grave men with a desire to clasp her in their arms
and kiss her. This desire had scattered the desultory
intellectual culture of Sir Charles at first sight.
His imagination invested her with the taste for the
fine arts which he required from a wife, and he married
her in her first season, only to discover that the
amativeness in her temperament was so little and languid
that she made all his attempts at fondness ridiculous,
and robbed the caresses for which he had longed of
all their anticipated ecstasy. Intellectually
she fell still further short of his hopes. She
looked upon his favorite art of painting as a pastime
for amateur and a branch of the house-furnishing trade
for professional artists. When he was discussing
it among his friends, she would offer her opinion
with a presumption which was the more trying as she
frequently blundered upon a sound conclusion whilst
he was reasoning his way to a hollow one with his
utmost subtlety and seriousness. On such occasions
his disgust did not trouble her in the least; she triumphed
in it. She had concluded that marriage was a
greater folly, and men greater fools, than she had
supposed; but such beliefs rather lightened her sense
of responsibility than disappointed her, and, as she
had plenty of money, plenty of servants, plenty of
visitors, and plenty of exercise on horseback, of
which she was immoderately fond, her time passed pleasantly
enough. Comfort seemed to her the natural order
of life; trouble always surprised her. Her husband’s
friends, who mistrusted every future hour, and found
matter for bitter reflection in many past ones, were
to her only examples of the power of sedentary habits
and excessive reading to make men tripped and dull.
One fine May morning, as she cantered along the avenue
at Brandon Beeches on a powerful bay horse, the gates
at the end opened and a young man sped through them
on a bicycle. He was of slight frame, with fine
dark eyes and delicate nostrils. When he recognized
Lady Brandon he waved his cap, and when they met he
sprang from his inanimate steed, at which the bay
horse shied.
“Don’t, you silly beast!” she cried,
whacking the animal with the butt of her whip.
“Though it’s natural enough, goodness knows!
How d’ye do? The idea of anyone rich enough
to afford a horse riding on a wheel like that!”
“But I am not rich enough to afford a horse,”
he said, approaching her to pat the bay, having placed
the bicycle against a tree. “Besides, I
am afraid of horses, not being accustomed to them;
and I know nothing about feeding them. My steed
needs no food. He doesn’t bite nor kick.
He never goes lame, nor sickens, nor dies, nor needs
a groom, nor—”
“That’s all bosh,” said Lady Brandon
impetuously. “It stumbles, and gives you
the most awful tosses, and it goes lame by its treadles
and thingamejigs coming off, and it wears out, and
is twice as much trouble to keep clean and scrape
the mud off as a horse, and all sorts of things.
I think the most ridiculous sight in the world is a
man on a bicycle, working away with his feet as hard
as he possibly can, and believing that his horse is
carrying him instead of, as anyone can see, he carrying
the horse. You needn’t tell me that it isn’t
easier to walk in the ordinary way than to drag a
great dead iron thing along with you. It’s
not good sense.”