The Nymph and the Lamp (14 page)

“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.

The cabin built for the Deputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries (and never used by that worthy) delighted Isabel. With a schoolgirl's eagerness she exclaimed over the red carpet, the green plush couch, the maple panels, the gilt mirror, the great mahogany berth with its brass-handled drawers below, the water carafe and tumblers secure in their rack, the opulent green curtain sliding on brass rings across the doorway when the door itself stood open for air, the adjoining bathroom, the open ports through which the harbor water cast a dappled sunshine on the bulkhead. She turned to Carney and kissed him with all the enthusiasm of a bride whose husband has secured the bridal suite of, say, the
Mauretania.

He smiled and left her to unpack, walking out upon the deck with his solid tread to watch the last-minute stores and mail bags coming aboard. When the bell rang for the evening meal he found her freshly arrayed in one of her purchases, a smart yellow frock, and with her mouth full of hairpins, putting the final touches to her coiffure.

“How do you like my dress?” she demanded through the pins.

“Lovely!”

“It's awfully short, do you mind? I feel all legs.”

“You look very nice, legs and all.”

“It's the fashion,” she said, a little self-consciously.

They entered the saloon together and found the officers standing politely at their places about the table. The purser and the young third mate were absent at their duties. The chief officer, a handsome man with curly gray hair and a ruddy, somewhat choleric face, was at the table's foot. The second mate, a pockmarked man of thirty-five, and the other passenger, a fat and cheerful assistant lightkeeper bound for the lonely rock of Saint Paul, were on the settee side. Captain O'Dell asked Isabel to sit at the head of the table on his left, opposite the chief engineer, and placed Carney at the chief officer's right.

The formality of these arrangements, a tribute of which she was quite unconscious, seemed to fit the pattern of that wonderful private cabin and she accepted it as the normal habit of the ship. Carney, familiar with the easygoing air that usually obtained with passengers going to posts about the coast, gave O'Dell a humorous glance. But the captain was devoting himself to Isabel, and in sidelong glances so was every man about the board. The sudden reappearance of the famous Carney with a wife was a phenomenon as startling in its way as the appearance of a bright new satellite beside the Polar Star, and they regarded her with almost the same professional interest.

She was quick to sense it. Their curiosity was a challenge and she accepted it with spirit, chatting vivaciously with O'Dell and the walrus across the table, and from time to time casting a smiling glance to meet Carney's own adoring gaze. He was proud of her in the presence of these men he had known for years and he showed it in his eyes, in his smile, in his absent conversation with the florid man beside him.

The happiest moment came with the dessert, when at a signal from Captain O'Dell the steward passed around with a bottle of champagne smuggled from Saint Pierre, and they all rose and drank, in the captain's words, “To the new queen of Marina, and long may she reign!” There followed a burst of handclapping and demands for a speech. She refused, smiling, and aware that she was blushing hotly as all brides are supposed to do but as well-trained queens are not. Then came demands on Carney, who refused as well, protesting with truth that he was too poor a hand at speechmaking to do the subject justice. There it ended, a pleasant little episode. There were sounds of winches turning on the deck outside, and the voices of longshoremen, and in a few moments O'Dell and his mates gulped the last of their coffee and withdrew to take the ship to sea.

The sun had withdrawn behind the harbor hills. A few clouds high in the west caught the last of the light with a sudden blaze as if afire. In the shadow of Citadel Hill the lower city already was putting on the artificial glitter of its night. In the still air the smoke of its chimneys rose and mingled over steep tiers of rooftops rising from the water, so that all were veiled and mysterious, and in this haze the lights winked like fireflies. Halifax was beautiful then, and Isabel, standing beside Carney on the bridge, felt a momentary pang. Then the memory of that shabby little court behind Mrs. Paradee's establishment rose out of the dusk like an apparition. Again she thought of the sailors packing for sea.
And now I—I too,
she whispered to herself triumphantly. She turned her face toward the bow, and far ahead saw the Mauger's Beach lighthouse flashing in the twilight, a signpost on the way to adventure.