Page 612 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

bands of his calibre veil their bad temper.
Sylvia had her defensive armour on in a twinkling. ‘Of
course, you two men will be against me. When did two men
ever disagree upon the subject of wifely duties? However,
I shall read in spite of you. Do you know, Mr. North, that
when I married I made a special agreement with Captain
Frere that I was not to be asked to sew on buttons for him?’
‘Indeed!’ said North, not understanding this change of
humour.
‘And she never has from that hour,’ said Frere, recovering
his suavity at the sight of food. ‘I never have a shirt fit to put
on. Upon my word, there are a dozen in the drawer now.’
North perused his plate uncomfortably. A saying of
omniscient Balzac occurred to him. ‘Le grand écueil est le
ridicule,’ and his mind began to sound all sorts of philo-
sophical depths, not of the most clerical character.
After dinner Maurice launched out into his usual topic—
convict discipline. It was pleasant for him to get a listener;
for his wife, cold and unsympathetic, tacitly declined to
enter into his schemes for the subduing of the refractory
villains. ‘You insisted on coming here,’ she would say. ‘I did
not wish to come. I don’t like to talk of these things. Let
us talk of something else.’ When she adopted this method
of procedure, he had no alternative but to submit, for he
was afraid of her, after a fashion. In this ill-assorted match
he was only apparently the master. He was a physical ty-
rant. For him, a creature had but to be weak to be an object
of contempt; and his gross nature triumphed over the finer
one of his wife. Love had long since died out of their life.

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