Towards eleven o'clock Mr. Thomas came in.
"I wonder you come home at all," Severn heard Mrs. Thomas say as her husband stepped indoors.
"I left the office at half-past ten," the voice of Thomas replied, disagreeably.
"Oh, don't try to tell me that old tale," the woman answered contemptuously.
"I didn't try anything at all, Gertie," he replied with sarcasm. "Your question was answered."
Severn imagined him bowing with affected, magisterial dignity, and he smiled. Mr. Thomas was something in the law.
Mrs. Thomas left her husband in the hall, came and sat down again at table, where she and Severn had just finished supper, both of them reading the while.
Thomas came in, flushed very red. He was of middle stature, a thickly-built man of forty, good-looking. But he had grown round-shouldered with thrusting forward his chin in order to look the aggressive, strong-jawed man. He had a good jaw; but his mouth was small and nervously pinched. His brown eyes were of the emotional, affectionate sort, lacking pride or any austerity.
He did not speak to Severn nor Severn to him. Although as a rule the two men were very friendly, there came these times when, for no reason whatever, they were sullenly hostile. Thomas sat down heavily, and reached his bottle of beer. His hands were thick, and in their movement rudimentary. Severn watched the thick fingers grasp the drinking-glass as if it were a treacherous enemy.
"Have you had supper, Gertie?" he asked, in tones that sounded like an insult. He could not bear that these two should sit reading as if he did not exist.
"Yes," she replied, looking up at him in impatient surprise. "It's late enough." Then she buried herself again in her book.
Severn ducked low and grinned. Thomas swallowed a mouthful of beer.
"I wish you could answer my questions, Gertie, without superfluous detail," he said nastily, thrusting out his chin at her as if cross-examining.
"Oh," she said indifferently, not looking up. "Wasn't my answer right, then?"
"Quite--I thank you," he answered, bowing with great sarcasm. It was utterly lost on his wife.
"Hm-hm!" she murmured in abstraction, continuing to read.
Silence resumed. Severn was grinning to himself, chuckling.
"I had a compliment paid me to-night, Gertie," said Thomas, quite amicably, after a while. He still ignored Severn.
"Hm-hm!" murmured his wife. This was a well-known beginning. Thomas valiantly struggled on with his courtship of his wife, swallowing his spleen.
"Councillor Jarndyce, in full committee--Are you listening, Gertie?"
"Yes," she replied, looking up for a moment.
"You know Councillor Jarndyce's style," Thomas continued, in the tone of a man determined to be patient and affable: "--the courteous Old English Gentleman--"
"Hm-hm!" replied Mrs. Thomas.
"He was speaking in reply to . . ." Thomas gave innumerable wearisome details, which no one heeded.
"Then he bowed to me, then to the Chairman--'I am compelled to say, Mr. Chairman, that we have one cause for congratulation; we are inestimably fortunate in one member of our staff; there is one point of which we can always be sure--the point of law; and it is an important point, Mr. Chairman.'
"He bowed to the Chairman, he bowed to me. And you should have heard the applause all round that Council Chamber--that great, horseshoe table, you don't know how impressive it is. And every face turned to me, and all round the board: 'Hear--Hear!' You don't know what respect I command in business, Mrs. Thomas."
"Then let it suffice you," said Mrs. Thomas, calmly indifferent.
Mr. Thomas bit his bread-and-butter.
"The fat-head's had two drops of Scotch, so he's drawing on his imagination," thought Severn chuckling deeply.
"I thought you said there was no meeting to-night," Mrs. Thomas suddenly and innocently remarked after a while.
"There was a meeting, in camera," replied her husband, drawing himself up with official dignity. His excessive and wounded dignity convulsed Severn; the lie disgusted Mrs. Thomas in spite of herself.
Presently Thomas, always courting his wife and insultingly overlooking Severn, raised a point of politics, passed a lordly opinion very offensive to the young man. Severn had risen, stretched himself, and laid down his book. He was leaning on the mantelpiece in an indifferent manner, as if he scarcely noticed the two talkers. But hearing Thomas pronounce like a boor upon the Woman's Bill, he roused himself, and coolly contradicted his landlord. Mrs. Thomas shot a look of joy at the white-clad young man who lounged so scornfully on the hearth. Thomas cracked his knuckles one after another, and lowered his brown eyes, which were full of hate. After a sufficient pause, for his timidity was stronger than his impulse, he replied with a phrase that sounded final. Severn flipped the sense out of it with a few words. In the argument Severn, more cultured and far more nimble-witted than his antagonist, who hauled up his answers with a lawyer's show of invincibility, but who had not any fineness of perception, merely spiked his opponent's pieces and smiled at him. Also the young man enjoyed himself by looking down scornfully, straight into the brown eyes of his senior all the time, so that Thomas writhed.
Mrs. Thomas, meantime, took her husband's side against women, without reserve. Severn was angry; he was scornfully angry with her. Mrs. Thomas glanced at him from time to time, a little ecstasy lighting her fine blue eyes. The irony of her part was delicious to her. If she had sided with Severn, that young man would have pitied the forlorn man, and been gentle with him.
The battle of words had got quieter and more intense. Mrs. Thomas made no move to check it. At last Severn was aware he and Thomas were both getting overheated. Thomas had doubled and dodged painfully, like a half-frenzied rabbit that will not realise it is trapped. Finally his efforts had moved even his opponent to pity. Mrs. Thomas was not pitiful. She scorned her husband's dexterity of argument, when his intellectual dishonesty was so evident to her. Severn uttered his last phrases, and would say no more. Then Thomas cracked his knuckles one after the other, turned aside, consumed with morbid humiliation, and there was silence.
"I will go to bed," said Severn. He would have spoken some conciliatory words to his landlord; he lingered with that purpose; but he could not bring his throat to utter his purpose.
"Oh, before you go, do you mind, Mr. Severn, helping Mr. Thomas down with Kate's box? You may be gone before he's up in the morning, and the cab comes at ten. Do you mind?"
Originally Posted by Antiquarian
No they bicker over lots of things. Just look over my lit net fights. They are almost all against men I've noticed. I'm too much of a gentleman to fight with women.
But what else is implied in this story that they could be bickering over? I may be only seeing phallices again, but I only see a sexual tug of war.
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