The End of Her Honeymoon | Page 3

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 H?tel Saint Ange!"
"Have you ever stayed in the H?tel 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 H?tel 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 coch��re 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,