That first dinner was gloomy enough. Mr. Oke--Oke of Okehurst, as the
people down there called him--was horribly shy, consumed with a fear of
making a fool of himself before me and his wife, I then thought. But that
sort of shyness did not wear off; and I soon discovered that, although it
was doubtless increased by the presence of a total stranger, it was
inspired in Oke, not by me, but by his wife. He would look every now and
then as if he were going to make a remark, and then evidently restrain
himself, and remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome,
manly young fellow, who ought to have had any amount of success with women,
suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was
it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke,
although always slow and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very
defined political and social views, and a certain childlike earnestness and
desire to attain certainty and truth which was rather touching. On the
other hand, Oke's singular shyness was not, so far as I could see, the
result of any kind of bullying on his wife's part. You can always detect,
if you have any observation, the husband or the wife who is accustomed to
be snubbed, to be corrected, by his or her better-half: there is a
self-consciousness in both parties, a habit of watching and fault-finding,
of being watched and found fault with. This was clearly not the case at
Okehurst. Mrs. Oke evidently did not trouble herself about her husband in
the very least; he might say or do any amount of silly things without
rebuke or even notice; and he might have done so, had he chosen, ever since
his wedding-day. You felt that at once. Mrs. Oke simply passed over his
existence. I cannot say she paid much attention to any one's, even to mine.
At first I thought it an affectation on her part--for there was something
far-fetched in her whole appearance, something suggesting study, which
might lead one to tax her with affectation at first; she was dressed in a
strange way, not according to any established aesthetic eccentricity, but