Part 71 (1/2)
”I am not speaking of the law. I am speaking simply of convenience, and of that which you must feel to be right. If I wish that your intercourse with any person should be of such or such a nature it must be best that you should comply with my wishes.” He paused for her a.s.sent, but she neither a.s.sented nor dissented. ”As far as I can understand the position of a man and wife in this country, there is no other way in which life can be made harmonious.”
”Life will not run in harmonies.”
”I expect that ours shall be made to do so, Laura. I need hardly say to you that I intend to accuse you of no impropriety of feeling in reference to this young man.”
”No, Robert; you need hardly say that. Indeed, to speak my own mind, I think that you need hardly have alluded to it. I might go further, and say that such an allusion is in itself an insult,--an insult now repeated after hours of deliberation,--an insult which I will not endure to have repeated again. If you say another word in any way suggesting the possibility of improper relations between me and Mr.
Finn, either as to deeds or thoughts, as G.o.d is above me, I will write to both my father and my brother, and desire them to take me from your house. If you wish me to remain here, you had better be careful!” As she was making this speech, her temper seemed to rise, and to become hot, and then hotter, till it glowed with a red heat.
She had been cool till the word insult, used by herself, had conveyed back to her a strong impression of her own wrong,--or perhaps I should rather say a strong feeling of the necessity of becoming indignant. She was standing as she spoke, and the fire flashed from her eyes, and he quailed before her. The threat which she had held out to him was very dreadful to him. He was a man terribly in fear of the world's good opinion, who lacked the courage to go through a great and hara.s.sing trial in order that something better might come afterwards. His married life had been unhappy. His wife had not submitted either to his will or to his ways. He had that great desire to enjoy his full rights, so strong in the minds of weak, ambitious men, and he had told himself that a wife's obedience was one of those rights which he could not abandon without injury to his self-esteem.
He had thought about the matter, slowly, as was his wont, and had resolved that he would a.s.sert himself. He had a.s.serted himself, and his wife told him to his face that she would go away and leave him.
He could detain her legally, but he could not do even that without the fact of such forcible detention being known to all the world.
How was he to answer her now at this moment, so that she might not write to her father, and so that his self-a.s.sertion might still be maintained?
”Pa.s.sion, Laura, can never be right.”
”Would you have a woman submit to insult without pa.s.sion? I at any rate am not such a woman.” Then there was a pause for a moment. ”If you have nothing else to say to me, you had better leave me. I am far from well, and my head is throbbing.”
He came up and took her hand, but she s.n.a.t.c.hed it away from him.
”Laura,” he said, ”do not let us quarrel.”
”I certainly shall quarrel if such insinuations are repeated.”
”I made no insinuation.”
”Do not repeat them. That is all.”
He was cowed and left her, having first attempted to get out of the difficulty of his position by making much of her alleged illness, and by offering to send for Dr. Mac.n.u.thrie. She positively refused to see Dr. Mac.n.u.thrie, and at last succeeded in inducing him to quit the room.
This had occurred about the end of November, and on the 20th of December Violet Effingham reached Loughlinter. Life in Mr. Kennedy's house had gone quietly during the intervening three weeks, but not very pleasantly. The name of Phineas Finn had not been mentioned.
Lady Laura had triumphed; but she had no desire to acerbate her husband by any unpalatable allusion to her victory. And he was quite willing to let the subject die away, if only it would die. On some other matters he continued to a.s.sert himself, taking his wife to church twice every Sunday, using longer family prayers than she approved, reading an additional sermon himself every Sunday evening, calling upon her for weekly attention to elaborate household accounts, asking for her personal a.s.sistance in much local visiting, initiating her into his favourite methods of family life in the country, till sometimes she almost longed to talk again about Phineas Finn, so that there might be a rupture, and she might escape. But her husband a.s.serted himself within bounds, and she submitted, longing for the coming of Violet Effingham. She could not write to her father and beg to be taken away, because her husband would read a sermon to her on Sunday evening.
To Violet, very shortly after her arrival, she told her whole story.
”This is terrible,” said Violet. ”This makes me feel that I never will be married.”
”And yet what can a woman become if she remain single? The curse is to be a woman at all.”
”I have always felt so proud of the privileges of my s.e.x,” said Violet.
”I never have found them,” said the other; ”never. I have tried to make the best of its weaknesses, and this is what I have come to! I suppose I ought to have loved some man.”
”And did you never love any man?”
”No;--I think I never did,--not as people mean when they speak of love. I have felt that I would consent to be cut in little pieces for my brother,--because of my regard for him.”
”Ah, that is nothing.”
”And I have felt something of the same thing for another,--a longing for his welfare, a delight to hear him praised, a charm in his presence,--so strong a feeling for his interest, that were he to go to wrack and ruin, I too, should, after a fas.h.i.+on, be wracked and ruined. But it has not been love either.”