But they were not long together. Five minutes later I heard her voice suddenly through the open port of my cabin—that horrible deck cabin, where I was surrounded and pressed upon by talking, boot-clumping passengers, who just could not spy in upon me because I had door shut and window curtain down. Doubtless she did it on purpose. She must have known where I was, seeing that I was not on the bridge or sitting out on deck. She was speaking to some man of her acquaintance.
"It is always a mistake," she said, "for captains to have their wives on board. I wonder the owners allow it. It spoils the comfort of the other passengers—who, after all, are the chief persons to be considered—and demoralises the poor fellows to such an extent that they are not like the same men. Look at Captain Braye, whom I've known for ages—the dearest old boy you can imagine when he's let alone—it's pitiful to see him henpecked and cowed, and afraid to call his soul his own, shaking in his very shoes before that vixen of a woman!" Her companion said something that I could not hear—I believe it was my pleasant neighbour at breakfast whom she was trying to set against me—and then she put on the crowning touch. "It is always the fate of those exceptionally nice men," said she, "to marry women who don't know how to appreciate them."
I wondered for a moment if I could have heard aright. It was hard to believe in such consummate insolence—such a wild, malignant, perversion of facts. To talk of Tom as a henpecked husband! To dub me, of all people in the world, a vixen!! To say that I—I—did not appreciate him!!! The thing was too utterly ludicrous to be taken seriously, and yet it made me so angry that I could hardly contain myself. It made me feel that it would have been a pleasure to rush out upon her and tear her hair from her head, just like the real vixens do. I felt that my husband, who was also the commander of the ship, ought to have spared me this gross indignity, which could not have occurred if he had respected his position, and kept himself to himself.
Knowing that she was not with him now, I went back to the bridge. But alas and alas! The bridge, that had been a little paradise, was a place despoiled. Though the serpent had gone out of it, she had been there and poisoned everything. Tom was not the same to me. All the pleasure of our trip was at an end. I had a wretched day, and at night a gale came on, and I was seasick for the first time. He did not know it, and I would not send for him. Oh, it was horrible! It was tragical! It was heart-breaking! I can't talk about it any more.
People came to meet her at Sydney, but she could not leave without a ceremonious good-bye to her dear captain. She was calling for him everywhere while he was busy making fast, and when she got him she shook hands two or three times over, standing apart with him as at first, regardless of me. Goodness knows I did not want to intrude, yet it was impossible to help noticing the fuss she made. I heard her say—I am quite sure I heard her—that she was coming back with us; meaning, of course, with him. She explained that she had but a day's business to do in Sydney, and would then be able to return by the "dear old Bendigo"—I distinctly caught those three words, in her high-pitched voice. And I thought to myself that this would really be more than I could stand—more than I could in reason be expected to stand. In fact, I was so enraged that I was strongly tempted to put it to my husband that he must make his choice between her and me. However, on second thoughts, I perceived that it would be more dignified to say nothing, but to let my acts speak for me. We had never been accustomed to bicker between ourselves, he and I, and to a certain extent he was not responsible for the situation. Any one not suffering from madness or an infectious disease had the right to travel in the ship; he could not help it. But if he could not turn the otherwise objectionable person off, he could keep him or her in the passengers' proper place. My grievance with him was that he did not keep that woman in her place.
Being quite determined not to have another voyage with her, and not wishing to say nasty things to him about it, I was glad when an old acquaintance, paying us a call on board, asked me to stay awhile with her, for the further benefit of my health, representing that the time covered by the sea trip was all too short to recruit in.
"Thank you very much," I answered, on the spur of the moment. "I really think I will. I was never in Sydney but once, and then I had no chance to see the beauties of the place, of which I have heard so much; and I daresay it would do me good to have a longer change."
I was aware of Tom's utter, silent astonishment, but I would not look at him; I left him to read the riddle for himself. When he spoke it was to quietly fall in with the proposal, adding suggestions that would have made it difficult for me to draw back if I had wanted to do so. He was so ready to leave me, indeed, that I fancied he wanted to get rid of me—of course he did not, but any one would have thought so—and naturally that made me bitter. I spoke but little to him afterwards, and he was certainly cold to me—-he seemed to divine my suspicions and to resent them—and I did not go to see him off; I could not. In short, our holiday was entirely and irreparably ruined.
I believe I cried nearly the whole time that I was in Sydney. It did seem hard, in my state of health and under the sad circumstances, to be stranded amongst strangers, who did not understand my sorrows, nor my habits of life, and gave me none of the little pettings and coddlings that I needed and was accustomed to; and the thought of that woman going home with Tom, having the deck cabin, sitting on the bridge with him of nights, making free with the whole ship, usurping my place and privileges, drove me simply frantic—until one day I met her in the street, and found she had not gone with him after all.