"Roger has rather taken me by surprise with the news of his engagement," said Lady Gertrude, after she and Nan had exchanged a few laboured platitudes. "Do you think you will be happy with him? We live a very simple country existence here, you know."
To Nan, the use of the word "we" sounded rather as though she were proposing to marry the family.
"Oh, I like country life very much," she replied. "After all, you can always vary the monotony by running up to town or going abroad, can't you?"
"I don't think Roger cares much for travelling about. He is extremely attached to his home. We have always made everything so easy and comfortable for him here, you see," responded Lady Gertrude, with a certain significance.
Nan surmised she was intended to gather that it would be her duty to make everything "so easy and comfortable" for him in the future! She almost smiled. Most of the married men she knew were kept busy seeing that everything was made easy and comfortable for their wives.
"Still," continued Lady Gertrude, "there could be no objection to your making an occasional trip to London."
She had a dry, decisive method of speech which gave one the impression she was well accustomed to laying down the law--and that her laws were expected to remain unbroken. The "occasional trip to London" sounded bleakly in Nan's ears. Still, she argued, Lady Gertrude would only be her mother-in-law--and she was sure she could "manage" Roger. There is a somewhat pathetic element in the way in which so many people light-heartedly enter into marriage, the man confident in his ability to "mould" his wife, the woman never doubting her power to "manage" him. It all seems quite simple during the adaptable period of engagement, when romance spreads a veil of glamour over the two people concerned, effectually concealing for the time being the wide gulf of temperament that lies between them. It is only after the knot has been tied that the unlooked-for difficulties of managing and moulding present themselves.
Nan found it increasingly difficult to sustain her side of the conversation with Lady Gertrude. The latter's old-fashioned views clashed violently with her own modern ones, and there seemed to be no mutual ground upon which they could meet. Like her son, Lady Gertrude clung blindly to the narrow outlook of a bygone period, and her ideas of matrimony were based strictly upon the English Marriage Service.