“Gracious!” Mrs. Enever exclaimed. “That is such an advantage, isn’t it? Just look at the Menemons! When they first appeared I heard people saying, ‘Shall we receive them?’ In no time those very same people were asking, ‘Will they receive us?’ ”
“It may be that I am censorious,” the groom’s mother continued, expansively. “It may be, though it is a fault which I try to guard against. But I am not precipitate, and that, I fear, Paul is. You will not believe me when I tell you that he has not known his wife eight weeks.”
“Gracious! I thought they had made mud pies together. Perhaps they will. Matrimony, don’t you think, is just full of adventure?”
“And I need not tell you,” Mrs. Usher added, “how grateful I am to the dispensation of Providence which, in putting me in mourning, relieved me of asking people here today. So, while there is that for which I am thankful, there is also that which perturbs. Do you not agree with me, Mr. Jones?”
“Entirely, Mrs. Usher. Every silver lining has its cloud.” The novelist was about to add further novelties, but Marie beckoned to him. He crossed the room.
“Where is Paul?” the girl asked.
“Playing billiards with your father, I fancy. In Latin countries it is customary for a bride to be taken aside by her mother. Here it is becoming fashionable for a father to disappear with the groom. But don’t let it worry you. Disappearances are deceptive.”
In the doorway the butler loomed.
“Harris,” the bride called, “is the carriage here? Fetch me a cup of bouillon.” She turned to the others. “It is after one. The ship sails at two. But you will all stop and lunch with my father, won’t you? Mr. Jones, would you mind very much telling Paul that the carriage is here?”
“It is so unusual,” said Mrs. Usher mère, “for young people to sail for the tropics on their wedding day. Does it not seem unusual to you, also, dear Mrs. Metuchen?”
“Gracious!” Mrs. Enever exclaimed. “When I was married I took my husband to Iceland.”
The butler reappeared, preceding a footman who carried a tray, on which there were little cups.
Marie took one. So also did the dowager. As the servants were leaving, Jones, followed by Usher, reentered the room.
“Before we go, Paul, don’t you want some bouillon?” Marie asked.
But either he did not hear or else he did not heed. “Mother,” he said, “bring Mrs. Enever and come.”
Mrs. Usher, who was drinking, lowered her cup. “We are to lunch here after you and Marie are gone.”
“Marie and I are not going anywhere.”
As he spoke he looked at his bride, and as he looked the cup which she held fell from her hand, spilling over her dress, and then to the floor, where it broke, musically, after the fashion of Sèvres.
Her eyes followed it meditatively. When, presently, she lifted them, the front door had opened and closed. Usher had gone.
“What is the meaning of this?” demanded the dowager. She turned to Mrs. Metuchen, from her to Mrs. Enever, then to Jones.
“What is the meaning of this?” she repeated. This time she addressed the girl.
Marie nodded, tried to smile, tried, perhaps, to speak. The effort, though, must have been too great. She dropped forward on her face.
Mrs. Metuchen made a dive at the girl. But almost immediately the latter straightened herself.
From without there came a ring.
“Gracious!” exclaimed Mrs. Enever. “It is like a scene in a play.”
Jones blinked appreciatively. “It is better. This is real drama in real life.”
“But, gracious! what do you suppose—?”
Jones, however, had no time to waste on Mrs. Enever. The groom’s mother, with the air of a Gorgon, was promenading toward the door. She seemed smitten by that disease which pathology catalogues as noli me tangere. Her eyes were open to their widest extent, her mouth shut very tight. But Jones was not afraid.
“You’d best wait a moment, Mrs. Usher; there is a newspaper man in the hall.”
But the lady herself was not afraid. Her promenade across the room continued, rigidly, almost mechanically, perhaps pleasurably. In a moment she, too, had gone.
Jones turned to the bride. Apparently now she had wholly recovered. She looked precisely as she had five minutes before, as pretty as she could stick, a Venus in her teens. Mrs. Metuchen, talking as though the tongue would fall from her mouth, was standing on one side of her. Mrs. Enever, doing her best to get a word in edgewise, was standing on the other. Though the one was old and the other young, conjointly they set her off.
Jones was not permitted to stare at her undisturbed. Enever had him by the arm.
“If you love Mammon and abhor righteousness,” the latter was muttering, “and even if you don’t,” he interrupted himself to add, “tell me what all this mystery is about.”
There are men who can’t say, “I don’t know.” It sounds too flat. Jones was one of them. Pontifically, in his deepest note, he replied, “Mystery, dear boy, exists only in the dictionary. There is no such thing. But there is ignorance, and that is very fertile. The less we know the more we believe. Now, if you want a guess—” and drawing Enever nearer he whispered in his ear.
Enever shook him off. “Nonsense!” he sputtered.
“Well, perhaps,” Jones, with silken sweetness, answered, “perhaps it is nonsense; but then, you see, we have been exchanging ideas.”
The shot might have told, yet it lacked the time. Before it could hit, there was Mr. Mermex.
“Archibald,” chuckled Mrs. Metuchen, “look at your work! You have killed your daughter, you—”
Marie interrupted her. She had risen. “You might better have stayed in Frisco, I think. Don’t you?” she added, longly. As she spoke, she smiled. “And just look at my dress! I am dripping with soup.”
Brushing her father aside, leisurely, without haste, smiling still, she crossed the room and left it.
“There goes a dream in lilac,” Jones confided to Enever.
“One from which Usher appears to have awakened.”
“The more fool
