by George Moore
“Perhaps she never was guilty,” said Esther, unable to resist the temptation to irritate.
“Not guilty! what do you mean? Haven’t I told you how I found them the day I came up from Ascot?… And didn’t she own up to it? What more proof do you want?”
“Anyway, it appears you haven’t enough; what are you going to do? Wait until you catch her out?”
“There is nothing else to do, unless — —” William paused, and his eyes wandered from Esther’s.
“Unless what?”
“Well, you see my solicitors have been in communication with her solicitors, and her solicitors say that if it were the other way round, that if I gave her reason to go against me for a divorce, she would be glad of the chance. That’s all they said at first, but since then I’ve seen my wife, and she says that if I’ll give her cause to get a divorce she’ll not only go for it, but will pay all the legal expenses; it won’t cost us a penny. What do you think Esther?”
“I don’t know that I understand. You don’t mean — —”
“You see, Esther, that to get a divorce — there’s no one who can hear us, is there?”
“No, there’s no one in the ‘ouse except me and the missus, and she’s in the study reading. Go on.”
“It seems that one of the parties must go and live with another party before either can get a divorce. Do you understand?”
“You don’t mean that you want me to go and live with you, and perhaps get left a second time?”
“That’s all rot, Esther, and you knows it.”
“If that’s all you’ve got to say to me you’d better take your hook.”
“Do you see, there’s the child to consider? And you know well enough, Esther, that you’ve nothing to fear; you knows as well as can be that I mean to run straight this time. So I did before. But let bygones be bygones, and I know you’d like the child to have a father; so if only for his sake — —”
“For his sake! I like that; as if I hadn’t done enough for him. Haven’t I worked and slaved myself to death and gone about in rags? That’s what that child has cost me. Tell me what he’s cost you. Not a penny piece — a toy boat and a suit of velveteen knickerbockers, — and yet you come telling me — I’d like to know what’s expected of me. Is a woman never to think of herself? Do I count for nothing? For the child’s sake, indeed! Now, if it was anyone else but you. Just tell me where do I come in? That’s what I want to know. I’ve played the game long enough. Where do I come in? That’s what I want to know.”
“There’s no use flying in a passion, Esther. I know you’ve had a hard time. I know it was all very unlucky from the very first. But there’s no use saying that you might get left a second time, for you know well enough that that ain’t true. Say you won’t do it; you’re a free woman, you can act as you please. It would be unjust to ask you to give up anything more for the child; I agree with you in all that. But don’t fly in a rage with me because I came to tell you there was no other way out of the difficulty.”
“You can go and live with another woman, and get a divorce that way.”
“Yes, I can do that; but I first thought I’d speak to you on the subject. For if I did go and live with another woman I couldn’t very well desert her after getting a divorce.”
“You deserted me.”
“Why go back on that old story?”
“It ain’t an old story, it’s the story of my life, and I haven’t come to the end of it yet.”
“But you’ll have got to the end of it if you’ll do what I say.”
A moment later Esther said —
“I don’t know what you want to get a divorce for at all. I daresay your wife would take you back if you were to ask her.”
“She’s no children, and never will have none, and marriage is a poor look-out without children — all the worry and anxiety for nothing. What do we marry for but children? There’s no other happiness. I’ve tried everything else—”
“But I haven’t.”
“I know all that. I know you’ve had a damned hard time, Esther. I’ve had a good week at Doncaster, and have enough money to buy my partner out; we shall ‘ave the ‘ouse to ourselves, and, working together, I don’t think we’ll ‘ave much difficulty in building it up into a very nice property, all of which will in time go to the boy. I’m doing pretty well, I told you, in the betting line, but if you like I’ll give it up. I’ll never lay or take the odds again. I can’t say more, Esther, can I? Come, say yes,” he said, reaching his arm towards her.
“Don’t touch me,” she said surlily, and drew back a step with air of resolution that made him doubt if he would be able to persuade her.
“Now, Esther — —” William did not finish. It seemed useless to argue with her, and he looked at the great red ash of the tallow candle.
“You are the mother of my boy, so it is different; but to advise me to go and live with another woman! I shouldn’t have thought it of a religious girl like you.”
“Religion! There’s very little time for religion in the places I’ve had to work in.” Then, thinking of Fred, she added that she had returned to Christ, and hoped He would forgive her. William encouraged her to speak of herself, remarking that, chapel or no chapel, she seemed just as severe and particular as ever. “If you won’t, I can only say I am sorry; but that shan’t prevent me from paying you as much a week as you think necessary for Jack’s keep and his schooling. I don’t want the boy to cost you anything. I’d like to do a great deal more for the boy, but I can’t do more unless you make him my child.”
“And I can only do that by going away to live with you?” The words brought an instinctive look of desire into her eyes.
“In six months we shall be man and wife…. Say yes.”
“I can’t… I can’t, don’t ask me.”
“You’re afraid to trust me, is that it?”
Esther did not answer.
“I can make that all right: I’ll settle £500 on you and the child.”
She looked up; the same look was in her eyes, only modified, softened by some feeling of tenderness which had come into her heart.
He put his arm round her; she was leaning against the table; he was sitting on the edge.
“You know that I mean to act rightly by you.”
“Yes, I think you do.”
“Then say yes.”
“I can’t — it is too late.”
“There’s another chap?”
She nodded.
“I thought as much. Do you care for him?”
She did not answer.
He drew her closer to him; she did not resist; he could see that she was weeping. He kissed her on her neck first, and then on her face; and he continued to ask her if she loved the other chap. At last she signified that she did not.
“Then say yes.” She murmured that she could not. “You can, you can, you can.” He kissed her, all the while reiterating, “You can, you can, you can,” until it became a sort of parrot cry. Several minutes elapsed, and the candle began to splutter in its socket. She said —
“Let me go; let me light the gas.”
As she sought for the matches she caught sight of the clock.
“I did not know it was so late.”
“Say yes before I go.”
“I can’t.”
And it was impossible to extort a promise from her. “I’m too tired,” she said, “let me go.”
He took her in his arms and kissed her, and said, “My own little wife.”
As he went up the area steps she remembered that he had used the same words before. She tried to think of Fred, but William’s great square shoulders had come between her and this meagre little man. She sighed, and felt once again that her will was overborne by a force which she could not control or understand.
XXVIII
SHE WENT ROUND the house bolting and locking the doors, seeing that everything was made fast for the night. At the foot of the stairs painful thoughts came upon her, and she drew her
hand across her eyes; for she was whelmed with a sense of sorrow, of purely mental misery, which she could not understand, and which she had not strength to grapple with. She was, however, conscious of the fact that life was proving too strong for her, that she could make nothing of it, and she thought that she did not care much what happened. She had fought with adverse fate, and had conquered in a way; she had won countless victories over herself, and now found herself without the necessary strength for the last battle; she had not even strength for blame, and merely wondered why she had let William kiss her. She remembered how she had hated him, and now she hated him no longer. She ought not to have spoken to him; above all, she ought not to have taken him to see the child. But how could she help it?
She slept on the same landing as Miss Rice, and was moved by a sudden impulse to go in and tell her the story of her trouble. But what good? No one could help her. She liked Fred; they seemed to suit each other, and she could have made him a good wife if she had not met William. She thought of the cottage at Mortlake, and their lives in it; and she sought to stimulate her liking for him with thoughts of the meeting-house; she thought even of the simple black dress she would wear, and that life seemed so natural to her that she did not understand why she hesitated…. If she were to marry William she would go to the “King’s Head.”
She would stand behind the bar; she would serve the customers. She had never seen much life, and felt somehow that she would like to see a little life; there would not be much life in the cottage at Mortlake; nothing but the prayer-meeting. She stopped thinking, surprised at her thoughts. She had never thought like that before; it seemed as if some other woman whom she hardly knew was thinking for her. She seemed like one standing at cross-roads, unable to decide which road she would take. If she took the road leading to the cottage and the prayer-meeting her life would henceforth be secure. She could see her life from end to end, even to the time when Fred would come and sit by her, and hold her hand as she had seen his father and mother sitting side by side. If she took the road to the public-house and the race-course she did not know what might not happen. But William had promised to settle £500 on her and Jackie. Her life would be secure either way.
She must marry Fred; she had promised to marry him; she wished to be a good woman; he would give her the life she was most fitted for, the life she had always desired; the life of her father and mother, the life of her childhood. She would marry Fred, only — something at that moment seemed to take her by the throat. William had come between her and that life. If she had not met him at Woodview long ago; if she had not met him in the Pembroke Road that night she went to fetch the beer for her mistress’s dinner, how different everything would have been! …If she had met him only a few months later, when she was Fred’s wife!
Wishing she might go to sleep, and awake the wife of one or the other, she fell asleep to dream of a husband possessed of the qualities of both, and a life that was neither all chapel nor all public-house. But soon the one became two, and Esther awoke in terror, believing she had married them both.
XXIX
IF FRED HAD said, “Come away with me,” Esther would have obeyed the elemental romanticism which is so fixed a principle in woman’s nature. But when she called at the shop he only spoke of his holiday, of the long walks he had taken, and the religious and political meetings he had attended. Esther listened vaguely; and there was in her mind unconscious regret that he was not a little different. Little irrelevant thoughts came upon her. She would like him better if he wore coloured neckties and a short jacket; she wished half of him away — his dowdiness, his sandy-coloured hair, the vague eyes, the black neckties, the long loose frock-coat. But his voice was keen and ringing, and when listening her heart always went out to him, and she felt that she might fearlessly entrust her life to him. But he did not seem wholly to understand her, and day by day, against her will, the thought gripped her more and more closely that she could not separate Jackie from his father. She would have to tell Fred the whole truth, and he would not understand it; that she knew. But it would have to be done, and she sent round to say she’d like to see him when he left business. Would he step round about eight o’clock?
The clock had hardly struck eight when she heard a tap at the window. She opened the door and he came in, surprised by the silence with which she received him.
“I hope nothing has happened. Is anything the matter?”
“Yes, a great deal’s the matter. I’m afraid we shall never be married, Fred, that’s what’s the matter.”
“How’s that, Esther? What can prevent us getting married?” She did not answer, and then he said, “You’ve not ceased to care for me?”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Jackie’s father has come back?”
“You’ve hit it, that’s what happened.”
“I’m sorry that man has come across you again. I thought you told me he was married. But, Esther, don’t keep me in suspense; what has he done?”
“Sit down; don’t stand staring at me in that way, and I’ll tell you the story.”
Then in a strained voice, in which there was genuine suffering, Esther told her story, laying special stress on the fact that she had done her best to prevent him from seeing the child.
“I don’t see how you could have forbidden him access to the child.”
He often used words that Esther did not understand, but guessing his meaning, she answered —
“That’s just what the missus said; she argued me into taking him to see the child. I knew once he’d seen Jackie there’d be no getting rid of him. I shall never get rid of him again.”
“He has no claim upon you. It is just like him, low blackguard fellow that he is, to come after you, persecuting you. But don’t you fear; you leave him to me. I’ll find a way of stopping his little game.”
Esther looked at his frail figure.
“You can do nothing; no one can do nothing,” she said, and the tears trembled in her handsome eyes. “He wants me to go away and live with him, so that his wife may be able to divorce him.”
“Wants you to go away and live with him! But surely, Esther, you do not — —”
“Yes, he wants me to go and live with him, so that his wife can get a divorce,” Esther answered, for the suspense irritated her; “and how can I refuse to go with him?”
“Esther, are you serious? You cannot… You told me that you did not love him, and after all — —” He waited for Esther to speak.
“Yes,” she said very quickly, “there is no way out of it that I can see.”
“Esther, that man has tempted you, and you have not prayed.”
She did not answer.
“I don’t want to hear more of this,” he said, catching up his hat. “I shouldn’t have believed it if I had not heard it from your lips; no, not if the whole world had told me. You are in love with this man, though you may not know it, and you’ve invented this story as a pretext to throw me over. Good-bye, Esther.”
“Fred, dear, listen, hear me out. You’ll not go away in that hasty way. You’re the only friend I have. Let me explain.”
“Explain! how can such things be explained?”
“That’s what I thought until all this happened to me. I have suffered dreadful in the last few days. I’ve wept bitter tears, and I thought of all you said about the ‘ome you was going to give me.” Her sincerity was unmistakable, and Fred doubted her no longer. “I’m very fond of you, Fred, and if things had been different I think I might have made you a good wife. But it wasn’t to be.”
“Esther, I don’t understand. You need never see this man again if you don’t wish it.”
“Nay, nay, things ain’t so easily changed as all that. He’s the father of my child, he’s got money, and he’ll leave his money to his child if he’s made Jackie’s father in the eyes of the law.”
“That can be done without your going to live with him.”
“Not as he wants. I know what he wants; he wants a �
�ome, and he won’t be put off with less.”
“How men can be so wicked as — —”
“No, you do him wrong. He ain’t no more wicked than another; he’s just one of the ordinary sort — not much better or worse. If he’d been a real bad lot it would have been better for us, for then he’d never have come between us. You’re beginning to understand, Fred, ain’t you? If I don’t go with him my boy’ll lose everything. He wants a ‘ome — a real ‘ome with children, and if he can’t get me he’ll go after another woman.”
“And are you jealous?”
“No, Fred. But think if we was to marry. As like as not I should have children, and they’d be more in your sight than my boy.”
“Esther, I promise that — —”
“Just so, Fred; even if you loved him like your own, you can’t make sure that he’d love you.”
“Jackie and I — —”
“Ah, yes; he’d have liked you well enough if he’d never seen his father. But he’s that keen on his father, and it would be worse later on. He’d never be contented in our ‘ome. He’d be always after him, and then I should never see him, and he would be led away into betting and drink.”
“If his father is that sort of man, the best chance for Jackie would be to keep him out of his way. If he gets divorced and marries another woman he will forget all about Jackie.”
“Yes, that might be,” said Esther, and Fred pursued his advantage. But, interrupting him, Esther said —
“Anyway, Jackie would lose all his father’s money; the public-house would—”
“So you’re going to live in a public-house, Esther?”
“A woman must be with her husband.”
