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THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE by Rudyard Kipling
IRREMEDIABLE by Ella D'Arcy
'A POOR STICK' by Arthur Morrison
THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE by Arthur Conan Doyle
THE PRIZE LODGER by George Gissing
By Rudyard Kipling
(Civil and Military Gazette, 26 September 1884)
In the daytime, when she moved about me,
In the night, when she was sleeping at my side,—
I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence,
Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her—
Would God that she or I had died!
There was a man called Bronckhorst—a three-cornered, middle-aged man inthe Army—grey as a badger, and, some people said, with a touch ofcountry-blood in him. That, however, cannot be proved. Mrs. Bronckhorstwas 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 prettypublic and private lies that make life a little less nasty than it is.His manner towards his wife was coarse. There are many things—includingactual assault with the clenched fist—that a wife will endure; butseldom a wife can bear—as Mrs. Bronckhorst bore—with a long course ofbrutal, hard chaff, making light of her weaknesses, her headaches, hersmall fits of gaiety, her dresses, her queer little attempts to makeherself attractive to her husband when she knows that she is not whatshe has been, and—worst of all—the love that she spends on herchildren. That particular sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dearto Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped into it, meaning noharm, in the honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock ofendearments run short, and so go to the other extreme to express theirfeelings. A similar impulse makes a man say, 'Hutt, you old beast!'when a favourite horse nuzzles his coat-front. Unluckily, when thereaction of marriage sets in, the form of speech remains, and, thetenderness 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 theoryto account for his infamous behaviour later on—he gave way to thequeer, savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a husbandtwenty years married, when he sees, across the table, the same, sameface of his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing it, somust he continue to sit until the day of its death or his own. Most menand 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 worsethan they are now, and is too unpleasant to be discussed.
Dinner at the Bronckhorsts' was an infliction few men cared to undergo.Bronckhorst took a pleasure in saying things that made his wife wince.When their little boy came in at dessert Bronckhorst used to give himhalf a glass of wine, and, naturally enough, the poor little mite gotfirst riotous, next miserable, and was removed screaming. Bronckhorstasked if that was the way Teddy usually behaved, and whether Mr