“Oh, well—” said Archer, getting up. “Look here—the fog’s lifting. If we made a dash for the National Gallery we might manage to catch a glimpse of the pictures.”
The Newland Archers were on their way home, after a three months’ wedding-tour which May, in writing to her girl friends, vaguely summarised as “blissful.”
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 someone 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 cafés chantants where, under the blossoming horse-chestnuts of the Champs Élysées, 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.