She thought the green-clothed country lovely as the train sped through it, and a lump rose in her small throat because she knew she might have been so happy if she had not been so frightened and miserable.The thing which had been dawning upon her took clearer, more awful form.Incidents she had tried to explain and excuse to herself, upon all sorts of futile, simple grounds, began to loom up before her in something like their actual proportions.She had heard of men who had changed their manner towards girls after they had married them, but she did not know they had begun to change so soon.This was so early in the honeymoon to be sitting in a railway carriage, in a corner remote from that occupied by a bridegroom, who read his paper in what was obviously intentional, resentful solitude.Emily Soame's father, she remembered it against her will, had been obliged to get a divorce for Emily after her two years of wretched married life.But Alfred Soames had been quite nice for six months at least.It seemed as if all this must be a dream, one of those nightmare things, in which you suddenly find yourself married to someone you cannot bear, and you don't know how it happened, because you yourself have had nothing to do with the matter.She felt that presently she must waken with a start and find herself breathing fast, and panting out, half laughing, half crying, "Oh, I am so glad it's not true! I am so glad it's not true!"But this was true, and there was Nigel.And she was in a new, unexplored world.Her little trembling hands clutched each other.The happy, light girlish days full of ease and friendliness and decency seemed gone forever.It was not Rosalie Vanderpoel who pressed her colourless face against the glass of the window, looking out at the flying trees; it was the wife of Nigel Anstruthers, and suddenly, by some hideous magic, she had been snatched from the world to which she belonged and was being dragged by a gaoler to a prison from which she did not know how to escape.Already Nigel had managed to convey to her that in England a woman who was married could do nothing to defend herself against her husband, and that to endeavour to do anything was the last impossible touch of vulgar ignominy.
The vivid realisation of the situation seized upon her like a possession as she glanced sideways at her bridegroom and hurriedly glanced away again with a little hysterical shudder.
New York, good-tempered, lenient, free New York, was millions of miles away and Nigel was so loathly near and--and so ugly.She had never known before that he was so ugly, that his face was so heavy, his skin so thick and coarse and his expression so evilly ill-tempered.She was not sufficiently analytical to be conscious that she had with one bound leaped to the appalling point of feeling uncontrollable physical abhorrence of the creature to whom she was chained for life.She was terrified at finding herself forced to combat the realisation that there were certain expressions of his countenance which made her feel sick with repulsion.Her self-reproach also was as great as her terror.He was her husband--her husband--and she was a wicked girl.She repeated the words to herself again and again, but remotely she knew that when she said, "He is my husband," that was the worst thing of all.
This inward struggle was a bad preparation for any added misery, and when their railroad journey terminated at Stornham Station she was met by new bewilderment.
The station itself was a rustic place where wild roses climbed down a bank to meet the very train itself.The station master's cottage had roses and clusters of lilies waving in its tiny garden.The station master, a good-natured, red-faced man, came forward, baring his head, to open the railroad carriage door with his own hand.Rosy thought him delightful and bowed and smiled sweet-temperedly to him and to his wife and little girls, who were curtseying at the garden gate.She was sufficiently homesick to be actually grateful to them for their air of welcoming her.But as she smiled she glanced furtively at Nigel to see if she was doing exactly the right thing.
He himself was not smiling and did not unbend even when the station master, who had known him from his boyhood, felt at liberty to offer a deferential welcome.
"Happy to see you home with her ladyship, Sir Nigel," he said; "very happy, if I may say so."Sir Nigel responded to the respectful amiability with a half-military lifting of his right hand, accompanied by a grunt.
"D'ye do, Wells," he said, and strode past him to speak to the footman who had come from Stornham Court with the carriage.
The new and nervous little Lady Anstruthers, who was left to trot after her husband, smiled again at the ruddy, kind-looking fellow, this time in conscious deprecation.In the simplicity of her republican sympathy with a well-meaning fellow creature who might feel himself snubbed, she could have shaken him by the hand.She had even parted her lips to venture a word of civility when she was startled by hearing Sir Nigel's voice raised in angry rating.
"Damned bad management not to bring something else,"she heard."Kind of thing you fellows are always doing."She made her way to the carriage, flurried again by not knowing whether she was doing right or wrong.Sir Nigel had given her no instructions and she had not yet learned that when he was in a certain humour there was equal fault in obeying or disobeying such orders as he gave.
The carriage from the Court--not in the least a new or smart equipage--was drawn up before the entrance of the station and Sir Nigel was in a rage because the vehicle brought for the luggage was too small to carry it all.