There she sat with me, for instance, in the ruins, pretending she was tired too, though of course she was not, for never was any one more active, and for want of a better listener—Frau von Eckthum had from the first melted away among the shadows—I was obliged to talk to her in the above strain. However, one cannot really talk to such a woman, not really converse with her. She soon reminded me of this fact (which I well knew) by inquiring whether I did not think people were very apt to call that Providence which was in reality nothing more nor less than their own selves—“Or,” she added (profanely) “if they’re in another mood they call it the Devil, but it is always just themselves.”
Well, I had not come through the mud to Bodiam to be profane, so I gathered my wraps about me and prepared to go.
“But I do see your point,” she said, noticing these preparations, and realizing, perhaps, that she had gone too far. “Things do sometimes happen very unluckily, and punishments are out of all proportion to the offence. I think, for instance, it was perfectly terrible for you that you should have been scolding your wife——”
“Not scolding. Rebuking.”
“It’s the same thing——”
“Certainly not.”
“Rebuking her, then, up to the very moment—oh, it would have killed me!”
And she shivered.
“My dear lady,” said I, slightly amused, “a man has certain duties, and he performs them. Sometimes they are unpleasant, and he still performs them. If he allowed himself to be killed each time there would be a mighty dearth of husbands in the world, and what would you all do then?”
Women however have no sense of humour, and she was unable to catch at this straw of it offered her for the purpose of lightening the conversation. On the contrary, she turned her head and looking at me gravely (pretty eyes, wasted) she said, “But how much better never, never to do your duty.”