"No, you aren't. And you know jolly well you aren't. Your scheme was simply to tie my hands."
She knew the truth of this, and her smile became queer. Nevertheless the amiable calm which she maintained astonished even herself. She was not happy, but certainly she was not unhappy. She had got, or she was going to get, what she wanted; and here was the only fact important to her; the means by which she had got it, or was going to get it, were negligible now. It cost her very little to be magnanimous. She wondered at Edwin. Was this furious brute the timid, worshipping boy who had so marvellously kissed her a dozen years earlier--before she had fallen into the hands of a scoundrel? Were these scenes what the exquisite romance of marriage had come to? ... Well, and if it was so, what then? If she was not happy she was elated, and she was philosophic, and she had the terrific sense of realities of some of her sex. She was out of the Benbow house; she breathed free, she had triumphed, and she had her man to herself. He might be a brute--the Five Towns (she had noticed as a returned exile) were full of brutes whose passions surged and boiled beneath the phlegmatic surface--but he existed, and their love existed. And a peep into the depth of the cauldron was exciting.... The injustice or the justice of his behaviour did not make a live question.
Moreover, she did not in truth seriously regard him as a brute. She regarded him as an unreasonable creature, something like a baby, to be humoured in the inessentials of a matter of which the essentials were now definitely in her favour. His taunt that she went blundering into a thing, and that she knew naught of business, amused her. She knew her own business, and knew it profoundly. The actual situation was a proof of that. As for abstract principles of business, the conventions and etiquette of it--her lips condescendingly curled. After all, what had she done to merit this fury? Nothing! Nothing! What could it matter whether the negotiations were begun instantly or in a week's or a month's time? (Edwin would have dilly-dallied probably for three months, or six). She had merely said a few harmless words, offered a suggestion. And now he desired to tear her limb from limb and eat her alive. It was comical! Impossible for her to be angry, in her triumph! It was too comical! She had married an astounding personage.... But she had married him. He was hers. She exulted in the possession of him. His absurd peculiarities did not lower him in her esteem. She had a perfect appreciation of his points, including his general wisdom. But she was convinced that she had a special and different and superior kind of wisdom.
"And a nice thing you've let Maggie in for!" Edwin broke out afresh after a spell of silent walking.
"Let Maggie in for?" she exclaimed lightly.
"Albert ought never to have known anything of it until it was all settled. He will be yarning away to her about how he can use her money for her, and what he gets hold of she'll never see again,--you may bet your boots on that. If you'd left it to me I could have fixed things up for her in advance. But no! In you must go! Up to the neck! And ruin everything!"
"Oh!" she said reassuringly. "You'll be able to look after Maggie all right."
He sniffed, and settled down into embittered disgust, quickening somewhat his speed up the slope of Acre Lane.
"Please don't walk so fast, Edwin," she breathed, just like a nice little girl. "I can't keep up with you."
In spite of his enormous anger he could not refuse such a request. She was getting the better of him again. He knew it; he could see through the devices. With an irritated swing of his body he slowed down to suit her.