“It makes me sick to see you sitting there tapping at yourself like an Irish peasant!”
Swiftly I found words to requite him for this new outrage. Until then he had at least left my faith untainted by his touch.
“Oh, Maurice!” I said. “If you were only an Irish peasant I would wash your feet and dry them with my hair.”
I spoke very softly, but my words brought two little streaks of red into his cheeks, as though I had flicked them there with a whip. God forgive me, I had developed a cruel tongue; I was no Angel in the house: only a sorely driven woman. And it was true that I would have poured out gifts at his feet if he had only been an Irish peasant with any of the nobility of some of the natures that come to birth in that sad land of beauty. If only he had possessed some of the lovely Irish traits that draw love as the sun draws the dew—generosity, a few ideals, a sweet thing or two about his heart, a little room in it for dreams and beauty!
If even his sins had been big sins I should have felt some hope. Had everything he did been of the same calibre as his coming to table in his dirty flannels, offensive and discourteous as that action was, I could have forgiven much. There is hope for the boldly offensive man who does not care a button whose feelings he hurts, or who sees his sins. Such men usually have the force of character to do big, bold, fine things also to offset their offences, and such men never fail to bring women to their banner; for women, above all things, love in a man the quality of bigness.
But a man who lies and is a coward! who drinks whiskey in his room, and afterwards eats cloves! who pats animals in public, and viciously kicks them in private! whose wretched puling sins are afraid to stand on their own legs and assert themselves as sins—hiding behind doors, skulking in the darkness!
Oh! there were days when, as we rode together over the short golden grass, I wished my horse would throw me and break my neck—and did not pray at night for forgiveness for that sinful wish. In the terrible season of drought that had fallen, the source of prayer was beginning to dry up and fail.
In a letter from Judy, which came from Australia this passage occurred:
“I hear that the petit sobriquet Rhodesians have for you since you went to Mgatweli is ‘Ghostie’ Stair. They tell me you are as gay and witty as ever, and seem to be extremely happy in your marriage, but have become as white and spectral as a ghost. Doesn’t the place agree with you? Dickie is flourishing, and I have got a splendid German governess for him. John is a perfect Pet.”