But next morning, having had time to think things out in my simple and
ignorant way, I tried to reconcile myself to my position. Remembering
what Aunt Bridget had said, both before my marriage and after it, about
the different moralities of men and women, I told myself I had placed my
standard too high.
Perhaps a husband was not a superior being, to be regarded with respect
and reverence, but a sort of grown-up child whom it was the duty of a
wife to comfort, coax, submit to and serve.
I determined to do this. Still clinging to the hope of falling in love
with my husband, I set myself to please him by every means within my
power, even to the length of simulating sentiments which I did not feel.
But what a task I was setting myself! What a steep and stony Calvary I
was attempting to climb!
After the degrading business with the other woman had been concluded I
thought we should have left England immediately on the honeymoon tour
which my husband had mapped out for us, but he told me that would not be
convenient and we must remain in London a little longer. We stayed six
weeks altogether, and never did a young wife pass a more cheerless and
weary time.
I had no friends of my own within reach, and to my deep if secret
mortification no woman of my husband's circle called upon me. But a few
of his male friends were constantly with us, including Mr. Eastcliff,
who had speedily followed us from Ellan, and a Mr. Vivian, who, though
the brother of a Cabinet Minister, seemed to me a very vain and vapid
person, with the eyes of a mole, a vacant smile, a stupid expression, an
abrupt way of speaking through his teeth, and a shrill voice which gave
the impression of screeching against the wind.
With these two men, and others of a similar kind, we passed many hours
of nearly every day, lunching with them, dining with them, walking with
them, driving with them, and above all playing bridge with them in one
of our sitting rooms in the hotel.
I knew nothing of the game to begin with, never having touched a card in
my life, but in accordance with the theories which I believed to be
right and the duties I had imposed upon myself, I took a hand with my
husband when he could find nobody better to be his partner.
The results were very disheartening. In spite of my desire to please I
was slow to learn, and my husband's impatience with my mistakes, which
confused and intimidated me, led to some painful humiliations. First he
laughed, next he sneered, then he snapped me up in the midst of my
explanations and apologies, and finally, at a moment of loss, he broke
out on me with brutal derision, saying he had never had much opinion of
my intellect, but was now quite sure that I had no more brains than a
rabbit and could not say Boo to a goose.
One day when we were alone, and he was lying on the couch with his
vicious little terrier by his side, I offered to sing to him.
Remembering how my voice had been praised, I thought it would be
pleasant to my husband to see that there was something I really could
do. But nine years in a convent had left me with next to no music but
memories of the long-breathed harmonies of some of the beautiful masses
of our Church, and hardly had I begun on these when my husband cried:
"Oh, stop, stop, for heaven's sake stop, or I shall think we're
attending a funeral."
Another day I offered to read to him. The Reverend Mother used to say I
was the best reader she had ever heard, but perhaps it was not
altogether my husband's fault if he formed a different opinion. And
indeed I cannot but think that the holy saints themselves would have
laughed if they had heard me reading aloud, in the voice and intonation
which I had assumed for the meditations of St. Francis of Assisi, the
mystic allusions to "certs," and "bookies," and "punters," and "evens,"
and "scratchings," which formed the substance of the sporting journals
that were my husband's only literature.
"Oh, stop it, stop it," he cried again. "You read the 'Winning Post' as
if it were the Book of Revelation."
As time passed the gulf that separated me from my husband became still
greater. If I could have entertained him with any kind of gossip we
might have got on better. But I had no conversation that interested him,
and he had little or none that I could pretend to understand. He loved
the town; I loved the country; he loved the night and the blaze of
electric lights; I loved the morning and the sweetness of the sun.
At the bottom of my heart I knew that his mind was common, low and
narrow, and that his tastes were gross and vulgar, but I was determined
to conquer the repulsion I felt for him.
It was impossible. If I could have struck one spark from the flint of
his heart the relations between us might have been different. If his
look could have met my look in a single glance of understanding I could
have borne with his impatience and struggled on.
But nothing of this kind ever happened, and when one dreary night after
grumbling at the servants, cursing his fate and abusing everybody and
everything, he put on his hat and went out saying he had "better have
married Lena [the other woman] after all," for in that case he would
have had "some sort of society anyway," the revulsion I had felt on the
night of my marriage came sweeping over me like a wave of the sea, and I
asked myself again, "What's the good? What's the good?"