OVER THE WAY.
It was natural, after the first liveliness of the emotion which had
been excited in Mrs. Parrot’s breast by the installation of a lodger
worth fourteen shillings a week to her, had in some degree subsided,
that she should begin to wonder who that lodger was.
She had been particularly struck and greatly taken by his behaviour
to the little girl, and inferred, of course, that he was a humane and
tender-hearted man, a conjecture which, although it was true, did no
credit to her sagacity, considering the circumstance on which it was
based; since it is a notorious fact, that great rascals will admire,
pet, and “tip” little children, whose parents they would not scruple to
rob of their very last farthing.
But though Mrs. Parrot had no doubt as to her lodger’s humanity of
character after what she had seen, she could not by any means feel
so sure as to the position he held either in or out of society, the
calling he had followed, if ever he _had_ followed a calling, or the
part of the world he came from. His name was Hampden. That was English.
But had he a Christian name? No initial stood between the Mr. and the
Hampden, on the card affixed to his portmanteau. _Was_ he a Christian?
She hoped he was. She was no judge of other religions; but she must
say, when she let her lodgings to people, that she liked to _feel_ that
they were Christians.
He had ordered dinner at two o’clock; and when she came in to lay the
cloth, for she kept no servant, she found him still at the window,
staring into the empty road as earnestly as if it were filled with a
very beautiful and novel procession. But she could only suppose that he
looked out of the window because he was new to the place.
He smiled softly when he met her glance, but did not speak, nor would
she hazard any remarks herself, for fear of being thought intrusive.
All that he said during dinner was to express himself well pleased with
her cooking; but she noticed, in removing the dishes, that, pleasantly
as he had praised the piece of roast mutton, he had scarcely tasted it,
and that of the four potatoes she had put into the dish, three and a
half remained.
Whilst in the kitchen she heard him leave the house, and, when her
task was done, she went upstairs to her mother’s room, whither she had
conducted the old lady soon after little Nelly’s visit.
“If the gentleman don’t eat more every day than he’s just had for
dinner,” said she, throwing herself back in a chair and fanning her hot
face with the corner of her apron, “I reckon we shall have a funeral
here before long.”
“A what!” gasped the old woman, who sat upright in a cane chair, near
the open window, with an immense Bible on her right hand and her
spectacles on the top of it.
“He’s no more than skin an’ bone as he is,” continued Mrs. Parrot,
“but it was a picter to see him with the child. I never see a man more
soft with a child before.”
“He ain’t likely to make strange nises o’ nights, is he, Sairey?”
exclaimed the old woman, earnestly regarding her daughter with a pair
of eyes from which all expression and light seemed literally washed
out, leaving nothing but two circles of weak, dim blue.
“I don’t think so. He seems to me quiet enough. He’s fond o’ staring
into the road. One might think he’s trying to find out where he is. I
niver see a stranger face. He don’t look English-like, and yet he talks
uncommon well. I can tell by his boots--which is square as square at
the toes, and his clothes, which have an odd twist somehows--that he’s
not from these parts. Maybe, he’s from Ireland.”
“I hope not, Sairey,” ejaculated the old woman, bending forward with
the profoundly confidential air of old age. “I was once fellow-sarvint
with a Ayrish futman as was allus talkin’ of burnin’ down houses, an’
his speech ran on so it were niver to be trusted, for niver was such
lies as he used to tell. You’d best gi’ him notice, Sairey. You can
say I gi’ yer more trouble nor you can well get through, and recommend
Burton’s lodgin’s to him. Burton’s a strong man, and kapes dogs.”
“Tut! I’m not afeard!” said Mrs. Parrot, tossing up her hands and
giving her cap a pull. “There’s no more harm in the man than there
is in you, for didn’t I tell yer how he gave the girl a shillin’
and spoke that soft to it, it made me feel as if I could ha’ cried.
Give him notice, and him not here a day yit! Fourteen shillin’ is
fourteen shillin’ in these scarce times, to say nothin’ of his being
as well-spoken a man as iver you listened to in your life; an’ as for
his face, it is but as God made it, an’ beauty is but skin deep, as t’
parson says, an’ I’m for lettin’ well alone.”
“If he ain’t Ayrish,” said the old woman, stroking the back of her
lean hand, “he may be very well. But sitch talk of invasions from that
nashun as I used to hear when I was a gal, an’ the drink an’ shootin’
as goes on there, is enough to wet your hair with perspiration ...”
“_I_ didn’t say he was Irish. _I_ don’t know what he is. He was askin’
about Mrs. Conway, though she’s unbeknown to him, as any one might tell
who heerd him questionin’. He wants Miss Nelly to bear him company at
tea, and I don’t see why the child can’t come, if the mother ’ull let
it. I won’t take it upon myself to bring the child in. I’ll speak to
the mother when I see her. I like Mrs. Conway. She’s a nice-spoken
lady, but seems to know a deal of grief, poor thing. It ’ud be a mussy
if that husband of hers ’ud take it into his head to pull out all his
own teeth. The cook at Mrs. Short’s was tellin’ me he’s grown that
wicious there’s no wishin’ him a civil good mornin’. An’ drink! Didn’t
I see him pass here yesterday evenin’, staggerin’ on his legs like a
doll which a child tries to teach walkin’ to?”
“The ’pothecaries used to draw teeth in my day; now they must be all
gentlefolks as looks into your mouth,” said the old woman, who had been
three minutes searching in her pocket for the snuff-box that lay open,
with some of its sand-coloured contents spilt, in her lap.
“Pretty gentlefolks!” exclaimed Mrs. Parrot, pulling up the old
woman’s dress and tilting the spilt snuff into the box. “If they’re all
like Mr. Conway, I’d rather carry a toothache to my grave than have it
stopped wi’ the lockjaw, which they tell me he gave to Mr. Timpson;
for drink had taken away the use of his mind, and he pushed the wrong
instrayment into the man’s mouth and nearly choked him, he did, and
then took out two wrong teeth after all; beautiful teeth they was, for
Mr. Timpson showed them to me hisself, with the tears standin’ in his
eyes, wropped up in silver paper.”
“Thank God! he can’t draw none o’ my teeth!” mumbled the old woman,
talking through her nose in rapt enjoyment of the flavour of the snuff.
“They’re all gone.”
“I noticed Mrs. Conway’s gownd to-day. If I was her husband, I’d scorn
to let her appear in sitch a rag. And there was darns in the knees
o’ that child’s stockings as made ’em look forty year old. They’re
always i’ the same dresses, both of ’em. There’s a silk she puts on o’
Sundays, all wore thin over the buzzum, and I remember the bonnet she
had on to-day iver since I’ve known her. Sitch a pretty face as she
has, too! I expect he must ha’ told her some fine lies to get her to
marry him. They say he niver did well, even when he was in the High
Street, wi’ that show-box of his stuck up, filled wi’ gaping gums an’
naked teeth as turned the stomach to see. He must ha’ sold that piece
of ugliness, for I don’t see it nowheres outside his house, which is
a mussy, for I’d as lief see a skiliton on a pole for a sign! Fancy a
doctor settin’ up a death’s-head to show his trade!”
She jumped from her chair with a face and gesture of disgust, and
throwing some knitting with the pins through it into her mother’s lap,
adjusted her cap before the glass, and left the room.
* * * * *
There is always some truth in gossip: and there was a great deal in
what Mrs. Parrot had said of Mr. Conway, who, as we have seen, held
no place at all in her opinion. But then sympathy for Dolly was to be
expected from a woman who, if she did not know what it was to live with
a drunkard, had known what it was to live with a surly man, whose eye
was evil, and whose voice was thick, and whose characteristic method of
expressing discontent was by holding his clenched fist under his wife’s
nose.
Mr. Conway is passing Mrs. Parrot’s door at the very moment that
Mrs. Parrot is leaving her mother’s bedroom; we shall not have an
opportunity of seeing much of him, having the fortunes of a better kind
of hero to deal with; so, while Holdsworth is away from his lodgings,
we’ll step into the road and have a look at the dentist, and follow him
into his house.
He is a man with sandy whiskers and light hair, but by no means
ill-looking. On the contrary, there are materials in his face out of
which a very pleasing countenance could be made; a well-shaped nose, a
well-shaped forehead, a good chin, a facial outline clearly defined and
perfectly symmetrical.
But there never was a better illustration than this man’s face of the
truth, that good features make but a very small portion of beauty.
I want a word to express that middle quality of aspect which is
contrived by the mingling of comely lineaments with bad passions.
Possibly the effect is no more than a neutralisation of nature’s good
intentions, wherein we behold a handsome countenance sunk into a
species of physical negation, by moral qualities tugging it hard in the
direction of repellent ugliness.
A most unstriking face at which you would barely glance, and pass on
absolutely unimpressed. His thin lips might mark both cruelty and
selfishness; his eyes are made heavy by their drooping lids, and the
irids are pale and unintelligent. He is dressed in the style of the
times, of course; pantaloons strapped over his boots, a frock-coat
gaping in a circle round a great quantity of black satin stock (in
which are two pins and a chain). But the pantaloons are frayed at the
heels and bagged at the knees; and the coat is suspiciously polished
at the elbows and the rim of the collar. He walks with a quick, uneasy
step, his hat slightly cocked, and his hands in his breeches pockets,
and arriving at the gate of his house, opens it by giving it a kick
with his foot.
He entered the sitting-room with his hat on, and found the cloth laid
for dinner, but nobody in the room, which was a soiled and dingy
apartment, although the house was a new one, and the paper fresh and
the ceiling white. But no paper and whitewash could qualify the sordid
suggestions of the old drugget imperfectly nailed over the floor,
the old leather sofa and the old leather arm-chair, the mantelpiece
decorated by a pair of plated candlesticks marked with indents, the
dingy red curtains, the _papier mâché_ table in the window, with the
mother-of-pearl dropping out of it.
The subtle magic of feminine fingers which extracts from rubbish itself
what hidden capabilities it may possess of comforting the eye with some
faintest aspect of taste, seemed either never to have been exercised
upon this room, or to have found itself powerless to deal with it. The
only feminine sign was a small bundle of child’s stockings on the top
of an old work-basket on the sofa.
Mr. Conway put his head out of the door and called, “Are you there,
wife?”
“Yes,” replied Dolly’s voice from downstairs.
“How long will dinner be?”
“Five minutes!”
He threw his hat down and walked into the “surgery,” a room at the end
of the passage, furnished with a chest of drawers, a toilet-table and
a looking-glass, an arm-chair, an ugly circular box with a basin let
into it, standing beside the arm-chair; on the toilet-table, some small
hand-glasses, a pair of forceps, and three unfinished false teeth.
Through the window was to be seen a slip of garden of the breadth of
the house, and about fifty feet long--its neglected state, its few
pining shrubs, and a flag-pole with a vane a-top that croaked to every
passage of the wind, showing up very squalidly against the neighbouring
garden, which was richly stocked with wall-fruit and ferns and green
plants.
Little Nelly was in this piece of ground with her doll, seated on the
grass, and at that moment making such a picture as a painter would stop
to study and receive into his mind; her round dark-blue eyes following
the swallows which chased each other high in the air, her mouth pouted
into an expression of exquisite infantine wonder, her bright hair about
her shoulders, and looking, as the breeze stirred the sunshine upon it,
like a falling shower of fine gold.
Mr. Conway stared at the child for a moment, and then turned away and
sauntered towards the door, but came back to open one of the drawers
in the chest and extract a leather-covered bottle, which he shook at
his ear, and put to his mouth.
O God! what contrasts there are in life, lying so close together that
the devil, though his worship be no bigger than a man, might measure
the space between with outstretched hands! Look at Purity and Innocence
in the garden, with its eyes raised to heaven; and the skulking fellow
in the dingy room swallowing brandy as a man steals money; and in the
room below--a darksome, scantily-furnished kitchen--a sweet-faced woman
doing servant’s work, and urging the slattern by her side into quicker
movements, that the gentleman upstairs shall have no occasion to use
bad language.
She comes upstairs presently, this Dolly, her face flushed, and
breathing quickly from the hurry of her movements, and bears with her
own hands a dish that will furnish but a poor repast, though she has
done her best to make what little there is palatable. The slattern,
with wisps of red hair about her forehead, and loose shoes, which beat
a double knock at each step upon the uncarpeted staircase, follows,
armed with a jug and a loaf of bread. Behind comes little Nelly, whom
the mother has summoned before leaving the kitchen, and who has climbed
the staircase with more labour than Mont Blanc is scaled by the Alpine
tourist.
No word is spoken. Nelly is lifted into a chair by her mother, and Mr.
Conway seats himself before the dish and fills a glass from the jug of
ale, taking care--a true connoisseur in such matters--to let the liquor
fall from a height, to secure a froth, into which he dips his mouth and
nose.
The slattern leaves the room; and Dolly cuts up some meat and bread
for the little one, with a whisper in her ear to say grace.
“Did you get the money, Robert?” she asks presently, eating little
herself, and noticing how Robert bribes his appetite with sups of ale.
“No. Davis was out.”
“What shall we do? I have only five and threepence left, and this meat
is not paid for.”
Pence make a sordid enumeration; but we talk of pence, reader, when we
have only pence to spend.
“We must sell something, that’s all,” says Mr. Conway, with a kind of
defiant recklessness in his manner.
She gives him a quick glance, looks at her child, and then closes the
knife and fork upon her plate.
He does not notice that she has eaten about as much as would serve
a bird for a meal; neither does he appear to remark that she drinks
water. _He_, at all events, keeps the beer-jug at his elbow, from
which, in a very short time, he pours out the last glass.
The child alone continues eating.
“_I_ don’t know what’s to be done!” he exclaims in a voice of
suppressed anger, pushing his chair from the table. “The people have
dropped me for that French quack, in Mornington Street. I saw three
carriages at his door when I passed just now. I ought never to have
left the old shop. I did well there.”
“You would do well here if you gave yourself a chance,” says Dolly.
“The lady who called yesterday evening came again this morning. Martha
told me she looked annoyed when she heard you were out. She will go to
some one else, I suppose, now.”
“Let her!” he calls out. “How am I to know that people are coming to
me after dark? Week after week passes, and they don’t come, and--am
I going to hang about here a whole night, in the hope of a patient
turning up? Why didn’t she leave word at what hour she meant to call
to-day? I went out to collect some money, and you know it, though I can
guess what is in your thoughts. But it’s false--there’s my hand on it!”
He let his hand fall heavily on the table, and stared at his wife. She
slightly turned from him, and looked through the window. He left the
table and began to pace the room. The child, having emptied her plate
and wanting something to play with, had taken the shilling Holdsworth
had given her from her pocket, and tried to make it spin on the cloth.
“What’s that Nelly has got there?” said Mr. Conway.
“A shilling,” answered Dolly.
“Did you give it her?... Look at our dinner!... You would pamper that
child if we were starving. Talk to me of your five and threepence when
you can give your baby a shilling!”
“I did not give it to her.”
“Who then?”
“A gentleman.”
“What gentleman?”
“A gentleman lodging at Mrs. Parrot’s.”
He looked at her with irritable suspicion, and then said:
“Did you see him give it? Did he take you and the child for beggars?...
Confound his impudence!... Send Martha over to him with it.”
He turned to ring the bell.
“Stop!” said Dolly, quietly. “Nelly tells me that Mrs. Parrot tapped
on the window to speak to her, and when she went in, she saw the
gentleman, who kissed her, and gave her the shilling to buy her doll a
parasol. No insult could have been intended by this.”
“Oh, that was it!” exclaimed Mr. Conway, “Well, and why do you let the
child keep the money? She’ll lose it. Take it from her.”
“It belongs to her. She will not lose it.”
“Yes, she will. Nelly, give that money to your mamma.”
But Nelly doubled her fist over it, and hid her hand under the table.
“Do you hear what I say?” cried Mr. Conway.
“Why will you not let her keep it?” asked Dolly.
“Am I master here or not?” shouted Mr. Conway. “Give that money to your
mother, child!”
Nelly began to whimper, terrified by the man’s voice, but loath to
surrender her little treasure. He stepped up to her, whipped the little
hand from under the cloth, and forcing the shilling from it, put it
into his pocket.
“Though I’m a beggar by my own folly,” he exclaimed, walking to the
door, “I’ll not be insulted and defied by the beggars I have brought
about me.”
His fingers were in his pocket, and it seemed as though he would pull
the money out and fling it on the table. But second thoughts prevailed;
he jerked his hat on his head, and marched out of the house, banging
the door after him.
Dolly watched to see if he would step across to Mrs. Parrot’s; but he
walked straight on.
“Hush, my darling, hush!” she exclaimed, catching up the sobbing child.
“Dolly shall have her parasol; I will buy it myself. Hush, my pet!
Nelly’s tears break poor mamma’s heart.... Oh, John! oh, husband!”
she murmured; “why did God take you from me? Why did He lead me and my
little one into this misery?”
Truly, it was misery, of a forlorn and hopeless kind. But you have seen
the man Dolly had married at his worst. The most brutal husband is not
always brutal. The drunkard is not always drunk. More colours than
black and white go to the painting of a man off the stage, where corked
eyebrows strike no horror, and blood-boltered cheeks prove nothing more
than a neglect of soap.
Mr. Conway had his soft hours, when he would shed tears, smite his
breast, and call himself a fiend--having reference, by this flattering
title, to nothing but his behaviour to Dolly.
He was undoubtedly in love with her when he married her; and the sweet
face which had made him haunt Southbourne, to the neglect of his
patients, would still, even after two years, have too much potency
not to occasionally soften and give movement to the humanities which
lay in him, hardened and drowned in drink. Though he had always, as
long as people could remember him in Hanwitch, been what they called
a dissipated man, he had managed somehow or other to get a living, to
keep his landlord civil and wear good clothes. Ladies were not wanting
who called him handsome. His manner, when sober, was courteous; his
language correct; his fingers dexterous in pulling teeth out or putting
teeth in. Those who knew anything of him knew that he never saved a
penny; that were he to make ten thousand a year he would never save a
penny; but they always said that, if he would only take a deep-rooted
dislike to beer and brandy, go to bed at ten and rise at seven, attend
to his business and give up smoking pipes in the streets, he might
obtain enough money to enable him to keep a carriage and live in good
style.
How he met Dolly matters little. She was living in one room at
Southbourne at that time, trying to obtain a livelihood by taking in
needlework. She was miserably poor, with a little baby at her breast.
Old Mr. Newcome, the rector, did his best for her, and allowed her what
little he could afford out of his slender income, which enabled her to
pay her rent. But she had to clothe and feed her child and herself, and
the work she procured was scanty and poorly paid for. God knows how she
managed to struggle through those days! Mr. Conway asked her to marry
him, but she answered “No,” bitterly, for her love for Holdsworth was
a passion. Then her only friend, Mr. Newcome, died; her health broke
down; she was absolutely destitute; and so, for her baby’s sake--but
shrinking from the marriage as one shrinks from the commission of
an evil deed, and with a heart in her so heavy that nothing but her
love for her child seemed to keep her alive--she gave her hand to Mr.
Conway, and went to live with him at Hanwitch.
She had no affection for the man. Her marriage was a bitter necessity,
and she hated it and herself for that. She had no knowledge of Conway’s
habits, though she had had penetration enough to miss certain moral
qualifications which are to be felt and cannot be explained. Now she
discovered that he was an intemperate, improvident man, hasty in his
temper, selfish, and at the same time neglectful of his own interests.
He was some way ahead in his downward career when he married her. The
addition his marriage made to his expenses quickened his pace, as an
object, rolling slowly at first, improves its velocity in proportion to
the increase of its distance from the starting-point. One by one his
patients deserted him. He insulted his landlord, to whom he owed money,
who gave him notice to quit. He then hired the little house in which we
have found him, and was now illustrating one of the great mysteries of
social life--the mystery of living without money, of keeping a house
over his head without a shilling in his pocket, of wearing boots and
coats without the means in his purse to pay off the milkman’s sixpenny
score.
How is this done? There are people doing it every day. They are doing
more: they are keeping men-servants, renting big houses, wearing
fine dresses, frequenting fashionable haunts, on nothing a year. How
Thackeray puzzled over this problem! How Dickens tried to explain it
and failed: for he is always driven to a last moment, when some good
genius steps forward to help. Imagination can’t deal with a feat which
makes nothing do the work of a great deal.
There is no doubt something aggressive, even to good nature, in the
brooding melancholy that goes about its duties lifelessly, which gives
spiritless attention to matters of moment and significance, which looks
complaint without speaking it, and addresses itself to every task of
life with an air of reproachful endurance.
A man possessed of such an inflammable temper as Conway would be
constantly taking fire in the presence of such a melancholy; and it
must be confessed that Dolly embodied the part with some degree of
completeness. Silent and mournful submission to fate was the wrong
attitude to assume towards a man in whom was a good deal of the fool.
A powerful virago, with muscular arms and a venomous tongue, would
have kept him to his work and out of the taverns by the irresistible
influence of words supported by finger-nails.
Dolly, whose heart was never with him, soon learned to despise him. It
is true that she endeavoured, at the beginning of their married life,
to win him from his extravagant and reckless courses by entreaties
and the mild persuasion of caresses; but she soon ceased her appeals
on finding that they took no effect, and only rarely alluded to his
habits, which, having plunged them into poverty, were keeping them
there, and sinking them lower and lower each day.
With an inconsistency not very uncommon, he resented her silence at
the same time that he knew the expression of her thoughts would enrage
him. He was still sufficiently under the control of her beauty to feel
jealous of her love, which he very well knew was with the man they
both thought dead. That truth had leaked out long ago. He once heard
her teaching her child to pray; and presently lift up her own voice in
a prayer which had no name in it but John’s, whom she cried aloud to,
bidding his spirit take witness of the sufferings which had driven her
into an act that made her hateful to herself. Once, when her gentle
sweetness was stirred into passion by him, she declared that she had
never loved him; that she had married him for her child’s sake; that if
God took her babe from her she would kill herself, for her husband was
in heaven, and his voice spoke in her conscience, eternally reproaching
her for forgetting the vow they had made--_that though death should
sunder them, the survivor would be true to love and memory, and live
alone_.
But his petulance, his churlishness, his occasional brutality, indeed,
was not owing to this. She had merely put his own knowledge of her into
language; and since he had married her, fully persuaded that the gift
of her hand had been dictated by pure necessity only, he could scarcely
find himself alienated by the confession of her motive. Poverty and
drink were the two demons that mastered him. And poverty without drink
would have done the work; for his happened to be one of those boneless
natures which give under a very small weight; one of those weak
characters who, if they find themselves in a gutter, are satisfied to
lie there and roll there, and moisten the mud with which they bedaub
those about them with tears, and make their settlements gross with
oaths, and shrieks, and reproaches.