It was well on in the afternoon when I entered my house. I had been to
my chambers, and having transacted some business which the change in
my affairs seemed to me to render imperative, I gave up the keys, and
turned my back forever upon the brighter side of my existence. I had
also visited a clergyman and a barrister with whom I had a slight
acquaintance; it was waste power, time thrown away, and I must have
paid the visits without the least hope of deriving any good from them.
As I walked towards my home I was overcome with faintness, and I
reeled like a drunken man. Then I recollected that food had not passed
my lips since breakfast yesterday morning. I entered the nearest
restaurant--it happened to be a public-house--and standing at the
counter ate some sandwiches and hard boiled eggs. The barmaid asked
what I would take to drink and for a moment I thought of calling for
brandy, but it was not on that occasion I broke my vow never to touch
spirituous liquor. I drank a glass of lemonade, and pursued my
homeward way.
As I entered the house I heard Barbara moaning and gibbering upstairs.
The sounds were familiar to me, and it was with a sickening feeling
that I entered the sitting-room. Maxwell was there and my stepmother.
Maxwell was quite composed; my stepmother looked rather scared at my
sudden entrance and wild appearance. They did not welcome me with
effusion. Maxwell made the remark that they had been wondering what
had become of me, and he inquired why I had not come home last night.
I did not answer him. My stepmother volunteered the information that
poor Barbara was very ill.
"You had better not go up to her," she said. "The sight of you will
make her worse."
Neither did I reply to her. Their presence was so hateful to me that I
left the room unceremoniously. They followed me into the passage, and,
my foot on the stairs, some words of what passed between them reached
my ears.
"Mad, I think," said my stepmother.
"Looks remarkably like it," responded Maxwell, pulling at his
mustache. "Or, let us be charitable, and put it down to drink."
"Supposing," she said, and finished the sentence in a whisper.
I stepped back.
"Supposing you drove me mad between you," I said, "there would be an
end of me, and you and my wife would have control of my property. Is
that it, dear friends?"
They looked at each other, and my stepmother said, boldly: "Decidedly
mad. Not a doubt of it."
"No, dear stepmother," I said, my voice and manner expressing
detestation of her, "not yet mad. Sane as yourselves. You remind me of
an omission which I must repair. I have not made my will; it is a
thing that ought not to be neglected. Not one of you shall profit by
it, I promise you. Pray let me know what you are in my house for."
"We are here to protect my sister from your brutality," said Maxwell,
and it pleased me to see that I had disconcerted them.
"Indeed! From my brutality? Of which you have already given evidence
in your secret court of inquiry. And your sister, too. There was a
time when I fancied there was no great love on either side. You pair
of scheming devils! I will show you that I am master here. Out! the
pair of you! Out of my house!" And I advanced towards them with so
threatening an air that they began to retreat.
"We will see what the law says to this," blustered Maxwell. "We have
witnesses enough."
"False witnesses--false testimony. When you come to consider the
matter it may not suit your purpose to appeal to the law. Establish
that my wife lives in fear of me, and that I am systematically cruel
to her, and you will succeed in obtaining a judicial separation. I
shall not thwart you, for it is what I pray for. The Courts award her
maintenance, the income of a third of what I am worth. Then I am free,
and you and she can trouble me no more. Free! Can you understand what
that means to me? Fools! I have offered her more than a third, and she
has refused. Why, if I gave her cause for a complete divorce she would
not avail herself of it. She is too good a wife, too pure, too mindful
of her wifely duties to desert the husband she loves so well."
Had it not been that I was apprehensive of falling into deeper public
disgrace I should not have spoken so openly, for it was speaking
against my own interests; but, indeed, I might have spared myself this
small duplicity, for nothing was farther from their wishes than to
sever the bonds which bound me to Barbara. While those held firm they
had, through her, some power over my purse; loosen them, and the power
was gone. It was only through my enforced bondage that they could hope
to gain.
"When you were a child," said my stepmother, white to the lips, "I
foresaw what you would grow into."
"You did your best for me," I retorted. "You made my home a
paradise--not much worse than this home is to me--you showed me daily
how you loved me. I remember well your tender care of me. Truly there
are men and women who are baser than beasts."
"If I were a man I would thrash you," she hissed.
"Ask your son Louis, my loving half-brother, to do it for you. Ask
that reptile by your side to undertake the task. Cunning and malice
have had their day. Let us try brute force."
I laughed in their faces. In this encounter we were more like animals
snarling at one another than human beings. Meanwhile Barbara continued
her moaning and gibbering upstairs.
"That is my work, is it not?" I went on. "It is I who have made her
what she is, a living shame to decency. Before our marriage she never
touched strong drink--is that the way it goes? She was an innocent,
simple child of nature, and it is I who have debased and contaminated
her. That is what you have made my friends believe. If it is any
satisfaction to you, hear from my lips that your cowardly plot has
succeeded, and that the honorable career I had mapped out for myself
is at an end. Has my wife told you that on the first night of our
marriage she locked herself in her room in Paris and drank herself
into such a filthy state of intoxication that we were turned out of
our hotel? But doubtless she kept this delectable piece of information
to herself."
"Another of your abominable inventions," cried my stepmother, "as true
as all the rest."
"Exactly. As true as all the rest. Women such as she, and you, should
be whipped daily for the public good."
"Oh!" cried my stepmother, digging her nails into her palms. If she
could have killed me with a look she would have done it--and with
shame I admit that I should have deserved a greater punishment than
that for expressing myself as I did. But I was stung to utter
recklessness, to utter forgetfulness of what was due to one's own
sense of self-respect.
"Come, come, John," said Maxwell, trying another tack, "you are
over-excited. You will be sorry for this to-morrow."
"I am sorry for it to-day. It was not to be expected when I courted
your sister that you should warn me of the pit into which I was
falling--you were too anxious to be rid of her. I see now, but did not
see then, the meaning of your covert sneers when you spoke of our
married life. By the way, from time to time you borrowed money of me
in those days. Are you prepared to repay it?"
"What I owe you," he replied, with a dark look, "I will repay--with
interest. As for money, I never had one farthing from you." He turned
to my stepmother. "He is good at invention, this John of ours."
"He is good at anything low and vile," she said. "Mark my words--one
of these days he will commit murder."
"You nurse your hatred well," I responded. "And now, quit my house."
They retreated before me, and I drove them, as though they were
cattle, to the street door.
"John," said Maxwell, with a sudden show of amiability, "this is all
nonsense, you know. Let us be friends."
He held out his hand, and the impulse was upon me to strike it down,
but I merely gave him a contemptuous look, and threw open the street
door. As they stood on the threshold Louis came up, and I think for a
moment that Maxwell, with this reinforcement, had an idea of forcing
his way in again.
"Do you see what he is doing?" cried my stepmother to her son. "The
low wretch is turning us out of the house."
"What else can you expect?" asked Louis, the scar on his forehead
becoming blood-red in my frowning glance.
"We shall come back," said Maxwell, and I slammed the door in his
face.
My conduct was brutal; I admit it. It would have been manlier had I
behaved with dignity, but during that evil time all my impulses were
evil. There is an element of savagery in every human being, and it
leaped forth and mastered me, and robbed sorrow of its crown. It led
me into further excesses, and had not an angel appeared and rescued
me, I might have deserved all the obloquy that had been thrown upon
me, and have become utterly, irretrievably lost.
It was evening, and I lingered in the passage outside Barbara's door,
which was locked against me. Then I called aloud:
"Annette, are you there?"
At first no answer; then, the question repeated, the reply:
"Yes, monsieur."
"Open the door."
"But, monsieur, it is madame's orders," she began, but I did not allow
her to finish.
"Open the door."
"I dare not disobey madame."
"Open the door."
This time she did not answer. I put my shoulder to the door, and
exerted all my strength. It is not a thing to boast of that I am a man
of great muscular power, and that on this occasion I exulted in it.
The evil spirit within me urged me on. As I strained my muscles there
was silence in the room; for a little while Barbara's voice was not
heard. The door creaked, yielded, then burst open with a crash.
Annette stood upright, her cold, gray eyes fixed upon me. She was a
woman of indomitable firmness, and in my knowledge of her she never
showed the least trace of fear. My wife cowered on the floor, clad
only in her nightdress, and in a more disgraceful condition than when
I found her lying at the door of my chambers in the Strand. Her body
was trembling and convulsed, her features twitched, there was a
nameless terror in her eyes. The atmosphere of the apartment reeked
with the fumes of liquor.
"You are a faithful servant," I said to Annette, "to encourage your
mistress in these disgusting orgies. You have a human excuse, I
suppose. It pays you."
"I am paid with ingratitude," she answered, composedly. "To keep
this"--pointing to my wife--"from the other servants in the house--is
not that faithful service?"
"And to give false evidence against your master," I retorted, "that
also is faithful service, is it not? I know you for what you are,
Annette--a panderer to vice and infamy."
"That is defamation, monsieur, I can make you pay for it."
"Do so. It will rid me of you. I am willing to pay the price."
This bickering was stopped by a piercing scream from Barbara.
"See there--see there!" the wretched creature shrieked. "Those devils
are creeping in again! Keep them off--keep them off! Save me--save
me!"
She bit, she snarled, she tore at the phantoms.
I cannot describe the scene. My pen halts, my fingers refuse to trace
the words. I remember helping Annette to lift my wife to the bed; I
remember noting with morbid curiosity the singular phase in her
delirium that she clung to Annette for protection while she clawed at
me; I remember her falling from the bed, and creeping under it to hide
herself from the imaginary terrors which afflict the dipsomaniac; I
recall her delirious entreaties for more brandy, her shrieks for
mercy, her ribald utterances when, for a brief space, these terrors
ceased, her shuddering paroxysms, her tears, her hysterical sobs. Good
God! Can we call such beings human? Should there not be a law to put
them under restraint, to treat them as we treat the mad, to free the
innocent partners of their unspeakable degradation from the horrible
curse which weighs like a blight upon despairing hearts?
So the night passed, and I paced the passages, the rooms, the stairs,
in a frame of mind the memory of which even now, after a lapse of
years, sends a shudder through me. For the time being I lost faith in
human goodness. Purity and sweetness were delusions--they had no
existence. Charity, virtue, kindliness, our holiest sentiments, the
spiritual instinct which lifts our thoughts above sordid cares and
rewards, all were mockeries, and he who believed in them was a fool.
Nothing was real but corruption. Beneath the lying mask on the world's
face lurked treachery and foul desire, and over this mass of impurity
reigned the Spirit of Evil.
At the end of the succeeding week I broke the vow I had made never to
touch spirituous liquor. To my shame be it recorded.
I had eaten scarcely anything the previous two days, and was suffering
from terrible depression. It was while I was in this state, pacing the
dining-room, up and down, up and down, with nerves so sensitively
attuned that any sudden noise made me start, that my eyes fell upon a
bottle of brandy which had just been uncorked, and inadvertently left
upon the sideboard. It fascinated me. I turned from it, was drawn to
it again, and for several minutes gazed fixedly at it. Here was rest,
here was forgetfulness, here was at least a transient relief. An
enticing devil lurked in that bottle, inviting me, tempting me, luring
me on. I laid my hand upon it.
My conscience smote me, but my moral strength was sapped. Character,
reputation, happiness, all were lost. Let the last remnants of
self-respect go with them. In all the wide world there was not one man
or woman who cared what became of me, not one human being who
entertained for me a spark of affection. Whether I died the death of a
dog or a martyr would not affect the judgment which had been passed
upon me. My epitaph was already written, and nothing could alter it.
The fiend Insomnia held me in his grip. During the past week I had not
had two consecutive hours' sleep. To save myself from going mad I must
have a few hours' oblivion from the misery which encompassed me.
I poured the liquor into a tumbler, and drank it neat. It burnt my
throat, but almost immediately I was conscious of a riotous revulsion
of spirits. Again and again I drank, forcing the liquor down my throat
till the bottle was empty, when I must have fallen to the ground in a
drunken stupor. I recall that it was broad daylight when I yielded to
the temptation, and put the final touch to my sorrows by this act of
self-degradation.