Mrs. Rutherford had one long, stormy interview with her eldest son, and learning therein that his determination to marry Miss Nugent was fixed and unalterable, she had with commendable wisdom accepted the situation, and resolved to so order the conduct of herself and her relatives as to give the scandalous world no room for that contemptuous pity and abundant gossip which an open rupture between herself and her son would doubtless have occasioned.
The manner of the wooing had been in this wise: John Archer, a sober, staid gentleman of great wealth, was Clement Rutherford's most intimate friend, and naturally, when the Archers moved into their new and splendid villa at Newport, Clement was invited to spend a few weeks with them--an invitation which he readily accepted. A few days after his arrival, Mrs. Archer, who was a pretty, lively little coquette, not in the least sobered by some thirteen years of married life, offered to drive him out in her little phaeton. "John has just given me a new pair of ponies," she said--"such perfect beauties and so gentle that I long to drive them." So the pretty, stylish equipage, with its fair driver and faultless appointments, made its first appearance on the avenue that afternoon, and also, I am sorry to say, its last; for the "gentle beauties" afore-said, excited to emulation by the number of spirited steeds around them, became ambitious of distinction, and sought for and decidedly obtained it by running away, thereby overturning the phaeton, breaking the harness, bruising Mrs. Archer severely and dislocating Mr. Rutherford's ankle.
Mrs. Archer was as well as ever in a few days, but the injuries received by her guest proved sufficiently serious to compel him to maintain a recumbent position for a long time, and prevented him from walking for several weeks. She made every arrangement possible for his comfort, and she had a charming little reception-room on the ground floor, adjoining the library, fitted up as a bed-chamber, and installed him there; so that as soon as he was able to quit his bed for a sofa, he could be wheeled into the latter apartment, and there enjoy the distractions of literature and society. For a few days after he made his first appearance there his lovely hostess was all attention and devotion; but, finding that he was anything but an agreeable or impressionable companion, she soon wearied of his society. Mr. Archer, shortly after the accident had taken place, had been summoned from home by important business connected with some mining property which he possessed, and which necessitated his presence in the interior of Pennsylvania; so Mrs. Archer, thus left with the entertainment of her most uncongenial guest exclusively confided to her care, came speedily to the conclusion that he was a nuisance, and began to look about for a substitute to relieve her from her unwelcome duties. She decided that her pretty governess, who spoke French so well, and sang little French chansonettes so sweetly, and got herself up in such a charming manner, giving so much "chic" and style even to the simplest of toilettes, was just the person to take upon herself the task of amusing the uninteresting invalid.
"Do look after Mr. Rutherford a little, there's a dear, good creature," whispered Mrs. Archer confidentially to Miss Nugent. "He is dreadfully tiresome, to be sure, but John thinks the world of him, you know, and it would not exactly do to leave him alone all the time. I wish him to receive every attention while he is in the house, of course; but as for sitting for hours at a time with him in that stuffy little library--just in the height of the season, too--why, I cannot think of doing it. If you will just go and sit with him sometimes, and read to him a little, it will be an absolute charity to me. I'll see that Alice and Emily do not get into any mischief."
Which, considering that the young ladies in question were, one twelve, the other ten years of age, and both much addicted to flirtation and dancing the "German," was rather a rash promise and inconsiderately made.
So Miss Nugent was definitely installed as reader and garde malade in general, and Clement Rutherford soon learned to await her coming with impatience and to welcome her with delight. All his life long will he remember those summer days, when her voice and the low plash of the far-off ocean waves wove themselves together into music as she read, and when the blue splendors of her lustrous eyes lent a new meaning to the poet's story as it flowed in melodious verses from her lips. Then came a day when the book was laid aside, and the impassioned utterances of poetry gave place to the more prosaic but not less fervent accents of a newly-awakened passion. Cold, silent and morose as Clement Rutherford had always been, it had so happened that but few women had ever attempted to attract him, notwithstanding his wealth and social position; and the interested motives of those few had been so apparent that he had been repelled and disgusted, instead of being fascinated, by their wiles; so that Miss Nugent's grace and beauty and syren charms proved all too potent for his unoccupied though icy heart to resist; and thus it chanced that the day before Mr. Rutherford left Newport he astonished his hostess by requesting a private interview with her, and therein announcing his engagement to her governess.
"You could have knocked me down with a feather," Mrs. Archer said afterward to an intimate friend. "I never should have suspected that such a quiet, stupid man as he was would fall in love in that ridiculous kind of a way. Good gracious! how indignant old Mrs. Rutherford will be! and I shall be blamed for the whole affair, no doubt. I wish John had never brought the man here--I never did like him; and then, too, it is so provoking to lose Miss Nugent just now, while we are at Newport. Of course I can find no one to replace her till we return to New York. Well, I always was an unlucky little woman."
The marriage took place in the latter part of September, only a few weeks after the engagement had been first announced. Mrs. Rutherford, true to her resolution of making the best of the affair, was careful that none of the usual courtesies and observances should be neglected. The bridal gifts from the Rutherford family, if less splendid, were as numerous as they would have been had Mr. Rutherford married a member of his mother's decorous, high-bred "set," and all his immediate relatives called most punctiliously on the bride when the newly-wedded pair arrived in New York after their six weeks' trip to Philadelphia and Washington.
Mr. Rutherford decided to take rooms at the Brevoort House till he could purchase a suitable residence. His mother's splendid home was not thrown open to receive him and his unwelcome bride, as it would have been had he made a choice more consonant with her wishes.
But we have wandered far from the dinner given by Mrs. Rutherford in honor of her new daughter-in-law, and with which our chapter commences.