Chapter 4

Mrs. Saltram made a great affair of her right to be informed where
her husband had been the second evening he failed to meet his
audience. She came to me to ascertain, but I couldn't satisfy her,
for in spite of my ingenuity I remained in ignorance. It wasn't
till much later that I found this had not been the case with Kent
Mulville, whose hope for the best never twirled the thumbs of him
more placidly than when he happened to know the worst. He had
known it on the occasion I speak of--that is immediately after. He
was impenetrable then, but ultimately confessed. What he confessed
was more than I shall now venture to make public. It was of course
familiar to me that Saltram was incapable of keeping the
engagements which, after their separation, he had entered into with
regard to his wife, a deeply wronged, justly resentful, quite
irreproachable and insufferable person. She often appeared at my
chambers to talk over his lapses; for if, as she declared, she had
washed her hands of him, she had carefully preserved the water of
this ablution, which she handed about for analysis. She had arts
of her own of exciting one's impatience, the most infallible of
which was perhaps her assumption that we were kind to her because
we liked her. In reality her personal fall had been a sort of
social rise--since I had seen the moment when, in our little
conscientious circle, her desolation almost made her the fashion.
Her voice was grating and her children ugly; moreover she hated the
good Mulvilles, whom I more and more loved. They were the people
who by doing most for her husband had in the long run done most for
herself; and the warm confidence with which he had laid his length
upon them was a pressure gentle compared with her stiffer
persuadability. I'm bound to say he didn't criticise his
benefactors, though practically he got tired of them; she, however,
had the highest standards about eleemosynary forms. She offered
the odd spectacle of a spirit puffed up by dependence, and indeed
it had introduced her to some excellent society. She pitied me for
not knowing certain people who aided her and whom she doubtless
patronised in turn for their luck in not knowing me. I dare say I
should have got on with her better if she had had a ray of
imagination--if it had occasionally seemed to occur to her to
regard Saltram's expressions of his nature in any other manner than
as separate subjects of woe. They were all flowers of his
character, pearls strung on an endless thread; but she had a
stubborn little way of challenging them one after the other, as if
she never suspected that he HAD a character, such as it was, or
that deficiencies might be organic; the irritating effect of a mind
incapable of a generalisation. One