When I began to write I determined to tell the truth and the whole
truth. But now I find that the whole truth will require that I should
invade some of the most sacred intimacies of human experience. At this
moment I feel as if I were on the threshold of one of the sanctuaries
of a woman's life, and I ask myself if it is necessary and inevitable
that I should enter it.
I have concluded that it _is_ necessary and inevitable--necessary to the
sequence of my narrative, inevitable for the motive with which I am
writing it.
Four times already I have written what is to follow. In the first case I
found that I had said too much. In the second I had said too little. In
the third I was startled and shocked by the portrait I had presented of
myself and could not believe it to be true. In the fourth I saw with a
thrill of the heart that the portrait was not only true, but too true.
Let me try again.
I entered our rooms at the hotel, my husband's room and mine, with a
sense of fear, almost of shame. My sensations at that moment had nothing
in common with the warm flood of feeling which comes to a woman when she
finds herself alone for the first time with the man she loves, in a
little room which holds everything that is of any account to her in the
world. They were rather those of a young girl who, walking with a candle
through the dark corridors of an empty house at night, is suddenly
confronted by a strange face. I was the young girl with the candle; the
strange face was my husband's.
We had three rooms, all communicating, a sitting-room in the middle with
bedrooms right and left. The bedroom on the right was large and it
contained a huge bed with a covered top and tail-boards. That on the
left was small, and it had a plain brass and iron bedstead, which had
evidently been meant for a lady's maid. I had no maid yet. It was
intended that I should engage a French one in London.
Almost immediately on entering the sitting-room my husband, who had not
yet recovered from his disappointment, left me to go downstairs, saying
with something like a growl that he had telegrams to send to London and
instructions to give to his man Hobson.
Without taking off my outer things I stepped up to the windows, which
were encrusted with salt from the flying spray. The hotel stood on a
rocky ledge above the harbour, and the sound of the sea, beating on the
outer side of the pier, came up with a deafening roar. The red-funnelled
steamer we should have sailed by lay on the pier's sheltered side,
letting down steam, swaying to her creaking hawsers, and heaving to the
foam that was surging against her bow.
I was so nervous, so flurried, so preoccupied by vague fears that I
hardly saw or heard anything. Porters came up with our trunks and asked
me where they were to place them, but I scarcely know how I answered
them, although I was aware that everything--both my husband's luggage
and mine--was being taken into the large bedroom. A maid asked if she
ought to put a light to the fire, and I said "Yes . . . no . . . yes,"
and presently I heard the fire crackling.
After awhile my husband came back in a better temper and said:
"Confounded nuisance, but I suppose we must make the best of it."
He laughed as he said this, and coming closer and looking me over with a
smile which was at the same time passionate and proud, he whispered:
"Dare say we'll not find the time long until to-morrow morning. What do
_you_ think, my little beauty?"
Something in his voice rather than in his question made my heart beat,
and I could feel my face growing hot.
"Not taken off your things yet?" he said. "Come, let me help you."
I drew out my hat-pins and removed my hat. At the same moment my husband
removed my sables and cloak, and as he did so he put his arms about me,
and held me close to him.
I shuddered. I tried not to, but I could not help it. My husband laughed
again, and said:
"Not got over it yet, little woman? Perhaps that's only because you are
not quite used to me."
Still laughing he pulled me still closer to him, and putting one of his
hands under my chin he kissed me on the mouth.
It will be difficult and perhaps it will be ridiculous to say how my
husband's first kiss shocked me. My mouth felt parched, I had a sense of
intense disgust, and before I was quite aware of what I was doing I had
put up both hands to push him off.
"Come, come, this is going too far," he said, in a tone that was half
playful, half serious. "It was all very well in the automobile; but
here, in your own rooms, you know. . . ."
He broke off and laughed again, saying that if my modesty only meant
that nobody had ever kissed me before it made me all the more charming
for him.
I could not help feeling a little ashamed of my embarrassment, and
crossing in front of my husband I seated myself in a chair before the
fire. He looked after me with a smile that made my heart tremble, and
then, coming behind my chair, he put his arms about my shoulders and
kissed my neck.
A shiver ran through me. I felt as if I had suffered a kind of
indecency. I got up and changed my place. My husband watched me with the
look of a man who wanted to roar with laughter. It was the proud and
insolent as well as passionate look of one who had never so much as
contemplated resistance.
"Well, this is funny," he said. "But we'll see presently! We'll see!"
A waiter came in for orders, and early as it was my husband asked for
dinner to be served immediately. My heart was fluttering excitedly by
this time and I was glad of the relief which the presence of other
people gave me.
While the table was being laid my husband talked of the doings of the
day. He asked who was "the seedy old priest" who had given us "the
sermon" at the wedding breakfast--he had evidently forgotten that he had
seen the Father before.
I told him the "seedy old priest" was Father Dan, and he was a saint if
ever there was one.
"A saint, is he?" said my husband. "Wish saint were not synonymous with
simpleton, though."
Then he gave me his own views of "the holy state of matrimony." By
holding people together who ought to be apart it often caused more
misery and degradation of character than a dozen entirely natural
adulteries and desertions, which a man had sometimes to repair by
marriage or else allow himself to be regarded as a seducer and a
scoundrel.
I do not think my husband was conscious of the naive coarseness of all
this, as spoken to a young girl who had only just become his wife. I am
sure he was not aware that he was betraying himself to me in every word
he uttered and making the repugnance I had begun to feel for him deepen
into horror.
My palms became moist, and again and again I had to dry them with my
handkerchief. I was feeling more frightened and more ashamed than I had
ever felt before, but nevertheless when we sat down to dinner I tried to
compose myself. Partly for the sake of appearance before the servants,
and partly because I was taking myself to task for the repugnance I
felt towards my husband, I found something to say, though my voice
shook.
My husband ate ravenously and drank a good deal. Once or twice, when he
insisted on pouring out champagne for me, I clinked glasses with him.
Although every moment at table was increasing my fear and disgust, I
sometimes allowed myself to laugh.
Encouraged by this he renewed his endearments even before the waiters
had left the room, and when they had gone, with orders not to return
until he rang, and the door was closed behind them, he switched off the
lights, pushed a sofa in front of the fire, put me to sit on it, sat
down beside me and redoubled his tenderness.
"How's my demure little nun now?" he said. "Frightened, wasn't she?
They're all frightened at first, bless them!"
I could smell the liquor he had been drinking. I could see by the
firelight the prominent front tooth (partly hidden by his moustache)
which I had noticed when I saw him first, and the down of soft hair
which grew as low on his hands as his knuckles. Above all I thought I
could feel the atmosphere of other women about him--loose women, bad
women as it seemed to me--and my fear and disgust began to be mixed with
a kind of physical horror.
For a little while I tried to fight against this feeling, but when he
began to put his arms about me, calling me by endearing names,
complaining of my coldness, telling me not to be afraid of him,
reminding me that I belonged to him now, and must do as he wished, a
faintness came over me, I trembled from head to foot and made some
effort to rise.
"Let me go," I said.
"Nonsense," he said, laughing and holding me to my seat. "You bewitching
little woman! You're only teasing me. How they love to tease, these
charming little women!"
The pupils of his eyes were glistening. I closed my own eyes in order to
avoid his look. At the next moment I felt his hand stray down my body
and in a fury of indignation I broke out of his arms and leapt to my
feet.
When I recovered my self-possession I was again looking out of the
window, and my husband, who was behind me, was saying in a tone of anger
and annoyance:
"What's the matter with you? I can't understand. What have I done? Good
heavens, we are man and wife, aren't we?"
I made no answer. My heart which had been hot with rage was becoming
cold with dread. It seemed to me that I had suffered an outrage on my
natural modesty as a human being, a sort of offence against my dignity
as a woman.
It was now dark. With my face to the window I could see nothing. The
rain was beating against the glass. The sea was booming on the rocks. I
wanted to fly, but I felt caged--morally and physically caged.
My husband had lit a cigarette and was walking up and down the
sitting-room, apparently trying to think things out. After awhile he
approached me, out his hand on my shoulder and said:
"I see how it is. You're tired, and no wonder. You've had a long and
exhausting day. Better go to bed. We'll have to be up early."
Glad to escape from his presence I allowed him to lead me to the large
bedroom. As I was crossing the threshold he told me to undress and get
into bed, and after that he said something about waiting. Then he closed
the door softly and I was alone.