MISS CLARE AMONGST HER FRIENDS.
I must give an instance of the way in which Marion--I am tired of calling
her _Miss Clare_, and about this time I began to drop it--exercised her
influence over her friends. I trust the episode, in a story so fragmentary
as mine, made up of pieces only of a quiet and ordinary life, will not seem
unsuitable. How I wish I could give it you as she told it to me! so graphic
was her narrative, and so true to the forms of speech amongst the London
poor. I must do what I can, well assured it must come far short of the
original representation.
One evening, as she was walking up to her attic, she heard a noise in
one of the rooms, followed by a sound of weeping. It was occupied by a
journeyman house-painter and his wife, who had been married several years,
but whose only child had died about six months before, since which loss
things had not been going on so well between them. Some natures cannot bear
sorrow: it makes them irritable, and, instead of drawing them closer to
their own, tends to isolate them. When she entered, she found the woman
crying, and the man in a lurid sulk.
"What _is_ the matter?" she asked, no doubt in her usual cheerful tone.
"I little thought it would come to this when I married him," sobbed the
woman, while the man remained motionless and speechless on his chair, with
his legs stretched out at full length before him.
"Would you mind telling me about it? There may be some mistake, you know."
"There ain't no mistake in _that_," said the woman, removing the apron she
had been holding to her eyes, and turning a cheek towards Marion, upon
which the marks of an open-handed blow were visible enough. "I didn't marry
him to be knocked about like that."
"She calls that knocking about, do she?" growled the husband. "What did she
go for to throw her cotton gownd in my teeth for, as if it was my blame she
warn't in silks and satins?"
After a good deal of questioning on her part, and confused and
recriminative statement on theirs, Marion made out the following as the
facts of the case:--
For the first time since they were married, the wife had had an invitation
to spend the evening with some female friends. The party had taken place
the night before; and although she had returned in ill-humor, it had not
broken out until just as Marion entered the house. The cause was this:
none of the guests were in a station much superior to her own, yet she
found herself the only one who had not a silk dress: hers was a print, and
shabby. Now, when she was married, she had a silk dress, of which she said
her husband had been proud enough when they were walking together. But when
she saw the last of it, she saw the last of its sort, for never another
had he given her to her back; and she didn't marry him to come down in the
world--that she didn't!
"Of course not," said Marion. "You married him because you loved him, and
thought him the finest fellow you knew."
"And so he was then, grannie. But just look at him now!"
The man moved uneasily, but without bending his outstretched legs. The fact
was, that since the death of the child he had so far taken to drink that
he was not unfrequently the worse for it; which had been a rare occurrence
before.
"It ain't my fault," he said, "when work ain't a-goin,' if I don't dress
her like a duchess. I'm as proud to see my wife rigged out as e'er a man
on 'em; and that _she_ know! and when she cast the contrairy up to me, I'm
blowed if I could keep my hands off on her. She ain't the woman I took her
for, miss. She _'ave_ a temper!"
"I don't doubt it," said Marion. "Temper is a troublesome thing with all of
us, and makes us do things we're sorry for afterwards. _You_'re sorry for
striking her--ain't you, now?"
There was no response. Around the sullen heart silence closed again.
Doubtless he would have given much to obliterate the fact, but he would not
confess that he had been wrong. We are so stupid, that confession seems to
us to fix the wrong upon us, instead of throwing it, as it does, into the
depths of the eternal sea.
"I may have my temper," said the woman, a little mollified at finding, as
she thought, that Miss Clare took her part; "but here am I, slaving from
morning to night to make both ends meet, and goin' out every job I can get
a-washin' or a-charin', and never 'avin' a bit of fun from year's end to
year's end, and him off to his club, as he calls it!--an' it's a club he's
like to blow out my brains with some night, when he comes home in a drunken
fit; for it's worse _and_ worse he'll get, miss, like the rest on 'em, till
no woman could be proud, as once I was, to call him hers. And when I do go
out to tea for once in a way, to be jeered at by them as is no better nor
no worse 'n myself, acause I ain't got a husband as cares enough for me to
dress me decent!--that do stick i' my gizzard. I do dearly love to have
neighbors think my husband care a bit about me, let-a-be 'at he don't, one
hair; and when he send me out like that"--
Here she broke down afresh.
"Why didn't ye stop at home then? I didn't tell ye to go," he said
fiercely, calling her a coarse name.
"Richard," said Marion, "such words are not fit for _me_ to hear, still
less for your own wife."
"Oh! never mind me: I'm used to sich," said the woman spitefully.
"It's a lie," roared the man: "I never named sich a word to ye afore. It do
make me mad to hear ye. I drink the clothes off your back, do I? If I bed
the money, ye might go in velvet and lace for aught I cared!"
"_She_ would care little to go in gold and diamonds, if _you_ didn't care
to see her in them," said Marion.
At this the woman burst into fresh tears, and the man put on a face of
contempt,--the worst sign, Marion said, she had yet seen in him, not
excepting the blow; for to despise is worse than to strike.
I can't help stopping my story here to put in a reflection that forces
itself upon me. Many a man would regard with disgust the idea of striking
his wife, who will yet cherish against her an aversion which is infinitely
worse. The working-man who strikes his wife, but is sorry for it, and tries
to make amends by being more tender after it, a result which many a woman
will consider cheap at the price of a blow endured,--is an immeasurably
superior husband to the gentleman who shows his wife the most absolute
politeness, but uses that very politeness as a breastwork to fortify
himself in his disregard and contempt.
Marion saw that while the tides ran thus high, nothing could be done;
certainly, at least, in the way of argument. Whether the man had been
drinking she could not tell, but suspected that must have a share in the
evil of his mood. She went up to him, laid her hand on his shoulder, and
said,--
"You're out of sorts, Richard. Come and have a cup of tea, and I will sing
to you."
"I don't want no tea."
"You're fond of the piano, though. And you like to hear me sing, don't
you?"
"Well, I do," he muttered, as if the admission were forced from him.
"Come with me, then."
He dragged himself up from his chair, and was about to follow her.
"You ain't going to take him from me, grannie, after he's been and struck
me?" interposed his wife, in a tone half pathetic, half injured.
"Come after us in a few minutes," said Marion, in a low voice, and led the
way from the room.
Quiet as a lamb Richard followed her up stairs. She made him sit in the
easy-chair, and began with a low, plaintive song, which she followed with
other songs and music of a similar character. He neither heard nor saw his
wife enter, and both sat for about twenty minutes without a word spoken.
Then Marion made a pause, and the wife rose and approached her husband. He
was fast asleep.
"Don't wake him," said Marion; "let him have his sleep out. You go down and
get the place tidy, and a nice bit of supper for him--if you can."
"Oh, yes! he brought me home his week's wages this very night."
"The whole?"
"Yes, grannie"
"Then weren't you too hard upon him? Just think: he had been trying to
behave himself, and had got the better of the public-house for once, and
come home fancying you'd be so pleased to see him; and you"--
"He'd been drinking," interrupted Eliza. "Only he said as how it was but a
pot of beer he'd won in a wager from a mate of his."
"Well, if, after that beginning, he yet brought you home his money, he
ought to have had another kind of reception. To think of the wife of a poor
man making such a fuss about a silk dress! Why, Eliza, I never had a silk
dress in my life; and I don't think I ever shall."
"Laws, grannie! who'd ha' thought that now!"
"You see I have other uses for my money than buying things for show."
"That you do, grannie! But you see," she added, somewhat inconsequently,
"we ain't got no child, and Dick he take it ill of me, and don't care to
save his money; so he never takes me out nowheres, and I do be so tired o'
stopping indoors, every day and all day long, that it turns me sour, I do
believe. I didn't use to be cross-grained, miss. But, laws! I feels now as
if I'd let him knock me about ever so, if only he wouldn't say as how it
was nothing to him if I was dressed ever so fine."
"You run and get his supper."
Eliza went; and Marion, sitting down again to her instrument, improvised
for an hour. Next to her New Testament, this was her greatest comfort. She
sung and prayed both in one then, and nobody but God heard any thing but
the piano. Nor did it impede the flow of her best thoughts, that in a chair
beside her slumbered a weary man, the waves of whose evil passions she
had stilled, and the sting of whose disappointments she had soothed, with
the sweet airs and concords of her own spirit. Who could say what tender
influences might not be stealing over him, borne on the fair sounds? for
even the formless and the void was roused into life and joy by the wind
that roamed over the face of its deep. No humanity jarred with hers. In
the presence of the most degraded, she felt God there. A face, even if
besotted, _was_ a face, only in virtue of being in the image of God. That
a man was a man at all, must be because he was God's. And this man was
far indeed from being of the worst. With him beside her, she could pray
with most of the good of having the door of her closet shut, and some of
the good of the gathering together as well. Thus was love, as ever, the
assimilator of the foreign, the harmonizer of the unlike; the builder of
the temple in the desert, and of the chamber in the market-place.
As she sat and discoursed with herself, she perceived that the woman was as
certainly suffering from _ennui_ as any fine lady in Mayfair.
"Have you ever been to the National Gallery, Richard?" she asked, without
turning her head, the moment she heard him move.
"No, grannie," he answered with a yawn. "Don'a' most know what sort of a
place it be now. Waxwork, ain't it?"
"No. It's a great place full of pictures, many of them hundreds of years
old. They're taken care of by the Government, just for people to go and
look at. Wouldn't you like to go and see them some day?"
"Donno as I should much."
"If I were to go with you, now, and explain some of them to you? I want you
to take your wife and me out for a holiday. You can't think, you who go out
to your work every day, how tiresome it is to be in the house from morning
to night, especially at this time of the year, when the sun's shining, and
the very sparrows trying to sing!"
"She may go out when she please, grannie. I ain't no tyrant."
"But she doesn't care to go without you. You wouldn't have her like one of
those slatternly women you see standing at the corners, with their fists in
their sides and their elbows sticking out, ready to talk to anybody that
comes in the way."
"_My_ wife was never none o' sich, grannie. I knows her as well's e'er a
one, though she do 'ave a temper of her own."
At this moment Eliza appeared in the door-way, saying,--
"Will ye come to yer supper, Dick? I ha' got a slice o' ham an' a hot tater
for ye. Come along."
"Well, I don't know as I mind--jest to please _you_, Liza. I believe I ha'
been asleep in grannie's cheer there, her a playin' an' a singin', I make
no doubt, like a werry nightingerl, bless her, an' me a snorin' all to
myself, like a runaway locomotive! Won't _you_ come and have a slice o' the
'am, an' a tater, grannie? The more you ate, the less we'd grudge it."
"I'm sure o' that," chimed in Eliza. "Do now, grannie; please do."
"I will, with pleasure," said Marion; and they went down together.
Eliza had got the table set out nicely, with a foaming jug of porter beside
the ham and potatoes. Before they had finished, Marion had persuaded
Richard to take his wife and her to the National Gallery, the next day but
one, which, fortunately for her purpose, was Whit Monday, a day whereon
Richard, who was from the north always took a holiday.
At the National Gallery, the house-painter, in virtue of his craft, claimed
the exercise of criticism; and his remarks were amusing enough. He had
more than once painted a sign-board for a country inn, which fact formed a
bridge between the covering of square yards with color and the painting of
pictures; and he naturally used the vantage-ground thus gained to enhance
his importance with his wife and Miss Clare. He was rather a clever fellow
too, though as little educated in any other direction than that of his
calling as might well be.
All the woman seemed to care about in the pictures was this or that
something which reminded her, often remotely enough I dare say, of her
former life in the country. Towards the close of their visit, they
approached a picture--one of Hobbima's, I think--which at once riveted her
attention.
"Look, look, Dick!" she cried. "There's just such a cart as my father used
to drive to the town in. Farmer White always sent _him_ when the mistress
wanted any thing and he didn't care to go hisself. And, O Dick! there's the
very moral of the cottage we lived in! Ain't it a love, now?"
"Nice enough," Dick replied. "But it warn't there I seed you, Liza. It
wur at the big house where you was housemaid, you know. That'll be it, I
suppose,--away there like, over the trees."
They turned and looked at each other, and Marion turned away. When she
looked again, they were once more gazing at the picture, but close
together, and hand in hand, like two children.
As they went home in the omnibus, the two averred they had never spent a
happier holiday in their lives; and from that day to this no sign of their
quarrelling has come to Marion's knowledge. They are not only her regular
attendants on Saturday evenings, but on Sunday evenings as well, when she
holds a sort of conversation-sermon with her friends.