My method was not to apologise in words for my husband’s behaviour, but by delicate implication to let it be understood that I considered such vagaries perfectly permissible in a genius—or a fool. They may have been in doubt (as I meant them to be) as to which of the two I considered him. But Maurice knew; and his was the cheek to burn.
When he insulted his guests over cards later in the evening I pursued the same tactics. I do not profess that I at any time played the rôle of a gentle and propitiating houri. As I have before remarked, such a person would have been thrown away on Maurice, and very bad for him. A man with a dog whip would have been much more to the point.
The art of winning or losing with equanimity at cards was not one which his ancestors had bequeathed to him. If he lost sixpence he also lost his temper. If he won he became jaunty and facetious and tried to make others lose their tempers by jeers at their poor play. When things went very wrong with his game he thought nothing of taking advantage of being in his own house to jibe a man about his income or his debts or any private matter he might happen to have cognisance of.
Once after squabbling outrageously with a man over his losses early in the evening, and winning from him later, he at the end of the game ostentatiously tore up the man’s I.O.U. saying calmly:
“That’s all right old man! I know you can’t afford to lose it.”
The man turned a bright green, and everybody in the room commenced to talk vivaciously about the weather. But Maurice smiled the triumphant smile of the man who has scored.
It was upon such occasions that I positively detested him. When I saw a man who for the sake of decency had been calm under affliction all the evening, smiling the set smile of a gargoyle, when only the presence of women prevented him from getting up and hitting Maurice in the eye (as I certainly should have done in his place); when I saw such a man swallow some flagrant final insult with an effort that made him turn pale, I too turned pale, and tasted aloes. When in my bedroom at the end of the evening, while they were putting on their wraps, I found myself mechanically muttering inventions to women as pale as myself about my husband’s touch of fever—stroke of sun—overwork—strain, anything that was not too utterly futile a reason for outrageous behaviour; the taste of life was bitter in my mouth, and I knew shame that burned to the bone.
Those were the nights when I could have torn out my tongue for making vows before God to Maurice Stair; when my soul was blotted with hatred; when I drove the knives of scorn and contempt into myself for desecrating my life, and my father’s name by such an alliance.
On such nights I dared not open my lips to Maurice. I feared myself too much. Locked in my hut I would spend hours watching with dry eyes the spectacle of pride writhing in the dust. Or kneeling before the tortured body of Christ crucified, but not daring to lift my face to him, nor to the lovely face of that stately Madonna Bouguereau painted with hands upraised and great eyes full of sorrow for the fate of women; no prayer would come to my bitten lips, nor tears to my scorched eyes; but the cry of the desolate and the despairing was in my heart.