In this way came about his extraordinary outbreak that night when Cecily had been alone to her aunt’s.  Pent-up irritation drove him into the extravagances which to Cecily were at first incredible.  He could not utter what was really in his mind, and the charges he made against her were modes of relieving himself.  Yet, as soon as they had once taken shape, these rebukes obtained a real significance of their own.  Coincident with Cecily’s disappointment in him had been the sudden exhibition of her pleasure in society.  Under other circumstances, his wife’s brilliancy among strangers might have been pleasurable to Elgar.  His faith in her was perfect, and jealousy of the ignobler kind came not near him.  But he felt that she was taking refuge from the dulness of her home; he imagined people speaking of him as “the husband of Mrs. Elgar;” it exasperated him to think of her talking with clever men who must necessarily suggest comparisons to her.

He himself was not the kind of man who shines in company.  He had never been trained to social usages, and he could not feel at ease in any drawing-room but his own.  The Bohemianism of his early life had even given him a positive distaste for social obligations and formalities.  Among men of his own way of thinking, he could talk vigorously, and as a rule keep the lead in conversation; but where restraint in phrase was needful, he easily became flaccid, and the feeling that he did not show to advantage filled him with disgust.  So there was little chance of his ever winning that sort of reputation which would have enabled him to accompany his wife into society without the galling sense of playing an inferior role.

In the matter of Mrs. Travis, he was conscious of his own arbitrariness, but, having once committed himself to a point of view, he could not withdraw from it.  He had to find fault with his wife and her society, and here was an obvious resource.  Its very obviousness should, of course, have warned him away, but his reason for attacking Mrs. Travis had an intimate connection with the general causes of his discontent.  Disguise it how he might, he was simply in the position of a husband who fears that his authority over his wife is weakening.  Mrs. Travis, as he knew, was a rebel against her own husband—­no matter the cause.  She would fill Cecily’s mind with sympathetic indignation; the effect would be to make Cecily more resolute in independence.  Added to this, there was, in truth, something of that conflict between theoretical and practical morality of which his wife spoke.  It developed in the course of argument; he recognized that, whilst having all confidence in Cecily, he could not reconcile himself to her associating with a woman whose conduct was under discussion.  The more he felt his inconsistency, the more arbitrary he was compelled to be.  Motives confused themselves and harassed him.  In his present mood, the danger of such a state of things was greater than he knew, and of quite another kind than Cecily was prepared for.