CHRISTMAS IN HARLEY STREET.
It seems singular to me myself, considering the idea which I have
in my own mind of the character of Lady Staveley, that I should be
driven to declare that about this time she committed an unpardonable
offence, not only against good nature, but also against the domestic
proprieties. But I am driven so to say, although she herself was of
all women the most good-natured and most domestic; for she asked
Mr. Furnival to pass his Christmas-day at Noningsby, and I find it
impossible to forgive her that offence against the poor wife whom in
that case he must leave alone by her desolate hearth. She knew that
he was a married man as well as I do. Sophia, who had a proper regard
for the domestic peace of her parents, and who could have been happy
at Noningsby without a father's care, not unfrequently spoke of her,
so that her existence in Harley Street might not be forgotten by
the Staveleys--explaining, however, as she did so, that her dear
mother never left her own fireside in winter, so that no suspicion
might be entertained that an invitation was desired for her also;
nevertheless, in spite of all this, on two separate occasions did
Lady Staveley say to Mr. Furnival that he might as well prolong his
visit over Christmas.
And yet Lady Staveley was not attached to Mr. Furnival with any
peculiar warmth of friendship; but she was one of those women whose
foolish hearts will not allow themselves to be controlled in the
exercise of their hospitality. Her nature demanded of her that she
should ask a guest to stay. She would not have allowed a dog to
depart from her house at this season of the year, without suggesting
to him that he had better take his Christmas bone in her yard. It
was for Mr. Furnival to adjust all matters between himself and his
wife. He was not bound to accept the invitation because she gave it;
but she, finding him there, already present in the house, did feel
herself bound to give it;--for which offence, as I have said before,
I cannot bring myself to forgive her.
At his sin in staying away from home, or rather--as far as the story
has yet carried us--in thinking that he would do so, I am by no means
so much surprised. An angry ill-pleased wife is no pleasant companion
for a gentleman on a long evening. For those who have managed that
things shall run smoothly over the domestic rug there is no happier
time of life than these long candlelight hours of home and silence.
No spoken content or uttered satisfaction is necessary. The fact that
is felt is enough for peace. But when the fact is not felt; when
the fact is by no means there; when the thoughts are running in a
direction altogether different; when bitter grievances from one to
the other fill the heart, rather than memories of mutual kindness;
then, I say, those long candlelight hours of home and silence are not
easy of endurance. Mr. Furnival was a man who chose to be the master
of his own destiny, so at least to himself he boasted; and therefore
when he found himself encountered by black looks and occasionally by
sullen words, he declared to himself that he was ill-used and that he
would not bear it. Since the domestic rose would no longer yield him
honey, he would seek his sweets from the stray honeysuckle on which
there grew no thorns.
Mr. Furnival was no coward. He was not one of those men who wrong
their wives by their absence, and then prolong their absence because
they are afraid to meet their wives. His resolve was to be free
himself, and to be free without complaint from her. He would have
it so, that he might remain out of his own house for a month at the
time and then return to it for a week--at any rate without outward
bickerings. I have known other men who have dreamed of such a state
of things, but at this moment I can remember none who have brought
their dream to bear.
Mr. Furnival had written to his wife,--not from Noningsby, but
from some provincial town, probably situated among the Essex
marshes,--saying various things, and among others that he should
not, as he thought, be at home at Christmas-day. Mrs. Furnival had
remarked about a fortnight since that Christmas-day was nothing to
her now; and the base man, for it was base, had hung upon this poor,
sore-hearted word an excuse for remaining away from home. "There are
lawyers of repute staying at Noningsby," he had said, "with whom it
is very expedient that I should remain at this present crisis."--When
yet has there been no crisis present to a man who has wanted an
excuse?--"And therefore I may probably stay,"--and so on. Who does
not know the false mixture of excuse and defiance which such a letter
is sure to maintain; the crafty words which may be taken as adequate
reason if the receiver be timid enough so to receive them, or as a
noisy gauntlet thrown to the ground if there be spirit there for the
picking of it up? Such letter from his little borough in the Essex
marshes did Mr. Furnival write to the partner of his cares, and there
was still sufficient spirit left for the picking up of the gauntlet.
"I shall be home to-morrow," the letter had gone on to say, "but
I will not keep you waiting for dinner, as my hours are always so
uncertain. I shall be at my chambers till late, and will be with you
before tea. I will then return to Alston on the following morning."
There was at any rate good courage in this on the part of Mr.
Furnival;--great courage; but with it coldness of heart, dishonesty
of purpose, and black ingratitude. Had she not given everything to
him?
Mrs. Furnival when she got the letter was not alone. "There,"
said she; throwing it over to a lady who sat on the other side of
the fireplace handling a loose sprawling mass of not very clean
crochet-work. "I knew he would stay away on Christmas-day. I told you
so."
"I didn't think it possible," said Miss Biggs, rolling up the big
ball of soiled cotton, that she might read Mr. Furnival's letter at
her leisure. "I didn't really think it possible--on Christmas-day!
Surely, Mrs. Furnival, he can't mean Christmas-day? Dear, dear, dear!
and then to throw it in your face in that way that you said you
didn't care about it."
"Of course I said so," answered Mrs. Furnival. "I was not going to
ask him to come home as a favour."
"Not to make a favour of it, of course not." This was Miss Biggs
from ----. I am afraid if I tell the truth I must say that she came
from Red Lion Square! And yet nothing could be more respectable than
Miss Biggs. Her father had been a partner with an uncle of Mrs.
Furnival's; and when Kitty Blacker had given herself and her young
prettinesses to the hardworking lawyer, Martha Biggs had stood at the
altar with her, then just seventeen years of age, and had promised
to her all manner of success for her coming life. Martha Biggs had
never, not even then, been pretty; but she had been very faithful.
She had not been a favourite with Mr. Furnival, having neither wit
nor grace to recommend her, and therefore in the old happy days of
Keppel Street she had been kept in the background; but now, in this
present time of her adversity, Mrs. Furnival found the benefit of
having a trusty friend.
"If he likes better to be with these people down at Alston, I am sure
it is the same to me," said the injured wife.
"But there's nobody special at Alston, is there?" asked Miss Biggs,
whose soul sighed for a tale more piquant than one of mere general
neglect. She knew that her friend had dreadful suspicions, but Mrs.
Furnival had never as yet committed herself by uttering the name of
any woman as her rival. Miss Biggs thought that a time had now come
in which the strength of their mutual confidence demanded that such
name should be uttered. It could not be expected that she should
sympathise with generalities for ever. She longed to hate, to
reprobate, and to shudder at the actual name of the wretch who had
robbed her friend of a husband's heart. And therefore she asked the
question, "There's nobody special at Alston, is there?"
Now Mrs. Furnival knew to a furlong the distance from Noningsby to
Orley Farm, and knew also that the station at Hamworth was only
twenty-five minutes from that at Alston. She gave no immediate
answer, but threw up her head and shook her nostrils, as though she
were preparing for war; and then Miss Martha Biggs knew that there
was somebody special at Alston. Between such old friends why should
not the name be mentioned?
On the following day the two ladies dined at six, and then waited tea
patiently till ten. Had the thirst of a desert been raging within
that drawing-room, and had tea been within immediate call, those
ladies would have died ere they would have asked for it before his
return. He had said he would be home to tea, and they would have
waited for him, had it been till four o'clock in the morning! Let the
female married victim ever make the most of such positive wrongs as
Providence may vouchsafe to her. Had Mrs. Furnival ordered tea on
this evening before her husband's return, she would have been a woman
blind to the advantages of her own position. At ten the wheels of Mr.
Furnival's cab were heard, and the faces of both the ladies prepared
themselves for the encounter.
"Well, Kitty, how are you?" said Mr. Furnival, entering the room with
his arms prepared for a premeditated embrace. "What, Miss Biggs with
you? I did not know. How do you do, Miss Biggs?" and Mr. Furnival
extended his hand to the lady. They both looked at him, and they
could tell from the brightness of his eye and from the colour of his
nose that he had been dining at his club, and that the bin with the
precious cork had been visited on his behalf.
"Yes, my dear, it's rather lonely being here in this big room all
by oneself so long; so I asked Martha Biggs to come over to me. I
suppose there's no harm in that."
"Oh, if I'm in the way," began Miss Biggs, "or if Mr. Furnival is
going to stay at home for long--"
"You are not in the way, and I am not going to stay at home for
long," said Mr. Furnival, speaking with a voice that was perhaps a
little thick,--only a very little thick. No wife on good terms with
her husband would have deigned to notice, even in her own mind, an
amount of thickness of voice which was so very inconsiderable. But
Mrs. Furnival at the present moment did notice it.
"Oh, I did not know," said Miss Biggs.
"You know now," said Mr. Furnival, whose ear at once appreciated the
hostility of tone which had been assumed.
"You need not be rude to my friend after she has been waiting tea for
you till near eleven o'clock," said Mrs. Furnival. "It is nothing to
me, but you should remember that she is not used to it."
"I wasn't rude to your friend, and who asked you to wait tea till
near eleven o'clock? It is only just ten now, if that signifies."
"You expressly desired me to wait tea, Mr. Furnival. I have got your
letter, and will show it you if you wish it."
"Nonsense; I just said I should be home--"
"Of course you just said you would be home, and so we waited; and
it's not nonsense; and I declare--! Never mind, Martha, don't mind
me, there's a good creature. I shall get over it soon;" and then fat,
solid, good-humoured Mrs. Furnival burst out into an hysterical fit
of sobbing. There was a welcome for a man on his return to his home
after a day's labour!
Miss Biggs immediately got up and came round behind the drawing-room
table to her friend's head. "Be calm, Mrs. Furnival," she said; "do
be calm, and then you will be better soon. Here is the hartshorn."
"It doesn't matter, Martha: never mind: leave me alone," sobbed the
poor woman.
"May I be excused for asking what is really the matter?" said Mr.
Furnival, "for I'll be whipped if I know." Miss Biggs looked at him
as if she thought that he ought to be whipped.
"I wonder you ever come near the place at all, I do," said Mrs.
Furnival.
"What place?" asked Mr. Furnival.
"This house in which I am obliged to live by myself, without a soul
to speak to, unless when Martha Biggs comes here."
"Which would be much more frequent, only that I know I am not welcome
by everybody."
"I know that you hate it. How can I help knowing it?--and you hate
me too; I know you do;--and I believe you would be glad if you need
never come back here at all; I do. Don't, Martha; leave me alone. I
don't want all that fuss. There; I can bear it now, whatever it is.
Do you choose to have your tea, Mr. Furnival? or do you wish to keep
the servants waiting out of their beds all night?"
"D---- the servants," said Mr. Furnival.
"Oh laws!" exclaimed Miss Biggs, jumping up out of her chair with her
hands and fingers outstretched, as though never, never in her life
before, had her ears been wounded by such wicked words as those.
"Mr. Furnival, I am ashamed of you," said his wife with gathered
calmness of stern reproach.
Mr. Furnival was very wrong to swear; doubly wrong to swear before
his wife; trebly wrong to swear before a lady visitor; but it must
be confessed that there was provocation. That he was at this present
period of his life behaving badly to his wife must be allowed, but on
this special evening he had intended to behave well. The woman had
sought a ground of quarrel against him, and had driven him on till he
had forgotten himself in his present after-dinner humour. When a man
is maintaining a whole household on his own shoulders, and working
hard to maintain it well, it is not right that he should be brought
to book because he keeps the servants up half an hour later than
usual to wash the tea-things. It is very proper that the idle members
of the establishment should conform to hours, but these hours must
give way to his requirements. In those old days of which we have
spoken so often he might have had his tea at twelve, one, two, or
three without a murmur. Though their staff of servants then was
scanty enough, there was never a difficulty then in supplying any
such want for him. If no other pair of hands could boil the kettle,
there was one pair of hands there which no amount of such work on his
behalf could tire. But now, because he had come in for his tea at
ten o'clock, he was asked if he intended to keep the servants out of
their beds all night!
"Oh laws!" said Miss Biggs, jumping up from her chair as though she
had been electrified.
Mr. Furnival did not think it consistent with his dignity to keep up
any dispute in the presence of Miss Biggs, and therefore sat himself
down in his accustomed chair without further speech. "Would you
wish to have tea now, Mr. Furnival?" asked his wife again, putting
considerable stress upon the word now.
"I don't care about it," said he.
"And I am sure I don't at this late hour," said Miss Biggs. "But so
tired as you are, dear--"
"Never mind me, Martha; as for myself, I shall take nothing now." And
then they all sat without a word for the space of some five minutes.
"If you like to go, Martha," said Mrs. Furnival, "don't mind waiting
for me."
"Oh, very well," and then Miss Biggs took her bedcandle and left the
room. Was it not hard upon her that she should be forced to absent
herself at this moment, when the excitement of the battle was about
to begin in earnest? Her footsteps lingered as she slowly retreated
from the drawing-room door, and for one instant she absolutely
paused, standing still with eager ears. It was but for an instant,
and then she went on up stairs, out of hearing, and sitting herself
down by her bedside allowed the battle to rage in her imagination.
Mr. Furnival would have sat there silent till his wife had gone also,
and so the matter would have terminated for that evening,--had she
so willed it. But she had been thinking of her miseries; and, having
come to some sort of resolution to speak of them openly, what time
could she find more appropriate for doing so than the present? "Tom,"
she said,--and as she spoke there was still a twinkle of the old
love in her eye, "we are not going on together as well as we should
do,--not lately. Would it not be well to make a change before it is
too late?"
"What change?" he asked; not exactly in an ill humour, but with a
husky, thick voice. He would have preferred now that she should have
followed her friend to bed.
"I do not want to dictate to you, Tom, but--! Oh Tom, if you knew how
wretched I am!"
"What makes you wretched?"
"Because you leave me all alone; because you care more for other
people than you do for me; because you never like to be at home,
never if you can possibly help it. You know you don't. You are always
away now upon some excuse or other; you know you are. I don't have
you home to dinner not one day in the week through the year. That
can't be right, and you know it is not. Oh Tom! you are breaking my
heart, and deceiving me,--you are. Why did I go down and find that
woman in your chamber with you, when you were ashamed to own to me
that she was coming to see you? If it had been in the proper way of
law business, you wouldn't have been ashamed. Oh, Tom!"
The poor woman had begun her plaint in a manner that was not
altogether devoid of a discreet eloquence. If only she could have
maintained that tone, if she could have confined her words to the
tale of her own grievances, and have been contented to declare that
she was unhappy, only because he was not with her, it might have
been well. She might have touched his heart, or at any rate his
conscience, and there might have been some enduring result for good.
But her feelings had been too many for her, and as her wrongs came to
her mind, and the words heaped themselves upon her tongue, she could
not keep herself from the one subject which she should have left
untouched. Mr. Furnival was not the man to bear any interference such
as this, or to permit the privacy of Lincoln's Inn to be invaded even
by his wife. His brow grew very black, and his eyes became almost
bloodshot. The port wine which might have worked him to softness, now
worked him to anger, and he thus burst forth with words of marital
vigour:
"Let me tell you once for ever, Kitty, that I will admit of no
interference with what I do, or the people whom I may choose to
see in my chambers in Lincoln's Inn. If you are such an infatuated
simpleton as to believe--"
"Yes; of course I am a simpleton; of course I am a fool; women always
are."
"Listen to me, will you?"
"Listen, yes; it's my business to listen. Would you like that I
should give this house up for her, and go into lodgings somewhere? I
shall have very little objection as matters are going now. Oh dear,
oh dear, that things should ever have come to this!"
"Come to what?"
"Tom, I could put up with a great deal,--more I think than most
women; I could slave for you like a drudge, and think nothing about
it. And now that you have got among grand people, I could see you go
out by yourself without thinking much about that either. I am very
lonely sometimes,--very; but I could bear that. Nobody has longed to
see you rise in the world half so anxious as I have done. But, Tom,
when I know what your goings on are with a nasty, sly, false woman
like that, I won't bear it; and there's an end." In saying which
final words Mrs. Furnival rose from her seat, and thrice struck her
hand by no means lightly on the loo table in the middle of the room.
"I did not think it possible that you should be so silly. I did not
indeed."
"Oh, yes, silly! very well. Women always are silly when they mind
that kind of thing. Have you got anything else to say, sir?"
"Yes, I have; I have this to say, that I will not endure this sort of
usage."
"Nor I won't," said Mrs. Furnival; "so you may as well understand it
at once. As long as there was nothing absolutely wrong, I would put
up with it for the sake of appearances, and because of Sophia. For
myself I don't mind what loneliness I may have to bear. If you had
been called on to go out to the East Indies or even to China, I could
have put up with it. But this sort of thing I won't put up with;--nor
I won't be blind to what I can't help seeing. So now, Mr. Furnival,
you may know that I have made up my mind." And then, without waiting
further parley, having wisked herself in her energy near to the door,
she stalked out, and went up with hurried steps to her own room.
Occurrences of a nature such as this are in all respects unpleasant
in a household. Let the master be ever so much master, what is he to
do? Say that his wife is wrong from the beginning to the end of the
quarrel,--that in no way improves the matter. His anxiety is that the
world abroad shall not know he has ought amiss at home; but she, with
her hot sense of injury, and her loud revolt against supposed wrongs,
cares not who hears it. "Hold your tongue, madam," the husband says.
But the wife, bound though she be by an oath of obedience, will not
obey him, but only screams the louder.
All which, as Mr. Furnival sat there thinking of it, disturbed his
mind much. That Martha Biggs would spread the tale through all
Bloomsbury and St. Pancras of course he was aware. "If she drives
me to it, it must be so," he said to himself at last. And then he
also betook himself to his rest. And so it was that preparations for
Christmas were made in Harley Street.