Simmons's infamous behavior toward his wife is still matter for profound
wonderment among the neighbors. The other women had all along regarded
him as a model husband, and certainly Mrs. Simmons was a most
conscientious wife. She toiled and slaved for that man, as any woman in
the whole street would have maintained, far more than any husband had a
right to expect. And now this was what she got for it. Perhaps he had
suddenly gone mad.
Before she married Simmons, Mrs. Simmons had been the widowed Mrs. Ford.
Ford had got a berth as donkeyman on a tramp steamer, and that steamer
had gone down with all hands off the Cape: a judgment, the widow woman
feared, for long years of contumacy which had culminated in the
wickedness of taking to the sea, and taking to it as a donkeyman--an
immeasurable fall for a capable engine-fitter. Twelve years as Mrs. Ford
had left her still childless, and childless she remained as Mrs.
Simmons.
As for Simmons, he, it was held, was fortunate in that capable wife. He
was a moderately good carpenter and joiner, but no man of the world, and
he wanted one. Nobody could tell what might not have happened to Tommy
Simmons if there had been no Mrs. Simmons to take care of him. He was a
meek and quiet man, with a boyish face and sparse, limp whiskers. He had
no vices (even his pipe departed him after his marriage), and Mrs.
Simmons had engrafted on him divers exotic virtues. He went solemnly to
chapel every Sunday, under a tall hat, and put a penny--one returned to
him for the purpose out of his week's wages--in the plate. Then, Mrs.
Simmons overseeing, he took off his best clothes and brushed them with
solicitude and pains. On Saturday afternoons he cleaned the knives, the
forks, the boots, the kettles, and the windows, patiently and
conscientiously. On Tuesday evenings he took the clothes to the
mangling. And on Saturday nights he attended Mrs. Simmons in her
marketing, to carry the parcels.
Mrs. Simmons's own virtues were native and numerous. She was a wonderful
manager. Every penny of Tommy's thirty-six or thirty-eight shillings a
week was bestowed to the greatest advantage, and Tommy never ventured to
guess how much of it she saved. Her cleanliness in housewifery was
distracting to behold. She met Simmons at the front door whenever he
came home, and then and there he changed his boots for slippers,
balancing himself painfully on alternate feet on the cold flags. This
was because she scrubbed the passage and doorstep turn about with the
wife of the downstairs family, and because the stair-carpet was her own.
She vigilantly supervised her husband all through the process of
"cleaning himself" after work, so as to come between her walls and the
possibility of random splashes; and if, in spite of her diligence, a
spot remained to tell the tale, she was at pains to impress the fact on
Simmons's memory, and to set forth at length all the circumstances of
his ungrateful selfishness. In the beginning she had always escorted him
to the ready-made clothes shop, and had selected and paid for his
clothes: for the reason that men are such perfect fools, and shopkeepers
do as they like with them. But she presently improved on that. She found
a man selling cheap remnants at a street corner, and straightway she
conceived the idea of making Simmons's clothes herself. Decision was one
of her virtues, and a suit of uproarious check tweeds was begun that
afternoon from the pattern furnished by an old one. More: it was
finished by Sunday; when Simmons, overcome by astonishment at the feat,
was indued in it, and pushed off to chapel ere he could recover his
senses. The things were not altogether comfortable, he found: the
trousers clung tight against his shins, but hung loose behind his heels;
and when he sat, it was on a wilderness of hard folds and seams. Also
his waistcoat collar tickled his nape, but his coat collar went
straining across from shoulder to shoulder; while the main garment
bagged generously below his waist. Use made a habit of his discomfort,
but it never reconciled him to the chaff of his shopmates; for as Mrs.
Simmons elaborated successive suits, each one modelled on the last, the
primal accidents of her design developed into principles, and grew even
bolder and more hideously pronounced. It was vain for Simmons to
hint--as hint he did--that he shouldn't like her to overwork herself,
tailoring being bad for the eyes, and there was a new tailor's in the
Mile End Road, very cheap, where.... "Ho yus," she retorted, "you're
very consid'rit I dessay sittin' there actin' a livin' lie before your
own wife Thomas Simmons as though I couldn't see through you like a
book. A lot you care about overworkin' me as long as _your_ turn's
served throwin' away money like dirt in the street on a lot o' swindlin'
tailors an' me workin' an' slavin' 'ere to save a 'apenny an' this is
my return for it any one 'ud think you could pick up money in the
'orseroad an' I b'lieve I'd be thought better of if I laid in bed all
day like some would that I do." So that Thomas Simmons avoided the
subject, nor even murmured when she resolved to cut his hair.
So his placid fortune endured for years. Then there came a golden summer
evening when Mrs. Simmons betook herself with a basket to do some small
shopping, and Simmons was left at home. He washed and put away the
tea-things, and then he fell to meditating on a new pair of trousers,
finished that day and hanging behind the parlor door. There they hung,
in all their decent innocence of shape in the seat, and they were
shorter of leg, longer of waist, and wilder of pattern than he had ever
worn before. And as he looked on them the small devil of Original Sin
awoke and clamored in his breast. He was ashamed of it, of course, for
well he knew the gratitude he owed his wife for those same trousers,
among other blessings. Still, there the small devil was, and the small
devil was fertile in base suggestions, and could not be kept from
hinting at the new crop of workshop gibes that would spring at Tommy's
first public appearance in such things.
"Pitch 'em in the dustbin!" said the small devil at last; "it's all
they're fit for."
Simmons turned away in sheer horror of his wicked self, and for a
moment thought of washing the tea-things over again by way of
discipline. Then he made for the back room, but saw from the landing
that the front door was standing open, probably by the fault of the
child downstairs. Now a front door standing open was a thing that Mrs.
Simmons would _not_ abide: it looked low. So Simmons went down, that she
might not be wroth with him for the thing when she came back; and, as he
shut the door, he looked forth into the street.
A man was loitering on the pavement, and prying curiously about the
door. His face was tanned, his hands were deep in the pockets of his
unbraced blue trousers, and well back on his head he wore the
high-crowned peaked cap topped with a knob of wool, which is affected by
Jack ashore about the docks. He lurched a step nearer to the door, and
"Mrs. Ford ain't in, is she?" he said.