Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section one of Stories of Troubled Marriages. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by John Burlinson, Stories of Troubled Marriages, Section one.
(00:24):
The bronc Horst divorce case by Rodger Kipling, sybil And
Military Gazette, twenty sixth September eighteen eighty four. In the daytime,
when she moved about me. In the night, when she
was sleeping at my side, I was wearied. I was
(00:45):
wearied of her presence day by day, and night by night.
I grew to hater with God that she or I
had died. Confessions. There was a man called Bronchhorst, a
three cornered, middle aged man in the army, gray as
(01:07):
a badger, and some people said, with a touch of
country blood in him, that, however, cannot be proved. Missus
Bronckhorst was not exactly young, though fifteen years younger than
her husband. She was a large, pale, quiet woman, with
heavy eyelids over weak eyes, and hair that turned red
(01:31):
or yellow as the lights fell on it. Bronkhorst was
not nice in any way. He had no respect for
the pretty public and private lies that make life a
little less nasty than it is. His manner towards his
wife was coarse. There are many things, including actual assault
(01:55):
with the clenched fist, that a wife will endure, but
seldom my wife can bear, as missus Bronckhorst bore, with
a long course of brutal, hard chaff, making light of
her weaknesses, her headaches, her small fits of gayety, her dresses,
(02:15):
her queer little attempts to make herself attractive to her
husband when she knows that she is not what she
has been, and worst of all, the love that she
spends on her children. That particular sort of heavy handed
jest was especially dear to Bronkhorst. I suppose that he
(02:38):
had first slipped into it, meaning no harm in the honeymoon,
when folk find their ordinary stock of endearments run short
and so go to the other extreme to express their feelings.
A similar impulse makes a man say, hut, you, old
beast when her favorite horse muzzles his coat front. Unluckily,
(03:04):
when the reaction of marriage sets in the form of speech, remains,
and the tenderness having died, out hurts the wife more
than she cares to say. But missus Bronchurst was devoted
to her, teddy as she called him. Perhaps that was
why he objected to her. Perhaps this is only a
(03:27):
theory to account for his infamous behavior. Later on he
gave way to the queer, savage feeling that sometimes takes
by the throat a husband twenty years married when he
sees across the table the same same face of his
wedded wife and knows that as he has sat facing it,
(03:49):
so he must continue to sit until the day of
its death or his own. Most men and all women
know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths. As
a rule, must be a throwback to times when men
and women were rather worse than they are now, and
(04:11):
is too unpleasant to be discussed. Dinner at the Broncorsts
was an infliction few men cared to undergo. Broncorst took
a pleasure in saying things that made his wife WinCE.
When their little boy came in at dessert, Bronkhorst used
to give him half a glass of wine, and naturally enough,
(04:34):
the poor little mite got first riotous, next miserable, and
was removed screaming. Bronkhorst asked if that was the way
Teddy usually behaved, and whether Missus Bronhorst could not spare
some of her time to teach the little beggar decency.
(04:55):
Missus Bronkhorst, who loved the boy more than her life,
tried not to cry. Her spirit seemed to have been
broken by her marriage. Lastly, Bronkhorst used to say, there,
that'll do. That'll do. For God's sake, try to behave
like a rational woman. Go into the dressing room. Missus
(05:20):
broncast would go, trying to carry it all off with
a smile, and the guest of the evening would feel
angry and uncomfortable. After three years of this cheerful life,
for Missus Bronhorst had no women friends to talk to.
The station was startled by the news that Bronckhorst had
(05:42):
instituted proceedings on the criminal count against a man called Beale,
who certainly had been rather attentive to Missus Broncost whenever
she had appeared in public. The utter want of reserve
with which Bronchorst treated his own dishonor helped us to
(06:03):
know that the evidence against Beale would be entirely circumstantial
and native. There were no letters, but Bronkhorst said openly
that he would rack heaven and earth until he saw
Beale superintending the manufacture of carpets in the central jail.
(06:23):
Missus Bronkhorst kept entirely to her house and let charitable
folks say what they pleased. Opinions were divided. Some two
thirds of the station jumped at once to the conclusion
that Beale was guilty, but a dozen men who knew
and liked him held by him. Beale was furious and surprised.
(06:49):
He denied the whole thing and vowed that he would
thrash Bronhorst within an inch of his life. No jury
we knew would convict him on the criminal count on
native evidence in a land where you can buy a
murder charge including the corpse, all complete, for fifty four rupees.
(07:12):
But Beale did not care to scrape through by the
benefit of a doubt. He wanted the whole thing cleared.
But as he said one night, he can prove anything
with servant's evidence, and I've only my bare word. This
was almost a month before the case came on, and
(07:34):
beyond degreeing with Beale we could do little. All that
we could be sure of was that the Native evidence
would be bad enough to blast Beale's character for the
rest of his service. For when a native begins perjury,
he purges himself thoroughly. He does not boggle over details.
(07:57):
Some genius at the end of the table, whereas the
affair was being talked over, said, look here, I don't
believe lawyers are any good. Get a man to wire
to Strickland and beg him to come down and pull
us through. Strickland was about one hundred and eighty miles
up the line. He had not long been married to
(08:19):
Miss Hugel, but he centered in the telegram a chance
of return to the old detective work that his soul
lusted after. And next time he came in and heard
our story, he finished his pipe and said, oracularly, we
must get the evidence. Hurriya bearer, Mussulman git sweeper. I A.
(08:42):
I suppose are the pillars of the charge. I am
on in this piece, But I'm afraid I'm getting rusty
in my talk. He rose and went into Beale's bedroom,
where his trunk had been put, and shut the door.
An hour later we heard him say, I hadn't the
heart to part with my old make ups when I married.
(09:04):
Will this do? There was a loathly fakir salaming in
the doorway. Now lend me fifty rupees, said Strickland, and
give me your words of honor that you won't tell
my wife. He got all that he asked for and
left the house while the table drank his health. What
(09:25):
he did only he himself knows. A fakir hung about
Bronkhorst's compound for twelve days. Then a sweeper appeared, and
when Beale heard of him, he said that Strickland was
an angel full fledged. Whether the sweeper made love to
Yankee Missus Bronkhorsaiah is a question which concerns Strickland exclusively.
(09:51):
He came back at the end of three weeks and said, quietly,
you spoke the truth. Bial The whole business is put
up from beginning to end. Jove, it almost astonishes me
that Broncorst piece isn't fit to live. There was an
uproar and shouting, and Beale said, how are you going
(10:12):
to prove it? You can't say that you've been trespassing
on Bronkhorst's compound in disguise no, said Strickland. Tell your lawyer,
fool whoever he is, to get up something strong about
inherent improbabilities and discrepancies of evidence. He won't have to speak,
(10:34):
but it will make him happy. I'm going to run
this business. Biale held his tongue, and the other men
waited to see what would happen. They trusted Strickland as
men trust quiet men. When the case came off, the
court was crowded. Strickland hung about in the verandah of
the court till he met the Mohammedan kitmuc Gar. Then
(10:58):
he murmured a fakir's blessing in his ear and asked
him how his second wife did. The man spun round,
and as he looked into the eyes of Estreekin Sahib,
his jaw dropped. You must remember that before Strickland was married,
he was, as I have told you already, a power
(11:20):
among natives. Strickland whispered a rather coarse vernacular proverb to
the effect that he was abreast of all that was
going on, and went into the court armed with a
gut trainer's whip. The Mohammedan was the first witness, and
Strickland beamed upon him from the back of the court.
(11:40):
The man moistened his lips with his tongue, and in
his abject fear of Estreekin Sahib, the Fakir went back
on every detail of his evidence, said he was a
poor man and God was his witness, that he had
forgotten everything that bronc Horst Saib had told him to say.
(12:01):
Between his terror of Strickland, the judge and Bronkhorst, he
collapsed weeping. Then began the panic among the witnesses. Yankee
the Ayah, leering chastely behind her veil, turned gray, and
the bearer left the court. He said that his mama
(12:21):
was dying and that it was not wholesome for any
man to lie unthriftily in the presence of Estreekin Sahib.
Beale said politely to Bronkhorst, your witnesses don't seem to work.
Haven't you any forged letters to produce? But Bronkhorst was
(12:43):
swaying to and fro in his chair, and there was
a dead pause. After Beale had been called to order.
Bronkhorst's counsel saw the look on his client's face, and
without more ado pitched his papers on the little green
Bay's table and mumbled something about having been misinformed. The
(13:05):
whole court applauded wildly like soldiers at a theater, and
the judge began to say what he thought. Beale came
out of the court and Strickland dropped a gut trainer's
whip in the verandah. Ten minutes later, Beale was cutting
Broncorst into ribbons behind the old court cells, quietly and
(13:28):
without scandal. What was left of Broncorst was sent home
in a carriage, and his wife wept over it and
nursed it into a man again. Later on, after Beale
had managed to hush up the counter charge against Broncorst
of fabricating false evidence, Missus Bronchorst, with her faint, watery smile,
(13:52):
said that there had been a mistake, but it wasn't
her Teddy's fault altogether. She would wait till her Teddy
came back to her. Perhaps he had grown tired of her,
or she had tried his patience, and perhaps we wouldn't
cut her any more, and perhaps the mothers would let
their children play with little Teddy again. He was so lonely.
(14:17):
Then the station invited Missus Bronckhorst everywhere until Bronkhorst was
fit to appear in public when he went home and
took his wife with him. According to latest advices, her
teddy did come back to her and they were moderately happy,
though of course he can never forgive her the thrashing
(14:39):
that she was the indirect means of getting for him.
What Beale wants to know is why didn't I press
home the charge against the Bronchhorst brute and have him
run in. What Missus Strickland wants to know is how
did my husband bring such a lovely, lovely wailer from
(15:02):
your station? I know all his money matters, and I'm
certain he didn't buy it. What I want to know
is how do women like Missus Bronkhorst come to marry
men like Bronkhorst? And my conundrum is the most unanswerable
(15:23):
of the three. End of Section one
Section one of Stories of Troubled Marriages. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by John Burlinson, Stories of Troubled Marriages, Section one.
(00:24):
The bronc Horst divorce case by Rodger Kipling, sybil And
Military Gazette, twenty sixth September eighteen eighty four. In the daytime,
when she moved about me. In the night, when she
was sleeping at my side, I was wearied. I was
(00:45):
wearied of her presence day by day, and night by night.
I grew to hater with God that she or I
had died. Confessions. There was a man called Bronchhorst, a
three cornered, middle aged man in the army, gray as
(01:07):
a badger, and some people said, with a touch of
country blood in him, that, however, cannot be proved. Missus
Bronckhorst was not exactly young, though fifteen years younger than
her husband. She was a large, pale, quiet woman, with
heavy eyelids over weak eyes, and hair that turned red
(01:31):
or yellow as the lights fell on it. Bronkhorst was
not nice in any way. He had no respect for
the pretty public and private lies that make life a
little less nasty than it is. His manner towards his
wife was coarse. There are many things, including actual assault
(01:55):
with the clenched fist, that a wife will endure, but
seldom my wife can bear, as missus Bronckhorst bore, with
a long course of brutal, hard chaff, making light of
her weaknesses, her headaches, her small fits of gayety, her dresses,
(02:15):
her queer little attempts to make herself attractive to her
husband when she knows that she is not what she
has been, and worst of all, the love that she
spends on her children. That particular sort of heavy handed
jest was especially dear to Bronkhorst. I suppose that he
(02:38):
had first slipped into it, meaning no harm in the honeymoon,
when folk find their ordinary stock of endearments run short
and so go to the other extreme to express their feelings.
A similar impulse makes a man say, hut, you, old
beast when her favorite horse muzzles his coat front. Unluckily,
(03:04):
when the reaction of marriage sets in the form of speech, remains,
and the tenderness having died, out hurts the wife more
than she cares to say. But missus Bronchurst was devoted
to her, teddy as she called him. Perhaps that was
why he objected to her. Perhaps this is only a
(03:27):
theory to account for his infamous behavior. Later on he
gave way to the queer, savage feeling that sometimes takes
by the throat a husband twenty years married when he
sees across the table the same same face of his
wedded wife and knows that as he has sat facing it,
(03:49):
so he must continue to sit until the day of
its death or his own. Most men and all women
know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths. As
a rule, must be a throwback to times when men
and women were rather worse than they are now, and
(04:11):
is too unpleasant to be discussed. Dinner at the Broncorsts
was an infliction few men cared to undergo. Broncorst took
a pleasure in saying things that made his wife WinCE.
When their little boy came in at dessert, Bronkhorst used
to give him half a glass of wine, and naturally enough,
(04:34):
the poor little mite got first riotous, next miserable, and
was removed screaming. Bronkhorst asked if that was the way
Teddy usually behaved, and whether Missus Bronhorst could not spare
some of her time to teach the little beggar decency.
(04:55):
Missus Bronkhorst, who loved the boy more than her life,
tried not to cry. Her spirit seemed to have been
broken by her marriage. Lastly, Bronkhorst used to say, there,
that'll do. That'll do. For God's sake, try to behave
like a rational woman. Go into the dressing room. Missus
(05:20):
broncast would go, trying to carry it all off with
a smile, and the guest of the evening would feel
angry and uncomfortable. After three years of this cheerful life,
for Missus Bronhorst had no women friends to talk to.
The station was startled by the news that Bronckhorst had
(05:42):
instituted proceedings on the criminal count against a man called Beale,
who certainly had been rather attentive to Missus Broncost whenever
she had appeared in public. The utter want of reserve
with which Bronchorst treated his own dishonor helped us to
(06:03):
know that the evidence against Beale would be entirely circumstantial
and native. There were no letters, but Bronkhorst said openly
that he would rack heaven and earth until he saw
Beale superintending the manufacture of carpets in the central jail.
(06:23):
Missus Bronkhorst kept entirely to her house and let charitable
folks say what they pleased. Opinions were divided. Some two
thirds of the station jumped at once to the conclusion
that Beale was guilty, but a dozen men who knew
and liked him held by him. Beale was furious and surprised.
(06:49):
He denied the whole thing and vowed that he would
thrash Bronhorst within an inch of his life. No jury
we knew would convict him on the criminal count on
native evidence in a land where you can buy a
murder charge including the corpse, all complete, for fifty four rupees.
(07:12):
But Beale did not care to scrape through by the
benefit of a doubt. He wanted the whole thing cleared.
But as he said one night, he can prove anything
with servant's evidence, and I've only my bare word. This
was almost a month before the case came on, and
(07:34):
beyond degreeing with Beale we could do little. All that
we could be sure of was that the Native evidence
would be bad enough to blast Beale's character for the
rest of his service. For when a native begins perjury,
he purges himself thoroughly. He does not boggle over details.
(07:57):
Some genius at the end of the table, whereas the
affair was being talked over, said, look here, I don't
believe lawyers are any good. Get a man to wire
to Strickland and beg him to come down and pull
us through. Strickland was about one hundred and eighty miles
up the line. He had not long been married to
(08:19):
Miss Hugel, but he centered in the telegram a chance
of return to the old detective work that his soul
lusted after. And next time he came in and heard
our story, he finished his pipe and said, oracularly, we
must get the evidence. Hurriya bearer, Mussulman git sweeper. I A.
(08:42):
I suppose are the pillars of the charge. I am
on in this piece, But I'm afraid I'm getting rusty
in my talk. He rose and went into Beale's bedroom,
where his trunk had been put, and shut the door.
An hour later we heard him say, I hadn't the
heart to part with my old make ups when I married.
(09:04):
Will this do? There was a loathly fakir salaming in
the doorway. Now lend me fifty rupees, said Strickland, and
give me your words of honor that you won't tell
my wife. He got all that he asked for and
left the house while the table drank his health. What
(09:25):
he did only he himself knows. A fakir hung about
Bronkhorst's compound for twelve days. Then a sweeper appeared, and
when Beale heard of him, he said that Strickland was
an angel full fledged. Whether the sweeper made love to
Yankee Missus Bronkhorsaiah is a question which concerns Strickland exclusively.
(09:51):
He came back at the end of three weeks and said, quietly,
you spoke the truth. Bial The whole business is put
up from beginning to end. Jove, it almost astonishes me
that Broncorst piece isn't fit to live. There was an
uproar and shouting, and Beale said, how are you going
(10:12):
to prove it? You can't say that you've been trespassing
on Bronkhorst's compound in disguise no, said Strickland. Tell your lawyer,
fool whoever he is, to get up something strong about
inherent improbabilities and discrepancies of evidence. He won't have to speak,
(10:34):
but it will make him happy. I'm going to run
this business. Biale held his tongue, and the other men
waited to see what would happen. They trusted Strickland as
men trust quiet men. When the case came off, the
court was crowded. Strickland hung about in the verandah of
the court till he met the Mohammedan kitmuc Gar. Then
(10:58):
he murmured a fakir's blessing in his ear and asked
him how his second wife did. The man spun round,
and as he looked into the eyes of Estreekin Sahib,
his jaw dropped. You must remember that before Strickland was married,
he was, as I have told you already, a power
(11:20):
among natives. Strickland whispered a rather coarse vernacular proverb to
the effect that he was abreast of all that was
going on, and went into the court armed with a
gut trainer's whip. The Mohammedan was the first witness, and
Strickland beamed upon him from the back of the court.
(11:40):
The man moistened his lips with his tongue, and in
his abject fear of Estreekin Sahib, the Fakir went back
on every detail of his evidence, said he was a
poor man and God was his witness, that he had
forgotten everything that bronc Horst Saib had told him to say.
(12:01):
Between his terror of Strickland, the judge and Bronkhorst, he
collapsed weeping. Then began the panic among the witnesses. Yankee
the Ayah, leering chastely behind her veil, turned gray, and
the bearer left the court. He said that his mama
(12:21):
was dying and that it was not wholesome for any
man to lie unthriftily in the presence of Estreekin Sahib.
Beale said politely to Bronkhorst, your witnesses don't seem to work.
Haven't you any forged letters to produce? But Bronkhorst was
(12:43):
swaying to and fro in his chair, and there was
a dead pause. After Beale had been called to order.
Bronkhorst's counsel saw the look on his client's face, and
without more ado pitched his papers on the little green
Bay's table and mumbled something about having been misinformed. The
(13:05):
whole court applauded wildly like soldiers at a theater, and
the judge began to say what he thought. Beale came
out of the court and Strickland dropped a gut trainer's
whip in the verandah. Ten minutes later, Beale was cutting
Broncorst into ribbons behind the old court cells, quietly and
(13:28):
without scandal. What was left of Broncorst was sent home
in a carriage, and his wife wept over it and
nursed it into a man again. Later on, after Beale
had managed to hush up the counter charge against Broncorst
of fabricating false evidence, Missus Bronchorst, with her faint, watery smile,
(13:52):
said that there had been a mistake, but it wasn't
her Teddy's fault altogether. She would wait till her Teddy
came back to her. Perhaps he had grown tired of her,
or she had tried his patience, and perhaps we wouldn't
cut her any more, and perhaps the mothers would let
their children play with little Teddy again. He was so lonely.
(14:17):
Then the station invited Missus Bronckhorst everywhere until Bronkhorst was
fit to appear in public when he went home and
took his wife with him. According to latest advices, her
teddy did come back to her and they were moderately happy,
though of course he can never forgive her the thrashing
(14:39):
that she was the indirect means of getting for him.
What Beale wants to know is why didn't I press
home the charge against the Bronchhorst brute and have him
run in. What Missus Strickland wants to know is how
did my husband bring such a lovely, lovely wailer from
(15:02):
your station? I know all his money matters, and I'm
certain he didn't buy it. What I want to know
is how do women like Missus Bronkhorst come to marry
men like Bronkhorst? And my conundrum is the most unanswerable
(15:23):
of the three. End of Section one
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