“Yes; something very important. I have always wished it, but they would never give in to me. Not that mamma did not think me quite right, but it is very difficult to break a habit in a family. But you must do it, Arthur; it is not such a very old habit with you.”
“What is this great thing I am to do—give up smoking—take off my moustache?”
“Oh! no!” cried Nancy, horrified. “The nicest thing about you!” which pleased Arthur much, for it was still new enough to give him unfeigned and honest pride. “But I will tell you what it is. Nancy is so vulgar, so common, not a name for a lady; and it will not sound well here, abroad, where people have such pretty names. Call me Anna—I have always wished it. I was christened Anna Frances, you know.”
“And I could not think who she was when they married me to her,” cried Arthur. “I will call you what you like, my darling; but I like Nancy best.”
Did ever young people start on a honeymoon expedition with a better understanding? He planned a hundred places to take her to, and things to do. The theatre every night!—How Nancy’s eyes sparkled! and the Louvre, of which she was quite willing to admit that it must be very fine, without knowing what it was; and the Tuileries gardens with the band playing, and the beautiful shops in the Boulevards. Even to hear of these delights was enough to charm any bride. They were to go everywhere, to see everything, to walk about and drive about always these two together—nobody to interfere with them; and the play every night! What could any bride desire more?
CHAPTER II.
PARIS, with all its lamps and shop-windows, dazzled Nancy. It was before the days in which ruins were visible from that brilliant Rue de Rivoli, through which they drove to their hotel. She thought it was an illumination as she saw the sweeping circles of light in the Place de la Concorde, and the long line of lamps under the archways, and could not be persuaded that this was how the brightest of cities adorned herself every night. And when she opened her eyes next morning to the brilliancy of the winter sunshine, and saw the brightness and gaiety of everything around, Nancy was fairly transported out of herself. She had never even been in a great hotel before, for Arthur had taken her to London lodgings he had been in the habit of using, in Jermyn Street, which were not dazzling. But here everything was lovely, Nancy thought. They had a little appartement in one of the great hotels over-looking the garden of the Tuileries, with a little balcony; and from the white carpet with its bouquet, and the sparkling wood-fire which was so bright and clean, and supplemented the sunshine so delightfully, to the mirrors and gilding, and white panels of the walls, everything she looked upon filled Nancy with a bewildering delicious sense of having arrived at the summit of fineness and splendour, and being a lady indeed, a princess almost, enshrined in a bower of bliss. Nothing she had ever seen in all her limited experience was half so splendid; and the noiseless waiters who ran up and down with every luxury that Arthur could think of, and the dainty food, and the perpetual service bewildered her unaccustomed brain. This then was how great people lived! with carpets like velvet, sofas covered with satin, a host of eager servants to find out what they wanted, and bring them everything that could be thought of; mirrors to reflect them on every side (Nancy had never been so sure about the sit of her dress, or knew so well what her figure was like before—and it was a very pretty figure). No wonder they were happy! When they had breakfasted, a pretty Victoria, with a fur rug to cover their knees, came to the door, and in this they drove all about, taking what Arthur called a general view of Paris, its pretty streets, its river and quays, its boulevards, the Champs Elysées, brilliant in the sunshine, with the great arch at the end. When Arthur stopped to let her see Notre Dame, Nancy was respectful but failed a little in interest. It chilled her to go into a church in the middle of a week day so soon after she was married. Church was for Sundays, she felt, not a place to go into in the midst of laughing and talk. She felt it like a memento mori, a sudden chill upon her exhilaration, and supposed that Arthur took her there with the intention of making her remember her duty and her “latter end,” which was a suggestion she did not like.
“Now you shall see something quite different in the ecclesiastical way,” he said, stopping at another church before they went back to their hotel; for he felt that somehow, though he did not quite know how, Notre Dame had not been successful with Nancy. But she altogether refused to go into the Madeleine.
“I don’t know why you are so anxious that I should see the churches,” she said, pouting. “I never knew you were so religious.” Arthur made haste to disavow the imputation, as may be supposed, which all the same he did not like her to make. He was not “so religious,” but he did not like to hear women speak of the matter so—it was “bad taste.”
“It is because the building is supposed to be fine,” he said, standing at the door of the little carriage to hand her out; but Nancy declined firmly. If she could not think of her duty without being taken into a lot of churches to be reminded of religion and of dying, and all that sort of thing, she did not feel at all disposed to be instructed so—and they came in from their drive a little silent, and not so delighted with each other, and with everything about them as they had been when they went out, though Arthur, for his part, had not the slightest idea why.