Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/238

230 A Poor Young Man. I was the Poor Young Man.

We got married. She gave me a living she had in her parsonage, and we went to live at her Hall. She wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Lord!—we were an infatuated couple—and she would choose to view me in an aesthetic light. I was Greek statues for her, bless you: Croton, Hercules, I don’t know what! She had her own way too much—I let her do as she liked with me.

Then gradually she got tired—it took her three years to be really glutted with me. I had a physique then—for that matter I have now.”

He held out his arm to me, and bade me try his muscle. I was startled. The hard flesh almost filled his sleeve.

“Ah,” he continued, “You don’t know what it is to have the pride of a body like mine. But she wouldn’t have children—no, she wouldn’t—said she daren’t. That was the root of the difference at first. But she cooled down, and if you don’t know the pride of my body you’d never know my humiliation. I tried to remonstrate—and she looked simply astounded at my cheek. I never got over that amazement.

She began to get souly. A poet got hold of her, and she began to affect Burne-Jones—or Waterhouse—it was Waterhouse—she was a lot like one of his women—Lady of Shalott, I believe. At any rate, she got souly, and I was her animal—son animal—son boeuf. I put up with that for above a year. Then I got some servants’ clothes and went.

I was seen in France—then in Australia—though I never left England. I was supposed to have died