As he smiled assent in the grateful laziness of a hard-worked man, his mind was stung with the remembrance of a young wife swathed in the dreary fog, who, above all things, loved the open air and the shining of the sun.
Her plea was that Bertie would weary alone, and that she hated travelling, but it came to him quite suddenly that this was always the programme of their holidays—some Mediterranean villa, full of clever people, for him, and the awful dulness of that Bloomsbury street for her; or he went North to a shooting-lodge, where he told his best stories in the smoking-room, after a long day on the purple heather; and she did her best for Bertie at some watering-place, much frequented on account of its railway facilities and economical lodgings. Letters of invitation had generally a polite reference to his wife—“If Mrs. Trevor can accompany you I shall be still more delighted”—but it was understood that she would not accept “We have quite a grudge against Mrs. Trevor, because she will never come with her husband; there is some beautiful child who monopolises her,” his hostess would explain on his arrival; and Trevor allowed it to be understood that his wife was quite devoted to Bertie, and would be miserable without him.
When he left the room, it was explained: “Mrs. Trevor is a hopelessly quiet person, what is called a 'good wife,' you know.”
“The only time she dined with us, Tottie Fribbyl—he was a Theosophist then, it's two years ago—was too amusing for words, and told us what incarnation he was going through.
“Mrs. Trevor, I believe, had never heard of Theosophy, and looked quite horrified at the idea of poor Tottie's incarnation.
“'Isn't it profane to use such words?' she said to me. So I changed to skirt dancing, and would you believe me, she had never seen it?
“What can you do with a woman like that? Nothing remains but religion and the nursery. Why do clever men marry those impossible women?”
Trevor was gradually given to understand, as by an atmosphere, that he was a brilliant man wedded to a dull wife, and there were hours—his worst hours—when he agreed.
Cara mia, cara mia, sang the sailors; and his wife's face in its perfect refinement and sweet beauty suddenly replaced the Mediterranean.
Had he belittled his wife, with her wealth of sacrifice and delicate nature, beside women in spectacles who wrote on the bondage of marriage, and leaders of fashion who could talk of everything from horse-racing to palmistry?