“The man was a prig who wrote that. I want to be placed above your God and above your honour. The love I want is the love of the man who will lose everything, even his own soul, for the sake of a woman.”
Edward shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know where you’ll get that. My idea of love is that it’s a very good thing in its place—but there’s a limit to everything. There are other things in life.”
“Oh yes, I know—there’s duty and honour, and the farm, and fox-hunting, and the opinion of one’s neighbours, and the dogs and the cat, and the new brougham, and a million other things.... What do you suppose you’d do if I had committed some crime and were likely to be imprisoned?”
“I don’t want to suppose anything of the sort. You may be sure I’d do my duty.”
“Oh, I’m sick of your duty. You din it into my ears morning, noon, and night. I wish to God you weren’t so virtuous—you might be more human.”
Edward found his wife’s behaviour so extraordinary that he consulted Dr. Ramsay. The medical man had been for thirty years the recipient of marital confidences, and was sceptical as to the value of medicine in the cure of jealousy, talkativeness, incompatibility of temper, and the like diseases. He assured Edward that time was the only remedy by which all differences were reconciled; but after further pressing consented to send Bertha a bottle of harmless tonic, which it was his habit to give to all and sundry for most of the ills to which the flesh is heir. It would doubtless do Bertha no harm, and that is an important consideration to a general practitioner. Dr. Ramsay likewise advised Edward to keep calm and be confident that Bertha would eventually become the dutiful and submissive spouse whom it is every man’s ideal to see by his fireside, when he wakes up from his after-dinner snooze.
Bertha’s moods were certainly trying. No one could tell one day, how she would be the next; and this was peculiarly uncomfortable to a man who was willing to make the best of everything, but on the condition that he had time to get used to it. Sometimes she would be seized with melancholy, in the twilight of winter afternoons, for instance, when the mind is naturally led to a contemplation of the vanity of existence and the futility of all human endeavour. Edward, noticing she was pensive, a state which he detested, asked what were her thoughts; and half dreamily she tried to express them.
“Good Lord deliver us!” he cried cheerily, “what rum things you do get into your little noddle. You must be out of sorts.”
“It isn’t that,” she answered, smiling sadly.
“It’s not natural for a woman to brood in that way. I think you ought to start taking that tonic again—but I dare say you’re only tired and you’ll think quite different in the morning.”