If I have dwelt at greater length than I intended upon the incidents
which made their fatal mark upon the early months of my married life,
it is because I wish Barbara's character to be clearly understood, and
because they supply a pregnant index to what followed. The first night
I spent in our new home was a prelude to innumerable nights of the
same nature. Safe from observation and free to indulge in her besotted
habits, with a willing tool at her beck and call in the person of
Annette, with a helpless protector chained to her by bonds which he
could not break, she found herself absolute mistress of a drunkard's
hellish heaven. She reveled in it, and gave her passions free play.
Day after day, night after night, I had by my side a creature who had
reached the lowest depths of bestial degradation, and whose one aim in
life seemed to be to reach a lower still. She was a large-framed woman
with a magnificent constitution, or she would soon have succumbed and
become a driveling idiot. Throughout all, singular to say, she
preserved her cunning, and the expedients by which she hedged herself
in and kept her besetting vice from the knowledge of others except
myself and Annette, were nothing short of marvelous in their
ingenuity. The room she called her prayer room was her sanctuary, and
it was there, attended by Annette, that she freely indulged. She
acquired, indeed, a reputation for sanctity, and even our servants
were deceived by her clever devices. Annette became housekeeper and
the nominal mistress of the establishment, and from her they received
their orders. They saw their real mistress only when she was sober,
and then she spoke kindly and was liberal to them. When she secluded
herself they were given to understand that she was ill or at her
devotions. She was supposed to suffer from a mysterious disorder, and
her driveling screams in the middle of the nights were attributed to
pain. I subsequently learned that they were often attributed to my
beating her and knocking her about.
I recall the day when she sat at the table with a livid bruise on her
cheek, caused by her falling against the sharp corner of a piece of
furniture. The parlor-maid assisted Annette to apply hot fomentations
to the bruise, and when, later in the day, I noticed the frightened,
horrified looks the girl cast at me, I knew that she had been told the
lie that I had struck my wife. Against these calumnies I had no
defense. In the kitchen I was regarded as a monster of cruelty, and
the servants shrank aside as I passed them. Before the domestics
Barbara invariably addressed me in frightened, humble tones. She kept
her revilings for my private ear, the only witness of the scenes
between us being Annette.
The character foisted upon me was not confined to the house. Our
servants related shameful stories against me to their friends in the
neighborhood, who, in their turn, poured these stories into their
mistresses' ears. Wives and mothers looked darkly at me, and those
with whom I had become acquainted did not return my bow. I was
completely and effectually ostracised. Under these persecutions was it
any wonder that I felt myself becoming hardened? My nature was
changed. I grew habitually morose and savage, and by my manner defied
my traducers. This made matters worse for me, and gave color to the
stories of systematic cruelty laid to my charge. After awhile I slept
in the spare room alone, and offered up prayers of thankfulness that
we had no children. It was indeed a blessing for which I could not be
sufficiently grateful.
One evening when we were at dinner, and Barbara was toying with her
food and sighing in the presence of the maid who waited at table, I
suggested that she should call in a doctor.
"It is not a doctor I require," she said, gazing at me with mournful
significance. "Oh, John, if only you----" And then she checked
herself, as if she would not say anything to my discredit before the
servant.
"Finish the sentence," I said. "If I only what?"
"Do not force me to speak," she cried, in an imploring tone.
Bursting into tears she rose from the table and left the room.
What clearer evidence of my barbarity could be supplied? The maid
would have been bereft of sense not to have understood the
implication, and there is no doubt that she took the tale down to her
fellow servants in the kitchen. Before them, at meals, she never
drank, but it was a common practice with her when we and Annette were
together at dinner, to help herself to copious draughts of brandy. I
no longer remonstrated with her; she would have added to my distress
by drinking deeper.
In all these tricks she was assisted by Maxwell and my stepmother.
Louis, for the most part, was a passive spectator. Maxwell drank with
her and laughed. My stepmother said:
"See what you are driving her to. You are breaking her heart. I always
knew what would happen if you married."
"You are saying what is false, because you hate me," I replied.
"I am speaking the truth," she retorted, "and truly I have no cause to
love you. It is my opinion you have some wicked scheme in view. But
there will be a judgment upon you for all your cleverness. You robbed
me; you robbed Louis of his patrimony. What good is the money doing
you?"
It is well I had matters apart from my domestic affairs to occupy me,
or my mind would have lost its balance entirely. In accordance with
the plan Barbara had laid down for me, I took a small set of chambers
in one of the streets leading from the Strand to the river--the
locality she had herself proposed--consisting of three rooms, a
sitting-room, bedroom, and bathroom; and there I pursued my
literary labors. The chambers were at the top of the house, and the
sitting-room looked out upon the river. How happy could I have been
there, had it not been for the living weight which held me down!
Gladly every morning did I leave my home, sadly every evening did I
return to it.
At first I wrote a few short stories, which I sent to the magazines.
They were refused. Every fresh rejection brought disappointment with
it, but disheartened me only a short time. When my manuscripts came
back to me I read them carefully, found faults in them, re-wrote them,
and tried again, with the same result. Thus a year passed, and I had
not advanced a step. Two or three times in the course of this year
Barbara visited me.
"You are happy here," she said, and I did not gainsay her. "You like
it better than your own home."
"It was your own proposition," I replied. "Will nothing satisfy you?"
"It was not my proposition," she said. "You chose this yourself, and
you have assignations here with creatures you love better than me. Oh,
I know why you spend the day in these rooms. Do you think I am blind
to the life you are living."
She carried her venom to the length of tearing up manuscripts upon
which I was engaged; I submitted to this awhile, but eventually I
protected myself by locking up my papers when I heard her knock at the
door. She was furious at my refusal to give her duplicate keys to the
chambers.
"A clear proof," she cried.
On one of these occasions I proposed a separation, and offered to
settle upon her half the money I possessed, so long as we remained
apart.
"Will you give it me in a lump?" she asked.
"No," I answered, "there must be a guarantee that you will not violate
the conditions of the deed, which would be drawn up and signed by both
of us. You shall have the interest of the money. If I die before you
it will all be yours without restriction."
"Thank you, my dear," she said. "I prefer things as they are. You will
not get rid of me so easily. You would divorce me if it were in your
power. Of course you won't answer that. But you will never get the
chance, love. I am acquainted with the grounds upon which a divorce
can be obtained. You shall have no reason to say that I am not a true
and faithful wife to you."
And, indeed, upon the score of faithfulness--in its legal sense--I
entertained no doubts. She had but one love--brandy.
While I was endeavoring to obtain a footing in the literary field by
means of short stories, I was preparing a series of articles upon the
curse of the land--drink--drawing upon actual facts and real life for
my pen and ink pictures. By good fortune I obtained an introduction to
the editor of a paper, the columns of which were open to social
subjects, and I submitted a few of these articles to him. He approved
of them, and suggesting certain alterations, which I agreed to make,
consented to use them. His paper was one which did not admit of signed
contributions, and had it been otherwise I should not have put my name
to them, my domestic troubles on the same theme being a bar to such a
course. The editor did not inquire into the source from which I
obtained the facts for my descriptions of the effects of the awful
vice; he was content with my method of treatment and with my literary
style.
"Just one word of advice," he said, "don't shrink from speaking
broadly and plainly. It is a burning question, and you can't put it
too strongly. I am not so well up in the subject as yourself, but I
should say, even if a man drew entirely upon his imagination, he could
not paint more striking pictures than reality can supply. The
successful artist paints from life and nature."
"What I describe," I replied, "is what I have seen. Nothing more
horrible can be met in the Vision of Hell. This city of shame and sin
is full of little hells, and if there is any truth in pulpit sermons
and religious ministrations, in every little hell souls are daily
being damned."
He threw a searching glance upon me. "I like that. Don't forget the
metaphor; use it in one of the early articles. Some writers keep their
big plums till the last; it is a mistake. Fairy tales can be written
on a Swiss mountain or an Italian lake, but to do justice to such a
subject as yours you must dig into Babylon's crust; you need the
pest-houses of civilization, the hog-like natures of men and women
familiar with crime and poverty."
"The evil is not confined to hovels," I remarked, "nor to the criminal
classes. Mansions of the well-to-do supply fruitful material."
"Well, do your best," he said. "We shall create a sensation."
We did. My articles were quoted far and near. Writing under a burning
sense of wrong I was not sparing of epithet and denunciation. I worked
at fever heat, and was often appalled at what I wrote, but it went
into print with scarcely the alteration of a word. Had I written under
my own name I might have become a celebrity.
In one of my articles I touched upon the marriage tie in relation to
the evil. I described a home--a type of many--in which the wife was a
confirmed dipsomaniac; another, in which the husband was drunk every
day of his life. They were cases which came under my own eye in the
localities where I pursued my investigations. From the lips of the
sufferers themselves I received the terrible details of the gradual
sinking into the slough of despair. Here was the wretched husband,
once a bright mechanic earning a fair wage, whose wife's filthy habits
had brought ruin upon him--hopeless, irremediable ruin. Vainly had he
striven to reform her, vainly had he pointed out to her the sure
consequences of her dissipation. Coming home at night from his work he
found his rooms in darkness, his hungry children lying almost naked on
the bare boards, and his wife drunk in the nearest gin palace. It had
become a common occurrence. She pawned the beds, the furniture, the
children's clothes and his own, again and yet again, and when he
dragged her from the public-house she lay through the night, gibbering
at the awful sights her diseased imagination conjured up. He replaced
the furniture, he bought new beds and clothing, he gave his children
food, and when his wife was able to crawl out again, off she crept to
the pawnbroker to repeat her evil work. The children had grown stunted
and deformed, their rags hung loosely on their shrunken limbs, like
starving dogs they nosed the gutters for offal. "My God, my God!" he
cried, the tears streaming down his face. "What shall I do? How shall
I save my children? How shall I save myself?" His voice sank to a
whisper. "One night I shall kill her, and there will be murder on my
soul!"
In the other case it was the husband who drank, who would not work,
who starved his wife and children, and beat them till their flesh was
covered with livid bruises. It was the wife who told me the story. "If
it were not for my children," she moaned, "I would make a hole in the
water." It was not my habit to make more than a passing comment upon
my descriptions of real and suffering life as it is to be seen to-day
in the fester-spots of London. I had wished to do so, but was
requested by my editor to put some restriction upon myself in this
respect. "Leave that," he said, "to the editorial pen." At the end of
the article in which I narrated these two cases, I wrote: "And these
poor creatures are, by the Church and the so-called laws of God,
chained to a living curse which blights, destroys, and damns the
innocent." The words were allowed to stand.
On the following day a powerful leading article was written by the
editor, in which a change in the law of divorce was imperatively
demanded.
"Confirmed drunkenness," he said, "is a crime against the true laws of
God and man; it is far worse than adultery, and more than a sufficient
cause for separation. It is not alone that humanity demands it, but
could God make Himself heard in this sinful world there would be a
Divine mandate to enforce it." Other papers took up the subject. One
popular journal (the season being over, and the House not sitting)
made it a theme for the usual yearly correspondence, and columns
of letters were printed every day--from despairing husbands and
wives approving, from the clergy protesting, from politicians
shilly-shallying. Meanwhile my articles had come to an end.
There was no change in my home, except for the worse, and I grew to
hate it, to hate all who visited it, to hate myself. I had as little
authority in it as any chance guest. I breakfasted, dined, and slept
there--and, for variation, there were the scenes I had with Barbara.
The lies that were circulated as to my brutality towards her bore
fruit, and I was shunned by every soul in the neighborhood. Not a
person I met there had a smile or a cordial word for me, and not for
one sober hour did Barbara relax her cunning. In her mad fits she was
visible only to me and Annette; when she went about the house or was
seen in the streets her sad, listless ways (she was always sad when
sober) were apparent to all, and her conspicuous ill-health was
attributed to my conduct. It was the popular belief that I was
"killing her by inches." I heard the words uttered by one of our
servants to a servant in the adjoining house, and the indignant
comment upon them--"Brute!"
Maxwell tried to borrow money from me, but I was sufficiently incensed
to refuse him. "Not another shilling while I live," I said, and he
replied that I would live to repent it. Scoundrel as he was, he spoke
the truth.
The cases of the two poor homes ruined by a drunken husband and a
drunken wife, which I have just narrated, drove my thoughts upon my
own--and indeed it may have been because of the position in which I
stood that I sifted them to the bottom. They had a peculiar
fascination for me.
But even if the law of divorce were so altered as to rescue those
who are driven to despair, sometimes to crime, by this frightful
vice--which I pray may soon be so--a man situated as I was would find
no relief in it. The shame would have to be proved, and the web which
had been spun around me was of so cunning a nature that proof was
impossible in my case. On the contrary, indeed; all the evidence,
except my bare statements, would be turned against myself.
As an instance of the base arts employed to still further entangle and
incriminate me I recount the following circumstances. Whose devilish
ingenuity first conceived the idea I never discovered.
The spare room in which I slept was at the back of the house, and its
window faced the window of another house, used also, I believe, as a
bedroom. I stood in front of this window, shaving, one morning; the
blind was up and the day was bright. While the razor was at my cheek
Barbara rushed into the room, crying at the top of her voice:
"John--John--John! For mercy's sake, don't!" And as she spoke she
threw herself upon me.
Fearful lest the razor should cut her I threw it away, but not before
I had gashed my cheek, causing blood to flow. Then, observing that she
was in her nightdress and that the bosom was open, I quickly drew down
the blind.
"What is the meaning of this?" I inquired, bitterly. "Do you fear that
I intend to kill myself?"
Her only answer was a series of hysterical shrieks which could be
heard a long distance off. For a few moments I thought she had gone
mad, and I stooped to raise her from the floor, upon which she had
fallen.
"For mercy's sake, for mercy's sake!" she screamed, and in the midst
of the confusion Annette entered the room and led her mistress away. I
followed her into the passage, the blood running down my face, and
there upon the stairs were the servants, who had naturally been
alarmed by Barbara's screams, and had run up to see what was the
matter.
"Go down," said Annette, speaking to them in a tone of command.
"Madame is ill--very, very ill. I will attend to her."
I did not see my wife again that day; the door of her room was locked
against me. To all my inquiries after her Annette replied:
"She is more composed; she will recover in a few days, perhaps."
"I wish to see her, Annette."
"Madame will not be seen by any one but me. She ordered me to say so
to you."
I had, perforce, to give up the attempt.
I thought of the scene during the day; it was of a different nature
from those to which I was accustomed, but there was something strange
in it which I could not unfathom. Finally I came to the conclusion
that Barbara's malady was developing itself in a new direction, and
the last thought in my mind was that anything more than generally
prejudicial to my character would come of it.