Mrs. Bronckhorst was not exactly young, though fifteen years younger than her
husband. She was a large, pale, quiet woman, with heavy eyelids, over weak
eyes, and hair that turned red or yellow as the lights fell on it.
Bronckhorst was not nice in any way. He had no respect for the pretty public
and private lies that make life a little less nasty than it is. His manner
towards his wife was coarse. There are many things--including actual assault
with the clenched fist--that a wife will endure; but seldom a wife can bear--as
Mrs. Bronckhorst bore--with a long course of brutal, hard chaff, making light
of her weaknesses, her headaches, her small fits of gaiety, her dresses, her
queer little attempts to make herself attractive to her husband when she knows
that she is not what she has been, and--worst of all--the love that she spends
on her children. That particular sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dear
to Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped into it, meaning no harm,
in the honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock of endearments run short,
and so go to the other extreme to express their feelings. A similar impulse
makes a man say:--"Hutt, you old beast!" when a favorite horse nuzzles his
coat-front.
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