Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “It seems as if, take it when he may, or how he can, a man never is to have his tea in peace,” Mr. Moulem grumbled as he came out of the parlour. “Now then, young man, what next?”

  He said this with as injured a tone as if Gervoise Gilbert had been worrying him throughout that day; whereas the artist had never set eyes upon Mr. Moulem before.

  “Now then?” repeated the pawnbroker; “what is it? Is it flat-irons? It a’most always is when I’m fetched away from my cup of tea.”

  Gervoise Gilbert stated his business and uncovered his picture, but the pawnbroker shook his head before the artist could remove the baize.

  “It ain’t a bit of good showin’ it to me,” he said decisively. “I’ve got too much of that sort of stuff a’ready, my winder’s cluttered up with pictur’s; you might have seen ’em if you’d looked.”

  “I did see them,” the young man answered faintly — he was almost too much exhausted to speak above his breath. “I did see them, and I thought, as you seem to sell pictures, you might—”

  “As I seem to sell ‘em?” cried the pawnbroker contemptuously; “as I seem to don’t sell ‘em, you might say. If I could sell them pictur’s should I have ’em in my winder, I should like to know; and I have had ’em in my winder till they’re that spoiled by the flies as you wouldn’t know the landscapes from the figures; and still nobody won’t buy ‘em.”

  Gervoise Gilbert was too tired to remonstrate; he turned despondently away, with his unlucky picture under his arm.

  “If I could break stones upon the highway,” he muttered, “I might earn sixpence a-day. But I’m only an artist, and I can’t earn a halfpenny.”

  He was on the threshold of the shop-door, when a cheerful sounding, pleasant voice behind him said:

  “You might have a look at the picture, father. The poor young man seems awful tired.”

  The artist turned quickly at this welcome sound — it was the sound of a woman’s voice pleading for him, the first token of pity which he had received that day from any living creature.

  The speaker was Mr. Moulem’s eldest daughter, a plump little woman nursing a baby.

  “That’s just like you women,” said the pawnbroker; “you want me to take this here pictur’ because a man looks tired, and that there gownd because a woman looks hungry, and to make a hunconscionable advance upon a flat-iron if a child looks as if she’d been cryin’! A nice way you’d carry on business if you was left to yourself, I don’t think.”

  “Look at the picture, father.”

  Mr. Moulem didn’t say he would; but then, on the other hand, he didn’t say he wouldn’t; and Gervoise Gilbert had uncovered the picture once more while the pawnbroker was hesitating.

  The young woman with the baby was enraptured with the simple sketch.

  “It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed; “not a bit like them nasty dingy things in the window, father. I don’t wonder you can’t sell them; but I’m sure you could sell this, and if you couldn’t I should like it for our parlour, that I should, father. What a dear, sweet little fellow!” she added; “I never see such a pretty child; smilin’, too, bless his little heart, just like life!”

  Gervoise Gilbert sighed.

  “He’d need to smile in the picture, poor child!” he said.

  Something in his tone made the woman look up to him.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because he doesn’t often smile out of it. He’s starving!”

  “Starving! That sweet child?”

  “Yes. It isn’t an uncommon fate. This is a great city, and we are all too busy to think of our neighbours. So nobody takes much notice of the women and children, ay, and the strong men too, who die of starvation. I’ve been from one end of London to the other to-day to try and get five shillings for that picture.”

  “Father, father,” cried the young woman, “you hear that; I’m sure you’d give ten shillings for the picture — you’ll get fifteen for it any day, or five-and-twenty if you was to put it in a frame.”

  Mr. Moulem shrugged his shoulders, and looked at his daughter with an expression of unmitigated contempt.

  “Yes, you are a nice one for the business, Rachel,” he said.—” Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, young man,” he added; “I don’t want the pictur’, and I don’t believe I shall sell it — for as to my daughter here, she’s a good-hearted young woman, but she knows no more about a pawnbroker’s business, no, nor about his losses, neither, than the baby at her breast; but I’ll give you a crown for it — yes or no?”

  “Yes, then,” cried Gervoise Gilbert; “the picture’s worth twenty times that money; but if it was my life’s blood I think I should sell it you.”

  He took up the crown which the pawnbroker had selected from the till, and was hurrying from the shop, when he stopped suddenly, took off his hat, and bowed to Mr. Moulem’s daughter.

  “God bless you and reward you, ma’am,” he said, “for the first pitiful words I’ve heard this day.”

  In another moment he was gone, and the door had closed upon him.

  “Bless us and save us!” exclaimed the pawnbroker, “if that gentleman isn’t cracked, there ain’t no lunatics in Bedlam! He’s mad as a March hare, I should think.”

  “No, father,” the young woman answered gently; “not mad — he’s only very miserable.”

  CHAPTER II. GIN.

  THE street in which Mr. Moulem the pawnbroker lived was a shabby street, but when compared with the sordid alley to which Gervoise Gilbert bent his steps, it was splendid as one of the noblest thoroughfares in Belgravia.

  Here, in this dismal alley, poverty and crime, vice and innocence, rubbed shoulders. The poor cannot choose their companions, and destitution makes one common bond, which unites creatures so dissimilar in every other respect that they might almost be the inhabitants of different planets. The alley was in the heart of St. Giles’s, and it was called Purvis-court.

  Gervoise Gilbert had bought a couple of rolls and a quarter of a pound of cooked meat, on his way to this wretched place. He pushed open the door of one of the houses, passed by a group of children huddled together on the step, and mounted the dark, dilapidated staircase leading to the roof.

  He opened the door of one of the garrets and went in. There was very little furniture in the room, only a truckle bed, covered with a patchwork counterpane, a couple of rush-bottomed chairs, a deal table, and a great gaunt empty easel standing in the middle of the bare floor.

  A woman was lying on the bed — a woman who was young and who had once been pretty, but whose bloated face bore upon it the most horrible evidence that a woman’s face can bear, the fatal stamp which brands the besotted countenance of a drunkard.

  She was sleeping now, a heavy, drunken slumber, and she never stirred at the sound of the opening door. This sleeping woman was Gervoise Gilbert’s wife, and it was she who had dragged the young man down into that dark abyss of poverty and degradation from which he found it so impossible to rise.

  He had met her four years before, when his future life seemed to smile upon him, lightening the burdens of the present, and beckoning him onward along the road to greatness.

  When he had married this woman he had been proud, ambitious, hopeful. Now, he was only defiant and despairing.

  The pretty, graceful girl whom he had loved and wedded was transformed into a drunken fury dangerous to approach, or a besotted wretch sleeping off the fumes of gin.

  Yes, the gin fiend, the comforter and tempter of the poor, had laid his fatal grasp upon Agatha Gilbert. She had not been able to bear poverty, she had not been blest with that cheerful and contented spirit which is woman’s noblest dower. Tempted by the women about her, she had tried to drown her sorrows in gin.

  Perhaps the painter himself may have been a little to blame for his wife’s degradation. He had grown impatient of her complaints, her tears, her murmurs. If she could have borne her fate bravely and nobly, his love for her would never have diminished; but that lov
e wore out under the perpetual torments which a discontented woman can inflict upon her husband.

  He had long ceased to love her. Now he hated her. He hated her, for she was the burden which weighed him down to ruin and degradation. How could he hope to rise? In what sphere of life could he hope to hold up his head with this woman by his side, the sharer of his name, the mother of his child — his wife; only to be separated from him by death?

  He thought of this sometimes, as he sat looking at her in gloomy silence.

  “Will she die young?” he thought; “will she drink herself to death, and leave me free? O, what a new life mine might be, released from this horrible burden!”

  But Gervoise Gilbert was not base enough to encourage the fatal vice that threatened to kill the wife he hated. He tried all in his power to rescue the wretched woman. He pleaded, he expostulated, he threatened; but it was all in vain. She would not hear him; she would not let him save her.

  “Heaven help us!” he muttered, as he glanced at the prostrate figure on the bed; “she can get gin even when I can’t get food!”

  A little boy — a golden-haired, blue-eyed child of three years old — was kneeling upon the ledge of the window, clinging to the bars which guarded the casement, and looking down at the children below; but he turned at the sound of his father’s footstep, and slipped to the ground.

  “Papa,” he cried, “papa, I’m so glad you’re come! I’ve been looking at the children playing in the street. But I wouldn’t go down, because you said I mustn’t.”

  Gervoise Gilbert lifted the child in his arms and kissed him.

  “Bless you, Georgey!” he said; “you’re papa’s own treasure — his only treasure! What has your mother been doing, Georgey?”

  “She’s been out; and then she came in, and she was cross, and like — you know, papa — like she always is after she’s been out a long time; and she beat me because I spoke to her; and then she lay down on the bed, and she’s been asleep ever since. I tried to wake her, but she wouldn’t wake. Why is she so cross to me, papa, and so different from you?”

  The boy looked eagerly in his father’s face as he asked the question; then, in a low, anxious voice, he said:

  “Papa, have you brought anything to eat? I’ve been so hungry all day.”

  Gervoise Gilbert looked at the child for a few moments before he replied. The despair which had been visible in his countenance all day intensified as he gazed at the childish face.

  “Papa,” cried the boy, “why do you look at me like that?”

  His father did not answer, but walked slowly to the empty easel.

  Upon a shelf near the easel there were some brushes and a palette, with some leaden tubes that had once held colours.

  “The picture-trade won’t last any longer,” muttered the painter, as he looked at these empty tubes; “I have used all my colours, and have no money to buy more. Mr. Moulem’s prices won’t pay for paint and canvas. Great God, what an end! And I once dreamed of being a great artist.”

  He groaned aloud, in the bitterness of his soul; and then, turning from the easel to the bed, looked darkly at the prostrate figure.

  “If you had been a better woman,” he said below his breath, “I might have been a different man. The blight of my life has been there.”

  He took the bread and meat from his pocket, and placed it before the child. The little boy ate ravenously, and the father watched him with a smile, the first that had lighted his face that day; but he touched nothing himself.

  “Papa,” the child exclaimed, “ain’t you hungry too?”

  “No, my pet.”

  Gervoise flung himself into a chair opposite the low truckle bed, and sat with his elbows on his knees, and his chin resting on his hands, watching the sleeping woman.

  She never stirred; the weary eyelids were never lifted from the dim eyes; the heavy head lay as it had fallen on the pillow.

  She had been a pretty woman. The disordered hair, streaming upon that wretched pillow, was dark and luxuriant; the features of the face were regular; and long dark lashes fringed the closed eyelids.

  The artist sat in the same position, never speaking, never looking away from the figure on the bed. The child finished his supper, and then, creeping softly to his father’s side, sat down upon the ground at the young man’s feet The sun went down in all his summer grandeur, glorifying even the garret windows of a court like this with splashes of crimson splendour, that turned the common glass to brighter hues than were ever produced by mortal hands, even in the days when the art of staining glass was in all its mediæval glory. The evening shadows deepened in the room and on the artist’s face; but before the light quite died away, Gervoise Gilbert changed his attitude and drew the deal table towards him. There was a penny ink-bottle and an old quill-pen upon the narrow ledge which served as an apology for a chimney-piece. Gervoise took these and a sheet of crumpled note-paper, and wrote, slowly and deliberately, the following lines:

  “AGATHA GILBERT, — When I met you five years ago, I was an ambitious man, with a bright future, as I thought, before me. I married you, and from that hour to this a blight has clung to me.

  “Have you ever considered that a wife’s duty is to be a help and comfort, not a hindrance and a burden, to the man whose name she bears? Have you ever remembered this, and tried to aid me in the battle of life? No; as I live, not once!

  “I am weary of the struggle, Agatha. I am weary of trying to save you from the hateful vice which is doomed to be the destruction of your body and soul. If the law could part us, I would appeal to the law. But, unhappily, justice has no remedy for wrongs such as mine. The law gives no redress to the husband whose wife robs her child of bread in order that she may have money to buy gin.

  “I depart, therefore, of my own will. Every link that ever united us is broken — every hope of domestic happiness that I ever cherished is shattered — every feeling of affection that ever warmed my heart has died out, leaving only the bitter ashes of regret behind.

  “I go I know not where, and I take the boy with me. It is for his sake I endure a miserable and broken life. If it were not for him, I would go to the nearest river and drown my troubles in a deeper oblivion than that which gin gives to you.

  “Good-bye. I try not to think bitterly of you; I try to forgive you, as I pray you to forgive me for any wrong I may have done you. I have been often impatient, harsh, violent; but I have suffered, and suffered intensely. Once more, goodbye. Do not attempt to follow me, or to seek me out. You will never see me, you will never hear of me again, nor of your child.

  “You have chosen your road in life, and have been reckless as to the misery it has brought upon me. I now choose my pathway, and it leads me far away from you.

  “GERVOISE GILBERT.”

  The young man folded this letter, placed it on the mantelpiece, where it was sure to meet his wife’s eye; then he awoke the boy, who had fallen asleep with his head upon his father’s knee.

  “You have a warmer frock than that, haven’t you, Georgey?” said Gervoise, pointing to the little ragged cotton garment which covered his son’s slender frame.

  “No, papa.”

  “You had one; a woollen frock — very shabby, but thick and warm.”

  “Yes, but mamma took it, you know, papa, ever so many days ago. She took it out with her, and never brought it back.”

  The father muttered an execration. He had seen the comfort of a decent home melt away little by little until it had come to this. He had striven hard against the grim invader, poverty, but he had striven in vain. Of what use were his struggles, when his wife spent every shilling she could wring from him in gin?

  She had robbed her husband and child of every comfort, even of common necessaries, and lastly she had taken her child’s clothes to the pawnbroker.

  “Put on your cap, Georgey,” said Gervoise Gilbert; “you are going for a long journey with papa. Shall you like that?”

  “O, yes, yes; I’ll go anywhere with you
, papa.”

  “Come, then, my darling. But remember, Georgey, we are not going by the railroad; we are not going to travel, as we once travelled when you were a very little child; we are poor now, and we must go on foot. We must walk, Georgey; but when you are tired, papa will carry you.”

  “But I won’t be tired, papa,” the boy answered proudly.

  Gervoise Gilbert looked down upon him with a loving smile.

  “Brave spirit!” he exclaimed. “Noble spirit! The blood of all the Palgraves of Palgrave Chase spoke there.”

  The artist had not many preparations to make before leaving that wretched shelter; he had only one clean shirt, so ragged as to have escaped from the clutches of the pawnbroker. He had no extra coat, no carpet-bag, no railway-rug with which to burden himself.

  He put the shirt in his pocket, put on his hat, took an old silk handkerchief from his own throat, and tied it on the neck of the child, then, leading the boy by the hand, he went out of the room and down the stairs into the narrow court, where the children were still brawling and quarrelling in their noisy play.

  They had no inviting bedchambers to which to retire, these poor children — no well-paid and experienced nurses, solicitous about their health, to watch over their movements. They enjoyed liberty, at least, if they knew no other joy, and were free to roll in the gutter till some drunken mother, coming from the nearest public-house, swooped down upon them, and bore them off to a stifling garret, crowded by a dozen tenants.

  The shadows deepened in the narrow alley; the ruby light that made cracked panes of common glass more beautiful to look upon than all the precious gems glittering in the jewellers’ shops faded slowly away, leaving the windows dark.

  It was quite dark when Agatha Gilbert awoke from her drunken sleep, and staggered to the fireplace. She groped, with her right hand, along the ledge of wood until she found a box of lucifer-matches and a scrap of tallow-candle, that was stuck in an old blacking-bottle. She lighted this candle, and then looked slowly round her, winking and blinking stupidly in the dim light.

  “Not come home yet,” she muttered discontentedly; “not come home yet, though it’s dark. But why should he come home? He hates me, and he doesn’t take the pains to hide his hatred. Where’s the child, though? He was here when I came in. Georgey!”