“You were very good to me, in your way, Hibbert Mearely; but you never allowed me to forget how greatly you had honoured me. It pleased you when I called you ‘sir.’ You didn’t marry me for love of me—you took me as if I were a—a—bunch of wild flowers, to give just the right contrasting touch of rustic simplicity to your fine house. No, not home. It never was a home—only a museum.”
She looked about the large room. It was ornamented with scores of pieces of bric-à-brac, with jars, images, plates, trays, boxes, gathered from all parts of the globe. They were artistically arranged, making pleasant spots of colour, and might have looked as if they belonged there and together—but for the tags. Every article, no matter what its size—even the thimble which, it is safe to say, Mary Stuart never did wear—had a ticket attached to it. Mr. Mearely had spent most of his time, when at Villa Rose, in writing on these tickets, in his small, pointed calligraphy, the fictions of dealers most pleasing to his egotistical and highly artificial mind.
“I have been only another curio with a ticket on—” Rosamond said, accusingly—“the rustic trifle to offset the art of all ages. You even told me that was why you married me and thought I should feel complimented. What higher compliment could a woman desire than to be regarded by her husband purely as an art object? And I agreed—at first. I thought that was finer than just love—the love of farm lads and lasses. But, oh sir, the farm lads and lasses know something more precious than any treasure that has ever come into Villa Rose. Everybody in Roseborough said that the butter-maker’s daughter married you from ambition, but it wasn’t only ambition. It was glamour!”
The wistful, far-away look came into her eyes again, despite the little smile at the corners of her mouth—a smile as if she mocked herself for a past foible, the while her eyes denied that it was past.
“Yes, it was glamour. I had known nothing but humdrum farm poverty—but I believed fairy tales. I thought it would be good to be the wife of the distinguished Hibbert Mearely—to live in Villa Rose among the antiques—among Cleopatra’s knitting needles and Madame Pompadour’s stuffed lizards, with a knob of Charles I’s unwise, not to say wooden, head for the handle of my shoe-horn!”
A short sharp laugh came from her, unmellowed by the spirit which had bubbled in her since His Friggets’ departure. It suggested that, unless she laughed, she might cry.
“There wasn’t a single woman in the district who wouldn’t have jumped at the chance of marrying Hibbert Mearely. So I—yes, sir—I jumped! And you never knew that I wasn’t happy. You never knew because you were not interested to inquire. You of the portrait, there—do you accuse me of ingratitude? Are you saying that you richly dowered a beggar maid who gave you nothing but the beggar maid in return? Let us discuss that. You made me believe it, and I did believe it, until lately. But it isn’t true. I spoiled nothing that you gave me; but you!—I gave you my dreams, all the fairy tales I’d imagined, all my ideals and faith and all that I knew of reverence. But these things weren’t art objects, so you despised them. Well, I suppose you’d say I gave you no gifts at all, because I gave you what you had no taste for! Enough said for my gifts. What do I owe you? Let us talk of your gifts—without glamour—heart to heart.”
Her hands smoothed down the crease in the hem of the satin pannier, and she smiled.
“You dressed me very beautifully and extravagantly; but it was only to delight your eyes—not to make me seem more lovable to you. Love was too common—almost too vulgar—a sentiment to find lodgment in the Mearely breast. I didn’t mind your being fifty-three, sir. That was like being wooed by a prince with powdered hair—say, the Fourth George, ‘the first gentleman in Europe.’”
She nodded emphatically over this.