HUSBAND AND WIFE.
The rain pattered down, faster and faster, as the night wore on, and
still the two strange companions sat, silent and undisturbed, before
the fire. At intervals sounds of altercation from without were heard,
and occasionally a woman's drunken shriek or a ruffian's muttered
curse was borne upon the angry wind. A step upon the creaking stairs
would cause the girl's face to assume an expression of watchfulness:
for a moment only; the next, she would relapse into dreamy
listlessness. Grif had thrown himself upon the floor at her feet. He
was not asleep, but dozing; for at every movement that Alice made, he
opened his eyes, and watched. The declaration of friendship he had
made to her had something sacramental in it. When he said that he
would be true and faithful to her, he meant it with his whole heart
and soul. The better instincts of the boy had been brought into play
by contact with the pure nature of a good woman. He had never met any
one like Alice. The exquisite tenderness and unselfishness exhibited
by her in every word and in every action, filled him with a kind of
adoration, and he vowed fealty to her with the full strength of his
uncultivated nature. His vow might be depended on. He was rough, and
dirty, and ugly, and a thief; but he was faithful and true. Some
glimpse of a better comprehension appeared to pass into his face as he
lay and watched. And so the hours lagged on until midnight, when a
change took place.
A sudden change--a change that transformed the hitherto quiet house
into a den of riotous vice and drunkenness. It seemed as though the
house had been forced into by a band of ruffianly bacchanals. They
came up the stairs, laughing, and singing, and screaming. A motley
throng--about a dozen in all--but strangely contrasted in appearance.
Men upon whose faces rascality had set its seal; women in whose eyes
there struggled the modesty of youth with the depravity of shame. Most
of the men were middle-aged; the eldest of the women could scarcely
have counted twenty winters from her birth: many of them, even in
their childhood, had seen but little of life's summer. With the men,
moleskin trousers, pea-jackets, billycock hats, and dirty pipes,
predominated. But the women were expensively dressed, as if they
sought to hide their shame by a costly harmony of colours. How strange
are the groupings we see, yet do not marvel at, in the kaleidoscope of
life!
The company were in the adjoining apartment, and, through the chinks
in the wall, Alice could see them flitting about. She had started to
her feet when she heard them enter the house, and her trembling frame
bespoke her agitation. All her heart was in her ears as she listened
for the voice she expected yet dreaded to hear.
"Get up, Grif," she whispered, touching the gently with her foot. On
the instant, he was standing, watchful by her side. "Listen! Can you
hear his voice?"
The boy listened attentively, and shook his head. At this moment, a
ribald jest called forth screams of laughter, and caused Alice to
cover her crimsoned face, and sink tremblingly into her seat. But
after it short struggle with herself, she rose again, and listened
anxiously.
"He must be there," she said, her hand twitching nervously at her
dress. "Oh, what if I should not see him to-night! I should be
powerless to save him. What if they have kept him away from me,
fearing that I should turn him from them! Oh, Grif, Grif, what shall I
do? what shall I do?"
"Hush!" Grif whispered. "You keep quiet. You pretend to be asleep, and
don't let 'em 'ear you. If anybody comes in, you shut your eyes, and
breathe 'ard. I'll go and see if he's there."
And he crept out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. Left
alone, the girl sat down again by the fire, whispering to herself, "I
must save him, I must save him;" as if the words were a charm. "Yes,"
she whispered, "I must save him from this disgrace, and then I will
make one more appeal;" and then she started up again, and listened,
and paced the room in an agony of expectation. Thus she passed the
next half-hour. At the end of that time, Grif came in, almost
noiselessly, and to her questioning look replied,
"He's there, all right."
"What is he doing?"
"He's a settin' in a corner, 'arf asleep, all by 'isself, and he
hasn't sed a word to no one. Where are you goin'?" he inquired
quickly, as Alice walked towards the door.
"I am going in to him."
"What for?" cried Grif hoarsely, gripping her arm. "Ally, are you
mad?"
"I must go and bring him away," she replied, firmly.
"Look here, Ally," said Grif, in a voice of terror; "don't you try it.
Pizey's got the devil in him to-night. I know it by his eye. It's jist
as cool and wicked as anythin'! When he sets his mind upon a thing
he'll do it, or be cut to pieces. If you go in, you can't do nothin',
and somethin' bad 'll 'appen. Pizey 'll think you know what you
oughtn't to know. Don't you go!"
"But I must save him, Grif," she said, in deep distress. "I must save
him, if I die!"
"Yes," Grif said in a thick undertone, and still keeping firm hold of
her arm; "that's right and proper, I dersay. But s'pose you die and
don't save him? They won't do nothin' to-night. You can't do no good
in there, Ally. The Oysterman 'll kill you, or beat you senseless, if
you go; and then what could you do? I've seen him beat a woman before
to-night. They're mad about somethin' or other, the whole lot of 'em.
You'll do him more good by stoppin' away."
"Of what use can my husband be to them, Grif?" she cried, yet
suppressing her voice, so that those in the next room should not hear.
"What plot of their hatching can he serve them in?"
"I don't know," Grif replied; "he can talk and look like a swell, and
that's what none of 'em can do. But you'll soon find out, if you keep
quiet. 'Ark! they're a clearin' out the gals," and as he spoke were
heard female voices and laughter, and the noise of the speakers who
were trooping into the miserable night. "They won't be very long
together. They won't be together at all!" he cried, as the door of the
adjoining apartment opened, and heavy steps went down the stairs.
"But suppose my husband goes with them?" Alice cried, and tried to
reach the door; but Grif restrained her.
"There's Jim Pizey's foot," he said, with a finger at his lips; "jist
as if he was tramplin' some one down with every step. And there's
Black Sam--I could tell him from a mob of people, for he walks as if
he was goin' to tumble down every minute. And there's Ned Rutt--he's
got the largest feet I ever sor. And there's the Tenderhearted
Oysterman, he treads like a cat. I'll be even with him one day for
sayin' he'd kill Rough! And there's--there's no more."
The street door was heavily slammed, and a strange stillness fell upon
the house--a stillness which did not appear to belong to it, and which
struck Alice with a sense of desolation, and made her shiver. A few
moments afterwards Alice's husband entered the apartment. He was a
handsome, indolent-looking man, with a reckless manner which did not
become him. There were traces of dissipation upon his countenance, and
his clothes were a singular mixture of rough coarseness and faded
refinement. He did not notice Grif, who had stepped aside, but, gazing
neither to the right nor to the left, walked to the seat which Alice
had occupied, and sinking into it, plunged his fingers in his hair,
and gazed vacantly at the ashes in the grate. He made no sign of
recognition to Alice, who went up to him, and encircled his neck with
her white arms. As she leant over him, with her face bending to his,
caressingly, it appeared, although he did not repulse her, as if there
were within him some wish to avoid her, and not be conscious of her
presence.
"Richard," she whispered.
But he doggedly turned his head from her.
"Richard," she whispered again, softly and sweetly.
"I hear you," he said, pettishly.
"Do not speak to me harshly to-night, dear," she said; "this day six
months we were married."
He winced as he heard this, as if the remembrance brought with it a
sense of physical pain, and said:--
"It is right that you should reproach me, yet it is bitter enough for
me without that."
"I do not say it to reproach you, dear,--indeed, indeed, I do not!"
"That makes it all the more bitter. This day six months we were
married, you say! Better for you, better for me, that we had never
seen each other."
"Yes," the girl said, sadly; "perhaps it would have been. But there is
no misery to me in the remembrance. I can still bless the day when we
first met. Oh, Richard, do not give me cause to curse it!"
"You have cause enough for that every day, every hour," he replied;
"to curse the day, and to curse me. You had the promise of a happy
future before you saw me, and I have blighted it. What had you done
that I should force this misery upon you? What had you done that I
should bring you into contact with this?" he looked loathingly upon
the bare walls. "And I am even too small-hearted to render you the
only reparation in my power--to die, and loose you from a tie which
has embittered your existence!"
"Hush, Richard!" she said. "Hush! my dear! All may yet be well, if you
have but the courage--"
"But I have not the courage," he interrupted. "I am beaten down,
crushed, nerveless. I was brought up with no teaching that existence
was a thing to struggle for, and I am too old or too idle to learn the
lesson now. What do such men as I in the world? Why, it has been
thrown in my teeth this very night that I haven't even soul enough for
revenge."
"Revenge, Richard!" she cried. "Not upon--"
"No, not that," he said; "nor anything that concerns you or yours. But
it has been thrown in my teeth, nevertheless. And it is true. For I am
a coward and a craven, if there ever lived one. It is you who have
made me feel that I am so; it is you who have shown me to myself in my
true colours, and who have torn from me the mask which I--fool that I
am!--had almost learnt to believe was my real self, and not a sham!
Had you reproached me, had you reviled me, I might have continued to
be deceived. But as it is, I tremble before you; I tremble, when I
look upon your pale face;" and turning to her suddenly, and meeting
the look of patient uncomplaining love in her weary eyes, he cried,
"Oh, Alice! Alice! what misery I have brought upon you!"
"Not more than I can bear, dear love," she said, "if you will be true
to yourself and to me. Have patience--"
"Patience!" he exclaimed. "When I think of the past, I lash myself
into a torment. Will patience feed us? Will it give us a roof
or a bed? Look here!" and he turned out his pockets. "Not a
shilling. Fill my pockets first. Give me the means to fight with my
fellow-cormorants, and I will have patience. Till then, I must fret,
and fret, and drink. Have you any brandy?"
"No," she said, with a bitter sigh.
"Perhaps it is better so," he said, slowly, for his passion had
somewhat exhausted him; "for what I have to say might seem the result
of courage that does not belong to me. I have refrained from drink
to-night that my resolution might not be tampered with."
He paused to recover himself; Alice bending forward, with clasped
hands, waited in anxious expectancy.
"Do you know how I have spent to-night and many previous nights?" he
asked. "In what company, and for what purpose?"
She had been standing during all this time, and her strength was
failing her. She would have fallen, had he not caught her in his arms,
whence she sank upon the ground at his feet, and bowed her head in her
lap.
"I have spent to-night, and many other nights," he continued, "in the
company of men whose touch, not long since, I should have deemed
contamination. I have spent them in the company of villains, who, for
some purpose of their own, are striving to inveigle me in their plots.
But they will fail. Yes, they will fail, if you will give me strength
to keep my resolution. Coward I am, I know, but I am not too great a
coward to say that you and I must part."
"Part!" she echoed, drearily.
"Look around," he said; "this is a nice home I have provided for you;
I have surrounded you with fit associates, have I not? How nobly I
have performed my part of husband! How you should bless my name,
respect, and love me, for the true manliness I have displayed towards
you! But by your patience and your love you have shown me the depth of
my degradation."
"Not degradation, Richard, not degradation for you!"
"Yes, degradation, and for me, in its coarsest aspect. Is not this
degradation?" and he pointed to Grif, who was crouching, observant, in
a corner. "Come here," he said to the lad, who slouched towards him,
reluctantly. "What are you?"
"What am I?" replied Grif, with a puzzled look; "I'm a pore
boy--Grif."
"You're a poor boy--Grif!" the man repeated. "How do you live!"
"By eatin' and drinkin'."
"How do you get your living?"
"I makes it as I can," answered Grif, gloomily.
"And when you can't make it?"
"Why, then I takes it."
"That is, you are a thief?"
"Yes, I s'pose so."
"And a vagabond?"
"Yes, I s'pose so."
"And you have been in prison?"
"Yes, I've been in quod, I have," said Grif, feeling, for the first
time in his life, slightly ashamed of the circumstance.
"And you say," Richard said, bitterly, as the boy slunk back to his
corner, "that this is not degradation!"
She turned her eyes to the ground, but did not reply.
"I was once a good arithmetician," he continued. "Let us see what
figures there are in the sum of our acquaintance, and what they amount
to."
"Of what use is it to recall the past, Richard?"
"It may show us how to act in the future. Besides, I have a strange
feeling on me to-night, having met with an adventure which I will
presently relate. Listen. When I first saw you I was a careless
ne'er-do-well, with no thought of the morrow. You did not know this
then, but you know it now. It is the curse of my life that I was
brought up with expectations. How many possibly useful, if not good,
men have been wrecked on that same rock of expectations! Upon the
strength of 'expectations' I was reared into an idle incapable. And
this I was when you first knew me. I had an income then small, it is
true, but sufficient, or if it was not, I got into debt upon the
strength of my expectations, which were soon to yield to me a life's
resting-place. You know what happened. One day there came a letter,
and I learned that, in a commercial crash at home, my income and my
expectations had gone to limbo. The news did not hurt me much, Alice,
for I had determined on a scheme which, if successful, would give me
wealth and worldly prosperity. It is the truth--shamed as I am to
speak it--that, knowing you to be an only child and an heiress, I
deliberately proposed to myself to win your affections. I said, 'This
girl will be rich, and her money will compensate for what I have lost.
This girl has a wealthy father, not too well educated, not too well
connected, who will be proud when he finds that his daughter has
married a gentleman.' In the execution of my settled purpose, I sought
your society, and strove to make myself attractive to you. But your
pure nature won upon me. The thought that your father was wealthy, and
that you would make a good match for me, was soon lost in the love I
felt for you. For I learned to love you, honestly, devotedly--nay,
keep your place, and do not look at me while I speak, for I am
unworthy of the love I sought and gained. Yet, you may believe me when
I say, that as I learned to know you, all mercenary thoughts died
utterly away. Well, Alice, I won your love, and could not bear to part
from you. I had to do something to live; and so that I might be near
you, I accepted the post of tutor offered me by your father. I
accepted this to be near you--it was happiness enough for the
time, and I thought but little of the future. Happy, then, in the
present, I had no thought of the passing time, until the day arrived
when your father wished to force you into a marriage with a man,
ignorant, brutal mean, and vulgar,--but rich. You came to me in your
distress--Good God!" he exclaimed passionately; "shall I ever forget
the night on which you came to me, and asked for help and for advice?
The broad plains, bathed in silver light, stretched out for miles
before us. The branches of the old gum-trees glistened with white
smiles in the face of the moon--we were encompassed with a peaceful
glory. You stood before me, sad and trembling, and the love that had
brought sunshine to my heart rushed to my lips"--he stopped suddenly,
looked round, and smiled bitterly. Then he continued--"The next day we
fled, and at the first town we reached we were married. Then, and then
only, you learned for the first time, that the man you had married was
a beggar, and was unable to provide for his wife the common comforts
of a home. We appealed to your father--you know how he met our
appeals. The last time I went, at your request, to his house, he set
his dogs upon me--"
"Richard! Richard!" she cried entreatingly. "Do not recall that time.
Be silent for awhile, and calm yourself."
"I will go on to the end. We came to Melbourne. Brought up to no trade
or profession, and naturally idle, I could get nothing to do. Some
would have employed me, but they were afraid. I was not rough
enough--I was too much of a gentleman. They wanted coarser material
than I am composed of, and so, day by day, I have sunk lower and
lower. People begin to look on me with suspicion. I am fit for nothing
in this colony. I was born a gentleman, and I live the life of a dog;
and I have dragged you, who never before knew want, down with me. With
no friends, no influence to back me, we might starve and rot. What
wonder that I took to drink! The disgust with which I used to
contemplate the victims of that vice recoils now upon myself, and I
despise and abhor myself for what I am! By what fatality I brought you
here, I know not. I suppose it was because we were poor, and I could
not afford to buy you better lodging. Now, attend to me--but stay,
that boy is listening."
"He is a friend, Richard," said Alice.
"Yes," said Grif, "I am a friend that's what I am. Never you mind me I
ain't a-goin' to peach. I'd do any thin' to 'elp her, I would--sooner
than 'urt her, I'd be chopped up first. You talk better than the
preacher cove!"
"Very well. Now attend. These men want me to join them in their
devilish plots. I will not do so, if I can help it. But if I stop
here much longer, they will drive me to it. And so I must go away from
you and from them. I will go to the gold diggings, and try my luck
there--"
"Leaving me here?"
"Leaving you here, but not in this house. You have two or three
articles of jewellery left. I will sell them--the watch I gave you
will fetch ten pounds--and you will be able to live in a more
respectable house than this for a few weeks until you hear from me."
"How will you go?"
"I shall walk I cannot afford to ride. But I have not concluded yet. I
have something to tell you, which may alter our plans, so far as you
are concerned. I have a message for you, which I must deliver word for
word."
"A message for me!"
He paced the room for a few moments in silence. Then, standing before
Alice, he looked her in the face, and said:--
"I saw your father this evening."
"In town!" she exclaimed.
"In town. I do not know for what purpose he is here, nor do I care."
"Oh, Richard," cried the girl; "you did not quarrel with him?"
"No; I spoke to him respectfully. I told him you were in Melbourne, in
want. I begged him to assist us. I said that I was willing to do
anything--that I would take any situation, thankfully, in which I
could earn bread for you. He turned away impatiently. I followed him,
and continued to address him humbly, entreatingly. For your sake,
Alice, I did this."
She took his hand and kissed it, and rested her cheek against it.
"Hearken to his reply," he said, disengaging his hand, and standing
apart from her. "This was it. 'You married my daughter for my money.
You are a worthless, idle scoundrel, and I will not help you. If you
so much regret the condition to which you have brought my daughter,
divorce yourself from her.'"
"No, no, Richard!"
"Those were his words. 'Divorce yourself from her, and I will take her
back. When you come to me to consent to this, I will give you money.
Till then, you may starve. I am a hard man, as you know, obstinate and
self-willed; and rather than you should have one shilling of the money
you traded for when you married my daughter, I would fling it all in
the sea. Tell my daughter this. She knows me well enough to be sure I
shall not alter when once I resolve.' Those were his words, word for
word. That was the message he bade me give you. What is your answer?"
"What do you think it is?" she asked, sadly.
"I cannot tell," he said, doggedly, turning his face from her; "I know
what mine would be."
"What would it be?"
"I should say this" (he did not look at her while he spoke)--"You,
Richard Handfield, Scapegrace, Fortune-hunter, Vagabond (any of these
surnames would be sufficiently truthful), came to me, a young simple
girl, and played the lover to me, without the knowledge of my father,
for the sake of my father's money. You knew that I, a young simple
girl, bred upon the plains, and amidst rough men, would be certain to
be well affected towards you--would almost be certain to fall in love
with you, for the false gloss you parade to the world, and for the
refinement of manner which those employed about my father's station
did not possess. You played for my heart, and you won it. But you won
it without the money you thought you would have gained, for you were
disappointed in your calculations. And now that I know you for what
you are, and now that I have been sufficiently punished for my folly,
in the misery you have brought upon me, I shall go back to the home
from which I fled, and endeavour to forget the shame with which you
have surrounded me."
"Do you think that this would be my answer, Richard?"
He had not once looked at her while he spoke, and now as she addressed
him, with an indescribable sadness in her voice, he did not reply. For
full five minutes there was silence in the room. Then the grief which
filled her heart could no longer be suppressed, and short broken gasps
escaped her.
"Richard!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, Alice."
"Have you not more faith in me than this? As I would die to keep you
good, so I should die without your love. What matters poverty? We are
not the only ones in the world whose lot is hard to bear! Be true to
me, Richard, so that I may be true to myself and to you. You do not
believe that this would be my answer!"
There came no word from his lips.
"When I vowed to be faithful to you, Richard, I was but a
girl--indeed, I am no better now, except in experience but I vowed
with my whole heart. I had no knowledge then of life's hard trials,
but since I have learned them, I seem also to have learned what is my
duty, and what was the meaning of the faith I pledged. I never rightly
understood it till now, darling! You do not believe that this would be
my answer!"
Still he did not look at her. Although she waited in an anxious agony
of expectation, he did not speak. The plain words he had chosen in
which to make his confession, had brought to him, for the first time,
a true sense of the unworthy part he had played.
"If in the time that has gone, my dear," she continued, "there is any
circumstance, any remembrance, connected with me, that gives you pain,
forget it for my sake. If you have believed that any thought that, you
have done me wrong exists, or ever existed, in my mind, believe it no
longer. Think of me as I am--see me as I am--your wife, who loves you
now with a more perfect love than when she was a simple girl,
inexperienced in the world's hard ways. Ah! see how I plead to you,
and turn to me, my dear!"
She would have knelt to him, but he turned and clasped her in his
arms, and pressed her pure heart to his. Her fervent love had
triumphed; and as he kissed away her tears, he felt, indeed, that
wifely purity is man's best shield from evil.
"You shall do what you have said, Richard; but not to-morrow. Wait but
one day longer; and if I then say to you--'Go,' you shall go. I have a
reason for this, but I must not tell you what it is. Do you consent?"
"Yes, love."
"Brighter days will dawn upon us. I am happier now than I have been
for a long, long time! And oh, my dear!--bend your head closer,
Richard--there may come a little child to need our care--"
The light had gone out and the room was in darkness. But mean and
disreputable as it was, a good woman's unselfish love sanctified it
and made it holy!