A PAGE OF LIFE.
Does love fly out of the window when poverty walks in at the door? No,
no--of course not! Only when love is an imitation love, selfish and
cowardly, as true love can never be. I am sure ours stayed with us
always, no matter how cramped and starved. We never felt a regret for
having married each other, even when the practical consequences were
most unpleasant--never, never, not for a single instant. And yet--and
yet--well, it is all over now. One need not make one's self gratuitously
uncomfortable by reviving memories of hardships long gone by, and never
likely to be repeated.
Another thing. _Is_ it fair that a sea-captain should have such
miserable wage for such magnificent work? He has no play-hours, like
other working men, no nights' rest, no evenings at home, no Saturday
holidays--no Sundays even--and no comfort of his wife and family. He is
exposed to weather that you would not turn a dog into, and to fatigue
only measured by the extent of human endurance; and accepts both without
a thought of protest. He has the most awful responsibilities continually
on his mind, as to which he is more inflexibly conscientious than any
landsman living; and he is broken and ruined if an accident happens that
he is but technically to blame for and did his utmost to prevent. Yet
all he gets in return is a paltry twenty pounds a month! At least, that
is what Tom got--with an English certificate and a record without a
flaw. It is because sailors are not money-grubbers, as landsmen are,
that the money-grubbers take advantage of them.
Tom used to bring his money home and give it all to me, and he almost
apologised for having to ask for a little now and then, to provide
himself with clothes and tobacco. Moreover, he never pried into my
spendings, though anxious that I should be strict and careful, and
pleased to be asked to advise me and to audit my small accounts. In this
he was the most gentlemanly husband I ever heard of. And of course I
strained every nerve to manage for the best, and prove myself worthy of
the confidence reposed in me. But I was not much of a housekeeper in
those days. At home Miss Coleman had attended to everything, even to the
buying of my frocks; for my father had never made me an allowance--which
I do think is so wrong of fathers! If you are not taught the value of
money when you are a girl, how are you to help muddling and blundering
when you are a married woman?--especially if you marry a poor man. I
thought at first that twenty pounds a month was riches. But even at the
first, and though we used enough of Aunt Kate's wedding present to cover
the cost of setting up a house, there seemed nothing left over at the
month's end, try as I would to be economical. When the second draft
came I had doctor's and nurse's fees like lead upon my mind; we did not
invest that hundred at all, and it melted like smoke. And then--before
Harry was fairly out of arms--Phyllis was born, and I was delicate for a
long time; without a second servant my nursery cares would have killed
me. I thought Aunt Kate would have sent me help again, but she did
not--perhaps because I had neglected to write to her, being always so
taken up with household cares. And I got into arrears with the
tradesmen, and into the way of paying them "something on account," as I
could spare the money and not as it was due; and this wrecked the
precise system that Tom had made such a point of, so that I kept things
from him rather than have him worried when he wanted rest. And it was
miserable to be struggling by myself, weighed down with sordid
anxieties, tossing awake at night to think and think what I could do,
never any nearer to a solution of the everlasting difficulty, but rather
further and further off. And I know I was very cross and fretful--how
could I help it?--and that my poor boy must often have found the home
that should have cheered him a depressing place. He seemed not to like
to sleep while I was muddling about, and used to look after the
children, or clean the knives and boots, when he should have been
recruiting in his bed for the next voyage. For I was again obliged to do
as I could with one poor maid-of-all-work, and I am afraid--I really am
a little afraid sometimes--that I have a tendency to be inconsiderate
when I have much to think of.
By the time that Bobby was born--we had then been five years
married--all the romance of youth seemed to have departed from us, dear
as we were to one another. Our talk when we met was of butchers and
bakers, rents and rates, the wants of the house and how they could be
met or otherwise; and we had to shout sometimes to make ourselves heard
above the noise of crying babies and the clack of the sewing-machine. It
was exactly like the everyday, commonplace, perfunctory, prosaic
married life that we saw all around us, and to the level of which we had
thought it impossible that _we_ should ever sink.
Tom says, no. On second thoughts I do too. The everyday marriage was not
dignified with those great moments of welcome and farewell, those tragic
hours of the night when the husband was fighting the wind and sea and
the wife listening to the rattle of the windows with her heart in her
mouth--such as, for the time being, uplifted us above all things tame
and petty. And what parents, jogging along in the groove of easy custom,
can realize the effect of trials such as some of those that our peculiar
circumstances imposed on us, in keeping the wine of life from growing
flat and stale. The same thing happened at Bobby's birth as at Harry's,
Tom was perforce away, and I might have died alone without his knowing
it. Three months later the little one took convulsions and was given up
by the doctor; and the father again was out of reach, and might have
come home to find his baby underground. Never shall I forget those
times of anguish and rapture--and many besides, which proved that
nothing in the world was of any consequence to speak of compared with
our value to one another.
But we forget so soon! And the little things have such power to swamp
the big ones. They are like the dust and sand of the desert, which cover
everything if not continually dredged away. And all those little debts
and privations and schemings and strugglings to make ends meet that
would not meet, were enough to choke one. Especially as Bobby cut his
teeth with more trouble than any baby I ever had, and as I, what with
one thing and another, grew quite disheartened and out of health, so
that I never knew what it was not to feel tired.
The ignoble sorrows of this period--which I hate to think of--seemed to
culminate on the morning of the day that I am going to tell of--at the
end of which they were so joyfully dispelled.
Bobby had cried incessantly through the night, so that I had only slept
in snatches, just enough to make me feel more heavy and yawny than if I
had not slept at all. I dragged myself dispiritedly out of bed, dying
for the cup of tea which did not appear till an hour after its time, and
was then brought to me rank and cold from standing, with no milk in it.
"I forgot to put the can out last night," was Maria's cheerful
explanation, "and I waited in hopes that the milkman would come back,
but he didn't. And, please'm, what shall I do about the children's
breakfast?"
"You mean to say you never left a drop over from yesterday, in case of
accidents?" I demanded, tears rushing into my eyes. "Oh, Ma-_ria!_"
It sounds a poor thing to cry about, but I appeal to mothers to say if I
was a fool. Bobby was a bottle baby, and we had all our milk from one
cow on his account; and he was ill, and the dairy at least a mile away.
Rarely had I trusted Maria to remember to put the can out for the
morning supply, delivered before she was up; I used to hang it on the
nail myself. But last night, having my hands so full, I had contented
myself with telling her twice over not to forget it. With this result!
At any moment the poor child might awake and cry for food, and a
spoonful of stale dregs was all I had for him.
There and then, with clenched teeth and a lump in my throat, and boots
on my feet that had mere rags of soles to them, I set off with the
milk-can to that distant dairy. It was a thick morning, and presently
rained in torrents. When I arrived, drenched to the skin, I was told
that all the milk was with the cart, and I had to wait half an hour
until the proprietress could be persuaded to give me a little. She was
unsympathetic and disobliging--I suppose because I had not paid her
husband for three months. On my return home Bobby, in Maria's arms, was
shrieking himself into another fit of convulsions; and the other
children, catching their deaths of cold in their nightgowns, were
paddling about on flagstones and oilcloth, fighting and squalling, and
trying to light the dining-room fire. They imagined they were helping,
but had spilled coals all over the carpet and used the crumb-brush to
spread the black dust afterwards; and the wonder is that they didn't
burn the house down.
It was not quite just perhaps--poor little things, they _were_ trying
their best--but the first thing I did was to box the ears of both of
them and send them back to bed. I don't think I ever saw them, as
babies, take so small a punishment so greatly to heart. They snuffled
and sulked for hours--wouldn't even show an interest in the apricot jam
and boiled rice that I gave them for their breakfast and imagined would
be a treat to them--and were more vexatious and tiresome than words can
say.
"I wish father was home," Harry kept muttering, in that moody way of
his; it is the thing he always said when he wanted to be particularly
aggravating. "Phyllis, I wish father was here, don't you?"
"Oh," I cried, "you don't wish it more than I do! If father were here,
he'd pretty soon make you behave yourselves. _He_ wouldn't let you drive
your mother distracted when she's already got so much to worry her, with
poor little brother sick and all." Tears were in my eyes, as they must
have seen, but the heartless little brats were not in the least
affected.
And father's absence was an extra anxiety, for he was hours and hours
behind his time. The papers reported fogs along the coast, and I thought
of shipwrecks as the day wore on, and began to feel that it would be
quite consistent with the drift of things if I were to get news
presently that the Bendigo had gone down. I knew how he dreaded fogs,
which made a good navigator as helpless as a bad one, and wondered if it
implied an instinctive presentiment that a fog was to be his ruin! I
remembered his telling me that if ever he was so unfortunate as to lose
his ship, he should cast himself away along with her; and the appalling
idea filled me not with anguish only, but with a sort of indignation
against him.
"And he with a young family depending on him!" I cried in my heart--as
if he had already done it--"and a wife who would die if he went from
her!"
I was in that state of mind and health that when, early in the
afternoon, I heard him come stumbling in, my solicitude for him suddenly
passed, and only the bitter sense of grievance remained. The grocer had
been calling in person, insolent about his account, which indeed had
been growing to awful dimensions; and I was fairly sick of the whole
thing. It was not my poor old fellow's fault, for he gave me his money
as fast as he got it, but somehow I felt as if it was. And when he
dumped down on the sofa beside me to look at Bobby, I began at
once--without even kissing him--to pour out all my woes.
I was reckless with misery and headache, and did not care what I said. I
told him things I had been scrupulously keeping from him for
months--things which I imagined would harrow him frightfully, much to my
sorrow when it would be too late. And he--even _he_--seemed callous! He
mumbled a soothing word or two, and fell silent. I asked him for advice
and sympathy, and he never answered me.
Looking at him, I saw that his eyes were shut, his head dropped, his
great frame reeling as he sat, trying to prop himself with his broad
hands on his broad, outspread knees.
"Tom," I cried in despair, "you're not listening to a word I'm saying!"
He jerked himself up.
"I beg your pardon, Polly. The fact is, I'm dead-beat, my dear. It has
been foggy, you know, and I haven't dared to turn in these two nights."
It seemed as if _everything_ was determined to go wrong. I could see
that his eyelids were swollen and gummy, and that he was half stupefied
with fatigue.
"What a shame it is!" I passionately complained. "What wretches those
owners are--sitting at home in their armchairs, wallowing in luxury,
while they make you slave like this--and give you next to nothing for
it!"
"It's no fault of theirs," said he. "They can't help the weather. And
when I've had a few hours' sleep I shall be as right as ninepence. Then
we'll talk things over, pet, and I'll see what can be done."
I rose, with my sick child in my arms, and he stumbled after me into our
bedroom. For the first time it was not ready for him. I had been so
distracted with my numerous worries that I had forgotten to make the bed
and put away the litter left from all our morning toilets; the place was
a perfect pigsty for him to go into. And he coming so tired from the
sea--looking to his home for what little comfort his hard life afforded
him! When I saw the state of things, I burst into tears. With an
extremely grubby handkerchief he wiped them away, and kissed me and
comforted me.
"What the deuce does it matter?" quoth he. "Why, bless your heart, I
could sleep on the top of a gatepost. Just toss the things on
anyhow--here, don't you bother--I'll do it."
He was contented with anything, but I felt shamed and heart-broken to
have failed him in a matter of this kind--the more so because he _was_
so unselfish and unexacting, so unlike ordinary husbands who think wives
are made for no other purpose than to keep them always comfortable. In
ten minutes he was snoring deeply, and I was trying not to drop tears
into the little stew I was cooking for his tea.
"At least he shall have a nice tea," I determined, "though goodness
knows how I am going to pay for it."
Poor baby was easier, and asleep in his cradle; the two others had gone
to play with a neighbour's children. So the house was at peace for a
time, and that was a relief. It was also an opportunity for
thinking--for all one's cares to obtrude themselves upon the mind--and
the smallest molehills looked mountains under the shadow of my physical
weariness.
Having arranged the tea-table and made up the fire, I sat down for a
moment, with idle hands in my lap; and I was just coming to the sad
conclusion that life wasn't worth living--wicked woman that I was!--when
I heard the evening postman. Expecting nothing, except miserable little
bills with "account rendered" on them, I trailed dejectedly to the
street door. Opening it, a long-leaved book was thrust under my nose,
and I was requested to sign for a registered letter.
"Ah-h-h!" I breathed deeply, while flying for a pen. "It is that
ever-blessed Aunt Kate--I know it is! She seems to divine the exact
moment by instinct."
I scribbled my name, received the letter, saw my father's handwriting,
and turned into the house, much sobered. For father, who was a bad
correspondent--like me--had intimated more than once that he was finding
it as much as he could do to make ends meet, with his rapidly
increasing family.
I sat down by the fire, opened the much-sealed envelope, and looked for
the more or less precious enclosure. I expected a present of five pounds
or so, and I found a draft for a hundred. The colour poured into my
face, strength and vigour into my body, joy and gladness into my soul,
as I held the document to the light and stared at it, to make sure my
eyes had not deceived me. Oh, what a pathetic thing it is that the
goodness of life should so depend upon a little money! Even while I
thought that hundred pounds was all, I was intoxicated with the prospect
before me--bills paid, children able to have change of air, Tom and I
relieved from a thousand heartaches and anxieties which, though they
could not sour him, yet spoiled the comfort of our home because they
sapped my strength and temper.
I ran to wake him and tell him how all was changed in the twinkling of
an eye; but when I saw him so heavily asleep, my duty as a sailor's
wife restrained me. Nothing short of the house burning over his head
would have justified me in disturbing him. I went back to my
rocking-chair to read my father's letter.
Well, here was another shock--two or three shocks, each sharper than the
last. My beloved aunt was dead. She had had an uncertain heart for
several years, and it had failed her suddenly, as is the way of such.
She went to church on a Sunday night, returned in good spirits and
apparently good health, ate a hearty supper, retired to her room as
usual, and was found dead in her bed next morning when her maid took in
her tea. This sad news sufficed me for some minutes. Seen through a
curtain of thick tears, the words ran into each other, and I could not
read further. Dear, dear Aunt Kate! She was an odd, quick-tempered old
lady, cantankerous at times; but how warm-hearted, how just and
generous, how good to me, even when I did not care to please her! When
one is a wife, and especially when one is a mother, all other
relationships lose their binding power; but still I could not help
crying for a little while over the loss of Aunt Kate. And I can honestly
say that I did not think of her money until after I had wiped my eyes
and resumed reading. When I turned over a leaf and saw the word, I
remembered the importance of her will to all her relatives. I said to
myself, "After all, the hundred pounds does come from her. It is her
legacy to me." And I was sordid enough to feel a pang of disappointment
because--being her last bequest--it was so small.
"We buried her yesterday," wrote father, "and the will was read after
the funeral, and has proved a great and painful surprise to us. She has
left the bulk of her money to a man I never even heard of, an engineer
in India. Uncle John says his father was an admirer of hers when she was
a girl, but she never mentioned the name--Keating--to me, and I can't
understand the thing at all. She was always eccentric, and some of us
think we might contest the will with a fair chance of success. However,
my lawyer advises to the contrary, and my wife also; so I, for one,
shall let it go.
"She has not altogether forgotten her own family. There are a number of
small legacies, including £2,000 for myself, which will come in very
usefully just now, though not a tithe of what I expected. I have also
some plate and furniture. You, my dear girl, are the best off of us all.
Besides jewellery and odds and ends, she has left you the interest of
£10,000 (in Government securities) for life, your children after you.
This will give you an income of £300 a year--small, but absolutely
safe--and relieve my mind of many anxieties on your behalf." He went on
to tell me about powers of attorney and other legal matters that I did
not understand and thought unworthy of notice at such a moment. He also
explained that lawyers were a dilatory race, and that he was advancing
£100 to tide me over the interval that must elapse before affairs were
settled.
Again I went into my room and looked at Tom. How _could_ he sleep in a
house so charged with wild excitement! I regret to say it was that, and
not grief, which made my heart throb so that I wonder he did not feel
the bedstead shaking, and the very floor and walls. I ached with
suppressed exclamations; I tingled with an intolerable restlessness, as
if bitten by a thousand fleas. And still he lay like a log, drawing his
breath deeply and slowly, with soft, comfortable grunts; and still, in
an agony of self-control, I refrained from touching him. Baby woke up,
moist and smiling. His tooth was through; he seemed to know that it was
his business to get well at once. It is not only misfortunes that never
come singly; good luck is a thing that seldom rains but it pours. Harry
and Phyllis came home, took their tea peaceably, and went to bed like
lambs. I sent Maria, with half a sovereign, to a savoury cook-shop where
they sold fowls and hams and all sorts of nice things ready for table,
and she brought back a supper fit for a prince.
"It is all right, Maria," I assured her, in my short-breathed, vibrating
voice, seeing her wonder at my extravagance. "I am rich now. I can
afford the captain something better than a twice-cooked stew. Spend it
all, Maria, on the best things you can get. And you shall have your
wages to-morrow, and a present of a new frock."
When all was ready--the glazed chicken, the juicy slices of pink ham,
the wedge of rich Stilton, the bottle of English ale--I returned again
to my unconscious spouse. It was ten o'clock, and he had been sleeping
with all his might for seven hours. Surely that was enough! Especially
as he still had the whole night before him. I stroked his hair--I kissed
his forehead--I kissed his shut eyes. He can resist everything but that;
when I kiss his eyes he is obliged to stir and murmur and want kisses
for his lips. He stirred now, and turned up his dear old face.
"Pol----"
"Yes, darling, it's me. Are you awake?"
He sighed luxuriously.
"Tommy, _are_ you awake?"
"Wha's th' time?"
"It's _awfully_ late. Come, you won't sleep to-night if you don't get up
now."
"Oh, sha'n't I? I could sleep for a week if I had the chance. Ah-hi-ow!"
He yawned like a drowsy lion. "I'd sooner have twenty gales than one
fog, Polly."
"I know you would. But never mind about gales and fogs and trivial
things of that kind. I've something far, far more important to talk to
you about--something that will make your very hair stand on end with
astonishment. Only I want to be quite sure first that you are awake
enough to take it in."
He called his faculties together in a moment as if I had been the
look-out man reporting breakers, and was all alive and alert to deal
summarily with the situation, whatever it might be. And I rushed upon my
story, showed him the letter and the draft, and poured out a jumbled
catalogue of all the things we could now do that wanted doing--beginning
with a leaking kettle and ending with his professional appointment,
which I had decided must be resigned forthwith.
"And we will live together always and always, like other husbands and
wives, only that we shall be a thousand times happier," I concluded, as
I led him in to his supper, hanging on his arm.
"No more fogs and gales, to wear you out and perhaps drown you in the
end, but your bed every night, and your armchair by the fire, your home
and family, and me--_me_----"
"Little woman! But you mustn't forget, pet, that I'm not thirty-eight
till next birthday. A man can't give up work and sink into armchairs at
that age."
"Of course he can't. We can find some nice post ashore. There are plenty
of things, if you look for them."
"Not for sailor men, who know nothing but their trade."
"Oh, heaps--any amount of heaps! And you can take your time, of course.
No need to hurry for a year or two. You want a long holiday. You have
never had one yet. And _I_ want _you_. What's the use of money, if we
can't enjoy it together? We have not had so much as one whole month to
ourselves since we were married."
"Well, a sailor's wife must accept the conditions, you know."
"Yes, when necessary. But it is not necessary now that we are people of
independent means."
"Three hundred a year isn't three thousand. And we've got to educate the
kids, and put by for them."
"No need to put by for them when they are to have my money after I am
dead."
"For myself, then. You wouldn't like to die and leave me to sell matches
in the streets?"
"Oh, Tom, don't talk about dying--now that it's so sweet to be alive!"
"My dear, you began it. I vote we don't talk any more at all, but eat
our supper and go to bed. Here, sit down by me, and let us gorge. I
have had nothing since morning, and this table excites me to frenzy."
We cut off the breast of the chicken for the children and a leg for
Maria, and demolished the rest. We drank the beer between us, out of one
tumbler; we devoured half of a crusty loaf, and cheese sufficient for a
dozen nightmares; and I never felt so well in my life as I did after it.
Tom said the same.
But sleep was far away--even from him. We had to arrange our programme
for the morning--the fetching of Nurse Barber to take care of baby, the
business at the bank, the settlings of pressing accounts, the beginnings
of our innumerable shoppings; and whenever a silence fell that I knew I
should not break, something forced me to turn over in bed with a violent
fling and make loud ejaculations.
"Oh, dear, kind, sweet Aunt Kate! To think that I am so pleased at
having her money that I cannot cry because she is dead! Oh, Tom, Tom! To
think that we never need owe a penny again--never, never, as long as we
live!"
This was merely the effect of shock. We sobered down next day. And it
was wonderful how soon we grew accustomed to having an independent
income, and to feeling that it would not go half as far as it should.
Long and long had we spent the hundred pounds before the first
instalment of the annuity was paid over; we thought it was never coming,
and when it came it melted like snow in sunshine. One has no idea what
it costs to furnish even a small house comfortably until one begins to
do it, and a few doctor's bills play havoc with all one's calculations.
And my husband could not stay at home with me--rather, he would not. I
am sure there were dozens of situations that he might have had for the
asking--a man so universally beloved and respected--but he would not
ask. He was fit for the sea, he said, but would be a useless lubber
ashore--a fish out of water, a stranded hulk, and things of that sort.
The fact was he _preferred_ the sea--in which he differed from most
sailors--and hated streets and clubs and landsmen's pursuits. He said he
should choke if he were shut up in them, and I said, with tears, that he
cared more for the sea than he did for his wife and children. Of course
he declared it was not so, and his feelings were hurt; but he admitted
the strong affection. I was his mate as he described it, his nearest and
dearest--I and the children; but the sea was his comrade, to whom he had
grown accustomed--his foster mother, who had nursed him so long that she
had made him feel like a part of her. A foster mother is not much of a
rival to a wife so loved as I am, but, oh, how jealous of her I was!
However, I don't believe that his affection for the sea had anything to
do with it. I doubt very much whether that affection was as genuine as
it appeared. My conviction is that he was in terror of the possible
indignity of having to live upon my money. Such utter nonsense!--when
wife and husband are absolutely one, as we were.