I was still sitting before the fire in melancholy mood, musing over what, reasonably or unreasonably, I felt to be the desolation of my wedded existence, when I heard a latch-key turn in the lock of the street door — another instant, and a firm step marching along the outer passage assured me of my wife’s return. I glanced at the clock — it was close upon midnight. I had been alone since dinner-time, alone and melancholy, and I felt more injured and irritated than I cared to admit to myself. A strong whiff of tobacco heralded Honoria’s approach; she entered, clad in a long buttoned-up ulster and cloth jockey cap, her eyes brilliant, her cheeks flushed, and a half-smoked-out cigar in her mouth. A sudden anger possessed me. I looked up, but did not speak. She threw off her cloak and cap, and stood before me in evening dress — a clinging gown of grey velvet, touched here and there with silver embroidery.
“Well!” she said cheerfully, removing her cigar from her lips to puff out a volume of smoke, and then sticking it in again.
“Well,” I responded somewhat sullenly.
Her bright eyes opened wide.
“Hullo! All down in the mouth and low in the dumps — eh, old boy?” and she poked the fire into a blaze. “What’s up? Stocks queer? Bank broken? Shares gone down? You look like an unfortunate publisher!”
“Do I?” and I averted my gaze from hers and stared gloomily into the fire.
“Yes,” and she gave that ringing laugh that somehow had latterly begun to jar my nerves. “You know the man! — bad-times-no-sale-out-of-season-no-demand-in-the-provinces sort of fellow! Awful! — and all the while he’s pocketing profits on the sly. Funny expression he gets after long practice. You’ve got it exactly just now!”
“Thanks!” I said curtly.
She surveyed me wonderingly.
“Got the toothache?” she asked with some commiseration in her voice.
“No.”
“Headache?”
“No.”
She gave me a meditative side-glance, still smoking, then nodded in a wise and confidential manner.
“I know — indigestion!”
This was too much; I jumped up from my chair and faced her.
“No, Honoria,” I said, in accents that trembled with suppressed excitement—” it is not indigestion! It is nothing of the kind, madam! You see before you a broken, dispirited man — a miserable, homeless wretch who hasn’t a moment’s peace of his life — who is disgusted — yes, disgusted, Mrs. Tribkin — at the way you go on! You are out every day, more often with others than with me; and if you are not out, the house is full of gorging, lounging, grinning young fools, who no doubt laugh at me (and at you too, for that matter) in their sleeves. You smoke like — like — a dragoon! Yes!” — I spluttered this word out desperately, determined to bring her to book somehow—” and behave yourself altogether in a fashion that I consider indecorous and unbecoming to a lady in your position. I will not have it, Honoria! I will NOT have it! I have borne it as long as I can bear it, and my patience is quite exhausted! I tell you I am sick of the smell of tobacco — I loathe the very sight of a cigar! Smoking is a detestable, vulgar, and unwholesome vice, and as far as I am concerned I have done with it for ever! I used to like a quiet smoke in the evening” — here my voice took on a plaintive, almost tearful, wail—” but now — now, Honoria, I hate it! You have worked this change in me! I have seen you smoking, morning, noon and night, till my very soul has been nauseated by such an unnatural and unfeminine spectacle! You have robbed me of what was once my own peculiar enjoyment — and I can endure it no longer! I cannot, Honoria! I will NOT...!”
I gasped for breath, and sinking back again in my chair, glared steadily at the wall. I was afraid to encounter the whimsical look of my wife’s eye, lest I should give way to convulsions of wild laughter — laughter which really would not have been far off the verge of tears, I was so thoroughly shaken from my usual self-control.
“Whe-e-e-e-w!” — and the long and dismally drawn-out whistle she gave made me glance at her for a second. She had taken her cigar from her mouth, and was regarding me fixedly. “Good gracious, Willie! I never did! Look here, you know this won’t do at all! I never lose temper — it’s no use your trying to make me. I see what it is. You’ve got the fidgets, and you want to quarrel and make me cry and go off into a fit of hysterics, and then pet me and bring me round again. But it isn’t the least bit of good attempting it. I can’t do it — I can’t work hysterics anyhow! I never could since I grew up. I might manage to scream once, if that would oblige you, but I know it would scare the people next door! Now, don’t rant and rave like Wilson Barrett when he’s got his red Chatterton wig on, but be calm and sensible, and tell us what’s the matter.”
She spoke like a friendly young man, and I peered at her doubtfully.
“Honoria,” I began, then my feelings got the better of me again, and I muttered, “No, no! it is too much! I will NOT — I cannot be calm!”
“Then go to bed,” she said soothingly, laying one hand on my shoulder, and looking quite benignantly at me, in spite of my endeavour to bestow upon her a lordly scowl. “Something’s upset you; your liver’s wrong, that I can see in the twinkling of an eye. I haven’t studied medicine for nothing! You should have taken a cooling draught and gone to bye-bye” (gone to bye-bye! Silly minx! did she take me for a baby!) “hours ago. Why did you sit up for me?”
I fixed my reproachful gaze upon her, solemnly, penetratingly, and — quailed! She looked so handsome, especially now that she had thrown away the end of that horrible cigar. She had such a commanding presence — that clinging grey velvet gown became her so admirably, and round her full white throat she wore the diamond pendant I had given her on our wedding-day — a pendant containing a miniature portrait of myself. My portrait! She wore it — she, this stately, beautiful young woman wore my miserable physiognomy on her bosom! My wrath melted into sudden maudlin sentiment.
“Honoria,” I said feebly, slipping my arm round her waist—” oh, Honoria! if you only loved me!”
She bent her head towards mine, lower and lower till her lips almost touched my ear.
“Look here, old boy,” she then whispered confidentially, “you may as well make a clean breast of it! Have you — have you been at that brandy I left out on the sideboard?”
CHAPTER IV.
IT will now, I think, be readily understood that Honoria was a difficult woman to argue with. There was no imaginativeness about her, no romance, no sentiment. If a man gave way to his feelings (as I did on the occasion just related), she set his natural emotion down either to indigestion or insobriety. The “tide of passion” — the “overflowing of the human heart,” and all that sort of thing — belonged, she considered, to the “stuff and rubbish” books written by Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, or, worse still, suggested poetry. And if there was anything in the world Honoria positively hated, it was poetry. She didn’t mind the “Ingoldsby Legends” or the “Biglow Papers,” but poetry, real poetry, was her favourite abomination. She always went to sleep over a play of Shakespeare’s. The only time I ever saw her laugh at any performance of the kind was during Irving’s representation of “Macbeth.” Then she was in silent convulsions of mirth. Whenever the celebrated Henry gasped a gasp, or wriggled a wriggle, she seemed to be seized with spasms. But the play itself didn’t move her one iota; she dozed off comfortably in the carriage going home, and waking up suddenly just as we reached our own door, she demanded —
“I say, Willie, what became of the old man who went to stop with Irving in his cardboard castle? Never saw him again? Wasn’t it funny? Must have left out a bit of the play by mistake!”
I realised then that she had never comprehended the leading motif of the sublime tragedy — namely, the murder of King Duncan — and with anxious care and laboured precision I explained it to her as best I could. She listened amiably enough, and, when I had finished, yawned capaciously.
“Good gracious! So that was what it was all about! Well, it didn’t seem cle
ar to me! I thought Irving had stuck the blue man — the old blue thing with a patch over his eye that came up through a trap-door at dinner-time.” (She meant Banquo’s ghost!)— “He was funny — awfully funny! He was just the colour of a damp lucifer match — you know, one of those things that won’t strike, but only fizzle and smell! Anyhow it was a muddle, couldn’t tell who was killed and who wasn’t. Lovely last sprawl that of Irving — looked as if he were coming out of his skin! He was done for — he was killed in the play, wasn’t he?”
“He was,” I assented gravely.
“Thats all right! Hope he ate a good supper afterwards! Must make a man peckish to work about a big sword like that — all for nothing too! Poking at the air — just fancy! Dreadfully exhausting!”
And off she went to bed with no more notion of the grandeur and terror and pathos of Shakespeare’s most awe-inspiring production than if she had been a woman of wood! So I knew she had no sentiment in her, and of course I was a fool to expect any sympathy from her in my hours of irritation or despondency. And those hours were getting pretty frequent, but for various reasons I held my peace and made no further complaints. I would wait, I resolved, and patiently watch the course of events.
Events progressed onward as they are prone to do, and my wife continued her independently masculine mode of living without any fresh remonstrances from me just then. The time I had anticipated came at last, and a boy was born to us; a remarkably fine child — (yes, I know! the most weazened infant, if it be the first-born, is always “remarkably fine” in the opinion of its parents; but this one was not a humbug — he was really and truly a good specimen), and with his birth I became happy and hopeful. Surely now, I thought, with a swelling heart — now my Honoria will realise her true position, and will grow ashamed of those “mannish” habits, which rob a woman of the refined grace and sweetness that should attach to the dignity of motherhood. My spirits rose. I pictured my wife as a different and more lovable creature, retaining all her bright humour and frank vivacity, but gradually becoming more softened in character, and more chastened in disposition; I saw her, in my mind’s eye, carrying her child in her arms, and murmuring all that pretty baby nonsense which men pretend they despise, but which in their hearts they secretly love to hear, and I built up a veritable château en Espagne of home-happiness as I had never yet known it, but which I now sincerely believed I was destined to enjoy.
Need I say that my hopes were doomed to disappointment, and that I cursed myself for being such a sentimental ass as to imagine they could ever be realised? Honoria was up and about again in no time, and seemed almost, if not quite, cheerfully unconscious of our boy’s existence. He, poor mite, was consigned to the care of two nurses — large, beer-consuming women both, and ungrammatical of speech — and when his screams announced that all was not going well with his infant career — that pins were being put in the wrong places, or that windy spasms were the result of over-feeding, Honoria would smile at me and remark blandly —
“There’s a savage little brute! Doesn’t he roar! Never mind! Perhaps he’ll scare away the organ-grinders!”
On one of these occasions, when my son’s complaints were so heartrending that they threatened to lift the very roof off the house by sheer volume of sound, I said —
“Don’t you think you’d better go and see what’s the matter, Honoria? It’s not quite fair to leave him entirely at the mercy of the nurses!”
“Why not?” she responded composedly. “They understand him — I don’t. He’s a perfect mystery to me. He screams if I touch him, and rolls right over on his back and makes the most horrible faces at me when I look at him. Nurse says I hold him wrong — it seems to me impossible to hold him right. He’s as soft as putty, and bruises everywhere. Can’t lay a finger on him without bruising him black and blue. You try it! I wanted to amuse him yesterday — blew the cab whistle for him as loud as I could, and I thought he would have burst with howling. We don’t take to each other a bit — isn’t it funny? He doesn’t want me, and I don’t want him — we’re better apart, really!”
“Honoria,” I said (we were at breakfast, and I rose from the table with an angry movement), “you are heartless! You speak cruelly and slightingly of the poor child. You don’t deserve to be a mother!”
She laughed good-humouredly.
“You’re right, Willie; that’s one for you! I don’t deserve to be, and I didn’t want to be. Oh, what a bear you look! Be off to the City, for goodness’ sake; don’t stop scowling there! Would you like to take baby out for once? I’ll fetch him for you — he’ll be such a nice quiet companion for you down-town!”
I beat a hasty retreat; I had no words wherewith to answer her, but I released my pent-up wrath by banging the street door as I went out with a violence that I freely admit was femininely pettish and unworthy of a man. And I went down to my office in a very angry mood, and my anger was not lessened when, turning sharp round a corner, I ran up against the “boy” with the moustaches.
“So glad to meet you,” he said with his gentlemanly drawl and elegant air. “Hope you’re coming to the moors this year with Mrs. Tribkin?”
I stared at him — he looked provokingly cool and comfortable in his white flannels (always white flannels! However, it was a fact that August had just begun) — and then I replied with some frigidity —
“I am not aware that Mrs. Tribkin is going to the moors at all. I believe — indeed I am sure — our — er — my intention is to spend a quiet holiday at the seaside for the benefit of the child’s health.”
“Oh,” murmured the “boy” languidly. “Then I suppose I have made a mistake. Some one told me she had taken a share in the grouse-shootings this season — gone halves with Mrs. Stirling, of Glen Ruach, dontcherknow. Quite a big party expected down there on the Twelfth.”
“Really,” I snarled, for I was getting angrier every minute. “Are you going?”
He looked fatuously surprised.
“Me? Oh, dear, no! I’m on the river.”
“You’re always on the river now, I suppose, aren’t you?” I enquired, with a sarcastic grin.
“Always,” he replied placidly. “Won’t you and Mrs. Tribkin come and see me in my little house-boat? Awfully snug, dontcherknow — moored in capital position. Delighted to see you any time!”
“Thanks, thanks!” and here I strove to snigger at him politely in the usual “society” way. “But we are very much tied at home just now — my son is rather too young to appreciate the pleasures of river-life!”
“Oh, of course!” And for once the “boy” appeared really startled. “It would never do for a — for a little kid, you know. How is he?” This with an air of hypocritical anxiety.
“He is very well and flourishing,” I answered proudly. “As fine a child as—”
“Yes — er — no doubt,” interrupted Moustaches hurriedly. “And Honoria — Mrs. Tribkin — is awfully devoted, I suppose?”
“Awfully!” I said, fixing my eyes full and sternly upon his inanely handsome countenance.
“She is absorbed in him — absorbed, heart and soul!”
“Curious — I mean delightful!” stammered the hateful young humbug. “Well — er — give my kind regards, please, and just mention that I’m on the river!”
As well mention that Queen Anne was dead, I thought, scornfully, as I watched him dash over a crossing under the very nose of a plunging cab-horse and disappear on the opposite side. He was a fish, I declared to myself — a fish, not a man! Scrape his gills and cook him for dinner, I muttered deliriously as I went along — scrape his gills and cook him for dinner! This idiotic phrase became fixed in my mind, and repeated itself over and over again in my ears with the most tiresome monotony, whereby it will be easily comprehended that my nerves were very much unstrung and my system upset generally by the feverish mental worry and domestic vexation I was undergoing.
On reaching home that afternoon I found Honoria in high glee. She was lounging in one of those long
, comfortable “deck” chairs, which, when properly cushioned, are the most luxurious seats in the world, smoking a cigarette and reading Truth.
“I say!” she exclaimed, turning round as I entered. “Here’s a lark! Georgie’s going to marry the Earl of Richmoor!”
I confess I was rather surprised.
“What, Georgie?” I echoed incredulously.
“Yes, Georgie!” repeated my wife with emphasis. “Little sly, coaxy-woaxy Georgie, who can’t say be! to a goose. Going to be a real live countess — think of it! Good gracious, what a fool Richmoor is — he might have had me!”
“Might he, indeed, Honoria?” I enquired coldly, drawing off my gloves, and thinking for the thousandth time what a thorough man she looked. “Did he know that such a chance of supreme happiness was to be had for the asking?”
“Of course he didn’t.” Here she tossed away Truth, and catching up a horrible fat pug she adored, she kissed its nasty wet nose with effusion. “And he never tried to find out. He’s an awful swell, you know — the kind of fellow that coolly ‘cuts’ the fresh-dollars American, and won’t have anything to do with trade. Writes books and sculpts.”
“Is that a new word, sculpts?” I asked satirically.
“Don’t know, I’m sure. It means that he carves out busts and things in marble — not for money, you know, just for his own amusement. Oh, he’s a queer card! But fancy his proposing to Georgie, of all people in the world — such a little scrub of a woman!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 911