me visit them from time to time. My notion was, that it might
soften my heart if I could see the old place, and talk the old
talk, and look again at the well-remembered faces. I am almost
ashamed to own it--but, if I had had any thing to give, I would
have parted with it all, to be allowed to go back into mother's
kitchen and cook the Sunday dinner for them once more.
"But this was not to be. Not long before my letter was received
mother had died. They laid it all at my door. She had been ailing
for years past, and the doctors had said it was hopeless from the
first--but they laid it all at my door. One of my sisters wrote
to say that much, in as few words as could possibly suffice for
saying it. My father never answered my letter at all.
8.
"Magistrates and lawyers; relations and friends; endurance of
injuries, patience, hope, and honest work--I had tried all these,
and tried them vainly. Look round me where I might, the prospect
was closed on all sides.
"At this time my husband had got a little work to do. He came
home out of temper one night, and I gave him a warning. 'Don't
try me too far, Joel, for your own sake,' was all I said. It was
one of his sober days; and, for the first time, a word from me
seemed to have an effect on him. He looked hard at me for a
minute or so. And then he went and sat down in a corner, and held
his peace.
"This was on a Tuesday in the week. On the Saturday he got paid,
and the drinking fit took him again.
"On Friday in the next week I happened to come back late--having
had a good stroke of work to do that day, in the way of cooking a
public dinner for a tavern-keeper who knew me. I found my husband
gone, and the bedroom stripped of the furniture which I had put
into it. For the second time he had robbed me of my own property,
and had turned it into money to be spent in drink.
"I didn't say a word. I stood and looked round the empty room.
What was going on in me I hardly knew myself at the time, and
can't describe now. All I remember is, that, after a little, I
turned about to leave the house. I knew the places where thy
husband was likely to be found; and the devil possessed me to go
and find him. The landlady came out into the passage and tried to
stop me. She was a bigger and a stronger woman than I was. But I
shook her off like a child. Thinking over it now, I believe she
was in no condition to put out her strength. The sight of me
frightened her.
"I found him. I said--well, I said what a woman beside herself
with fury would be likely to say. It's needless to tell how it
ended. He knocked me down.
"After that, there is a spot of darkness like in my memory. The
next thing I can call to mind, is coming back to my senses after
some days. Three of my teeth were knocked out--but that was not
the worst of it. My head had struck against something in falling,
and some part of me (a nerve, I think they said) was injured in
such a way as to affect my speech. I don't mean that I was
downright dumb--I only mean that, all of a sudden, it had become
a labor to me to speak. A long word was as serious an obstacle as
if I was a child again. They took me to the hospital. When the
medical gentlemen heard what it was, the medical gentlemen came
crowding round me. I appeared to lay hold of their interest, just
as a story-book lays hold of the interest of other people. The
upshot of it was, that I might end in being dumb, or I might get
my speech again--the chances were about equal. Only two things
were needful. One of them was that I should live on good
nourishing diet. The other was, that I should keep my mind easy.
"About the diet it was not possible to decide. My getting good
nourishing food and drink depended on my getting money to buy the
same. As to my mind, there was no difficulty about _that._ If my
husband came back to me, my mind was made up to kill him.
"Horrid--I am well aware this is horrid. Nobody else, in my
place, would have ended as wickedly as that. All the other women
in the world, tried as I was, would have risen superior to the
trial.
9.
"I have said that people (excepting my husband and my relations)
were almost always good to me.
"The landlord of the house which we had taken when we were
married heard of my sad case. He gave me one of his empty houses
to look after, and a little weekly allowance for doing it. Some
of the furniture in the upper rooms, not being wanted by the last
tenant, was left to be taken at a valuation if the next tenant
needed it. Two of the servants' bedrooms (in the attics), one
next to the other, had all that was wanted in them. So I had a
roof to cover me, and a choice of beds to lie on, and money to
get me food. All well again--but all too late. If that house
could speak, what tales that house would have to tell of me!
"I had been told by the doctors to exercise my speech. Being all
alone, with nobody to speak to, except when the landlord dropped
in, or when the servant next door said, 'Nice day, ain't it?' or,
'Don't you feel lonely?' or such like, I bought the newspaper,
and read it out loud to myself to exercise my speech in that way.
One day I came upon a bit about the wives of drunken husbands. It
was a report of something said on that subject by a London
coroner, who had held inquests on dead husbands (in the lower
ranks of life), and who had his reasons for suspecting the wives.
Examination of the body (he said) didn't prove it; and witnesses
didn't prove it; but he thought it, nevertheless, quite possible,
in some cases, that, when the woman could bear it no longer, she
sometimes took a damp towel, and waited till the husband (drugged
with his own liquor) was sunk in his sleep, and then put the
towel over his nose and mouth, and ended it that way without any
body being the wiser. I laid down the newspaper; and fell into
thinking. My mind was, by this time, in a prophetic way. I said
to myself 'I haven't happened on this for nothing: this means
that I shall see my husband again.'
"It was then just after my dinner-time--two o'clock. That same
night, at the moment when I had put out my candle, and laid me
down in bed, I heard a knock at the street door. Before I had lit
my candle I says to myself, 'Here he is.'
"I huddled on a few things, and struck a light, and went down
stairs. I called out through the door, 'Who's there?' And his
voice answered, 'Let me in.'
"I sat down on a chair in the passage, and shook all over like a
person struck
with palsy. Not from the fear of him--but from my mind being in
the prophetic way. I knew I was going to be driven to it at last.
Try as I might to keep from doing it, my mind told me I was to do
it now. I sat shaking on the chair in the passage; I on one side
of the door, and he on the other.
"He knocked again, and again, and again. I knew it was useless
to try-
-and yet I resolved to try. I determined not to let him in
till I was forced to it. I determined to let him alarm the
neighborhood, and to see if the neighborhood would step between
us. I went up stairs and waited at the open staircase window over
the door.
"The policeman came up, and the neighbors came out. They were all
for giving him into custody. The policeman laid hands on him. He
had but one word to say; he had only to point up to me at the
window, and to tell them I was his wife. The neighbors went
indoors again. The policeman dropped hold of his arm. It was I
who was in the wrong, and not he. I was bound to let my husband
in. I went down stairs again, and let him in.
"Nothing passed between us that night. I threw open the door of
the bedroom next to mine, and went and locked myself into my own
room. He was dead beat with roaming the streets, without a penny
in his pocket, all day long. The bed to lie on was all he wanted
for that night.
"The next morning I tried again--tried to turn back on the way
that I was doomed to go; knowing beforehand that it would be of
no use. I offered him three parts of my poor weekly earnings, to
be paid to him regularly at the landlord's office, if he would
only keep away from me, and from the house. He laughed in my
face. As my husband, he could take all my earnings if he chose.
And as for leaving the house, the house offered him free quarters
to live in as long as I was employed to look after it. The
landlord couldn't part man and wife.
"I said no more. Later in the day the landlord came. He said if
we could make it out to live together peaceably he had neither
the right nor the wish to interfere. If we made any disturbances,
then he should be obliged to provide himself with some other
woman to look after the house. I had nowhere else to go, and no
other employment to undertake. If, in spite of that, I had put on
my bonnet and walked out, my husband would have walked out after
me. And all decent people would have patted him on the back, and
said, 'Quite right, good man--quite right.'
"So there he was by his own act, and with the approval of others,
in the same house with me.
"I made no remark to him or to the landlord. Nothing roused me
now. I knew what was coming; I waited for the end. There was some
change visible in me to others, as I suppose, though not
noticeable by myself, which first surprised my husband and then
daunted him. When the next night came I heard him lock the door
softly in his own room. It didn't matter to me. When the time was
ripe ten thousand locks wouldn't lock out what was to come.
"The next day, bringing my weekly payment, brought me a step
nearer on the way to the end. Getting the money, he could get the
drink. This time he began cunningly--in other words, he began his
drinking by slow degrees. The landlord (bent, honest man, on
trying to keep the peace between us) had given him some odd jobs
to do, in the way of small repairs, here and there about the
house. 'You owe this,' he says, 'to my desire to do a good turn
to your poor wife. I am helping you for her sake. Show yourself
worthy to be helped, if you can.'
"He said, as usual, that he was going to turn over a new leaf.
Too late! The time had gone by. He was doomed, and I was doomed.
It didn't matter what he said now. It didn't matter when he
locked his door again the last thing at night.
"The next day was Sunday. Nothing happened. I went to chapel.
Mere habit. It did me no good. He got on a little with the
drinking--but still cunningly, by slow degrees. I knew by
experience that this meant a long fit, and a bad one, to come.
"Monday, there were the odd jobs about the house to be begun. He
was by this time just sober enough to do his work, and just tipsy
enough to take a spiteful pleasure in persecuting his wife. He
went out and got the things he wanted, and came back and called
for me. A skilled workman like he was (he said) wanted a
journeyman under him. There were things which it was beneath a
skilled workman to do for himself. He was not going to call in a
man or a boy, and then have to pay them. He was going to get it
done for nothing, and he meant to make a journeyman of _me._ Half
tipsy and half sober, he went on talking like that, and laying
out his things, all quite right, as he wanted them. When they
were ready he straightened himself up, and he gave me his orders
what I was to do.
"I obeyed him to the best of my ability. Whatever he said, and
whatever he did, I knew he was going as straight as man could go
to his own death by my hands.
"The rats and mice were all over the house, and the place
generally was out of repair. He ought to have begun on the
kitchen-floor; but (having sentence pronounced against him) he
began in the empty parlors on the ground-floor.
"These parlors were separated by what is called a
'lath-and-plaster wall.' The rats had damaged it. At one part
they had gnawed through and spoiled the paper, at another part
they had not got so far. The landlord's orders were to spare the
paper, because he had some by him to match it. My husband began
at a place where the paper was whole. Under his directions I
mixed up--I won't say what. With the help of it he got the paper
loose from the wall, without injuring it in any way, in a long
hanging strip. Under it was the plaster and the laths, gnawed
away in places by the rats. Though strictly a paperhanger by
trade, he could be plasterer too when he liked. I saw how he cut
away the rotten laths and ripped off the plaster; and (under his
directions again) I mixed up the new plaster he wanted, and
handed him the new laths, and saw how he set them. I won't say a
word about how this was done either.
"I have a reason for keeping silence here, which is, to my mind,
a very dreadful one. In every thing that my husband made me do
that day he was showing me (blindfold) the way to kill him, so
that no living soul, in the police or out of it, could suspect me
of the deed.
"We finished the job on the wall just before dark. I went to my
cup of tea, and he went to his bottle of gin.
"I left him, drinking hard, to put our two bedrooms tidy for the
night. The place that his bed happened to be set in (which I had
never remarked particularly before) seemed, in a manner of
speaking, to force itself on my notice now.
"The head of the bedstead was set against the wall which divided
his room from mine. From looking at the bedstead I got to looking
at the wall next. Then to wondering what it was made of. Then to
rapping against it with my knuckles. The sound told me there was
nothing but lath and plaster under the paper. It was the same as
the wall we had been at work on down stairs. We had cleared our
way so far through this last--in certain places where the repairs
were most needed--that we had to be careful not to burst through
&n
bsp; the paper in the room on the other side. I found myself calling
to mind the caution my husband had given me while we were at this
part of the work, word for word as he had spoken it. _'Take care
you don't find your hands in the next room.'_ That was what he
had said down in the parlor. Up in his bedroom I kept on
repeating it in my own mind--with my eyes all the while on the
key, which he had moved to the inner side of the door to lock
himself in--till the knowledge of what it meant burst on me like
a flash of light. I looked at the wall, at the bedhead, at my own
two hands--and I shivered as if it was winter time.
"Hours must have passed like minutes while I was up stairs that
night. I lost all count of time. When my husband came up from his
drinking, he found me in his room.
10.
"I leave the rest untold, and pass on purposely to the next
morning.
"No mortal eyes but mine will ever see these lines. Still, there
are things a woman can't write of even to herself. I shal l only
say this. I suffered the last and worst of many indignities at my
husband's hands--at the very time when I first saw, set plainly
before me, the way to take his life. He went out toward noon next
day, to go his rounds among the public houses; my mind being then
strung up to deliver myself from him, for good and all, when he
came back at night.
"The things we had used on the previous day were left in the
parlor. I was all by myself in the house, free to put in practice
the lesson he had taught me. I proved myself an apt scholar.
Before the lamps were lit in the street I had my own way prepared
(in my bedroom and in his) for laying my own hands on him--after
he had locked himself up for the night.
"I don't remember feeling either fear or doubt through all those
hours. I sat down to my bit of supper with no better and no worse
an appetite than usual. The only change in me that I can call to
mind was that I felt a singular longing to have somebody with me
to keep me company. Having no friend to ask in, I went to the
street door and stood looking at the people passing this way and
that.
"A stray dog, sniffing about, came up to me. Generally I dislike
dogs and beasts of all kinds. I called this one in and gave him
his supper. He had been taught (I suppose) to sit up on his
hind-legs and beg for food; at any rate, that was his way of
asking me for more. I laughed--it seems impossible when I look
back at it now, but for all that it's true--I laughed till the
tears ran down my cheeks, at the little beast on his haunches,
with his ears pricked up and his head on one side and his mouth
watering for the victuals. I wonder whether I was in my right
senses? I don't know.
"When the dog had got all he could get he whined to be let out to
roam the streets again.
"As I opened the door to let the creature go his ways, I saw my
husband crossing the road to come in. 'Keep out' (I says to him);
'to-night, of all nights, keep out.' He was too drunk to heed me;
he passed by, and blundered his way up stairs. I followed and
listened. I heard him open his door, and bang it to, and lock it.
I waited a bit, and went up another stair or two. I heard him
drop down on to his bed. In a minute more he was fast asleep and
snoring.
"It had all happened as it was wanted to happen. In two
minutes--without doing one single thing to bring suspicion on
myself--I could have smothered him. I went into my own room. I
took up the towel that I had laid ready. I was within an inch of
it--when there came a rush of something up into my head. I can't
say what it was. I can only say the horrors laid hold of me and
hunted me then and there out of the house.
"I put on my bonnet, and slipped the key of the street door into
my pocket. It was only half past nine--or maybe a quarter to ten.
If I had any one clear notion in my head, it was the notion of
running away, and never allowing myself to set eyes on the house
Man and Wife Page 69
