Book II
20. Chapter XX.
(continued)
They had not gone to the Italian Lakes: on reflection,
Archer had not been able to picture his wife in
that particular setting. Her own inclination (after a
month with the Paris dressmakers) was for mountaineering
in July and swimming in August. This plan they
punctually fulfilled, spending July at Interlaken and
Grindelwald, and August at a little place called Etretat,
on the Normandy coast, which some one had recommended
as quaint and quiet. Once or twice, in the
mountains, Archer had pointed southward and said:
"There's Italy"; and May, her feet in a gentian-bed,
had smiled cheerfully, and replied: "It would be lovely
to go there next winter, if only you didn't have to be in
New York."
But in reality travelling interested her even less than
he had expected. She regarded it (once her clothes were
ordered) as merely an enlarged opportunity for walking,
riding, swimming, and trying her hand at the fascinating
new game of lawn tennis; and when they finally
got back to London (where they were to spend a fortnight
while he ordered HIS clothes) she no longer concealed
the eagerness with which she looked forward to
sailing.
In London nothing interested her but the theatres
and the shops; and she found the theatres less exciting
than the Paris cafes chantants where, under the blossoming
horse-chestnuts of the Champs Elysees, she had
had the novel experience of looking down from the
restaurant terrace on an audience of "cocottes," and
having her husband interpret to her as much of the
songs as he thought suitable for bridal ears.
Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas
about marriage. It was less trouble to conform with the
tradition and treat May exactly as all his friends treated
their wives than to try to put into practice the theories
with which his untrammelled bachelorhood had dallied.
There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife
who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free;
and he had long since discovered that May's only use
of the liberty she supposed herself to possess would be
to lay it on the altar of her wifely adoration. Her innate
dignity would always keep her from making the gift
abjectly; and a day might even come (as it once had)
when she would find strength to take it altogether back
if she thought she were doing it for his own good. But
with a conception of marriage so uncomplicated and
incurious as hers such a crisis could be brought about
only by something visibly outrageous in his own conduct;
and the fineness of her feeling for him made that
unthinkable. Whatever happened, he knew, she would
always be loyal, gallant and unresentful; and that pledged
him to the practice of the same virtues.
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