The Child Wife. Майн Рид
swarming with its happy hundreds.
He did not know that still another was in store for him. As he stepped into the long piazza, two gentlemen were seen entering at the opposite end. They were followed by a large dog, that sadly needed helping over a stile.
The recognition was mutual; though only acknowledged by a reciprocal frown, so dark as not to be dispelled by the cheerful gong at that moment sounding the summons to dinner.
Chapter Six.
A Loving Couple.
“Married for love! Hach! fool that I’ve been!”
The man who muttered these words was seated with elbows resting upon a table, and hands thrust distractedly through his hair.
“Fool that I’ve been, and for a similar reason!” The rejoinder, in a female voice, came from an inner apartment. At the same instant the door, already ajar, was spitefully pushed open, disclosing the speaker to view: a woman of splendid form and features, not the less so that both were quivering with indignation.
The man started, and looked up with an air of embarrassment. “You heard me, Frances?” he said, in a tone half-surly, half-ashamed.
“I heard you, Richard,” answered the woman, sweeping majestically into the room. “A pretty speech for a man scarce twelve months married—for you! Villain!”
“That name is welcome!” doggedly retorted the man. “It’s enough to make one a villain?”
“What’s enough, sir?”
“To think that but for you I might have had my thousands a year, with a titled lady for my wife!”
“Not worse than to think that but for you I might have had my tens of thousands, with a lord for my husband! ay, a coronet on my crown, where you are barely able to stick a bonnet?”
“Bah! I wish you had your lord.”
“And bah to you! I wish you had your lady.” The dissatisfied benedict, finding himself more than matched in the game of recrimination, dropped back into his chair, replanted his elbows on the table, and resumed the torturing of his hair.
Back and forth over the floor of the apartment paced the outraged wife, like a tigress chafed, but triumphant.
Man and wife, they were a remarkable couple. By nature both were highly endowed; the man handsome as Apollo, the woman beautiful as Venus. Adorned with moral grace, they might have challenged comparison with anything on earth. In the scene described, it was more like Lucifer talking to Juno enraged.
The conversation was in the English tongue, the accent was English, the speakers apparently belonging to that country—both of them. This impression was confirmed by some articles of travelling gear, trunks and portmanteaus of English manufacture, scattered over the floor. But the apartment was in the second storey of a second-class boarding-house in the city of New York.
The explanation is easy enough. The amiable couple had but lately landed from an Atlantic steamer. The “O.K.” of the Custom House chalk was still legible on their luggage.
Looking upon the pair of strange travellers—more especially after listening to what they have said—one skilled in the physiognomy of English life would have made the following reflections:—
The man has evidently been born “a gentleman,” and as evidently brought up in a bad school. He has been in the British army. About this there can be no mistake; no more than that he is now out of it. He still carries its whisker, though not its commission. The latter he has lost by selling out; but not until after receiving a hint from his colonel, or a “round robin” from his brother officers, requesting him to “resign.” If ever rich, he has long since squandered his wealth; perhaps even the money obtained for his commission. He is now poor. His looks proclaim him an adventurer.
Those of the woman carry to a like conclusion, as regards herself. Her air and action, the showy style of her dress, a certain recklessness observable in the cast of her countenance, bring the beholder, who has once stood alongside “Rotten Row,” back to the border of that world-renowned ride. In the fair Fan he sees the type of the “pretty horse-breaker”—the “Anonyma” of the season.
It is an oft-repeated experience. A handsome man, a beautiful woman, both equally heart-wicked, inspiring one another with a transient passion, that lasts long enough to make man and wife of them, but rarely outlives the honeymoon. Such was the story of the couple in question.
The stormy scene described was far from being the first. It was but one of the squalls almost daily occurring between them.
The calm succeeding such a violent gust could not be continuous. A cloud so dark could not be dissipated without a further discharge of electricity.
It came; the last speaker, as if least satisfied, resuming the discourse.
“And supposing you had married your lady—I know whom you mean—that old scratch, Lady C—, what a nice time the two of you would have had of it! She could only have kissed you at the risk of losing her front teeth, or swallowing them. Ha! ha! ha!”
“Lady C— be hanged! I could have had half a score of titled ladies; some of them as young, and just as good-looking, is you!”
“Boasting braggart! ’Tis false, and you know it! Good-looking as me! How you’ve changed your tune! You know I was called the ‘Belle of Brompton!’ Thank heaven, I don’t need you to satisfy me of my good looks. Men of ten times your taste have pronounced upon them; and may yet!”
The last speech was delivered in front of a cheval glass, before which the speaker had stopped, as if to admire her person.
Certainly the glass gave out an image that did not contradict what she had said.
“May yet!” echoed the satiated rake in a drawl, that betokened either indifference, or its assumption. “I wish some of them would!”
“Indeed! Then some of them shall!”
“Oh! I’m agreeable. Nothing would give me greater pleasure. Thank God! we’ve got into a country whose people take a common-sense view of these questions, and where divorce can be obtained, not only on the quiet, but cheaper than the licence itself! So far from standing in your way, madam, I’ll do all I can to assist you. I think we can honestly plead ‘incompatibility of temper’?”
“She’d be an angel that couldn’t plead that with you.”
“There’s no danger, then, of your being denied the plea, unless fallen angels be excepted.”
“Mean insulter! Oh, mercy! to think I’ve thrown myself away on this worthless man?”
“Thrown yourself away? Ha! ha! ha! What were you when I found you? A waif, if not worse. The darkest day of my life was that on which I picked you up!”
“Scoundrel!”
The term “scoundrel” is the sure and close precursor of a climax. When passed between two gentlemen, it not unfrequently leads to a mutual pulling of noses. From a lady to a gentleman the result is of course different, though in any case it conducts to a serious turn in the conversation. Its effect in the present instance was to end it altogether.
With only an exclamation for rejoinder, the husband sprang to his feet, and commenced pacing up and down one side of the room. The wife, already engaged in like perambulation, had possession of the other.
In silence they crossed and recrossed; at intervals exchanging angry glances, like a tiger and tigress, making the tour of their cage.
For ten minutes or more was this mute, unsocial promenade