” Carney urged. He felt a lover's desire to load her with gifts, and she recognized it with a quick smile that lit her serious face.

“‘Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes'? No, Matthew, not for me. Really! I never cared much for jewelry, and it seems silly to wear a ring for an engagement that's only lasted, let me see, twelve hours or so. All I want is a wedding ring, a nice old fashioned yellow one, like that.” She pointed.

They came out with the nice gold ring in Matthew's pocket and she kissed him warmly when they got inside the cab.

“You're such a darling, Matthew.”

“I wish you'd let me buy the diamond as well.”

“You and your diamonds. I'm just a poor working girl.”

“And what am I?”

“A big blond monster with a beard. Tell the cabby where to go.”

The wedding license was a simple matter. As they turned to leave the bureau Isabel asked the clerk casually if he knew the address of the nearest Presbyterian clergyman. The man gave her a quizzical look.

“Yes. I do. Of course you realize that you can't be married for three days?”

“What!”

“Three days from the date on the license.”

“But that's absurd!” Isabel cried.

“No doubt, but it's the law of Nova Scotia.”

They came out into the street in a perturbed silence and paused beside the cab.

“Oh well,” Isabel said valiantly, “we'll just get a room at a decent hotel. Three days isn't long, and who's to know the difference?”

The cabby looked around and regarded them through the fumes of a cigarette hanging from his lip. “Where now?” he asked. Carney looked at her.

“You'll want to do some shopping, won't you? And we ought to go and see Hurd. We can't just run off without saying anything.”

“Couldn't we?” she asked, a little plaintively. “Well—you go, Matthew. He'll be awfully angry, and I'm such a coward.” She knew, better than Carney, what sort of thunderbolt the news would be to Hurd. She was even a little amused, foreseeing Hurd's dilemma—whether to upbraid Carney for taking away his secretary, or Miss Jardine for running off with his best outpost operator. But chiefly she thought of the Benson girl. She could see that young woman's smile.

“I won't set foot in the office again,” she added vigorously. “It's part of everything I want to forget.”

Matthew fingered his blond jaw, staring at the pavement. Her sudden resolve to cut herself away from all her old life mystified him, but it had brought him such a gift that he would not question any part of it.

“My dear,” he said slowly, “if you really want to leave everything behind, we shouldn't stay in Halifax. It's not a big city, after all. Every day something or someone would remind you…”

“Yes…Yes, I hadn't thought of that.”

“We ought to go somewhere else—Montreal, say. I could get a job there.”

She thought with dismay of the little bungalow and the garden beside the Arm. But what he said was true. She had known it ever since she wakened in the bed beside him, when her mind became so crystal clear after the delirious events of the night.

“I've been awfully selfish,” she cried. “What do you really want to do?”

“What you wish.”

“Ah yes, but you can't go on doing that, Matthew. You'd hate me after a time. Don't you remember what you told me in that restaurant by the docks—that nothing in the cities had any meaning for you now?”

He gave her the shy smile that made him seem so naive and young.

“That was before last night.”

“You're dodging my question!”

“If you can put everything behind you, so can I.”

“But it's all so different with you, Matthew! You had what you wanted of life, and I didn't. You were happy and I wasn't. But let's not stand here arguing. Tell the cabby to drive us somewhere.”

“Anywhere particular?”

“Yes, Point Pleasant.”

The voice of the cabby broke in lazily. “Autos ain't allowed in the park, lady. On'y hoss-cabs. How about Bedford Basin?”

“No,” Isabel said crisply, “I want to ride through the park. Take us to a livery stable—one that has carriages for hire.”

Half an hour later they were bowling sedately through the park gates in a victoria of somewhat tarnished appearance, but behind a pair of well-kept bays and with an authentic coach man in muttonchop whiskers and a bowler hat. Carney could not help chuckling.

“I daresay I'm out of date but this is my idea of luxury. I didn't know any of these things were left.”

“I thought you'd like it. There aren't many. You only see them in the park, usually with a pair of old ladies taking the seaside air. It is rather nice, isn't it?” She caught his arm and pressed it to her side. The wheels and the trotting hoofs made a pleasant sound on the gravel and the road wound through the pine woods in a green twilight pierced by swords of brilliant sunshine. Presently there was a cool draft in the green tunnel under the trees. The victoria came briskly down a long slope and emerged beside sea water. They passed groups of idlers and picnickers sprawling on the grass above the shore, then a rococo iron bandstand lonely on a small bluff overlooking the water. Suddenly the old battery was before them.

Isabel ordered the cabby to stop. Carney turned to her, smiling. He found her facing seaward in that attitude, pensive and somehow sad, in which he had discovered her before—as if she were alone once more, and as if on that gleaming expanse she watched once more for the image of Sir Lancelot. Silently he studied the pale profile so clearly cut against the dark woods of the farther shore. She was a creature of such quick moods that he was afraid, recalling how on the very doorstep of her lodgings after that first charming evening together she had refused to see him again. The weather of her spirit seemed so changeable, so utterly unpredictable, that he was dismayed. The thought of losing her now was terrible. It was an age before she spoke.

“Matthew, I had to come here. I've always come here when I wanted to think, and it seems to me I've been going on impulse ever since yesterday afternoon.”

“Yes?” he said thickly. He was trembling. He wanted to cry out urging her not to think, but an unconquerable honesty held him back. She was still gazing towards the harbor mouth. An old tern schooner with the light breeze barely filling its patched and discolored sails crept slowly down the reach towards Thrum Cap. Farther out, on the horizon, a passing steamer traced a black crayon stroke along the sky. A few gulls, very white and clean against the sea, dipped and tossed on the breeze like scraps of blown confetti. Somewhere a bell buoy clanged dolefully.