The Nymph and the Lamp

by Thomas H Raddall

  “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.

  “It’s strange,” she went on in that musing voice. “I suppose it’s been in the back of my mind all along—ever since you mentioned a job ‘ashore,’ and living in Halifax or Montreal. We’ve both been dreaming nonsense.”

  “No!”

  “Oh yes, Matthew! Listen to me, please! You wanted to give up your post on Marina because you guessed that life in such a place would be unbearable to me. You thought—we both thought that love in a bungalow by the Arm or even a flat in Montreal would be nothing less than heaven. But all the time I knew it couldn’t work. It simply couldn’t. You’d never be happy, Matthew—please listen—not really happy in what you called a madhouse that day I first talked to you. For it is mad, all of it.” She gave her head a backward toss, a gesture that rejected not merely Halifax but the whole frenzied continent. “I found that out yesterday between six o’clock and seven. When I came to you in the teashop I was the complete lunatic—Bedlam could teach me nothing more.”

  Carney did not try to understand these vague references to Mrs. Paradee’s establishment. He knew she had been unhappy there but this harsh, almost strident note in her voice was disturbing; and it hurt him to see the mouth that last night had been so warm and generous twisted now in a wry smile that made another creature of her altogether. He was still under the spell of those miraculous hours which had given him back his youth and fulfilled his early dreams of an enchanting woman given to him alone. He longed to remain enchanted. This change in her was like a change of sky before storm. What was she about to say?

  He could read nothing in the averted face. Isabel sat rigid, as if she could not bring herself to utter what she thought. For half an hour she did not move. The horses stamped impatiently. The cabby turned a curious glance from time to time. A party of children wandered up from the shore and stared at his immobile passengers. Suddenly she spoke.

  “Matthew, it comes to this. You must go back to Marina.”

  A silence. Then, “What about you?” he asked painfully.

  “Take me with you.”

  Having said this in a firm voice she closed her eyes, as if to shut out that mirror on the sea; but she remained tense, leaning forward with her face towards the harbor mouth, towards the immense reach of the North Atlantic and that far speck on the face of it which meant home to Carney and was such a mystery to her. For several moments Carney sat dumb, drenched in a warm flow of relief. Slowly she turned to him, and the coachman’s sidelong eye beheld the passengers he had taken for father and daughter clasped in a passionate kiss there in the open carriage, in the pouring sunshine of the afternoon. He was astonished, even shocked, and he did not fully recover until the young woman cried something incomprehensible and the bearded blond man turned and shouted up to him “Five dollars if you get us downtown by four o’clock!”

  CHAPTER 10

  Many times afterward Isabel recalled with laughter that wild dash through the streets of Halifax in the old victoria, the tremendous clatter of hoofs, the whirr and rattle of the wheels, the dogs, the shouts of the cabby, the startled pedestrians and motor-drivers, the derisive small boys, the carriage swaying through the downtown traffic like a barque under full sail in a crowded tideway.

  There was little time for shopping. Carney pressed his pocketbook upon her, and with this she made her way swiftly through one of those stores that sell everything from luggage to silk stockings. The dreamy mood was gone. Once more she was the efficient young woman best known to Hurd, casting up a mental list of things required, seeing, pricing, buying, moving on. At last in a taxi laden with parcels and new hand-baggage, and permitting herself a tremor of excitement, she arrived at the ferry wharf where Carney was waiting with his suitcases. On the way over the harbor to Dartmouth she passed him the depleted pocketbook.

  “I’ve been awfully extravagant.”

  “Pshaw!”

  “Matthew, I’ve never spent so much money at one time in my life. It could have been such fun if there’d been more time going about from shop to shop, trying on dozens of things, and refusing to make up my mind until the very last. Who ever heard of a woman buying a trousseau in an hour? But I’ve got some nice things—you’ll see. And some practical things, of course. It’s really a wonderful feeling, darling, starting a new life with every stitch fresh from the shop. I’m so grateful.” She caught up his hand and pressed her lips upon it in one of those swift instinctive gestures that so charmed him.

  “I went in to see Hurd,” he said irrelevantly.

  She raised an apprehensive face. “Oh! What did he say?”

  “For a time he couldn’t say anything, though his mouth was open. He gaped. He stared at me through those pince-nez glasses as if I’d gone completely off my keel. I had to smile—couldn’t help it—he looked so like a stranded sculpin. Finally he offered congratulations in a sickly sort of way, and had the Benson girl make out a check for your salary up to the end of the month—very handsome of him when you stop to think of it. Here it is.”

  She glanced at the check and put it in her purse.

  “What did she say—Miss Benson?”

  “Not a word.”

  “She must have thought a lot.”

  “I daresay.”

  “What about me—on the ship, I mean. They’ll be expecting you alone.”

  “I asked Hurd to phone Captain O’Dell and tell him I’d be accompanied by my wife. It won’t make any difference in the arrangements. I’ve got a cabin to myself, and O’Dell’s used to female passengers, lightkeepers’ wives and so on, traveling up and down the coast.”

  “And what about me at Marina?”

  “I sent a wireless message to Skane, the chap I left in charge. He’ll see that everything’s tidy. MacGillivray’s coming off the island this trip—his time is up. Young Sargent’s to stay. That’ll leave you and me, Skane and Sargent, and of course the cook.”

  Isabel sank back against the cab cushions. Through the window she caught a glimpse of the battered spiles of the ferry approach, but her mind was far beyond the Dartmouth waterfront.

  “You told Hurd we were married?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’d better give me the wedding ring.” Carney fumbled in a pocket and produced it. She held out her hand.

  “Put it on, please, and kiss me.”
He obeyed.

  “Now give me the license.”

  “You have it now—you put it in your purse when we came out of the bureau.”

  She sat up hastily and looked in the purse.

  “So I did. I’d forgotten. My mind’s in such a whirl.”

  “By Jingo, I just thought—O’Dell could marry us, couldn’t he?”

  “Not according to that license man. In two days we’ll be on Marina. In any case I wouldn’t want that—like crying our affair all over the ship. They’d all think it queer. They’d all wonder why, with the city full of preachers, we didn’t think of getting married till the ship was on its way to Marina. I’d much rather let them think you’d met and married me respectably some time during your three months’ leave. There are people, the Quakers I think, and people in Scotland somewhere, who marry just by announcing their intention and taking each other. Well, we’ve got the license to witness our intention—and we’ve certainly taken each other. My poor strait-laced Matthew, don’t look so serious! I’m satisfied—aren’t you?”

  “You know I am. But I thought women were fussy about such things.”

  “I’m not ‘women,’ Matthew Carney. I’m me. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “As if I could!”

  Captain O’Dell met them at the gangway, an unusual honor. Hurd’s message had astounded him, and now his old friendship for Carney was overlaid by a morbid curiosity. He suspected that the lonely man from Marina had fallen victim to some artful painted creature seeking marriage and respectability, of which she would sicken in a month on his island. He cast a cynical eye upon Isabel as she walked up the gangway; but Carney introduced his wife with such an enormous pride that the captain was touched, and in another moment he was shaking hands with a calm young woman with an erect carriage and a sensitive face, not at all pretty, and innocent of paint. He approved, and at once felt sorry for her. She was so obviously city-bred. He thought of the life on Marina, so simple and primitive and so deadly dull, especially for women, and wondered by what persuasions Carney had induced her to come. And how long would she stay? The Lord Elgin called at Marina three or four times a year with stores and mail, and the islanders reckoned time by her appearances. O’Dell gave Carney’s bride one trip, or two at best; but he concealed these thoughts with a burst of affability, slapping Carney’s shoulder and calling him a sly old dog and a lucky dog, asking Isabel with a cadaverous smile what she saw in the fellow, and shouting in his high voice for a couple of seamen to look after their baggage.