Of course she wished, thoroughly wished, that her husband should succeed at Silverbridge.But she could understand that such a contest as this might be carried out without personal animosity.
The letter was so like Arthur Fletcher,--so good, so noble, so generous, so true! The moment her husband came in she showed it to him with delight.'I was sure,' she said as he was reading the letter, 'that he had not known you were to stand.'
'He knew it as well as I did,' he replied, and as he spoke there came a dark scowl across his brow.'His writing to you is a piece of infernal impudence.'
'Oh, Ferdinand!'
'You don't understand, but I do.He deserves to be horsewhipped for daring to write to you, and if I come across him he shall have it.'
'Oh;--for heaven's sake.'
'A man who was your rejected lover,--who has been trying to marry you for the last two years, presuming to commence a correspondence with you without your husband's sanction!'
'He meant you to see it.He says I'm to tell you.'
'Psha! That is ****** cowardice.He meant you not to tell me;and then when you answered him without telling me, he would have had the whip-hand of you.'
'Oh, Ferdinand, what evil thoughts you have!'
'You are a child, my dear, and must allow me to dictate to you what you ought to think in such a matter as this.I tell you he knew all about my candidature, and that what he has said here to the contrary is a mere lie,--yes, a lie.' He repeated the word because he saw that she shrank at hearing it; but he did not understand why she shrank,--that the idea of such an accusation against Arthur Fletcher was intolerable to her.'I have never heard of such a thing,' he continued.'Do you suppose it is common for men who have been thrown over to write to the ladies who have rejected them immediately after their marriage?'
'Do not the circumstances justify it?'
'No;--they make it infinitely worse.He should have felt himself to be debarred from writing to you, both as being my wife and as being the wife of the man whom he intends to oppose at Silverbridge.'
This he said with so much anger that he frightened her.'It is not my fault,' she said.
'No; it is not your fault.But you should regard it as a great fault committed by him.'
'What am I to do?'
'Give me the letter.You, of course, can do nothing.'
'You will not quarrel with him?'
'Certainly I will.I have quarrelled with him already.Do you think I will allow any man to insult my wife without quarrelling with him? What I shall do I cannot as yet say, and whatever Imay do, you had better not know.I never thought much of these Hertfordshire swells who believe themselves to be the very cream of the earth, and now I think less of them than ever.'
He was then silent, and slowly she took herself out of the room, and went away to dress.All this was very terrible.He had never been rough to her before, and she could not at all understand why he had been so rough to her now.Surely it was impossible that he should be jealous because her old lover had written to her such a letter as that which she had shown him!
And then she was almost stunned by the opinions he had expressed about Fletcher, opinions which she knew,--was sure that she knew,--to be absolutely erroneous.A liar! Oh, heavens! And then the letter itself was so ingenuous and so honest! Anxious as she was to do all that her husband bade her, she could not be guided by him in this matter.And then she remembered his words:
'You must allow me to dictate to you what you ought to think.'
Could it be that marriage meant as much as that,--that a husband was to claim to dictate to his wife what opinions she was to form about this and that person,--about a person she had known so well, whom he had never known? Surely she could only think in accordance with her own experience and her own intelligence! She was certain that Arthur Fletcher was no liar.Not even her own husband could make her think that.