Often he would drink himself into a state of maudlin sentimentality, and in that state reel into the stateroom occupied by himself and his bride. He was really more “in love” with Lamia Leegh than he had ever been with any woman in his long career of “lady-killing.” He had married her for love, although it was the Turk’s love.
But Lamia did not love him in the least. She had married him for rank, money and position. She had begun by liking him, then enduring him, and now she ended by detesting him.
“Some poor girls marry old men for money; some marry ugly men or withered men for the same cause; but to marry a drunkard for that, or for any cause; to be obliged to live with the beast; to be unable to escape from him; to see him day and night; to smell his nauseous breath—it is horrible, abhorrent, abominable!” she said to herself.
Yet she never dared to let her disgust and abhorrence appear to its object. She was too politic to offend him, for—he held the purse strings. There had been no settlements—nothing of the sort—notwithstanding all the talk about them with Will Walling. For every dollar she would receive she must depend on her husband.
The Cashmere shawls and sable furs and solitaire diamonds that she longed for, if she should get them at all, must be got from him, and she knew she would get them, and everything else she might want, so long as he should possess his fortune and she retain his favor. So she veiled her dislike under a show of affection, and she even made for herself a rule and set for herself a task, so that he might never find out her real feelings toward him.
The more disgusted she might really be, the more enamored she would pretend to be.
This was surely a very hard way of earning diamonds and the rest, but, like Gentleman Geff, she told herself that they were worth it; and she thought so.
Their fellow passengers all knew them to be a newly married pair; for there happened to be a few New York “society” people on the ship, who had heard all about the grand wedding at Peter Vansitart’s, and they had spread the news in the first cabin.
Their fellow voyagers also believed them to be a very happy couple; though ladies sometimes whispered together that he certainly did look rather dissipated; and gentlemen remarked to each other that it was a pity he drank so hard and played so high. It was a bad beginning at his age, and if it should continue Haymore fortunes could scarcely “stand the racket.”
But notwithstanding these drawbacks, Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Hay were very popular among their fellow voyagers.