“She’s having dinner in the glazing room to-day. So I took the opportunity. It’s about her I want to talk. But eat first. I don’t want to spoil the jugged hare.”
He brought out a small pudding basin containing the delicacy and his mother-in-law ate heartily and declared the dish very good.
“Medora can cook, whatever she can’t do,” said Lydia.
“There’s nothing she can’t do,” he answered; “but there’s a damned lot of things she won’t do. And that’s the trouble to me. Time was when we saw alike every way and never had a word or a difference of opinion; but that time’s past seemingly, and I want to know why; and if you know, I wish you’d tell me. It’s all in a nutshell so far as I can see. What am I doing to vex her? God’s my judge I don’t know. I’m the same as I always have been. A chap like me don’t change. I only want to be patient and cheerful and go on with my life as I’m going. It’s her that’s changed. She used to love a bit of fun and laughter and be friendly and easy-going and jolly and kind. That’s what she was when I married her anyway. But she’s changed and I’m getting fairly fed up, because I don’t know of any fault in myself to explain it. If I’d pretended to be different from what I am before we were married and deceived her in anything, then she’d have a case against me. But nobody can say I did. She knew just what I was, and I thought I knew just what she was.”
“You did, Ned,” said Mrs. Trivett earnestly. “You take my word that you did know just what she was. And what she was, she is still under her skin. She can’t change really, any more than you can, or anybody else. She took you because you suited her and she knew she’d be happy with you. And what’s happening to her just now is a passing thing calling for patience. Women have their funny moods and whims—Medora like the rest.”
“I grant that, but how long is it going to last? I know they get queer in their heads sometimes, but she’s down in the mouth always now. I can’t pleasure her, do what I may, and the things that always delighted her a year ago bore her now. Damn it! She looks at me sometimes as if she was a schoolmistress and I was a wicked boy.”
“It’s like this with her; and it’s the same with lots of people who have had nothing but a good time all their lives. Instead of knowing their luck, they take their luck to be just the usual state of things, and they don’t look round and see the scores of people without their good fortune: they only fancy that other people are more fortunate than them. They get so bored with the good that they begin to picture something better. Everybody wants better bread than is made of wheat sometimes, and especially them that have never tasted worse. We, that have had to eat barley bread, know our luck—t’others don’t. The thing for you is to be patient. You’re all right and you’re going on all right so far as I can tell. I’ll take your word of that and I very well understand your difficulties. But you’re a man and you’ve got the brains.”
“She says not,” he answered. “That’s one of the nice things I’m called to hear now. She didn’t quarrel with my sense or my nonsense a year ago. Now she says right out that she wishes I had more intellects. Not a very nice thing to hear. I might be a stone-breaker, or a hedge-tacker with no sense at all.”
“Be patient with her. It’s a whim, and what’s responsible for it I don’t know more than you. But it will pass. She can’t go on pretending she’s an unhappy woman—”
“No, and she shan’t,” he said. “I’m only a human man myself, and it’s a proper outrage for her to make out she’s being bullied and evil treated by a chap that worshipped the ground under her feet and would again. She’s mean, mother.”