Matthew Strang was startled, yet not quite surprised by the revelation of his wife’s mood. She had never before so openly resented or dissented from the situation that had gradually grown up—one of those strange, complex, undefined situations of which life is so full, and which are only able to exist by virtue of not being put into words.
He stirred the dregs of his tea with his spoon, painfully embarrassed.
“I shall talk to an architect I know,” he said at last, ignoring her allusion. “The cost mightn’t be much, and it needn’t be all paid off at once. Besides,” he added, with forced playfulness, “that extra hundred dollars a year of yours must be used up somehow.”
Rosina turned eyes of flame upon the unhappy Billy. “I knew it!” she said, cuttingly. “I knew you were here to spy upon me. So you have sneaked about that, have you?”
Matthew lost his temper at last.
“Don’t be a fool, Rosina!” he said, roughly. “Do you think I care a pin whether you spend a wretched hundred dollars more or less?”
“No; I dare say you would rather have a wife that would bring you to the workhouse. They had the bailiffs in at No. 36A only yesterday. There’s a wife there that would just suit you. The husband’s something in your way of business, an author or a poet, and she’s a tall, stuck-up creature who sits at the window in strange long gowns without stays, and reads books to him and never goes to church. My! You should see her out marketing—they swindle her at every turn; she doesn’t know a horse from a ham sandwich. I don’t wonder they’ve come to a bad end—you should see the dust on her Venetian blinds. I prophesied the crash last winter—ask Billy if I didn’t. They took in their coals by the hundred-weight. Don’t you fancy I don’t know that’s the sort of woman you’re hankering after. Ever since my Davie was born, and you got mixed up with those sort of creatures, you’ve been sorry you married me. Oh, it’s no use denying it. You want a fine lady that would scorn to soil her fingers with housework, and expect you to cover ’em with diamonds, a creature that would faint at the sight of a black-beetle. But you were glad enough to marry me once upon a time, when you hadn’t a dollar to your name. They say you’re a fine painter, and who made you a fine painter? Who took you abroad, and supported you while you were studying? They think you’re a fine gentleman, and who made you a fine gentleman? Oh yes, I know I’m not one of your fine ladies—but if I had been, where would you have been now? In the bankruptcy court—perhaps back again in the jail from which I dragged you.”
Matthew crimsoned furiously. Billy leaped in his chair.
“You fish-wife! How dare you say such things to my brother?” he cried, choking with rage. “Matt in jail, indeed!”
“Let her talk,” said Matthew, wearily. “I see it was a mistake to have come here at all.”