“Me? Why, I sleep like a top, and wake as fresh as a daisy.”
Fresh as a daisy! How suggestively beautiful! I believed her thoroughly. Such a physique as she had, such a clear skin, such a bright, full, almost wild eye! Health radiated from her; her very aspect was invigorating as well as commanding, and I was completely overpowered and taken captive by her superb masterfulness and self-assertion. She was so utterly unlike the women in Walter Scott’s novels, you know — the women our great-grandfathers used to admire — those gentle, dignified, retiring, blushing personages, who always wanted men to fight for them and protect them — poor, wretched weaklings they were, to be sure! Of course, all that sort of thing was very pretty and made a man think himself of some consequence and use in the world; but it was great nonsense when you come to consider it. Why should men be at the bother of looking after women? They can look after themselves, and pretty sharply, too; they have proved it over and over again. And as to business, they beat a man hollow in their keen aptitude for money transactions.
Well, as I was saying, this splendid girl, Honoria Maggs — that was her name — bowled me over completely—” knocked me into a cocked hat,” as I heard the Duke of Havilands remark the other day at a race-meeting, and as he is a royal and exalted individual I suppose it is the most aristocratic expression in vogue. One must always strive to imitate one’s betters; and he is unquestionably my better by several thousands of pounds, for nowadays, as we are all aware, we only rank superiority in mind by superfluity of cash. I recognised in this same Honoria Maggs my fate, from whom there was no escaping; I followed her from “at home” to “at home,” from ball to ball, from concert to concert, from race-course to racecourse, with an unflagging pertinacity that bordered on mania — a pertinacity which surprised everybody, myself included. I don’t know why I did it, I’m sure. If it will gratify the “spiritualists,” I am quite willing to set it down to “astral influence.” On the other hand, if it will oblige the celebrated Dr. Charcot, of Paris, I am ready to believe it was hypnotism. She “drew” me — yes, that is the correct term. Honoria Maggs “drew” me on, and I allowed myself to be “drawn,” regardless of future consequences. At last things came to the usual crisis. I proposed. I made a full and frank statement of the extent of my financial resources, carefully explained how much I had to my credit in the bank, and how much was invested in Consols, all with an agreeably satisfactory result. I was accepted, and for the next month or two went about receiving the congratulations of my friends, and inanely believing myself to be the happiest of men. During our courtship Honoria was not in the least bit sentimental; she was far too sensible for that. She never wanted a kiss in a dark passage; she would have been justly enraged had I suggestively trodden on her toes under the table. She never wished to stop and look at the moon on her way home from any neighbour’s house or place of amusement; not a bit of it! She was a thoroughly practical, capable, healthy female, utterly devoid of romance. I was glad of this, because I had been lately reading in the magazines and newspapers that romance of any kind was unwholesome, and I did not want an unwholesome wife. And she was tremendously healthy; there was no sickly mawkishness or die-away languor about her! She wrote a novel — yes, and published it too; but it was not rubbish, you understand. By rubbish, I mean it was not full of silly sentiments, like Byron’s verses or Shakespeare’s plays; it had no idyllic-sublime stuff in it. It was a sporting novel, full of slap-dash vigour and stable slang; a really jolly, go-ahead, over-hill-and-dale, crosscountry sort of book, with just a thread of a plot in it, which didn’t matter, and an abrupt wind-up that left you in the lurch, wondering what it was all about; in short, the kind of reading that doesn’t bother a fellow’s brain. It was a great success, partly because she, Honoria Maggs, found out the names of all the critics and “beat them up,” as she frankly said, in her own irresistibly dominant way, and partly because the Duke of Havilands (I mentioned him just now) swore it was “the most doosid clever thing he had ever clapped eyes on in print.” Her name was in everybody’s mouth for a short time, and in the full flush of her glory she went off to the moors partridge-shooting, and “bagged” such a quantity of game that the fact was chronicled in all the society journals; particularly that smart paper that always abuses our venerable Queen in its delightful columns. She rose higher than ever in popular estimation. Redfern implored her to let him “build” her gowns; all the rival tailors sent her their circulars and estimates free of charge; the various makers of soap entreated her to use their different specimens regularly every morning; the photographers offered her “sittings” gratis, and she was very nearly becoming a “professional beauty,” as well as a crack shot and literary genius. Yes, I know “genius” is a big word; but if Honoria Maggs did not have genius, then, I ask, what did she have? What active demon or legion of demons possessed her? But I anticipate. I have just remarked that she was at this time nearly becoming a “professional beauty,” and in that character might possibly have gone on the stage, there to get rid of some of that amazing energy of which she had such a superabundance, but that I stepped in and cut matters short by marrying her. Yes; I suppose I did marry her. I must have done so, though, as I before hinted, it seems to me that she was the imperative, and I the passive party in the arrangement. I know my responses in church at the marriage service were very inaudible, and that hers were so distinctly uttered that they echoed through the chancel and almost frightened me by their decisive resonance. But she always had a resonant voice; good lungs, you know — not a touch of consumption there!
It was a pretty wedding, people said. It may have been. I know nobody looked at or thought of me. I was the least part of the ceremony — the bride was everything; the bride always is everything. And yet the bridegroom is an absolute necessity; he is wanted, is he not? The affair would not go on well without him? Then why is he, as a rule, so obstinately ignored and despised by his friends and relatives at his own wedding? This is one of the perplexing problems of social life that I shall never, never understand!
We had a great number of presents. My wife, of course, had the most; and one among her numerous marriage gifts struck me as singularly inappropriate. It was a cigar and ash tray, in oak and silver, very prettily engraved with her monogram, and it came from the friend she had been staying with in the Highlands, when she had brought down the stag with the six-branched antlers; antlers which now, tipped with silver, were destined to adorn the entrance-hall of our new house. When we were driving away from the scene of our bridal festivities, and endeavouring to shield ourselves from the shower of rice that was being pelted through the carriage-windows by our over-zealous well-wishers, I remarked playfully —
“That was a singular gift for you, my darling, from Mrs. Stirling of Glen Ruach — she must have meant it for me!”
“Which?” demanded Honoria abruptly. (She never wasted words.)
“The cigar and ash tray,” I replied.
“Singular?” and the newly-made partner of my joys and sorrows turned upon me with a brilliant smile in her fine eyes. “Not singular at all. She knows I smoke.”
Smoke! A feeble gurgle or gasp of astonishment came from my lips and I fell back a little in the carriage.
“Smoke? You smoke, Honoria? — You — you—”
She laughed aloud. “Smoke? I should think so! Why, you silly old boy, didn’t you know that? Haven’t you smelt my tobacco before now? Real Turkish! — here you are!”
And she produced from her pocket a mannish-looking leather case embossed with silver, full of the finest “golden-hair” brand so approved by connoisseurs, and having at one side the usual supply of rice-paper wherewith to make cigarettes. She rolled up one very deftly as she spoke, and held it out to me.
“Have it?” she asked carelessly; but I made a sign of protest and she put it back in the case with another laugh.
“Very rude you are!” she declared. “Very! You refuse the first cigarette made for you by your wife!”
T
his was a stab, and I felt it keenly.
“I will take it presently, Honoria,” I stammered nervously; “but — but — my darling, my sweetest girl, I do not like you to smoke!”
“Don’t you?” and she surveyed me with the utmost nonchalance. “Sorry for that! But it can’t be helped now! You smoke — I’ve seen you at it.”
“Yes, yes, I do; but I am a man, and — and—”
“And I am a woman!” finished Honoria composedly. “And we twain have just been made one! So I have as much right to smoke as you, old boy, being part and parcel of you; and we’ll enjoy our cigars together after dinner.”
“Cigars!”
“Yes; or cigarettes — which you please. It doesn’t matter in the least to me; I’m accustomed to both!”
I sat dumb and bewildered. I could not realise the position. I stared at my bride, and suddenly observed a masculine imperviousness in her countenance that surprised me; a determination of chin that I wondered I had not noticed before. A vague feeling of alarm ran through me like a cold shiver. Had I made a mistake after all in my choice of a wife? And was this fine bouncing creature — this splendidly-developed, vigorously healthy specimen of womanhood going to prove too much for me? I recoiled from my own painful thoughts. I had always laughed to scorn those weak-spirited men who allowed themselves to be mastered by their wives. Now, was I also destined to become a laughing-stock for others? And should I also be ruled with the female rod of iron? Never, never, never! I would rebel — I would protest! But in the mean time — well, I was just married, and, as a perfectly natural consequence, I dared not speak my mind!
CHAPTER II.
THAT evening — the evening of my marriage day — I beheld a strange and remarkable spectacle. It was after dinner in our private sitting-room (we had engaged apartments at a very charming hotel down at Tenby, where we meant to pass the honeymoon), and my wife had just left me, saying she would return in an instant. I drew a chair up to the window and gazed at the sea; and, after a little while, I felt in my pocket and pulled out my cigar-case. I looked at it affectionately, but I resisted the temptation to smoke. I made up my mind that I would not be the first to suggest the idea to Honoria. For if she had fallen into such an unwomanly vice, then it was clearly my duty as her husband to get her out of it. Here some captious readers may say, “Well, if you didn’t mind her going about with a gun, you ought to have been prepared for her having other masculine accomplishments as well.” Now, just allow me to explain. I did mind her going about with a gun; I minded it very much; but, then, I was always an old-fashioned sort of fellow with old-fashioned notions (I am trying to break myself of them by degrees), and one of these notions was a deep respect and chivalrous homage for the ladies of the English aristocracy. I believed them to be the ne plus ultra of everything noble and grand in woman, and I felt that whatever they did must be right, and not only right, but perfectly well-bred, since it is their business and prerogative to furnish models of excellent behaviour to all their sex. And when Honoria was still Miss Maggs, and made her mark as a sportswoman, she was only imitating the example (for I read it in the society papers) of three of the most exalted ladies of title in the land. Moreover, I thought that after all it was merely a high-spirited girl’s freak, just to show that she could, on occasion, shoot as well as a man. I felt quite sure that when Miss Maggs became Mrs. Hatwell-Tribkin (William Hatwell-Tribkin is my name) she would, to speak poetically, lay aside the gun for the needle, and the game-bag for the household linen. Such was my limited conception of the female temperament and intelligence. But I know better now! And since I have learned that the “highest ladies in the land” smoke as well as shoot — well, I will not say openly what I think! I will merely assure those who may be interested in my feelings on the subject, that I have now no old-fashioned partiality whatever for such aristocratic personages; let them do as they like and sink to whatever level they choose, only for Heaven’s sake let them not be taken as the best examples we can show of England’s wives and mothers! Several persons who have recently aired their opinions in the roomy columns of the Daily Telegraph (all honour to that blessed journal, which provides so wide and liberal a pasture land gratis for sheep-like souls to graze upon!) have advocated smoking for women as a perfectly harmless and innocent enjoyment, tending to promote pleasant good-fellowship between the sexes. All I can say is, let one of these special pleaders marry an inveterate woman-smoker, and try it!
The evening of one’s marriage day is not exactly an evening to quarrel upon, and so I could not quarrel with Honoria, when she treated me to the amazing spectacle alluded to at the commencement of this chapter — the spectacle of herself, transformed. She came back into the sitting-room with that cheerful, wholesome laugh of hers (Oscar Wilde and others might think it a trifle too loud, still it was lively), and said —
“Now I’m comfortable! Got a chair for me? That’s right! Push it up in that corner, and let’s be chummy!”
I gazed at her as she spoke, and my voice died away in my throat; I could almost feel my hair rising slowly from my scalp in amazement and horror. What — what did my Honoria — my bride, whom I had lately seen a rustling vision of white silk and lace and orange-blossoms, what did she look like? Like a man! Ye gods! yes, though she had petticoats on — like a man! She had changed her pretty travelling dress for a short and extremely scanty brown tweed skirt; with this she wore a very racy-looking jacket of coarse flannel, patterned all over with large horse-shoes on a blue ground. On her head she had perched a red smoking-cap with a long tassel that bobbed over her left eyebrow, and she surveyed me as she sat down with an air of bland unconsciousness, as though her costume were the most natural thing in the world. I said nothing; she did not expect me to say anything, I suppose. She glanced at the sea, shining with a lovely purple in the evening light, and said briefly —
“Looks dull rather, doesn’t it? Wants a few racers about. Fancy! I had no yachting this year — all the boys went away to Ireland instead.”
“What boys?” I murmured faintly, still staring at her with dazed, bewildered eyes. She was a boy herself, or very like one!
Again that cheerful laugh vibrated in my ears.
“What boys? Good gracious, Willie, if I were to run over all their names, it would be like an hotel visitors’ list! I mean the boys. All the men who used to take me about, don’t you know?”
A kind of resolution fired my blood at this.
“They will hardly take you about now,” I said, with, I hope, a gentle severity. “You are married now, Honoria, and it will be my proud privilege to take you about, so that we shall be able to dispense with the boys.”
“Oh, certainly, if you like,” she replied, smiling unconcernedly; “only you’ll soon get tired of it, I expect! We can’t always hunt in couples — Darby and Joan sort of thing — awfully bad form; must go different ways sometimes. You’ll get sick to death of always doing the different seasons with me.
“Never, Honoria!” I said firmly. “I shall be perfectly happy with you for ever at my side; perfectly contented to be seen always in your company!”
“Really!” and she raised her eyebrows a little, then laughed again, and added coaxingly, “Don’t be spooney, Will, there’s a good fellow! I do hate being spooned upon — you know! Let us be as jolly as you like; but though we are just married, don’t let people take us for a pair of fools!”
“I fail to understand your meaning, Honoria,” I said rather vexedly. “Why should we be taken for fools? I really cannot see—”
“Oh, you know,” laughed my boyish-looking wife, diving into one of her capacious jacket-pockets in search of a something — I instinctively knew what it was. Yes, there, out it came! No cigarette-case this time, but one full of cigars, and I at once rose to the occasion with a manly fortitude that, I trust, did not ill become me.
“Honoria,” I said, “Honoria, my dear, my darling! Do oblige me by not smoking; not this evening, at any rate! I shall not be able to bear th
e sight of a cigar in your sweet mouth; I shall not indeed. I am a ‘spooney’ fellow, perhaps, but I love you and admire you, my dear, too much to let you appear even before my eyes at a disadvantage. It is not good for your health, I assure you! It will spoil your pretty teeth and play havoc with your nerves; and, besides this, Honoria, it is not a nice thing for a woman, especially an English woman. It is all very well for ugly Russian matrons and withered old Spanish gipsies, but for a young, bonnie, fresh creature like you, Honoria, it is not the thing, believe me! Moreover, it gives you a masculine appearance, which is not at all becoming. I am in earnest, my dear! I want my wife to be above all things womanly, and now we are married I can tell you frankly that I hope you will never take a gun in your hands again. It was very plucky of you to show that you could shoot, you know, Honoria. I admired your spirit, but, of course, I always knew you only did it for fun. A woman can never be an actual follower of sport, any more than she can become a practised smoker, without losing the beautiful prestige of modesty and dignity with which Nature has endowed her.”
Thus far Honoria had listened to me in absolute silence, a smile on her lips and her cigar-case still open in her hand. Now, however, she gave way to unfeigned and irrepressible laughter.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 909