Alice Coverdale, annoyed and pained by what she considered her
husband’s injustice and unkindness, did not leave him long in doubt as
to her feelings upon the subject; for as soon as she could conquer a
choking sensation in the throat sufficiently to speak, she exclaimed:--
“Really, Harry, I must say you are most unkind and inconsiderate; you
chose of your own accord to accept the invitation to Allerton House,
though I warned you at the time that it would necessitate your calling
on the Duke and Duchess first: you agreed--in fact, you promised to do
so. There has not been a day since that I haven’t reminded you of this
promise, so it is impossible you can have forgotten it;--there was a
time, and not so very long ago either, when you were ready enough to go
anywhere with me, and were only too glad to find I wished you to do so.
I little thought, poor foolish girl that I was, how soon things would
alter; and now, when you knew as well as I did that this is the last day
on which we can pay this visit, you’ve formed some stupid engagement
(to go and shoot somewhere, I dare say; I wish guns had never been
invented--horrid dangerous things--always going off unexpectedly and
killing people), and so made it impossible to return the Duchess’s call:
and tomorrow I shall be ashamed to look her in the face, or to speak to
her; though I dare say she won’t give me a chance to do that, for she is
as proud as Lu------ as a woman can be.”
Here, from sheer want of breath, Alice being forced to pause, Harry
quietly remarked: “Women can be as proud as men for that matter, _ecce
signum_, but now just listen to a little common sense for a minute. I
fully intended and wished to accompany you, but I happened yesterday, at
H--------, to meet with a very old friend of mine, who informed me that
he was going this morning to transact certain business matters which
would involve the expenditure of a considerable sum of money, in regard
to which affair he particularly required my advice and opinion.”
“He must be going to buy a gun or a horse then,” interrupted Alice;
“those are the only things people imagine you understand; and I don’t
wonder at them either, when they see you waste half your life about this
horrid sporting. If you give up all intellectual pursuits in this way,
you’ll go on till you become fit for nothing but to hunt, shoot, eat,
drink, and sleep, like that dreadful old creature, Colonel Crossman.”
Thoroughly provoked by this last speech (which touched on a sensitive
point in Harry’s disposition, and aroused a latent fear, by which he was
always more or less oppressed, lest people should consider him, from his
fondness for field sports, a mere addlepated, fox-hunting squire), he
replied, with more asperity in his tone than he had ever before used, or
believed it possible he could use, towards Alice, “Take care you don’t
become a peevish shrew, like Mrs. Crossman. You are angry, and forget
yourself; when you grow calm again, you will perceive how foolish
and unreasonable you have been to lose your temper about such a silly
trifle.”
“You think being rude to your friends and unkind to your wife a silly
trifle, do you?” inquired Alice.
Harry’s colour rose as he took a turn up and down the room to compose
his feelings ere he would trust himself to reply. “You want to make me
angry,” he said, “but I do not intend to afford you that satisfaction.
Listen to me,” he continued, seeing that his wife was again about to
interrupt him, “listen to me, and when you have heard what I am about
to say, you can reply as you please. I made this engagement to oblige
my friend, without at the moment recollecting that to-day was the time
appointed for calling on the Duchess; but when I reflected that one was
business of importance, and the other a mere visit of ceremony, I
hoped and believed you would be reasonable enough, when I should
have explained the matter to you, not even to wish me to give up my
engagement, and would exercise sufficient common sense and self-control,
to go and pay the visit alone.”
“Then you thought wrongly,” returned Alice, with vehemence; “if you
required a wife who could go about by herself and visit a set of proud,
stiff people, who are strangers to her, and keep up your position in
the county, while you are out hunting and shooting all day, for your own
selfish amusement, you should have chosen some fashionable woman of the
world, and not a poor simple country girl like myself, who relied on
your affection to protect and encourage her;” and here Alice showed
strong symptoms of a disposition to bring that “young wife’s last
resource” of a flood of tears to bear upon her disobedient and
refractory spouse.
Harry, seeing this, and having been throughout the interview haunted by
a latent consciousness that he was in the wrong, was strongly tempted to
yield, and, dispatching a messenger to Tom Rattleworth furnished
with some good and sufficient social white lie to account for his
non-appearance, to stay quietly at home till the time should have
arrived to accompany his wife to visit their aristocratic neighbours;
but, unhappily, Colonel Crossman’s caution, “You’ve married a nice gal
and a pretty gal, take care you don’t go and spoil her,” flashed across
him: “women are all alike, more or less; it’s the nature of ’em to
choose to have their own way; if you indulge ’em at first, they will
be your masters ever after; show your wife she has met her match,” &c.
&c.--these, and such like precepts, rang in Harry’s ears. Alice was
angry and unreasonable, striving for the upper hand, in fact; he must
not permit this: for her sake, as much as for his own, he was called
upon to assert himself, and vindicate his marital authority. Yes,
painful as it was to his feelings to speak or act harshly to his young
wife, whom, even at that moment, he cared for more than any other
created being, he would give her a lesson which should cure the evil at
once and for ever. So putting on a very grave look he began: “My dear
Alice, you are forgetting yourself, forgetting our relative positions;
but there is a quiet way of settling such affairs; verbose discussions
of this nature do not suit me--I am essentially a man of action. It is
the husband’s right to command, the wife’s duty to obey. I had hoped
your own proper feeling would have saved me the pain of being forced
to remind you of this. I must now add, that I consider myself bound
to fulfil my engagement to my friend, and intend to do so: during my
absence, it is my wish and desire that you should drive and call on the
Duchess of Brentwood; if, which I can scarcely conceive possible, you
still refuse to do as I have pointed out, I shall, before I leave this
room, write a note to Lady Allerton, informing her that we are unable to
dine with her to-morrow, without assigning any cause whatsoever for this
change of intention--which, as I cannot give the true reason, and will
not stoop to invent a false one, is the only course left open to me.”
Having delivered himself calmly and firmly of this despotic speech,
Harry folded his arms across his broad chest, and leaning his autocratic
back against the chimney-piece, stood looking as if he felt himself
completely “monarch of all he surveyed,” his wife included. Meanwhile a
fearful struggle between good and evil was proceeding in Alice’s mind;
a kind word or look would instantly have caused the good to triumph: but
her husband stood cold and inexorable as a statue of Fate. Then the
same personage who tempted Eve to the sin which lost her Eden, suddenly
caused to flash across Alice’s recollection all Mrs. Crossman’s
arguments, and she determined to follow her advice, to “pluck up a
spirit, and treat her husband as he treated her,” &c. Accordingly, by
a great effort restraining her tears, which during Harry’s harangue had
begun to flow, she looked up with flashing eyes and crimson cheeks, as
she replied:
“The obedience you require is not that of a wife but of a slave, and
I refuse to yield it. You have treated me unkindly and unjustly, and I
will not sacrifice myself to oblige you.” Harry made no reply, though
his lips moved convulsively, as though he could scarcely command himself
to keep silence; then snatching pen and ink, he scrawled a hasty note,
sealed and directed it, and rising, quitted the room without uttering
a single word. As the door closed behind him, the tears which Alice had
hitherto with such difficulty repressed, burst forth unrestrained. She
was roused from a paroxysm of weeping by the sound of horses’ feet, and
springing to the window, reached it in time to see Harry give a note to
a groom, who rode away at speed in the direction of Allerton House; then
mounting his own horse, he also galloped off, ere Alice could muster
sufficient presence of mind to attempt to recall him.