Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  ‘Oh, Kate! I beg of you not to go in there,’ said Dick; ‘you’ve had enough; do come home!’

  ‘Come home!’ she shrieked, ‘and with you, you beast! It was you who seduced me, who got me away from my husband.’

  This occasioned a good deal of amusement in the crowd, and several voices asked for information.

  ‘And how did he manage to do that, marm?’ said one.

  ‘With a bottle of gin. What do you think?’ cried another.

  There were moments when Dick longed for the earth to open; but he nevertheless continued to try to prevent Kate from entering the public-house.

  ‘I will drink! I will drink! I will drink! And not because I like it, but to spite you, because I hate you.’

  When she came out she appeared to be a little quieted, and Dick tried very hard to persuade her to get into a cab and drive home. But the very sound of his voice, the very sight of him, seemed to excite her, and in a few moments she broke forth into the usual harangue. Several times the temptation to run away became almost irresistible, but with a noble effort of will he forced himself to remain with her. Hoping to avoid some part of the ridicule that was being so liberally showered upon him, he besought of her to keep up Drury Lane and not descend into the Strand.

  ‘You don’t want to be seen with me; I know, you’d prefer to walk there with Mrs. Forest. You think I shall disgrace you. Well, come along, then.

  ‘“Look at me here! look at me there!

  Criticize me everywhere!

  I am so sweet from head to feet,

  And most perfect and complete.”’

  ‘That’s right, old woman, give us a song. She knows the game,’ answered another.

  Raising his big hat from his head, Dick wiped his face, and as if divining his extreme despair, Kate left off singing and dancing, and the procession proceeded in quiet past several different wine-shops. It was not until they came to Short’s she declared she was dying of thirst and must have a drink. Dick forbade the barman to serve her, and brought upon himself the most shocking abuse. Knowing that he would be sure to meet a crowd of his ‘pals’ at the Gaiety bar, he used every endeavour to persuade her to cross the street and get out of the sun.

  ‘Don’t bother me with your sun,’ she exclaimed surlily; and then, as if struck by the meaning of the word, she said, ‘But it wasn’t a son, it was a daughter; don’t you remember?’

  ‘Oh, Kate! how can you speak so?’

  ‘Speak so? I say it was a daughter, and she died; and you said it was my fault, as you say everything is my fault, you beast! you venomous beast! Yes, she did die. It was a pity; I could have loved her.’

  At this moment Dick felt a heavy hand clapped on his shoulder, and turning round he saw a pal of his.

  ‘What, Dick, my boy! A drunken chorus lady; trying to get her home? Always up to some charitable action.’

  ‘No; she’s my wife.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, old chap; you know I didn’t mean it;’ and the man disappeared into the bar-room.

  ‘Yes, I’m his wife,’ Kate shrieked after him. ‘I got that much right out of him at least; and I played the Serpolette in the Cloches.’

  ‘“Look at me here, look at me there,”’

  she sang, flirting with her abominable skirt, amused by the applause of the roughs. ‘But I’m going to have a drink here,’ she said, suddenly breaking off.

  ‘No, you can’t, my good woman,’ said the stout guardian at the door.

  ‘And why — why not?’

  ‘That don’t matter. You go on, or I’ll have to give you in charge.’

  Kate was not yet so drunk that the words ‘in charge’ did not frighten her, and she answered humbly enough, ‘I’m here wi-th — my hu-s-band, and as you’re so im-impertinent I shall go-go elsewhere.’

  At the next place they came to Dick did not protest against her being served, but waited, confident of the result, until she had had her four of gin, and came reeling out into his arms. Shaking herself free she stared at him, and when he was fully recognized, cursed him for his damned interference. She could now scarcely stand straight on her legs, and, after staggering a few yards further, fell helplessly on the pavement.

  Calling a cab, he bundled her into it and drove away.

  XXVII

  ‘OH, DICK, DEAR, what did I do yesterday? Do tell me about yesterday. Was I very violent? And those wounds on your face, I didn’t do that; don’t tell me that I did. Dick, Dick, are you going to leave me?’

  ‘I have to attend to my business, Kate.’

  ‘Ah, your business! Your business! Mrs. Forest is your business; you’ve no other business but her now. And that is what is driving me to drink.’

  ‘Oh, Kate, don’t begin it again. I’ve a rehearsal — —’

  ‘Yes, the rehearsal of her opera and Montgomery’s music. I did think he was my friend; yet he is putting up her opera to music, and all the while he was setting it you were telling me lies about Chilpéric, saying that I was to play the Fredegonde, and all the principal parts in the great Hervé festival, that the American — but there was no American. It was cruel of you, Dick, to shut me up here with nobody to speak to; nothing to do but to wait for you hour after hour, and when you come home to hear nothing from you but lies, nothing but lies! Chilpéric, Le Petit Faust, L’Oeil Créve, Trône d’Écosse, Marguerite de Navarre, La Belle Poule. And all the music I’ve learnt hoping that I would be allowed to sing it; and yet you expect that a woman who is deceived like that can abstain from drink. Why, you drive me to it, Dick. An angel from heaven wouldn’t abstain from drink. Away you go in the morning to Mrs. Forest — to her opera.’

  ‘But, Kate, there’s nothing between me and Mrs. Forest. She is a very clever woman, and I am doing her opera for her. How are we to live if you come between me and my business?’

  ‘Womanizing is your business,’ Kate answered suddenly.

  ‘Well, don’t let us argue it,’ Dick answered. He tied his shoe-strings and sought for his hat.

  ‘So you’re going,’ she said; ‘and when shall I see you again?’

  ‘I shall try to get home for dinner.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Not before eight.’

  ‘I shall not see you before twelve,’ she replied, and she experienced a sad sinking of the heart when she heard the door close behind him, a sad sinking that she would have to endure till she heard his latchkey, and that would not be for many hours, perhaps not till midnight. She did not know how she would be able to endure all these hours; to sleep some of them away would be the best thing she could do, and with that intention she drew down the blind and threw herself on the bed, and lay between sleeping and waking till the afternoon. Then, feeling a little better, she rang and asked for a cup of tea. It tasted very insipid, but she gulped it down as best she could, making wry faces and feeling more miserable than ever she had felt before; afraid to look back on yesterday, afraid to look forward on the morrow, she bethought herself of the past, of the happy days when Montgomery used to come and teach her to sing, and her triumphs in the part of Clairette; she was quite as successful in Serpolette; people had liked her in Serpolette, and to recall those days more distinctly she opened a box in which she kept her souvenirs: a withered flower, a broken cigarette-holder, two or three old buttons that had fallen from his clothes, and a lock of hair, and it was under these that the prize of prizes lay — a string of false pearls. She liked to run them through her fingers and to see them upon her neck. She still kept the dresses she wore in her two favourite parts, the stockings and the shoes, and having nothing to do, no way of passing the time away, she bethought herself of dressing herself in the apparel of her happy days, presenting, when the servant came up with her dinner, a spectacle that almost caused Emma to drop the dish of cold mutton.

  ‘Lord, Mrs. Lennox, I thought I see a ghost; you in that white dress, oh, what lovely clothes!’

  ‘These were the clothes I used to wear when I was on the stage.’
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br />   ‘But law, mum, why aren’t you on the stage now?’

  Kate began to tell her story to the servant-girl, who listened till a bell rang, and she said:

  ‘That’s Mr. So-and-So ringing for his wife; I must run and see to it. You must excuse me, mum.’

  The cold mutton and the damp potatoes did not tempt her appetite, and catching sight of herself in the glass, bitter thoughts of the wrongs done to her surged up in her mind. The tiny nostrils dilated and the upper lip contracted, and for ten minutes she stood, her hands grasping nervously at the back of her chair; the canine teeth showed, for the project of revenge was mounting to her head. ‘He’ll not be back till midnight; all this while he is with Leslie and Mrs. Forest, or some new girl perhaps. Yet when he returns to me, when he is wearied out, he expects to find me sober and pleased to see him. But he shall never see me sober or pleased to see him again.’ On these words she walked across the room to the fire-place, and putting her hand up the chimney brought down a bottle of Old Tom, and sat moodily sipping gin and water till she heard his key in the lock.

  ‘He’s back earlier than I expected,’ she said.

  Dick entered in his usual deliberate, elephantine way. Kate made no sign till he was seated, then she asked what the news was.

  It was clearly out of the question to tell her that he had been round to tea with one of the girls; to explain how he had wheedled Mrs. Forest into all sorts of theatrical follies was likewise not to be thought of as a subject of news, and as to making conversation out of the rest of the day’s duties, he really didn’t see how he was to do it. Miss Howard had put out the entire procession by not listening to his instructions; Miss Adair, although she was playing the Brigand of the Ultramarine Mountains, had threatened to throw up her part if she were not allowed to wear her diamond ear-rings. The day had gone in deciding such questions, had passed in drilling those infernal girls; and what interest could there be in going through it all over again? Besides, he never knew how or where he might betray himself, and Kate was so quick in picking up the slightest word and twisting it into extraordinary meanings, that he really would prefer to talk about something else.

  ‘I can’t understand how you can have been out all day without having heard something. It is because you want to keep me shut up here and not let me know anything of your going-on; but I shall go down to the theatre to-morrow and have it out of you.’

  ‘My dear, I assure you that I was at the rehearsal all day. The girls don’t know their music yet, and it puts me out in my stage arrangement. I give you my word that is all I heard or saw to-day. I’ve nothing to conceal from you.’

  ‘You’re a liar, and you know you are!’

  Blows and shrieks followed.

  ‘I shall pull that woman’s nose off; I know I shall!’

  ‘I give you my word, my dear, that I’ve been the whole day with Montgomery and Harding cutting the piece.’

  ‘Cutting the piece! And I should like to know why I’m not in that piece. I suppose it was you who kept me out of it. Oh, you beast! Why did you ever have anything to do with me? It’s you who are ruining me. Were it not for you, do you think I should be drinking? Not I — it was all your fault.’

  Dick made no attempt to answer. He was very tired. Kate continued her march up and down the room for some moments in silence, but he could see from the twitching of her face and the swinging of her arms that the storm was bound to burst soon. Presently she said:

  ‘You go and get me something to drink; I’ve had nothing all this evening.’

  ‘Oh, Kate dear! I beg of—’

  ‘Oh, you won’t, won’t you? We’ll see about that,’ she answered as she looked around the room for the heaviest object she could conveniently throw at him.

  Seeing how useless it would be to attempt to contradict her in her present mood, Dick rose to his feet and said hurriedly:

  ‘Now there’s no use in getting into a passion, Kate. I’ll go, I’ll go.’

  ‘You’d better, I can tell you.’

  ‘What shall I get, then?’

  ‘Get me half a pint of gin, and be quick about it — I’m dying of thirst.’

  Even Dick, accustomed as he was now to these scenes, could not repress a look in which there was at once mingled pity, astonishment and fear, so absolutely demoniacal did this little woman seem as she raved under the watery light of the lodging-house gas, her dark complexion gone to a dull greenish pallor. By force of contrast she called to his mind the mild-eyed workwoman he had known in the linen-draper’s shop in Hanley, and he asked himself if it were possible that she and this raging creature, more like a tiger in her passion than a human being, were one and the same person? He could not choose but wonder. But another scream came, bidding him make haste, or it would be worse for him, and he bent his head and went to fetch the gin.

  In the meantime Kate’s fury leaped, crackled, and burnt with the fierceness of a house in the throes of conflagration, and in the smoke-cloud of hatred which enveloped her, only fragments of ideas and sensations flashed like falling sparks through her mind. Up and down the room she walked swinging her arms, only hesitating for some new object whereon to wreak new fury. Suddenly it struck her that Dick had been too long away — that he was keeping her waiting on purpose; and grinding her teeth, she muttered:

  ‘Oh, the beast! Would he — would he keep me waiting, and since nine this morning I’ve been alone!’

  In an instant her resolve was taken. It came to her sullenly, obtusely, like the instinct of revenge to an animal. She did not stop to consider what she was doing, but, seizing a large stick, the handle of a brush that happened to have been broken, she stationed herself at the top of the landing. A feverish tremor agitated her as she waited in the semi-darkness of the stairs. But at last she heard the door open, and Dick came up slowly with his usual heavy tread. She made neither sign nor stir, but allowed him to get past her, and then, raising the brush-handle, she landed him one across the back. The poor man uttered a long cry, and the crash of broken glass was heard.

  ‘What did you hit me like that for?’ he cried, holding himself with both hands.

  ‘You beast, you! I’ll teach you to keep me waiting! You would, would you! Do you want another? Go into the sitting-room.’

  Dick obeyed humbly and in silence. His only hope was that the landlady had not been awakened, and he felt uneasily at his pockets, through which he could feel the gin dripping down his legs.

  ‘Well, have you brought the drink I sent you for? Where is it?’

  ‘Well,’ replied Dick, desirous of conciliating at any price, ‘it was in my pocket, but when you hit me with that stick you broke it.’

  ‘I broke it?’ cried Kate, her eyes glistening with fire.

  ‘Yes, dear, you did; it wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Wasn’t your fault! Oh, you horrid wretch! you put it there on purpose that I should break it.’

  ‘Oh, now really, Kate,’ he cried, shocked by the unfairness of the accusation, ‘how could I know that you were going to hit me there?’

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care; what’s that to me? But what I’m sure of is that you always want to spite me, that you hate me, that you would wish to see me dead, so that you might marry Mrs. Forest.’

  ‘I can’t think how you can say such things. I’ve often told you that Mrs. Forest and I—’

  ‘Oh! don’t bother me. I’m not such a fool. I know she keeps you, and she will have to pay me a drink to-night. Go and get another bottle of gin; and mind you pay for it with the money she gave you to-day. Yes, she shall stand me a drink to-night!’

  ‘I give you my word I haven’t another penny-piece upon me; it’s just the accident—’

  But Dick did not get time to finish the sentence; he was interrupted by a heavy blow across the face, and like a panther that has tasted blood, she rushed at him again, screaming all the while: ‘Oh, you’ve no money! You liar! you liar! So you would make me believe that she does not give you money, that you h
ave no money of hers in your pocket. You would keep it all for yourself; but you shan’t, no, you shan’t, for I will tear it from you and throw it in your face! Oh, that filthy money! that filthy money!’

  The patience with which he bore with her was truly angelic. He might easily have felled her to the ground with one stroke, but he contented himself with merely warding off the blows she aimed at him. From his great height and strength, he was easily able to do this, and she struck at him with her little womanish arms as she might against a door.

  ‘Take down your hands,’ she screamed, exasperated to a last degree. ‘You would strike me, would you? You beast! I know you would.’

  Her rage had now reached its height. Showing her clenched teeth, she foamed at the mouth, the bloodshot eyes protruded from their sockets, and her voice grew more and more harsh and discordant. But, although the excited brain gave strength to the muscles and energy to the will, unarmed she could do nothing against Dick, and suddenly becoming conscious of this she rushed to the fireplace and seized the poker. With one sweep of the arm she cleared the mantel-board, and the mirror came in for a tremendous blow as she advanced round the table brandishing her weapon; but, heedless of the shattered glass, she followed in pursuit of Dick, who continued to defend himself dexterously with a chair. And it is difficult to say how long this combat might have lasted if Dick’s attention had not been interrupted by the view of the landlady’s face at the door; and so touched was he by the woman’s dismay when she looked upon her broken furniture, that he forgot to guard himself from the poker. Kate took advantage of the occasion and whirled the weapon round her head. He saw it descending in time, and half warded off the blow; but it came down with awful force on the forearm, and glancing off, inflicted a severe scalp wound. The landlady screamed ‘Murder!’ and Dick, seeing that matters had come to a crisis, closed in upon his wife, and undeterred by yells and struggles, pinioned her and forced her into a chair.