At last he knocked softly and said he was coming in. I was still
crouching over the fire as he came up behind me.
"Not in bed yet?" he said. "Then I must put you to bed."
Before I could prevent him he had lifted me in his arms, dragged me on
to his knee and was pulling down my hair, laughing as he did so, calling
me by coarse endearing names and telling me not to fight and struggle.
But the next thing I knew I was back in the sitting-room, where I had
switched up the lights, and my husband, whose face was distorted by
passion, was blazing out at me.
"What do you mean?" he said. "I'm your husband, am I not? You are my
wife, aren't you? What did you marry for? Good heavens, can it be
possible that you don't know what the conditions of matrimony are? Is
that what comes of being brought up in a convent? But has your father
allowed you to marry without. . . . And your Aunt--what in God's name
has the woman been doing?"
I crossed towards the smaller bedroom intending to enter it, but my
husband intercepted me.
"Don't be a fool," he said, catching at my wrist. "Think of the
servants. Think what they'd say. Think what the whole island would say.
Do you want to make a laughing stock of both of us?"
I returned and sat by the table. My husband lit another cigarette.
Nervously flicking the ends off with the index finger of his left hand,
and speaking quickly, as if the words scorched his lips, he told me I
was mistaken if I supposed that he wanted a scene like this. He thought
he could spend his time better. I was equally mistaken if I imagined
that he had desired our marriage at all. Something quite different might
have happened if he could have afforded to please himself.
He had made sacrifices to marry me, too. Perhaps I had not thought of
that, but did I suppose a man of his class wanted a person like my
father for his father-in-law. And then my Aunt and my cousins--ugh!
The Bishop, too! Was it nothing that a man had been compelled to make
all those ridiculous declarations? Children to be brought up Catholics!
Wife not to be influenced! Even to keep an open mind himself to all the
muss and mummery of the Church!
It wasn't over either. That seedy old "saint" was probably my confessor.
Did any rational man want another man to come between him and his
wife--knowing all he did and said, and everything about him?
I was heart-sick as I listened to all this. Apparently the moral of it
was that if I had been allowed to marry without being instructed in the
first conditions of married life my husband had suffered a gross and
shocking injustice.
The disgust I felt was choking me. It was horribly humiliating and
degrading to see my marriage from my husband's point of view, and when I
remembered that I was bound fast to the man who talked to me like this,
and that he could claim rights in me, to-night, to-morrow, as long as I
lived, until death parted us, a wild impulse of impotent anger at
everybody and everything made me drop my head on to the table and burst
into tears.
My husband misunderstood this, as he misunderstood everything. Taking my
crying for the last remnant of my resistance he put his arms round my
shoulders again and renewed his fondling.
"Come, don't let us have any more conjugal scenes," he said. "The people
of the hotel will hear us presently, and there will be all sorts of
ridiculous rumours. If your family are rather common people you are a
different pair of shoes altogether."
He was laughing again, kissing my neck (in spite of my shuddering) and
saying:
"You really please me very much, you do indeed, and if they've kept you
in ignorance, what matter? Come now, my sweet little woman, we'll soon
repair that."
I could bear no more. I _must_ speak and I did. Leaping up and facing
round on him I told him my side of the story--how I had been married
against my will, and had not wanted him any more than he had wanted me;
how all my objections had been overruled, all my compunctions borne
down; how everybody had been in a conspiracy to compel me, and I had
been bought and sold like a slave.
"But you can't go any farther than that," I said. "Between you, you have
forced me to marry you, but nobody can force me to obey you, because I
won't."
I saw his face grow paler and paler as I spoke, and when I had finished
it was ashen-white.
"So that's how it is, is it?" he said, and for some minutes more he
tramped about the room, muttering inaudible words, as if trying to
account to himself for my conduct. At length he approached me again and
said, in the tone of one who thought he was making peace:
"Look here, Mary. I think I understand you at last. You have some other
attachment--that's it, I suppose. Oh, don't think I'm blaming you. I may
be in the same case myself for all you know to the contrary. But
circumstances have been too strong for us and here we are. Well, we're
in it, and we've got to make the best of it and why shouldn't we? Lots
of people in my class are in the same position, and yet they get along
all right. Why can't we do the same? I'll not be too particular. Neither
will you. For the rest of our lives let each of us go his and her own
way. But that's no reason why we should be strangers exactly. Not on our
wedding-day at all events. You're a damned pretty woman and I'm. . . .
Well, I'm not an ogre, I suppose. We are man and wife, too. So look
here, we won't expect too much affection from each other--but let's stop
this fooling and be good friends for a little while anyway. Come, now."
Once more he took hold of me, as if to draw me back, kissing my hands as
he did so, but his gross misinterpretation of my resistance and the
immoral position he was putting me into were stifling me, and I cried:
"No, I will not. Don't you see that I hate and loathe you?"
There could be no mistaking me this time. The truth had fallen on my
husband with a shock. I think it was the last thing his pride had
expected. His face became shockingly distorted. But after a moment,
recovering himself with a cruel laugh that made my hot blood run cold,
he said:
"Nevertheless, you shall do as I wish. You are my wife, and as such you
belong to me. The law allows me to compel you and I will."
The words went shrieking through and through me. He was coming towards
me with outstretched arms, his teeth set, and his pupils fixed. In the
drunkenness of his rage he was laughing brutally.
But all my fear had left me. I felt an almost murderous impulse. I
wanted to strike him on the face.
"If you attempt to touch me I will throw myself out of the window," I
said.
"No fear of that," he said, catching me quickly in his arms.
"If you do not take your hands off me I'll shriek the house down," I
cried.
That was enough. He let me go and dropped back from me. At the next
moment I was breathing with a sense of freedom. Without resistance on my
husband's part I entered the little bedroom to the left and locked the
door behind me.