Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages

Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages

In the daytime, when she moved about me, In the night, when she was sleeping at my side, I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence, Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her Would God that she or I had died! There was a man called Bronckhorsta three-cornered, middle-aged man in the Armygrey as a badger, and, some people said, with a touch of country-blood in him. That, however, cannot be proved. Mrs. Bronckhorst was not exactly young, though fifteen years younger than her husband. She was a large, pale, quiet woman, with heavy eyelids over weak eyes, and hair that turned red or yellow as the lights fell on it. Bronckhorst was not nice in any way. He had no respect for the pretty public and private lies that make life a little less nasty than it is. His manner towards his wife was coarse. There are many thingsincluding actual assault with the clenched fistthat a wife will endure; but seldom a wife can bearas Mrs. Bronckhorst borewith a long course of brutal, hard chaff, making light of her weaknesses, her headaches, her small fits of gaiety, her dresses, her queer little attempts to make herself attractive to her husband when she knows that she is not what she has been, andworst of allthe love that she spends on her children. That particular sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dear to Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped into it, meaning no harm, in the honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock of endearments run short, and so go to the other extreme to express their feelings. A similar impulse makes a man say, 'Hutt, you old beast!' when a favourite horse nuzzles his coat-front. Unluckily, when the reaction of marriage sets in, the form of speech remains, and, the tenderness having died out, hurts the wife more than she cares to say. But Mrs. Bronckhorst was devoted to her 'Teddy' as she called him. Perhaps that was why he objected to her. Perhapsthis is only a theory to account for his infamous behaviour later onhe gave way to the queer, savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a husband twenty years married, when he sees, across the table, the same, same face of his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing it, so must he continue to sit until the day of its death or his own. Most men and all women know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths as a rule, must be a 'throw-back' to times when men and women were rather worse than they are now, and is too unpleasant to be discussed. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 15466
Author: D'Arcy, Ella
Release Date: Mar 26, 2005
Format: eBook
Language: English