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The Manxman: A Novel, a novel by Hall Caine |
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Part 4. Man And Wife - Chapter 1 |
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_ PART IV. MAN AND WIFE CHAPTER I Next morning Kate said to herself, "My life must begin again from to-day." She had a secret that Pete did not share, but she was not the first woman who had kept something from her husband. When people had secrets which it would hurt others to reveal, they ought to keep them close. Honour demanded that she should be as firm as a rock in blotting Philip from her soul. Remembering the promise which Pete had demanded of Philip at the wedding to make their house his home in Ramsey, and seeing that Philip must come, if only to save appearances, she asked herself if she ought to prevent him. But no! She resolved to conquer the passion that made his presence a danger. There was no safety in separation. In her relation to Philip she was like the convict who is beginning his life again--the only place where he can build up a sure career is precisely there where his crime is known. "Let Philip come," she thought. She made his room ready. She was married. It was her duty to be a good wife. Pete loved her--his love would make it easy. They were sitting at breakfast in the hall-parlour, and she said, "I should like to be my own housekeeper, Pete." "And right, too," said Pete. "Be your own woman, darling--not your woman's woman--and have Mrs. Gorry for your housemaid." To turn her mind from evil thoughts, she set to work immediately, and busied herself with little duties, little economies, little cares, little troubles. But the virtues of housekeeping were just those for which she had not prepared herself. Her first leg of mutton was roasted down to the proportions of a frizzled shank, and her first pudding was baked to the colour and consistency of a badly burnt brick. She did not mend rapidly as a cook, but Pete ate of all that his faultless teeth could grind through, and laid the blame on his appetite when his digestion failed. She strove by other industries to keep alive a sense of her duty as a wife. Buying rolls of paper at the paperhanger's, she set about papering every closet in the house. The patterns did not join and the paste did not adhere. She initialled in worsted the new blankets sent by Grannie, with a P and a Q and a K intertwined. Than she overhauled the linen; turned out every room twice a week; painted every available wooden fixture with paint which would not dry because she had mixed it herself to save a sixpence a stone and forgotten the turpentine. Pete held up his hands in admiration at all her failures. She had thought it would be easy to be a good wife to a good husband. It was hard--hard for any one, hardest of all for her. There are the ruins of a happy woman in the bosom of every over-indulged wife. She could not keep to anything long, but every night for a week she gave Pete lessons in reading, writing, and arithmetic. His reading was laborious, his spelling was eccentric, his figuring he did on the tips of his heavy fingers, and his writing he executed with his tongue in his cheek and his ponderous thumb down on the pen nib. "What letter is that, Pete?" she said, pointing with her knitting needle to the page of a book of poems before them. Pete looked up in astonishment. "Is it _me_ you're asking, Kitty? If _you_ don't know, _I_ don't know." "That's a capital M, Pete." "Is it, now?" said Pete, looking at the letter with a searching eye. "Goodness me, the straight it's like the gate of the long meadow." "And that's a capital A." "Sakes alive, the straight it's like the coupling of the cart-house." "And that's a B." "Gough bless me, d'ye say so? But the straight it's like the hoof of a bull, though." "And M A B spells Mab--Queen Mab," said Kate, going on with her knitting. Pete looked up at her with eyes wide open. "I suppose, now," he said, in a voice of pride, "I suppose you're knowing all the big spells yourself, Kitty?" "Not all. Sometimes I have to look in the dictionary," said Kate. She showed him the book and explained its uses. "And is it taiching you to spell every word, Kitty?" he asked. "Every ordinary word," said Kate. "My gough!" said Pete, touching the book with awe. Next day he pored over the dictionary for an hour, but when he raised his face it wore a look of scepticism and scorn. "This spelling-book isn't taiching you nothing, darling," he said. "Isn't it. Pete?" "No, nothing," said Pete. "Here I've been looking for an ordinary word--a _very_ ordinary word--and it isn't in." "What word is it?" said Elate, leaning over his shoulder. "_Love_," said Pete. "See," pointing his big forefinger, "that's where it ought to be, and where is it?" "But _love_ begins _lo_," said Kate, "and you're looking at _lu_. Here it is--love." Pete gave a prolonged whistle, then fell back in his chair, looked slowly up and said, "So you must first know how the word begins; is that it, Kitty?" "Why, yes," said Kate. "Then it's you that's taiching the spelling-book, darling; so we'll put it back on the shelf." For a fortnight Kate read and replied to Pete's correspondence. It was plentiful and various. Letters from heirs to lost fortunes offering shares in return for money to buy them out of Chancery; from promoters of companies proposing dancing palaces to meet the needs of English visitors; from parsons begging subscriptions to new organs; from fashionable ladies asking Pete to open bazaars; from preachers inviting him to anniversary tea-meetings, and saying Methodism was proud of him. If anybody wanted money, he kissed the Blarney Stone and applied to Pete. Kate stood between him and the worst of the leeches. The best of them he contrived to deal with himself, secretly and surreptitiously. Sometimes there came acknowledgments of charities of which Kate knew nothing. Then he would shuffle them away and she would try not to see them. "If I stop him altogether, I will spoil him," she thought. One day the post brought a large envelope with a great seal at the back of it, and Kate drew out a parchment deed and began to read the indorsement--"'Memorandum of loan to Caesar Cre-----'" "That's nothing," said Pete, snatching the document and stuffing it into his jacket-pocket. Kate lifted her eyes with a look of pain and shame and humiliation, and that was the end of her secretaryship. _ |
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