The house had at once absorbed all of Kent’s savings, and was consequently, unlike a city apartment, an object to be considered seriously. This was the attitude that his men friends held toward the venture; neither did it seem strange to any one of the twoscore of assorted male temperaments that the couple should desire to spend their first summer entirely away from the paths of conventional social restraint. All the criticism, of which there was a belated April shower, mingled with not a few hailstones, came from the bride’s friends, her own elder sister Agatha taking the lead by saying to a select few who had dropped in a couple of weeks after the wedding to talk it over and hear the latest news of the bride, that Marjory seemed determined to slump, and had no sense whatever of the duties she owed society. While that any woman with her wedding presents, possessing a grain of pride, would try to make a front during the first year at least, adding as a final thrust, “So selfish in Marjory, short-sighted too; she’ll ruin Billy’s prospects for a place in the firm by keeping him away from all his friends. If they had only taken a smart little apartment, they would have been able to give half a dozen select dinners before the season breaks, and possibly they might have managed to get the Head of the Firm and his wife to come to one, and see the silver service he sent them, or at least give them a return invitation, for if Mrs. Coates should take up Marjory, you know their fortune, social and financial, would be made.”
“Marjory can entertain in the country quite as well as in town, and it’s far less stuffy from now on; it’s almost May, you know,” said little Mary Taylor, called Pussy from her demure and confiding ways, which none the less covered sharp, if delicately pointed, claws, when their use became necessary for the defence of her friends; she had been maid of honour at the wedding, and was a staunch friend of the bride.
“You know English couples often borrow a country house from friends to settle in for the honeymoon, if they’ve none of their own,” she continued. “There is nothing lovelier than a newly furnished country house, all white enamelled furniture, flowered chintz, and muslin draperies, with the maids in light blue or pink chambray and ruffled bib aprons; besides, Agatha, you know that to be asked to a week-end party is more of a compliment than a dinner. I shall make Margie invite me to the very first of them. Then, of course, she will be sure to go in for a specialty,—golf, tennis, motoring, or the garden craze; everybody rushes you out to see the garden now, and tells you how many loads of earth it took to fill it in, and who the landscape architect was.
“I only hope Margie will have an English garden with wooden benches; the seats in an Italian garden have no backs, and are so cold if you sit out in the moonlight, in a thin petticoat; and of course that’s one of the things that one goes to week-end parties for, the moonlight spooning, I mean.”
“You may banish all your pictures of that sort of thing,” said Agatha, speaking in a tone in which mystery and disgust were blended. “There will be no draperies or garden seats or maids; my sister has but one person to do everything, an old black woman named Juno, who wears a turban, and who, I believe, was Billy’s nurse. As for the house, it’s in the middle of a field, with some gloomy woods behind it; there’s hardly a thing in it but wall-papers, Japanese matting, and flower vases, for Marjory has absolutely sent all of her magnificent silver and bric-à-brac to storage at Tiffany’s. For the rest, they’ve a ginger-coloured pony and an absurd buggy, by way of a trap, and I shouldn’t be surprised to find that they all, including the pony, take their meals in the kitchen, and that Billy wears an apron and waits on Marjory and Juno, for she says they intend to lead the simple life this summer. Think of it! Deliberately committing social suicide.”
Agatha’s voice had a tragic break in it. Poor Agatha, who had never committed a social error in her life, and had made the most of everything almost to the extent of separating a poached egg on toast garnished with parsley into three separate courses, toast, egg, and salad! Yet at thirty-eight she had acquired nothing but an equivocal sense of correctness and a complexion that refused either to stand the light of day or to receive graciously and absorb the improvers that the owner lavished upon it.
Before Pussy Taylor or any one else could recover from their astonishment, the door was flung open, the butler announced in his formal drawl,—Mrs. Rodney Kent, and Marjory herself came in, stopping short in the middle of the room with a quizzical expression as she saw the very conscious faces of her friends.
“My dear,” purred Pussy Taylor, throwing her arms around the bride’s neck, “you’ve come just in time to defend yourself. Oh, yes, of course we were talking about you, and now, before you begin about the country, we must know instantly why you have on your last spring suit, which is of an entirely different shade of brown from this season’s wear, instead of your lovely reseda going-away gown; what you are doing in the city at five o’clock in the afternoon, when you are supposed to be wandering in green lanes and picking violets hand in hand with Billy, who, every now and then, kneels to tie your shoes; and lastly, why you are personally conducting those three queer bundles, and what do they contain? I’m sure if I had appeared at the front door similarly laden, that last butler of Agatha’s training would have sent me to the basement.”
Marjory looked about for a safe place of deposit for her bundles, which she finally confided to a tufted chair; then, throwing off her jacket and drawing off her gloves very deliberately, she took the proffered half of the seat that Pussy occupied by the tea-table.
Marjory was not what is commonly called a pretty woman; every feature was alert and too well adapted for the expression of humour for mere prettiness. A brunette of good colouring, she possessed that quality of charm that no one denies, even while they cannot locate its exact source. Matching her forefingers together, she began to count off the answers to Pussy’s questions.