“I should probably be exceedingly difficult and fretful. At times! There would be other times—especially when I was getting better—when I should feel overflowing with gratitude, and should say so, to the people who had been patient with me through the bad times!”
“Words! Words!” he snarled scornfully. “Men judge by deeds. If you want my character, you can hear it from the men with whom I have had to do. I am a Churchman. I go to church every Sunday of my life. I was once Vicar’s churchwarden for three years.”
Poor Vicar! What those three years must have been! I have known whole parishes “set by the ears” by just one warped, self-opinionated man, who put his own pet theories before anything else, and went about sowing dissension—splitting up a hitherto united people into two opposing camps. I said, with an air of polite inquiry:—
“And—did you part good friends?”
He did not answer, but the expression on his face was eloquent enough. I knew, without being told. Suddenly he broke out at a fresh tangent.
“I suppose my wife—”
I held up my hand authoritatively.
“No, please! Don’t blame your wife. She has never mentioned you, except to pity and sympathise. Her one thought has been for you—how to help, how to please. Of course, Mr Travers, the people here and myself have only known you lately, and this illness must have been coming on for some time. Probably it has—well, it has made you bad-tempered, hasn’t it? But your wife knew you before, when you were loving and gentle, so her judgment must be more true.”
With my usual “softness” I was beginning to pity the poor wretch, and to try to let him down gently; but once again his face was eloquent. At the words “loving and gentle,” an involuntary grimace twisted the grim features. Memory refused to reproduce the picture. He said abruptly:—
“My wife is a good woman. That virago of a matron told me this morning that if she’d been in her place, she’d have run away years ago. Well, Mary has stuck to me. She doesn’t want to go! It’s not always the softest-spoken men who make the best husbands. That Hallett fellow, whom Thorold is so thick with—he belongs to my club; I knew something about him when I lived in America long ago. How do you suppose he treated his wife?”