Kitabı oku: «The Betrayal of John Fordham», sayfa 6
CHAPTER XIII
If I have dwelt at greater length than I intended upon the incidents which made their fatal mark upon the early months of my married life, it is because I wish Barbara's character to be clearly understood, and because they supply a pregnant index to what followed. The first night I spent in our new home was a prelude to innumerable nights of the same nature. Safe from observation and free to indulge in her besotted habits, with a willing tool at her beck and call in the person of Annette, with a helpless protector chained to her by bonds which he could not break, she found herself absolute mistress of a drunkard's hellish heaven. She reveled in it, and gave her passions free play. Day after day, night after night, I had by my side a creature who had reached the lowest depths of bestial degradation, and whose one aim in life seemed to be to reach a lower still. She was a large-framed woman with a magnificent constitution, or she would soon have succumbed and become a driveling idiot. Throughout all, singular to say, she preserved her cunning, and the expedients by which she hedged herself in and kept her besetting vice from the knowledge of others except myself and Annette, were nothing short of marvelous in their ingenuity. The room she called her prayer room was her sanctuary, and it was there, attended by Annette, that she freely indulged. She acquired, indeed, a reputation for sanctity, and even our servants were deceived by her clever devices. Annette became housekeeper and the nominal mistress of the establishment, and from her they received their orders. They saw their real mistress only when she was sober, and then she spoke kindly and was liberal to them. When she secluded herself they were given to understand that she was ill or at her devotions. She was supposed to suffer from a mysterious disorder, and her driveling screams in the middle of the nights were attributed to pain. I subsequently learned that they were often attributed to my beating her and knocking her about.
I recall the day when she sat at the table with a livid bruise on her cheek, caused by her falling against the sharp corner of a piece of furniture. The parlor-maid assisted Annette to apply hot fomentations to the bruise, and when, later in the day, I noticed the frightened, horrified looks the girl cast at me, I knew that she had been told the lie that I had struck my wife. Against these calumnies I had no defense. In the kitchen I was regarded as a monster of cruelty, and the servants shrank aside as I passed them. Before the domestics Barbara invariably addressed me in frightened, humble tones. She kept her revilings for my private ear, the only witness of the scenes between us being Annette.
The character foisted upon me was not confined to the house. Our servants related shameful stories against me to their friends in the neighborhood, who, in their turn, poured these stories into their mistresses' ears. Wives and mothers looked darkly at me, and those with whom I had become acquainted did not return my bow. I was completely and effectually ostracised. Under these persecutions was it any wonder that I felt myself becoming hardened? My nature was changed. I grew habitually morose and savage, and by my manner defied my traducers. This made matters worse for me, and gave color to the stories of systematic cruelty laid to my charge. After awhile I slept in the spare room alone, and offered up prayers of thankfulness that we had no children. It was indeed a blessing for which I could not be sufficiently grateful.
One evening when we were at dinner, and Barbara was toying with her food and sighing in the presence of the maid who waited at table, I suggested that she should call in a doctor.
"It is not a doctor I require," she said, gazing at me with mournful significance. "Oh, John, if only you – " And then she checked herself, as if she would not say anything to my discredit before the servant.
"Finish the sentence," I said. "If I only what?"
"Do not force me to speak," she cried, in an imploring tone.
Bursting into tears she rose from the table and left the room.
What clearer evidence of my barbarity could be supplied? The maid would have been bereft of sense not to have understood the implication, and there is no doubt that she took the tale down to her fellow servants in the kitchen. Before them, at meals, she never drank, but it was a common practice with her when we and Annette were together at dinner, to help herself to copious draughts of brandy. I no longer remonstrated with her; she would have added to my distress by drinking deeper.
In all these tricks she was assisted by Maxwell and my stepmother. Louis, for the most part, was a passive spectator. Maxwell drank with her and laughed. My stepmother said:
"See what you are driving her to. You are breaking her heart. I always knew what would happen if you married."
"You are saying what is false, because you hate me," I replied.
"I am speaking the truth," she retorted, "and truly I have no cause to love you. It is my opinion you have some wicked scheme in view. But there will be a judgment upon you for all your cleverness. You robbed me; you robbed Louis of his patrimony. What good is the money doing you?"
It is well I had matters apart from my domestic affairs to occupy me, or my mind would have lost its balance entirely. In accordance with the plan Barbara had laid down for me, I took a small set of chambers in one of the streets leading from the Strand to the river – the locality she had herself proposed – consisting of three rooms, a sitting-room, bedroom, and bathroom; and there I pursued my literary labors. The chambers were at the top of the house, and the sitting-room looked out upon the river. How happy could I have been there, had it not been for the living weight which held me down! Gladly every morning did I leave my home, sadly every evening did I return to it.
At first I wrote a few short stories, which I sent to the magazines. They were refused. Every fresh rejection brought disappointment with it, but disheartened me only a short time. When my manuscripts came back to me I read them carefully, found faults in them, re-wrote them, and tried again, with the same result. Thus a year passed, and I had not advanced a step. Two or three times in the course of this year Barbara visited me.
"You are happy here," she said, and I did not gainsay her. "You like it better than your own home."
"It was your own proposition," I replied. "Will nothing satisfy you?"
"It was not my proposition," she said. "You chose this yourself, and you have assignations here with creatures you love better than me. Oh, I know why you spend the day in these rooms. Do you think I am blind to the life you are living."
She carried her venom to the length of tearing up manuscripts upon which I was engaged; I submitted to this awhile, but eventually I protected myself by locking up my papers when I heard her knock at the door. She was furious at my refusal to give her duplicate keys to the chambers.
"A clear proof," she cried.
On one of these occasions I proposed a separation, and offered to settle upon her half the money I possessed, so long as we remained apart.
"Will you give it me in a lump?" she asked.
"No," I answered, "there must be a guarantee that you will not violate the conditions of the deed, which would be drawn up and signed by both of us. You shall have the interest of the money. If I die before you it will all be yours without restriction."
"Thank you, my dear," she said. "I prefer things as they are. You will not get rid of me so easily. You would divorce me if it were in your power. Of course you won't answer that. But you will never get the chance, love. I am acquainted with the grounds upon which a divorce can be obtained. You shall have no reason to say that I am not a true and faithful wife to you."
And, indeed, upon the score of faithfulness – in its legal sense – I entertained no doubts. She had but one love – brandy.
While I was endeavoring to obtain a footing in the literary field by means of short stories, I was preparing a series of articles upon the curse of the land – drink – drawing upon actual facts and real life for my pen and ink pictures. By good fortune I obtained an introduction to the editor of a paper, the columns of which were open to social subjects, and I submitted a few of these articles to him. He approved of them, and suggesting certain alterations, which I agreed to make, consented to use them. His paper was one which did not admit of signed contributions, and had it been otherwise I should not have put my name to them, my domestic troubles on the same theme being a bar to such a course. The editor did not inquire into the source from which I obtained the facts for my descriptions of the effects of the awful vice; he was content with my method of treatment and with my literary style.
"Just one word of advice," he said, "don't shrink from speaking broadly and plainly. It is a burning question, and you can't put it too strongly. I am not so well up in the subject as yourself, but I should say, even if a man drew entirely upon his imagination, he could not paint more striking pictures than reality can supply. The successful artist paints from life and nature."
"What I describe," I replied, "is what I have seen. Nothing more horrible can be met in the Vision of Hell. This city of shame and sin is full of little hells, and if there is any truth in pulpit sermons and religious ministrations, in every little hell souls are daily being damned."
He threw a searching glance upon me. "I like that. Don't forget the metaphor; use it in one of the early articles. Some writers keep their big plums till the last; it is a mistake. Fairy tales can be written on a Swiss mountain or an Italian lake, but to do justice to such a subject as yours you must dig into Babylon's crust; you need the pest-houses of civilization, the hog-like natures of men and women familiar with crime and poverty."
"The evil is not confined to hovels," I remarked, "nor to the criminal classes. Mansions of the well-to-do supply fruitful material."
"Well, do your best," he said. "We shall create a sensation."
We did. My articles were quoted far and near. Writing under a burning sense of wrong I was not sparing of epithet and denunciation. I worked at fever heat, and was often appalled at what I wrote, but it went into print with scarcely the alteration of a word. Had I written under my own name I might have become a celebrity.
In one of my articles I touched upon the marriage tie in relation to the evil. I described a home – a type of many – in which the wife was a confirmed dipsomaniac; another, in which the husband was drunk every day of his life. They were cases which came under my own eye in the localities where I pursued my investigations. From the lips of the sufferers themselves I received the terrible details of the gradual sinking into the slough of despair. Here was the wretched husband, once a bright mechanic earning a fair wage, whose wife's filthy habits had brought ruin upon him – hopeless, irremediable ruin. Vainly had he striven to reform her, vainly had he pointed out to her the sure consequences of her dissipation. Coming home at night from his work he found his rooms in darkness, his hungry children lying almost naked on the bare boards, and his wife drunk in the nearest gin palace. It had become a common occurrence. She pawned the beds, the furniture, the children's clothes and his own, again and yet again, and when he dragged her from the public-house she lay through the night, gibbering at the awful sights her diseased imagination conjured up. He replaced the furniture, he bought new beds and clothing, he gave his children food, and when his wife was able to crawl out again, off she crept to the pawnbroker to repeat her evil work. The children had grown stunted and deformed, their rags hung loosely on their shrunken limbs, like starving dogs they nosed the gutters for offal. "My God, my God!" he cried, the tears streaming down his face. "What shall I do? How shall I save my children? How shall I save myself?" His voice sank to a whisper. "One night I shall kill her, and there will be murder on my soul!"
In the other case it was the husband who drank, who would not work, who starved his wife and children, and beat them till their flesh was covered with livid bruises. It was the wife who told me the story. "If it were not for my children," she moaned, "I would make a hole in the water." It was not my habit to make more than a passing comment upon my descriptions of real and suffering life as it is to be seen to-day in the fester-spots of London. I had wished to do so, but was requested by my editor to put some restriction upon myself in this respect. "Leave that," he said, "to the editorial pen." At the end of the article in which I narrated these two cases, I wrote: "And these poor creatures are, by the Church and the so-called laws of God, chained to a living curse which blights, destroys, and damns the innocent." The words were allowed to stand.
On the following day a powerful leading article was written by the editor, in which a change in the law of divorce was imperatively demanded.
"Confirmed drunkenness," he said, "is a crime against the true laws of God and man; it is far worse than adultery, and more than a sufficient cause for separation. It is not alone that humanity demands it, but could God make Himself heard in this sinful world there would be a Divine mandate to enforce it." Other papers took up the subject. One popular journal (the season being over, and the House not sitting) made it a theme for the usual yearly correspondence, and columns of letters were printed every day – from despairing husbands and wives approving, from the clergy protesting, from politicians shilly-shallying. Meanwhile my articles had come to an end.
There was no change in my home, except for the worse, and I grew to hate it, to hate all who visited it, to hate myself. I had as little authority in it as any chance guest. I breakfasted, dined, and slept there – and, for variation, there were the scenes I had with Barbara. The lies that were circulated as to my brutality towards her bore fruit, and I was shunned by every soul in the neighborhood. Not a person I met there had a smile or a cordial word for me, and not for one sober hour did Barbara relax her cunning. In her mad fits she was visible only to me and Annette; when she went about the house or was seen in the streets her sad, listless ways (she was always sad when sober) were apparent to all, and her conspicuous ill-health was attributed to my conduct. It was the popular belief that I was "killing her by inches." I heard the words uttered by one of our servants to a servant in the adjoining house, and the indignant comment upon them – "Brute!"
Maxwell tried to borrow money from me, but I was sufficiently incensed to refuse him. "Not another shilling while I live," I said, and he replied that I would live to repent it. Scoundrel as he was, he spoke the truth.
The cases of the two poor homes ruined by a drunken husband and a drunken wife, which I have just narrated, drove my thoughts upon my own – and indeed it may have been because of the position in which I stood that I sifted them to the bottom. They had a peculiar fascination for me.
But even if the law of divorce were so altered as to rescue those who are driven to despair, sometimes to crime, by this frightful vice – which I pray may soon be so – a man situated as I was would find no relief in it. The shame would have to be proved, and the web which had been spun around me was of so cunning a nature that proof was impossible in my case. On the contrary, indeed; all the evidence, except my bare statements, would be turned against myself.
As an instance of the base arts employed to still further entangle and incriminate me I recount the following circumstances. Whose devilish ingenuity first conceived the idea I never discovered.
The spare room in which I slept was at the back of the house, and its window faced the window of another house, used also, I believe, as a bedroom. I stood in front of this window, shaving, one morning; the blind was up and the day was bright. While the razor was at my cheek Barbara rushed into the room, crying at the top of her voice:
"John – John – John! For mercy's sake, don't!" And as she spoke she threw herself upon me.
Fearful lest the razor should cut her I threw it away, but not before I had gashed my cheek, causing blood to flow. Then, observing that she was in her nightdress and that the bosom was open, I quickly drew down the blind.
"What is the meaning of this?" I inquired, bitterly. "Do you fear that I intend to kill myself?"
Her only answer was a series of hysterical shrieks which could be heard a long distance off. For a few moments I thought she had gone mad, and I stooped to raise her from the floor, upon which she had fallen.
"For mercy's sake, for mercy's sake!" she screamed, and in the midst of the confusion Annette entered the room and led her mistress away. I followed her into the passage, the blood running down my face, and there upon the stairs were the servants, who had naturally been alarmed by Barbara's screams, and had run up to see what was the matter.
"Go down," said Annette, speaking to them in a tone of command. "Madame is ill – very, very ill. I will attend to her."
I did not see my wife again that day; the door of her room was locked against me. To all my inquiries after her Annette replied:
"She is more composed; she will recover in a few days, perhaps."
"I wish to see her, Annette."
"Madame will not be seen by any one but me. She ordered me to say so to you."
I had, perforce, to give up the attempt.
I thought of the scene during the day; it was of a different nature from those to which I was accustomed, but there was something strange in it which I could not unfathom. Finally I came to the conclusion that Barbara's malady was developing itself in a new direction, and the last thought in my mind was that anything more than generally prejudicial to my character would come of it.
CHAPTER XIV
Towards the end of that week I had invited my friend the editor to take a mid-day chop with me. He had put my name down as a candidate for admission into a literary club which I was anxious to join, and there was a difficulty in regard to my qualification. Had the articles I wrote for his paper been signed with my name, there would have been no question as to my being properly qualified, but they had been published anonymously, and I was personally unknown to the members. My proposer had vouched for me and had passed his word, but it was not deemed sufficient; they wanted proof positive, and this nettled him. Certain members of this committee had spoken to him privately, and had advised him to withdraw his candidate, but he had set his heart upon the matter, and was determined to carry me through. He held an influential position in the club, and it seemed to him that his influence would be weakened if he beat a retreat. And now on this day he came to tell me that the difficulty was at an end.
"Somehow or other," he said, "it has leaked out that you are the writer of those articles, and your election is assured. The committee meet in a fortnight, and the vote will be unanimous."
I was greatly disturbed. It had been my earnest desire to keep my name from being associated with the exposures I had made. Had I been unmarried and free, it would have been my pride that the world should know and give me my meed of praise, but married to Barbara, and with the curse of drink in my own home, I shrank from public gaze. A foreboding of evil stole upon me.
"The fellows are wild to meet you," continued my friend, "and every member of the committee has promised a white ball. This has set my mind at ease about you, for it is a serious matter being pilled in such a club. I know a case or two where a black ball has meant social death. I should have felt it more than you. You see, I am your sponsor. 'What do you say now to my candidate being qualified?' I said to two members who were dead against you on the score of your being a stranger. A man crept in once, and we discovered he was a blackleg. He gave us a chance, and we expelled him. Since then a strict watch has been kept upon candidates. Before it leaked out who you really were, they wanted to know whether you were a gentleman, a man of honor and good character, one it would be agreeable to mix with – what we call a clubbable man. They have no doubts now. You will be cordially welcomed by a band of as good fellows as can be met with in London, and you may look upon yourself as one of the inner circle."
"I am sorry my anonymity as a writer is destroyed," I said, speaking with reserve. "It lessens the value of one's work."
"Oh, I don't know," was his reply. "Up to a certain point it is all very well, but when a man has won his spurs everybody is ready to shake hands with him. What have you to be ashamed of, and why shouldn't you reap your reward? You wrote those things devilishly well; I was amazed at some of your word pictures. You must have had rare opportunities of studying the subject. 'That man is a vivisectionist,' said a very good judge."
It would have been better for me had I made a clean breast of it there and then, had I confided to him the awful sorrow which lay like a poisonous worm in my heart. But I let the opportunity slip.
He remained with me a couple of hours, and urged me to contribute a second series of articles on the same subject.
"You have drawn your illustrations for the first series from the poor," he said; "draw those for your second series from the rich."
"You forget," I rejoined, "that the skeletons of the rich are kept in iron closets with patent locks. The skeletons of the lower classes stand at open doors."
"Invent your instances," he suggested. "With such a rich store of material as you have at command, you can't go wrong. That is an ugly gash you have on your cheek. Cut yourself shaving, I suppose." I nodded. "Ah, I knew a man who was frightened to take a razor in his hand for fear he would cut his throat."
Inwardly resolving not to execute the commission, I promised to consider the matter, and he took his departure. I walked with him to his office, and then mounted an omnibus and rode a few miles, thinking of the disclosure that had been made and dreading to see my name in the papers. But I did not know how to prevent it. We live in an age of personalism, and very little of the private life of public men can be hidden from the Paul Prys of journalism. Almost to a certainty it would come under the notice of Maxwell and my stepmother, who would be ready to weave mischief out of it. Surely no man ever shrank from fame as I did. The prospect chilled me to the heart.
It is anticipating events by a few hours to record that on the following morning I received a letter from the editor informing me that he was over-worked and was going to Germany for a rest. He had designed to go earlier, but while there was a doubt of my election he felt it to be a point of honor not to leave London. He intended now to enjoy his holiday. I gathered from his letter that he would be absent a week.
At five o'clock I returned to my chambers, and my heart sank when I saw a huddled heap of clothes lying in front of my door – a woman in a drunken sleep.
I had no need to stoop to ascertain who it was. By her side was an empty brandy bottle, which she must have purchased on the road; the satchel on the ground was large enough only for the spirit flask I found in it – empty, as a matter of course.
I carried her into my sitting-room; her drunken stupor was of too profound a nature for her to make any resistance. It was as much as I could do to accomplish the task, for Barbara had grown very stout and unwieldy. Her condition was most disgraceful; I had seen nothing more degrading and shameful during my recent investigations. Probably to obtain ease for her feet, which she had complained of lately as being swollen, she had unlaced her boots, her clothes were torn and untidy, her hands ungloved, her hair hung loose about her bloated face, her lips and mouth were unsightly with the stains and dribble of liquor.
It was of the utmost importance that I should get her home without attracting attention to myself. A large latitude is allowed to men who occupy chambers, but in this particular house were old established offices of respectable firms, and there was a special clause in my lease as to doing anything which might cause annoyance to my neighbors.
I rang for the housekeeper, and slipping half-a-sovereign into her hand, begged her to assist me. She did not put any awkward questions to me, but called up her servant. Between them they repaired as far as they were able the disorder in my wife's dress and appearance, and, the offices in the house being closed – it was now past six o'clock – we managed to half carry, half support her to the street door, and into a four-wheel cab. Thus, on this occasion at least, was open exposure averted, but I thought, Where shall I find rest if this fresh form of persecutions be added to the list? And indeed I had an assurance of it in a subsequent scene with Barbara, during which she said, "You are living an infamous life away from your home. I will follow and disgrace you wherever you go."
A still bitterer blow was to fall upon me, a blow which drove me to the brink of despair. At the end of a week, the limit of time fixed by the editor for his holiday, I wrote him, and as no notice was taken of my letter, I concluded that he had not returned from his tour. My intention was to reveal my story, to acquaint him with Barbara's resolve to follow and disgrace me, and to request him to withdraw my name from candidature for his club. In his absence this course could not be taken, and I was compelled to await the course of events.
On the day following that on which the committee meeting was held, I received a letter from my proposer, which overwhelmed me. He informed me that I had been balloted for by the committee, and had been unanimously blackballed. He expressed his approval of this result. "I had the power," he wrote, "to withdraw your name, but having been made acquainted with the infamies you have practised, I considered it due to the committee to disclose the matters to them, expressing at the same time my sincere regret that I should have been so misled as to place your name on the candidates' book. The unanimous blackball was given as a warning to careless members to be exceedingly careful as to the character of the persons they desired to introduce into a club of gentlemen." He then proceeded with a minute narration of the charges brought against me, and I learned the names of my accusers. First, my wife; then her brother Maxwell; then my stepmother and her son Louis; then Annette; then the servants in our house; then an independent witness in the person of a gentleman who, with Maxwell and Louis, had been stationed at the window of the house opposite to that of my bedroom, and had witnessed the scene between Barbara and me when I was shaving. This scene, which had been cunningly prepared for my benefit, was construed into an attack I had made upon my wife with my razor; her agonized shrieks were appeals for mercy; my rapid drawing down of the blind was due to my fear that my barbarous behavior might be witnessed from the opposite house. It was represented that I was a man who habitually concealed his vices beneath a veil of gentle melancholy, as of one who was himself oppressed, and that my systematic cruelty had broken down my wife's health and made her a confirmed invalid.
There was a still more horrible charge. With a morbid craving for notoriety I had plied Barbara with brandy, and had made her an object lesson in the various stages of intoxication, so that my descriptions might be true to nature. She was my model, a living victim whom I was deliberately driving to madness.
It appears that Maxwell having learnt through the public journals that I was the author of the articles on Drink which had attracted general attention, called upon the editor of the paper in which they were published, and brought these accusations against me. At first the editor refused to listen, characterizing the charges as too horrible for belief and as being utterly inconsistent with the opinion he had formed of me. Maxwell, however, persisted, and the editor, impressed by his earnestness, consented to see the witnesses and hear what they had to say. For the last week a private court of inquiry had been made behind my back. The editor was convinced. Shocked at the revelations he advised my wife to apply for redress in the divorce court, but she said she would rather die than bring that shame upon me; she still clung to me, still trusted that obedience and affection would win me to a better comprehension of my duty towards her; and I was warned by my correspondent to consider my position while there was yet time, and not to lightly throw away the treasure of a good woman's love. He required, he concluded, no further contributions from my pen, and wherever his influence could be exerted it would be to prevail upon other editors not to accept my writings. His last words were – "Henceforth we are strangers."
I knew what this letter meant. The fiendish malice of the enemies in my home had brought upon me social and moral death. I wandered forth like Cain, accursed of men, and though, unlike him, there was no guilt upon my soul, the reflection brought me no comfort. My life had come to wreck. A gulf of black despair lay before me.
Men have been driven mad by physical torture, and under the pressure of mental agony some have lost their reason. Upon no other grounds can I account for my conduct after this last crushing blow fell upon me. I offer no excuses. My wife's theory – put forward in palliation of her own misconduct – that man is not responsible for his actions, is entirely opposed to my view. For what I did during that dolorous time I was and am accountable. I sinned, and have been punished; and little did I deserve the heavenly consolation administered to me in the darkest hour of my life.
