“I’ve been having a pretty fine time up here. About the first person I met was Barton. I had intended to kick him on sight, but I was still feeling pretty sore toward you, so I didn’t. He took me up to his clubs and entered my name, and the next night took me to call on that Mrs. Badgerly. Lord! Lord! that woman is inquisitive! She dug at me like a lawyer at a witness. I never gave anything away: swore you wouldn’t come along because you hated the sea trip so, and vowed I had come up on a sugar lorcha. Then this Mrs. Badgerly (she’s a corker; I like her style), told me she wanted to take me to see old General ——’s wife, because the old lady knew you at home. She was a mighty nice old lady—real motherly,—and she told me a lot of things that you never told me, and made a good many things clear that I’ve never understood. Then I was invited out to the General’s to a big dinner, where there were two or three other people who used to know you; and if I hadn’t been so fond of you, it would have made me all-fired mad the way they rammed it into me that I had married into a fine family, and a fine woman, and all that sort of thing. I didn’t need their verdict on you.
“There was another old lady there who used to know you [here Martin named the mother of a very important civil officer], and both the old ladies took me to their hearts and purred over me. I bluffed the thing right through, invited everybody to Maylubi, and promised to bring you up some time this year. Barton was at the dinner too, and he piled it on thick about our island, made it quite romantic.
“Well, the long and the short of the matter is that you call me. I’ll admit that the crowd here is a little swifter than any I have ever known, and maybe you have some right to your private opinions that I didn’t see before. And, as you said, you keep them to yourself, so I don’t see why I should let them bother me. I’ll stay another month or so, and by that time we will both have a chance to get over our grudges. You needn’t think I’ll let you go back to nursing; and as for me, I am willing to live with you on the old terms, and mighty anxious to get back to them.
“I have put six dots here to represent six kisses (......). I’ll give you sixty when I get home.
“Your affectionate husband,
”Martin Collingwood.”
“P. S. I am going to take both old ladies for a drive to-night. How am I getting on for a beau?”
When she had twice read this epistle, Mrs. Martin Collingwood was startled by the realization of a great mental change in herself. For six weeks she had schooled herself to feel that she must leave her husband purely out of decent pride and self-respect. She had believed that she was actuated by the desire to remove an obnoxious presence from one who had ceased to take pleasure in it; and she had said to herself a hundred times that her affection for her husband had never wavered, but that to thrust it upon him was indecent.
But as she laid down the letter after a second perusal, she was aghast to realize that she did not want to live again with Martin Collingwood: that she recoiled passionately from his easy sense of possession; that his taking her so completely for granted was an affront that she could not pardon. She became conscious of a slow process that had been going on in her mind during the dreary weeks, the death of the feeling that had cast a glamour over Martin Collingwood and his inability to understand her standards and traditions. He had lived with her for a year, and had been unable to comprehend that she was of different substance from Mrs. Maclaughlin or Mrs. Badgerly. He had been grossly offensive at the bare suggestion that she might be superior to one of them, but when she was ticketed with the other’s approval,—she drew an indignant breath,—he stood ready to exhibit her to the world, and to call its attention to the superfine partner whom he had drawn in the matrimonial lottery.
Well, he would be disappointed. He had yet to learn that she was no readier to accept his terms than he had been to accept hers. She had had her romance, and she would pay the price!