The End of Her Honeymoon by Marie Belloc Lowndes (books to read now .TXT) 📕

was an angel—she repeated the rather absurdly incongruous word to herself with a very tender feeling in her heart. He always treated her not only as if she were something beautiful and rare, but something fragile, to be respected as well as adored….

He had left her so little during the last three weeks that she had never had time to think about him as she was thinking of him now; “counting up her mercies,” as an old-fashioned lady she had known as a child was wont to advise those about her to do.

At last she looked round her for a bell. No, there was nothing of the sort in the tiny room. But Nancy Dampier had already learned to do without all sorts of things which she had regarded as absolute necessities of life when she was Nancy Tremain. In some of the humbler Italian inns in which she and Jack had been so happy, the people had never even heard of a bell!

She jumped out of bed, put on her pretty, pale blue dressing-gown—it was a fancy of Jack’s that she should wear a great deal of pale blue and white—and then she opened the door a little way.

“Madame!” she called out gaily. “Madame Poulain?” and wondered whether her French would run to the words “hot water”—yes, she thought it would. “Eau chaude”—that was hot water.

But there came no answering cry, and again, this time rather impatiently, she called out, “Madame Poulain?”

And then the shuffling sounds of heavy footsteps made Nancy shoot back from the open door.

“Yuss?” muttered a hoarse voice.

This surely must be the loutish-looking youth who, so Nancy suddenly remembered, knew a little English.

“I want some hot water,” she called out through the door. “And will you please ask your aunt to come here for a moment?”

“Yuss,” he said, in that queer hoarse voice, and shuffled downstairs again. And there followed, floating up from below, one of those quick, gabbling interchanges of French words which Nancy, try as she might, could not understand.

She got into bed again. Perhaps after all it would be better to allow them to bring up her “little breakfast” in the foreign fashion. She would still be in plenty of time for Jack. Once in the studio he would be in no hurry, or so she feared, to come back—especially if on his way out he had opened her door and seen how soundly she was sleeping.

She waited some time, and then, as no one came, grew what she so seldom was, impatient and annoyed. What an odd hotel, and what dilatory, disagreeable ways! But just as she was thinking of getting up again she heard a hesitating knock.

It was Madame Poulain, and suddenly Nancy—though unobservant as is youth, and especially happy youth—noticed that mine hostess looked far less well in the daytime than by candle-light.

Madame Poulain’s stout, sallow face was pale, her cheeks puffy; there were rings round the black eyes which had sparkled so brightly the night before. But then she too must have had a disturbed night.

In her halting French Mrs. Dampier explained that she would like coffee and rolls, and then some hot water.

“C’est bien, mademoiselle!”

And Nancy blushed rosy-red. “Mademoiselle?” How odd to hear herself so addressed! But Madame Poulain did not give her time to say anything, even if she had wished to do so, for, before Mrs. Dampier could speak again, the hotel-keeper had shut the door and gone downstairs.

And then, after a long, long wait, far longer than Nancy had ever been made to wait in any of the foreign hotels in which she and her husband had stayed during the last three weeks, Madame Poulain reappeared, bearing a tray in her large, powerful hands.

She put the tray down on the bed, and she was already making her way quickly, silently to the door, when Nancy called out urgently, “Madame? Madame Poulain! Has my husband gone out!”

And then she checked herself, and tried to convey the same question in her difficult French—“Mon mari?” she said haltingly. “Mon mari?”

But Madame Poulain only shook her head, and hurried out of the room, leaving the young Englishwoman oddly discomfited and surprised.

It was evidently true what Jack had said—that tiresome Exhibition had turned everything in Paris, especially the hotels, topsy-turvy. Madame Poulain was cross and tired, run off her feet, maybe; her manner, too, quite different now from what it had been the night before.

Nancy Dampier got up and dressed. She put on a pale blue linen gown which Jack admired, and a blue straw hat trimmed with grey wings which Jack said made her look like Mercury.

She told herself that there could be no reason why she shouldn’t venture out of her room and go downstairs, where there must surely be some kind of public sitting-room.

Suddenly remembering the young American’s interchange of words with his sister, she wondered, smiling to herself, if she would ever see them again. How cross the young man’s idle words had made Jack! Dear, jealous Jack, who hated it so when people stared at her as foreigners have a trick of staring. It made Nancy happy to know that people thought her pretty, nay beautiful, for it would have been dreadful for Jack, an artist, to marry an ugly woman….

Locking her box she went out onto the shallow staircase, down the few steps which led straight under the big arch of the porte cochère. It was thrown hospitably open on to the narrow street now full of movement, colour, and sound. But in vivid contrast to the moving panorama presented by the busy, lane-like thoroughfare outside, was the spacious, stone-paved courtyard of the hotel, made gay with orange trees in huge green tubs. Almost opposite the porte cochère was another arch through which she could see a glimpse of the cool, shady garden Jack remembered.

Yes, it was a strangely picturesque and charming old house, this Hôtel Saint Ange; but even so Nancy felt a little lost, a little strange, standing there under the porte cochère. Then she saw that painted up on a glass door just opposite the stairs leading to her room was the word “Bureau”: it was doubtless there that Jack had left word when he would be back.

She went across and opened the door, but to her surprise there was no one in the little office; she hadn’t, however, long to wait, for Madame Poulain’s nephew suddenly appeared from the courtyard.

He had on an apron; there was a broom in his hand, and as he came towards her, walking very, very slowly, there came over Nancy Dampier, she could not have told you why, a touch of repulsion from the slovenly youth.

“I wish to know,” she said, “whether my husband left any message for me?”

But the young man shook his head. He shuffled first on one foot and then on the other, looking miserably awkward. It was plain that he did not know more than a word or two of English.

“I am sure,” she said, speaking slowly and very distinctly, “that my husband left some kind of message with your uncle or aunt. Will you please ask one of them to speak to me?”

He nodded. “Si, mademoiselle” and walked quickly away, back into the courtyard.

“Mademoiselle” again! What an extraordinary hotel, and what bad manners these people had! And yet again and again Jack had compared English and French hotels—always to the disadvantage of the former.

Long minutes went by, and Nancy began to feel vexed and angry. Then there fell on her listening ears a phrase uttered very clearly in Madame Poulain’s resonant voice: “C’est ton tour maintenant! Vas-y, mon ami!”

And before she had time to try and puzzle out the sense of the words, she saw Monsieur Poulain’s portly figure emerge from the left side of the courtyard, and then—when he caught sight of the slim, blue-clad figure standing under his porte cochère—beat a hasty retreat.

Nancy’s sense of discomfort and indignation grew. What did these people mean by treating her like this? She longed with a painful, almost a sick longing for her husband’s return. It must be very nearly eleven o’clock. Why did he stay away so long?

A painful, choking feeling—one she had very, very seldom experienced during the course of her short, prosperous life, came into her throat.

Angrily she dashed away two tears from her eyes.

This was a horrid hotel! The Poulains were hateful people! Jack had made a mistake—how could he have brought her to such a place? She would tell him when he came back that he must take her away now, at once, to some ordinary, nice hotel, where the people knew English, and where they treated their guests with ordinary civility.

And then there shot through Nancy Dampier a feeling of quick relief, for, walking across the courtyard, evidently on their way out, came a pleasant-looking elderly gentleman, accompanied by the girl whom Nancy had seen for a brief moment standing on the landing close to her bedroom door the night before.

These were English people? No, American of course! But that was quite as good, for they, thank heaven! spoke English. She could ask them to be her interpreters with those extraordinary Poulains. Jack wouldn’t mind her doing that. Why, he might have left quite an important message for her!

She took a step forward, and the strangers stopped. The old gentleman—Nancy called him in her own mind an old gentleman, though Senator Burton was by no means old in his own estimation or in that of his contemporaries—smiled a very pleasant, genial smile.

Nancy Dampier made a charming vision as she stood under the arch of the porte cochère, her slender, blue-clad figure silhouetted against the dark background by the street outside, and the colour coming and going in her face.

“May I speak to you a moment?” she said shyly.

“Why certainly.”

The American took off his hat, and stood looking down at her kindly. “My name is Burton, Senator Burton, at your service! What can I do for you?”.

The simple little question brought back all Nancy’s usual happy confidence. How silly she had been just now to feel so distressed.

“I’m Mrs. Dampier, and I can’t make the hotel people understand what I say,” she explained. “I mean Monsieur and Madame Poulain—and the nephew—I think his name is Jules—though he is supposed to speak English, is so very stupid.”

“Yes, indeed he is!” chimed in the girl whom her brother had called “Daisy.” “I’ve long ago given up trying to make that boy understand anything, even in French. But they do work him most awfully hard, you know; they have women in each day to help with the cleaning, but that poor lad does everything else—everything, that is, that the Poulains don’t do themselves.”

“What is it that you can’t make them understand?” asked Senator Burton indulgently. “Tell us what it is you want to ask them?”

“I only wish to know at what time my husband went out, and whether he left any message for me,” answered Nancy rather shamefacedly. “You see the hotel is so full that they put us on different floors, and I haven’t seen him this morning.”

“I’ll find that out for you at once. I expect Madame Poulain is in her kitchen just now.”

The Senator turned and went back into the courtyard, leaving his daughter and the young Englishwoman alone together.

“The Poulains seem such odd, queer people,” said Nancy hesitatingly.

“D’you think so? We’ve always found them all right,” said the girl, smiling. “Of course they’re dreadfully busy just now because of the Exhibition. The hotel is full of French people, and they give Madame Poulain a great deal of trouble. But she doesn’t grudge it, for she and her husband are