A similar
impulse make's a man say:--"Hutt, you old beast!" when a favorite
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. Perhaps--this is only a
theory to account for his infamous behavior later on--he 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 face of his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing
it, so must he continue to sit until 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.
Dinner at the Bronckhorst's was an infliction few men cared to
undergo. Bronckhorst took a pleasure in saying things that made his
wife wince.
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