"Well," said Mrs. Cynic, when I had concluded the reading, "that story seems to me to prove but one thing."
"And what is that, pray?" I asked, realizing I had been foolish to read such a tale to such an auditor.
"Why, the truth of Madame de Staël's remark: 'The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.'"
That hateful woman! She always leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I know she springs from some corrupt ancestry. She has all the marks of inward decay upon her.
When she had gone, Mrs. Purblind and I breathed more freely.
"She doesn't believe in anything good," said Mrs. Purblind.
"No," I answered in a tone of disgust, "she has nothing within her to answer to it."
"How different she is from Mrs. Earnest," continued Mrs. Purblind; "why, you can hardly convince that woman that anyone is really mean, and goodness knows she has trouble enough to make her bitter. What a husband she's got! That man makes me so mad! He's ugly from sheer badness."
I thought for a moment, and then I assented. I really do believe that man is ugly without cause. He and his wife live at some distance from us, and I've often visited them. I should like to give you a scene to which I was witness one evening when I was a trifle ill, and lay on a divan just out of their dining room.
Mrs. Earnest is like a delicate flower that lifts its pretty face and smiles in the sunlight of love, but is bowed and broken 'neath the thunder-cloud and storm. She longs to make her home attractive, but her husband has no sympathy with this desire; to him home is merely the place where he finds food and lodging, and a safety valve for such moods and tempers as he is obliged to keep under control in the business world.
The efforts that this poor little wife makes, in her timid way, to start up pleasant subjects of conversation would move a rock to tears.
This is the scene, as I recall it--a specimen scene.
The family--husband, wife, and three little children were at dinner, as I said.
"What's been happening to-day? anything of interest?" asked the little wife.
"Not that I know of," was the gruff reply.
Silence, broken by the occasional sound of eating implements, ensued.
"Pass the bread, will you?" he said in a short tone, directly.