The Big Fight (Gallipoli to the Somme)Fallon, David
History
The Big Fight (Gallipoli to the Somme)
Fallon, David
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British
That sort of thing went on all through the honeymoon, and Brenda
found it wearing. If Lothar wanted a veil off he said so without any
consideration for her, and if he wanted to put his arm round her he did
not mind who looked on. In fact, he walked her up and down the terrace
of a Swiss hotel so interlaced that she knew every one English must be
laughing at them; but she submitted rather than to risk an explosion
of temper. He had no control over his temper, she soon found; and
quite childish trifles roused it. Wherever they went, sound and fury
went with them, so that she dreaded a meal because it usually meant a
row with a waiter. She could see that every one who served him hated
him, and she knew that his arrogance was never served as well as, for
instance, her father’s considerate politeness. His behavior to her
was uxorious and tyrannical, a blend that could not please a girl as
detached and fastidious as Brenda. If she had been blindly in love
with him, she might have borne to be adored, scolded, kissed, bullied,
checked here and ordered there in a whirlwind of proprietary ardor.
But she never had been blindly in love, and marriage did not make her
so. There must be something wanting in one of them, she thought, some
magnetic quality in him that would have fascinated her, or some strain
of the elemental woman in her that would have surrendered to a mate
with a club. When it was time to go to Berlin she felt relieved. He
would be hard at work at once, he told her, and she would have many
lonely hours. She looked forward to them.
About their arrival in Berlin he preserved a resolute silence that
vexed her. He would not tell her whether they were to stay with his
parents or in a hotel or in rooms till their home was ready for them,
nor would he say in what quarter he thought of living or whether they
were to have a flat or what he called a villa. When she questioned him
about these matters he evaded her and enlarged on the perfect taste and
judgment exercised by Little Mamma and his sisters in domestic matters.
He said again and again that though Elsa’s husband was rich and Mina’s
comparatively poor, they were both so blessed in their wives that their
existence was one of unbroken comfort. In fact, they were men any man
must envy.
“If you model yourself on my sisters in all ways, you will make me
happy,” he said.
“When you talk like that you remind me that I want to be happy myself,”
said Brenda, who was finding unsuspected and disturbing wells of anger
in herself at times.
“A woman’s happiness lies in self-sacrifice and devotion to others. At
least with us it does. Our ideas ...”
“Your ideas about women are out of date,” said Brenda. “You will find
them all in our older poets.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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