Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages | Page 9

remembered his youth as a sometime companion irrevocably lost to him; its vague,
delightful hopes were now crystallized into definite ties, and its happy irresponsibilities
displaced by a sense of care, inseparable perhaps from the most fortunate of marriages.
As he reached the street in which he lodged his pace involuntarily slackened. While still
some distance off, his eye sought out and distinguished the windows of the room in
which Esther awaited him. Through the broken slats of the Venetian blinds he could see
the yellow gaslight within. The parlour beneath was in darkness; his landlady had
evidently gone to bed, there being no light over the hall-door either. In some
apprehension he consulted his watch under the last street-lamp he passed, to find comfort
in assuring himself it was only ten minutes after ten. He let himself in with his latch-key,
hung up his hat and overcoat by the sense of touch, and, groping his way upstairs, opened
the door of the first floor sitting-room.
At the table in the centre of the room sat his wife, leaning upon her elbows, her two hands
thrust up into her ruffled hair; spread out before her was a crumpled yesterday's
newspaper, and so interested was she to all appearance in its contents that she neither
spoke nor looked up as Willoughby entered. Around her were the still uncleared tokens
of her last meal: tea-slops, bread-crumbs, and an egg-shell crushed to fragments upon a
plate, which was one of those trifles that set Willoughby's teeth on edge--whenever his
wife ate an egg she persisted in turning the egg-cup upside down upon the tablecloth, and
pounding the shell to pieces in her plate with her spoon.
The room was repulsive in its disorder. The one lighted burner of the gaselier, turned too
high, hissed up into a long tongue of flame. The fire smoked feebly under a newly
administered shovelful of 'slack', and a heap of ashes and cinders littered the grate. A pair
of walking boots, caked in dry mud, lay on the hearth-rug just where they had been
thrown off. On the mantelpiece, amidst a dozen other articles which had no business there,
was a bedroom-candlestick; and every single article of furniture stood crookedly out of
its place.
Willoughby took in the whole intolerable picture, and yet spoke with kindliness. 'Well,
Esther! I'm not so late, after all. I hope you did not find the time dull by yourself?' Then
he explained the reason of his absence. He had met a friend he had not seen for a couple
of years, who had insisted on taking him home to dine.
His wife gave no sign of having heard him; she kept her eyes riveted on the paper before
her.
'You received my wire, of course,' Willoughby went on, 'and did not wait?'
Now she crushed the newspaper up with a passionate movement, and threw it from her.
She raised her head, showing cheeks blazing with anger, and dark, sullen, unflinching
eyes.

'I did wyte then!' she cried 'I wyted till near eight before I got your old telegraph! I s'pose
that's what you call the manners of a "gentleman", to keep your wife mewed up here,
while you go gallivantin' off with your fine friends?'
Whenever Esther was angry, which was often, she taunted Willoughby with being 'a
gentleman', although this was the precise point about him which at other times found
most favour in her eyes. But tonight she was envenomed by the idea he had been
enjoying himself without her, stung by fear lest he should have been in company with
some other woman.
Willoughby, hearing the taunt, resigned himself to the inevitable. Nothing that he could
do might now avert the breaking storm; all his words would only be twisted into fresh
griefs. But sad experience had taught him that to take refuge in silence was more fatal
still. When Esther was in such a mood as this it was best to supply the fire with fuel, that,
through the very violence of the conflagration, it might the sooner burn itself out.
So he said what soothing things he could, and Esther caught them up, disfigured them,
and flung them back at him with scorn. She reproached him with no longer caring for her;
she vituperated the conduct of his family in never taking the smallest notice of her
marriage; and she detailed the insolence of the landlady who had told her that morning
she pitied 'poor Mr. Willoughby', and had refused to go out and buy herrings for Esther's
early dinner.
Every affront or grievance, real or imaginary, since the day she and Willoughby had first
met, she poured forth with a fluency due to frequent repetition, for, with the exception of
today's added injuries, Willoughby had heard