She deprecated this public display of his surly mood toward her. There is no woman, whether cherished or neglected, loving or indifferent, gifted or deficient, who does not arrogate in public the scepter in her husband’s affections, who is not wounded to the quick by the slightest suggestion of reproof, or disparagement, or even the assertion of his independent sentiment when brought to the notice of others. This is something that finds, even in the most long-suffering wife, a keen new nerve to thrill with an undreamed of pain. Paula’s cheek had flushed, her eyes were hot and excited,—indeed, she did not lift them. She could not brook the indignity that the coterie, most of all, Adrian Ducie, should see her husband at her side with a stern and corrugated brow, whispering in her ear his angry rebukes, commands, comments,—who could know what he might have to say to her with that furious face and through his set teeth. The situation was intolerable; her pride groped for a means of escape.
Then she did a thing that she felt afterward she could never have done had she not in that moment unconsciously ceased to love her husband. She shielded him no more as heretofore. She did not sacrifice herself, as was her custom in a thousand small preferences. She did not assume his whim that he might be satisfied, yet incur no responsibility or ridicule. On the contrary, she led the laugh,—she delivered him, bound hand and foot, to the scoffer.
She suddenly rose, and, with her graceful, willowy gait, walked conspicuously down the middle of the saloon. “Ladies and gentlemen, fellow travelers and companions in misery,” she said, swaying forward in an exaggerated bow, “the heir to the throne must not be kissed. Mr. Floyd-Rosney is a victim of the theory of osculatory microbes. You can only be permitted to taste how sweet the baby is through his honeyed words and his dulcet laughter. Why, he might catch a tobacco-bug from these human smoke-stacks, or the chewing-gum habit from Marjorie Ashley. Therefore, you had better turn him over to me and the same old germs he is accustomed to when his muzzer eats him up.”
Forthwith she swung the big child up lightly in her, slender arms and, with gurgles of laughter, devoured him with her lips, while he squealed, and hugged, and kicked, and vigorously returned the kisses. Then she held him head downward, with his curls dangling and apparently all the blood in his body surging through the surcharged veins of his red face as he screamed in delight.
“Why, Mrs. Floyd-Rosney,” said the wondering Marjorie volubly, “everybody on the boat has been kissing Ned ever since he came aboard. The mate says he is so sweet that he took Ned’s finger to stir his coffee with and declared it needed no other sweetening, either long or short. And little Ned believed him and sat on his knee while he ate his breakfast waiting to stir his second cup for him. Ned has got a whole heap of microbes if kissing gives ’em. Why, even that big deer-hound that is freighted to Vicksburg and has been sitting the picture of despair and home-sickness, refusing to eat,—dog-biscuit, or meat, or anything,—just tumbled little Ned over on the deck and licked his face from his hair to his chin. And when he let Ned up at last Ned just hugged the dog, and they kissed each other smack in the mouth. Then they raced up and down the deck among the freight, playing hide and seek till little Ned could hardly stir. Then the deer-hound ate his breakfast, and is sitting down there right now, begging the leadsman for more.”
“Oh, well, then, let him go to his nurse and get his mouth washed out with a solution of carbolic acid or some other anti-toxin,—perhaps that may be a staggerer for the microbes.”
She let the child slide to the floor and then followed the tousled little figure as it sped in a swift trot to her stateroom. He paused for her to turn the bolt of the door, and as it opened he slipped under her arm and disappeared, microbe-laden, within.
Her husband sat silent, dismayed, amazed, scarcely able to believe his senses. He was of the type of human being who, subtly and especially fitted to cause pain, was not himself adjusted to stoical suffering. He had a thousand sensitive fibers. His pride burned within him like an actual fire. While it was appropriate that in public appearances a wife should seem to be the predominant consideration, there being more grace in a deferential affectation than in a sultan-like swagger, this pose had such scant reality in the domestic economy that when Paula presumed upon it in this radical nonchalance, he was at once astounded, humiliated, and deeply wounded. He found it difficult to understand so strange a departure from her habitual attitude toward him, his relegation to the satiric methods with which she favored the world at large, the merciless exposure to ridicule of his remonstrance, which was, indeed, rather the vent of fretful ill-humor than any genuine objection or fear of infection. The least exertion of feminine tact in response to his wish would have quietly spirited the child away and without comment ended these repugnant caresses of the little fellow by strangers. Floyd-Rosney began to experience a growing conviction that it all was the influence of the presence of Ducie. He had had some queer, not unrelished, yet averse interest in studying in another man the face of the lover whom he had supplanted. He could scarcely have brooked the sight of the man she had loved, to tranquilly mark his facial traits, to appraise his mental development, to speculate on his social culture and worldly opportunities. But this was merely his image. Here was his twin brother, his faithful facsimile. Floyd-Rosney had been surprised to note how handsome he was, how obviously intelligent, how dashing. He had been flattered as well,—this was no slight mark of honest preference on the part of Paula, no mean rival he had put aside. He had felt a glow of added pride in the fact, an accession of affection. He had noted the studied calm, the inexpressive pose, the haughty simulation of indifference with which Ducie had sustained the awkward contretemps of their meeting, the strain upon savoir faire which the conventions imposed upon the incident.
And now, as he met Ducie’s eyes again, he perceived elation in them, disproportionate, futile, but delighted. It was the most trivial of foolish trifles, Floyd-Rosney said to himself, but this man had seen him set at naught, put to the blush, held up to ridicule by his wife, airily satiric, utterly unmindful of his dignity, nay, despising its tenuity, and leading the laugh at his discomfiture.
Ducie caught himself with difficulty. He was so conscious of the unguarded expression of his face, the look of relish, of triumph, of contempt surprised in his eyes, that he made haste to nullify the effect. The whole affair was the absent Randal’s, and he must take heed that he did not interfere by word or look or in any subtle wise in what did not concern him,—it was, indeed, of more complicated intent than heretofore he was aware. He was a man of very definite tact but he had hardly realized the extent of the endowment until that moment. He appreciated the subtle value of his own impulse, as if it had been another’s, when he said, directly addressing Floyd-Rosney, as if there had been only the element of good-natured joviality in the episode, “I think we are all likely to encounter dangers more formidable than microbes.—Have you any experience of cloud-bursts, Mr. Floyd-Rosney? This fall of water is something prodigious, to my mind.”