Lord Sigismund and Jellaby immediately got up and unhooked the steps and held them for her to come down by. Menzies-Legh also went across and offered her a hand. I alone sat still, as well I might; for not only am I her husband, but it is absurd to put false notions of her importance into a woman’s head who has not had such attentions paid her since she was eighteen and what we call appetitlich.
Besides, I was rooted to the bench by amazement at her extraordinary appearance. No wonder she was not to be seen when duty ought to have kept her at my side helping me with the horse. She had not walked one of those five hot miles. She had been sitting in the caravan, busily cutting her skirt short, altering her hair, and transforming herself into as close a copy as she could manage of Mrs. Menzies-Legh and her sister.
Small indeed was the resemblance now to the Christian gentlewoman one wishes one’s wife to seem to be. Few were the traces of Prussia. I declare I would not have recognized her had I met her casually in the road; and to think she had dared do it without a word, without asking my permission, without even asking my opinion! Her nice new felt hat with its pheasant’s wing had almost disappeared beneath a gauze veil arranged after the fashion adopted by the sisters. Heaven knows where she got it, or out of what other garment, now of course ruined, she had cut and contrived it; and what is the use of having a pheasant’s wing if you hide it? Her hair, up to then so tight and inconspicuous, was loosened, her skirt showed almost all of both her boots. The whole figure was strangely like that of the two sisters, a little thickened, a little emphasized.
What galled me was the implied entire indifference to my authority. My mind’s indignant eye saw the snap her fingers were executing in its face. Also, one’s own wife is undoubtedly a thing apart. It is proper and delightful that the wives of others should be attractive, but one’s own ought to be adorned solely with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit combined with that other ornament, an enduring desire to keep the husband God has given her comfortable and therefore happy. Without these two a wife cannot be regarded as a fit object for her husband’s esteem. I plainly saw that I would find it impossible to esteem mine in that skirt. I do not know what she had done to her feet, but they looked much smaller than I had been accustomed to suppose them as she came down the steps assisted by the three gentlemen. My full beer-glass, held neglected in my hand, dripped unheeded on to the road as I stared stupidly at this apparition. Rapidly I selected the first few of the phrases I would address to her the moment we found ourselves alone. There should be an immediate stop put to this loosening of the earth round the roots of the great and sheltering tree of a husband’s authority.
“Poor silly sheep,” I could not help murmuring, those animals flashing into my mind as a legitimate development of the sheltering-tree image.
Then I felt there was a quotation atmosphere about them, and was sure Horace or Virgil—elusive bugbears of my boyhood—must have said something that began like that and went on appropriately if only I could remember it. I regretted that having forgotten it I was unable to quote it, to myself as it were, but yet just loud enough for the lady beside me to hear. She, however, heard what I did say, and looked at me inquiringly.
“If I were to explain, dear lady,” said I, instantly responding to the look, “you would not understand.”
“Oh,” said she.
“I was thinking in symbols.”
“Oh,” said she.