Part 14 (1/2)

”Anyone could get the better of you,” she said.

He resented this estimate of himself as a good-natured simpleton. He a.s.suredly did not want to quarrel, but he was obliged to say:

”Oh! Could they?”

An acerbity scarcely intentional somehow entered into his tone. As soon as he heard it he recognised the tone as the forerunner of altercations.

”Of course!” she insisted, superiorly, and then went on: ”We're all right as we are. We spend too much money, but I daresay we're all right. If you go in for a lot of new things you may lose all we've got, and then where shall we be?”

In his heart he said to her:

”What's it got to do with you? You manage your home, and I'll manage my business! You know nothing at all about business. You're the very ant.i.thesis of business. Whatever business you've ever had to do with you've ruined. You've no right to judge and no grounds for judgment.

It's odious of you to asperse any of the Orgreaves. They were always your best friends. I should never have met you if it hadn't been for them. And where would you be now without me? Trying to run some wretched boarding-house and probably starving. Why do you a.s.sume that I'm a d----d fool? You always do. Let me tell you that I'm one of the most common-sense men in this town, and everybody knows it except you.

Anyhow I was clever enough to get _you_ out of a mess.... You knew I was hiding something from you, did you? I wish you wouldn't talk such infernal rot. And moreover I won't have you interfering in my business.

Other wives don't, and you shan't. So let that be clearly understood.”

In his heart he was very ill-used and very savage.

But he only said:

”Well, we shall see.”

She retorted:

”Naturally if you've made up your mind, there's no more to be said.”

He broke out viciously:

”I've not made up my mind. Don't I tell you I've only just begun to think about it?”

He was angry. And now that he actually was angry, he took an almost sensual pleasure in being angry. He had been angry before, though on a smaller scale, with less provocation, and he had sworn that he would never be angry again. But now that he was angry again, he gloomily and fiercely revelled in it.

Hilda silently folded up the shawl, and, putting it into a drawer of the wardrobe, shut the drawer with an irritatingly gentle click.... Click!

He could have killed her for that click.... She seized a dressing-gown.

”I must just go and look at George,” she murmured, with cool, clear calmness,--the virtuous, anxious mother; not a trace of coquetry anywhere in her.

”What bos.h.!.+” he thought. ”She knows perfectly well George's door is bolted.”

Marriage was a startling affair. Who could have foretold this finish to the evening? Nothing had occurred ... nothing ... and yet everything.

His plans were all awry. He could see naught but trouble.

She was away some time. When she returned, he was in bed, with his face averted. He heard her moving about.

”Will she, or won't she, come and kiss me?” he thought.

She came and kissed him, but it was a meaningless kiss.