Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (787 page)

“Shortly afterward my husband went out. I got tea ready for him — but he never came back. I got supper ready for him — but he never came back. It was past twelve at night before I saw him again. I was very much startled by the state he came home in. He didn’t speak like himself, or look like himself: he didn’t seem to know me — wandered in his mind, and fell all in a lump like on our bed. I ran out and fetched the doctor to him.

“The doctor pulled him up to the light, and looked at him; smelled his breath, and dropped him down again on the bed; turned about, and stared at me. ‘What’s the matter, Sir?’ I says. ‘Do you mean to tell me you don’t know?’ says the doctor. ‘No, Sir,’ says I. ‘Why what sort of a woman are you,’ says he, ‘not to know a drunken man when you see him!’ With that he went away, and left me standing by the bedside, all in a tremble from head to foot.

“This was how I first found out that I was the wife of a drunken man.”

4.

“I have omitted to say any thing about my husband’s family.

“While we were keeping company together he told me he was an orphan — with an uncle and aunt in Canada, and an only brother settled in Scotland. Before we were married he gave me a letter from this brother. It was to say that he was sorry he was not able to come to England, and be present at my marriage, and to wish me joy and the rest of it. Good Mr. Bapchild (to whom, in my distress, I wrote word privately of what had happened) wrote back in return, telling me to wait a little, and see whether my husband did it again.

“I had not long to wait. He was in liquor again the next day, and the next. Hearing this, Mr. Bapchild instructed me to send him the letter from my husband’s brother. He reminded me of some of the stories about my husband which I had refused to believe in the time before I was married; and he said it might be well to make inquiries.

“The end of the inquiries was this. The brother, at that very time, was placed privately (by his own request) under a doctor’s care to get broken of habits of drinking. The craving for strong liquor (the doctor wrote) was in the family. They would be sober sometimes for months together, drinking nothing stronger than tea. Then the fit would seize them; and they would drink, drink, drink, for days together, like the mad and miserable wretches that they were.

“This was the husband I was married to. And I had offended all my relations, and estranged them from me, for his sake. Here was surely a sad prospect for a woman after only a few months of wedded life!

“In a year’s time the money in the bank was gone; and my husband was out of employment. He always got work — being a first-rate hand when he was sober — and always lost it again when the drinking-fit seized him. I was loth to leave our nice little house, and part with my pretty furniture; and I proposed to him to let me try for employment, by the day, as cook, and so keep things going while he was looking out again for work. He was sober and penitent at the time; and he agreed to what I proposed. And, more than that, he took the Total Abstinence Pledge, and promised to turn over a new leaf. Matters, as I thought, began to look fairly again. We had nobody but our two selves to think of. I had borne no child, and had no prospect of bearing one. Unlike most women, I thought this a mercy instead of a misfortune. In my situation (as I soon grew to know) my becoming a mother would only have proved to be an aggravation of my hard lot.

“The sort of employment I wanted was not to be got in a day. Good Mr. Bapchild gave me a character; and our landlord, a worthy man (belonging, I am sorry to say, to the Popish Church), spoke for me to the steward of a club. Still, it took time to persuade people that I was the thorough good cook I claimed to be. Nigh on a fortnight had passed before I got the chance I had been looking out for. I went home in good spirits (for me) to report what had happened, and found the brokers in the house carrying off the furniture which I had bought with my own money for sale by auction. I asked them how they dared touch it without my leave. They answered, civilly enough I must own, that they were acting under my husband’s orders; and they went on removing it before my own eyes, to the cart outside. I ran up stairs, and found my husband on the landing. He was in liquor again. It is useless to say what passed between us. I shall only mention that this was the first occasion on which he lifted his fist, and struck me.”

5.

“Having a spirit of my own, I was resolved not to endure it. I ran out to the Police Court, hard by.

“My money had not only bought the furniture — it had kept the house going as well; paying the taxes which the Queen and the Parliament asked for among other things. I now went to the magistrate to see what the Queen and the Parliament, in return for the taxes, would do for
me.

“‘Is your furniture settled on yourself?’ he says, when I told him what had happened.

“I didn’t understand what he meant. He turned to some person who was sitting on the bench with him. ‘This is a hard case,’ he says. ‘Poor people in this condition of life don’t even know what a marriage settlement means. And, if they did, how many of them could afford to pay the lawyer’s charges?’ Upon that he turned to me. ‘Yours is a common case,’ he said. ‘In the present state of the law I can do nothing for you.’

“It was impossible to believe that. Common or not, I put my case to him over again.

“‘I have bought the furniture with my own money, Sir,’ I says. ‘It’s mine, honestly come by, with bill and receipt to prove it. They are taking it away from me by force, to sell it against my will. Don’t tell me that’s the law. This is a Christian country. It can’t be.’

“‘My good creature,’ says he, ‘you are a married woman. The law doesn’t allow a married woman to call any thing her own — unless she has previously (with a lawyer’s help) made a bargain to that effect with her husband before marrying him. You have made no bargain. Your husband has a right to sell your furniture if he likes. I am sorry for you; I can’t hinder him.’

“I was obstinate about it. ‘Please to answer me this, Sir,’ I says. ‘I’ve been told by wiser heads than mine that we all pay our taxes to keep the Queen and the Parliament going; and that the Queen and the Parliament make laws to protect us in return. I have paid my taxes. Why, if you please, is there no law to protect me in return?’

“‘I can’t enter into that,’ says he. ‘I must take the law as I find it; and so must you. I see a mark there on the side of your face. Has your husband been beating you? If he has, summon him here I can punish him for
that.
’

“‘How can you punish him, Sir?’ says I.

“‘I can fine him,’ says he. ‘Or I can send him to prison.’

“‘As to the fine,’ says I, ‘he can pay that out of the money he gets by selling my furniture. As to the prison, while he’s in it, what’s to become of me, with my money spent by him, and my possessions gone; and when he’s
out
of it, what’s to become of me again, with a husband whom I have been the means of punishing, and who comes home to his wife knowing it? It’s bad enough as it is, Sir,’ says I. ‘There’s more that’s bruised in me than what shows in my face. I wish you good-morning.’“

6.

“When I got back the furniture was gone, and my husband was gone. There was nobody but the landlord in the empty house. He said all that could be said — kindly enough toward me, so far as I was concerned. When he was gone I locked my trunk, and got away in a cab after dark, and found a lodging to lay my head in. If ever there was a lonely, broken-hearted creature in the world, I was that creature that night.

“There was but one chance of earning my bread — to go to the employment offered me (under a man cook, at a club). And there was but one hope — the hope that I had lost sight of my husband forever.

“I went to my work — and prospered in it — and earned my first quarter’s wages. But it’s not good for a woman to be situated as I was; friendless and alone, with her things that she took a pride in sold away from her, and with nothing to look forward to in her life to come. I was regular in my attendance at chapel; but I think my heart began to get hardened, and my mind to be overcast in secret with its own thoughts about this time. There was a change coming. Two or three days after I had earned the wages just mentioned my husband found me out. The furniture-money was all spent. He made a disturbance at the club, I was only able to quiet him by giving him all the money I could spare from my own necessities. The scandal was brought before the committee. They said, if the circumstance occurred again, they should be obliged to part with me. In a fortnight the circumstance occurred again. It’s useless to dwell on it. They all said they were sorry for me. I lost the place. My husband went back with me to my lodgings. The next morning I caught him taking my purse, with the few shillings I had in it, out of my trunk, which he had broken open. We quarreled. And he struck me again — this time knocking me down.

“I went once more to the police court, and told my story — to another magistrate this time. My only petition was to have my husband kept away from me. ‘I don’t want to be a burden on others’ (I says) ‘I don’t want to do any thing but what’s right. I don’t even complain of having been very cruelly used. All I ask is to be let to earn an honest living. Will the law protect me in the effort to do that?’

“The answer, in substance, was that the law might protect me, provided I had money to spend in asking some higher court to grant me a separation. After allowing my husband to rob me openly of the only property I possessed — namely, my furniture — the law turned round on me when I called upon it in my distress, and held out its hand to be paid. I had just three and sixpence left in the world — and the prospect, if I earned more, of my husband coming (with permission of the law) and taking it away from me. There was only one chance — namely, to get time to turn round in, and to escape him again. I got a month’s freedom from him, by charging him with knocking me down. The magistrate (happening to be young, and new to his business) sent him to prison, instead of fining him. This gave me time to get a character from the club, as well as a special testimonial from good Mr. Bapchild. With the help of these, I obtained a place in a private family — a place in the country, this time.

“I found myself now in a haven of peace. I was among worthy kind-hearted people, who felt for my distresses, and treated me most indulgently. Indeed, through all my troubles, I must say I have found one thing hold good. In my experience, I have observed that people are oftener quick than not to feel a human compassion for others in distress. Also, that they mostly see plain enough what’s hard and cruel and unfair on them in the governing of the country which they help to keep going. But once ask them to get on from sitting down and grumbling about it, to rising up and setting it right, and what do you find them? As helpless as a flock of sheep — that’s what you find them.

“More than six months passed, and I saved a little money again.

“One night, just as we were going to bed, there was a loud ring at the bell. The footman answered the door — and I heard my husband’s voice in the hall. He had traced me, with the help of a man he knew in the police; and he had come to claim his rights. I offered him all the little money I had, to let me be. My good master spoke to him. It was all useless. He was obstinate and savage. If — instead of my running off from him — it had been all the other way and he had run off from me, something might have been done (as I understood) to protect me. But he stuck to his wife. As long as I could make a farthing, he stuck to his wife. Being married to him, I had no right to have left him; I was bound to go with my husband; there was no escape for me. I bade them good-by. And I have never forgotten their kindness to me from that day to this.

“My husband took me back to London.

“As long as the money lasted, the drinking went on. When it was gone, I was beaten again. Where was the remedy? There was no remedy, but to try and escape him once more. Why didn’t I have him locked up? What was the good of having him locked up? In a few weeks he would be out of prison; sober and penitent, and promising amendment — and then when the fit took him, there he would be, the same furious savage that he had been often and often before. My heart got hard under the hopelessness of it; and dark thoughts beset me, mostly at night. About this time I began to say to myself, ‘There’s no deliverance from this, but in death — his death or mine.’

“Once or twice I went down to the bridges after dark and looked over at the river. No. I wasn’t the sort of woman who ends her own wretchedness in that way. Your blood must be in a fever, and your head in a flame — at least I fancy so — you must be hurried into it, like, to go and make away with yourself. My troubles never took that effect on me. I always turned cold under them instead of hot. Bad for me, I dare say; but what you are — you are. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?