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Materfamilias
Materfamiliasполная версия

Полная версия

Materfamilias

Язык: Английский
Год издания: 2017
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I was reckless with misery and headache, and did not care what I said. I told him things I had been scrupulously keeping from him for months – things which I imagined would harrow him frightfully, much to my sorrow when it would be too late. And he – even he– seemed callous! He mumbled a soothing word or two, and fell silent. I asked him for advice and sympathy, and he never answered me.

Looking at him, I saw that his eyes were shut, his head dropped, his great frame reeling as he sat, trying to prop himself with his broad hands on his broad, outspread knees.

"Tom," I cried in despair, "you're not listening to a word I'm saying!"

He jerked himself up.

"I beg your pardon, Polly. The fact is, I'm dead-beat, my dear. It has been foggy, you know, and I haven't dared to turn in these two nights."

It seemed as if everything was determined to go wrong. I could see that his eyelids were swollen and gummy, and that he was half stupefied with fatigue.

"What a shame it is!" I passionately complained. "What wretches those owners are – sitting at home in their armchairs, wallowing in luxury, while they make you slave like this – and give you next to nothing for it!"

"It's no fault of theirs," said he. "They can't help the weather. And when I've had a few hours' sleep I shall be as right as ninepence. Then we'll talk things over, pet, and I'll see what can be done."

I rose, with my sick child in my arms, and he stumbled after me into our bedroom. For the first time it was not ready for him. I had been so distracted with my numerous worries that I had forgotten to make the bed and put away the litter left from all our morning toilets; the place was a perfect pigsty for him to go into. And he coming so tired from the sea – looking to his home for what little comfort his hard life afforded him! When I saw the state of things, I burst into tears. With an extremely grubby handkerchief he wiped them away, and kissed me and comforted me.

"What the deuce does it matter?" quoth he. "Why, bless your heart, I could sleep on the top of a gatepost. Just toss the things on anyhow – here, don't you bother – I'll do it."

He was contented with anything, but I felt shamed and heart-broken to have failed him in a matter of this kind – the more so because he was so unselfish and unexacting, so unlike ordinary husbands who think wives are made for no other purpose than to keep them always comfortable. In ten minutes he was snoring deeply, and I was trying not to drop tears into the little stew I was cooking for his tea.

"At least he shall have a nice tea," I determined, "though goodness knows how I am going to pay for it."

Poor baby was easier, and asleep in his cradle; the two others had gone to play with a neighbour's children. So the house was at peace for a time, and that was a relief. It was also an opportunity for thinking – for all one's cares to obtrude themselves upon the mind – and the smallest molehills looked mountains under the shadow of my physical weariness.

Having arranged the tea-table and made up the fire, I sat down for a moment, with idle hands in my lap; and I was just coming to the sad conclusion that life wasn't worth living – wicked woman that I was! – when I heard the evening postman. Expecting nothing, except miserable little bills with "account rendered" on them, I trailed dejectedly to the street door. Opening it, a long-leaved book was thrust under my nose, and I was requested to sign for a registered letter.

"Ah-h-h!" I breathed deeply, while flying for a pen. "It is that ever-blessed Aunt Kate – I know it is! She seems to divine the exact moment by instinct."

I scribbled my name, received the letter, saw my father's handwriting, and turned into the house, much sobered. For father, who was a bad correspondent – like me – had intimated more than once that he was finding it as much as he could do to make ends meet, with his rapidly increasing family.

I sat down by the fire, opened the much-sealed envelope, and looked for the more or less precious enclosure. I expected a present of five pounds or so, and I found a draft for a hundred. The colour poured into my face, strength and vigour into my body, joy and gladness into my soul, as I held the document to the light and stared at it, to make sure my eyes had not deceived me. Oh, what a pathetic thing it is that the goodness of life should so depend upon a little money! Even while I thought that hundred pounds was all, I was intoxicated with the prospect before me – bills paid, children able to have change of air, Tom and I relieved from a thousand heartaches and anxieties which, though they could not sour him, yet spoiled the comfort of our home because they sapped my strength and temper.

I ran to wake him and tell him how all was changed in the twinkling of an eye; but when I saw him so heavily asleep, my duty as a sailor's wife restrained me. Nothing short of the house burning over his head would have justified me in disturbing him. I went back to my rocking-chair to read my father's letter.

Well, here was another shock – two or three shocks, each sharper than the last. My beloved aunt was dead. She had had an uncertain heart for several years, and it had failed her suddenly, as is the way of such. She went to church on a Sunday night, returned in good spirits and apparently good health, ate a hearty supper, retired to her room as usual, and was found dead in her bed next morning when her maid took in her tea. This sad news sufficed me for some minutes. Seen through a curtain of thick tears, the words ran into each other, and I could not read further. Dear, dear Aunt Kate! She was an odd, quick-tempered old lady, cantankerous at times; but how warm-hearted, how just and generous, how good to me, even when I did not care to please her! When one is a wife, and especially when one is a mother, all other relationships lose their binding power; but still I could not help crying for a little while over the loss of Aunt Kate. And I can honestly say that I did not think of her money until after I had wiped my eyes and resumed reading. When I turned over a leaf and saw the word, I remembered the importance of her will to all her relatives. I said to myself, "After all, the hundred pounds does come from her. It is her legacy to me." And I was sordid enough to feel a pang of disappointment because – being her last bequest – it was so small.

"We buried her yesterday," wrote father, "and the will was read after the funeral, and has proved a great and painful surprise to us. She has left the bulk of her money to a man I never even heard of, an engineer in India. Uncle John says his father was an admirer of hers when she was a girl, but she never mentioned the name – Keating – to me, and I can't understand the thing at all. She was always eccentric, and some of us think we might contest the will with a fair chance of success. However, my lawyer advises to the contrary, and my wife also; so I, for one, shall let it go.

"She has not altogether forgotten her own family. There are a number of small legacies, including £2,000 for myself, which will come in very usefully just now, though not a tithe of what I expected. I have also some plate and furniture. You, my dear girl, are the best off of us all. Besides jewellery and odds and ends, she has left you the interest of £10,000 (in Government securities) for life, your children after you. This will give you an income of £300 a year – small, but absolutely safe – and relieve my mind of many anxieties on your behalf." He went on to tell me about powers of attorney and other legal matters that I did not understand and thought unworthy of notice at such a moment. He also explained that lawyers were a dilatory race, and that he was advancing £100 to tide me over the interval that must elapse before affairs were settled.

Again I went into my room and looked at Tom. How could he sleep in a house so charged with wild excitement! I regret to say it was that, and not grief, which made my heart throb so that I wonder he did not feel the bedstead shaking, and the very floor and walls. I ached with suppressed exclamations; I tingled with an intolerable restlessness, as if bitten by a thousand fleas. And still he lay like a log, drawing his breath deeply and slowly, with soft, comfortable grunts; and still, in an agony of self-control, I refrained from touching him. Baby woke up, moist and smiling. His tooth was through; he seemed to know that it was his business to get well at once. It is not only misfortunes that never come singly; good luck is a thing that seldom rains but it pours. Harry and Phyllis came home, took their tea peaceably, and went to bed like lambs. I sent Maria, with half a sovereign, to a savoury cook-shop where they sold fowls and hams and all sorts of nice things ready for table, and she brought back a supper fit for a prince.

"It is all right, Maria," I assured her, in my short-breathed, vibrating voice, seeing her wonder at my extravagance. "I am rich now. I can afford the captain something better than a twice-cooked stew. Spend it all, Maria, on the best things you can get. And you shall have your wages to-morrow, and a present of a new frock."

When all was ready – the glazed chicken, the juicy slices of pink ham, the wedge of rich Stilton, the bottle of English ale – I returned again to my unconscious spouse. It was ten o'clock, and he had been sleeping with all his might for seven hours. Surely that was enough! Especially as he still had the whole night before him. I stroked his hair – I kissed his forehead – I kissed his shut eyes. He can resist everything but that; when I kiss his eyes he is obliged to stir and murmur and want kisses for his lips. He stirred now, and turned up his dear old face.

"Pol – "

"Yes, darling, it's me. Are you awake?"

He sighed luxuriously.

"Tommy, are you awake?"

"Wha's th' time?"

"It's awfully late. Come, you won't sleep to-night if you don't get up now."

"Oh, sha'n't I? I could sleep for a week if I had the chance. Ah-hi-ow!" He yawned like a drowsy lion. "I'd sooner have twenty gales than one fog, Polly."

"I know you would. But never mind about gales and fogs and trivial things of that kind. I've something far, far more important to talk to you about – something that will make your very hair stand on end with astonishment. Only I want to be quite sure first that you are awake enough to take it in."

He called his faculties together in a moment as if I had been the look-out man reporting breakers, and was all alive and alert to deal summarily with the situation, whatever it might be. And I rushed upon my story, showed him the letter and the draft, and poured out a jumbled catalogue of all the things we could now do that wanted doing – beginning with a leaking kettle and ending with his professional appointment, which I had decided must be resigned forthwith.

"And we will live together always and always, like other husbands and wives, only that we shall be a thousand times happier," I concluded, as I led him in to his supper, hanging on his arm.

"No more fogs and gales, to wear you out and perhaps drown you in the end, but your bed every night, and your armchair by the fire, your home and family, and me —me– "

"Little woman! But you mustn't forget, pet, that I'm not thirty-eight till next birthday. A man can't give up work and sink into armchairs at that age."

"Of course he can't. We can find some nice post ashore. There are plenty of things, if you look for them."

"Not for sailor men, who know nothing but their trade."

"Oh, heaps – any amount of heaps! And you can take your time, of course. No need to hurry for a year or two. You want a long holiday. You have never had one yet. And I want you. What's the use of money, if we can't enjoy it together? We have not had so much as one whole month to ourselves since we were married."

"Well, a sailor's wife must accept the conditions, you know."

"Yes, when necessary. But it is not necessary now that we are people of independent means."

"Three hundred a year isn't three thousand. And we've got to educate the kids, and put by for them."

"No need to put by for them when they are to have my money after I am dead."

"For myself, then. You wouldn't like to die and leave me to sell matches in the streets?"

"Oh, Tom, don't talk about dying – now that it's so sweet to be alive!"

"My dear, you began it. I vote we don't talk any more at all, but eat our supper and go to bed. Here, sit down by me, and let us gorge. I have had nothing since morning, and this table excites me to frenzy."

We cut off the breast of the chicken for the children and a leg for Maria, and demolished the rest. We drank the beer between us, out of one tumbler; we devoured half of a crusty loaf, and cheese sufficient for a dozen nightmares; and I never felt so well in my life as I did after it. Tom said the same.

But sleep was far away – even from him. We had to arrange our programme for the morning – the fetching of Nurse Barber to take care of baby, the business at the bank, the settlings of pressing accounts, the beginnings of our innumerable shoppings; and whenever a silence fell that I knew I should not break, something forced me to turn over in bed with a violent fling and make loud ejaculations.

"Oh, dear, kind, sweet Aunt Kate! To think that I am so pleased at having her money that I cannot cry because she is dead! Oh, Tom, Tom! To think that we never need owe a penny again – never, never, as long as we live!"

This was merely the effect of shock. We sobered down next day. And it was wonderful how soon we grew accustomed to having an independent income, and to feeling that it would not go half as far as it should. Long and long had we spent the hundred pounds before the first instalment of the annuity was paid over; we thought it was never coming, and when it came it melted like snow in sunshine. One has no idea what it costs to furnish even a small house comfortably until one begins to do it, and a few doctor's bills play havoc with all one's calculations. And my husband could not stay at home with me – rather, he would not. I am sure there were dozens of situations that he might have had for the asking – a man so universally beloved and respected – but he would not ask. He was fit for the sea, he said, but would be a useless lubber ashore – a fish out of water, a stranded hulk, and things of that sort. The fact was he preferred the sea – in which he differed from most sailors – and hated streets and clubs and landsmen's pursuits. He said he should choke if he were shut up in them, and I said, with tears, that he cared more for the sea than he did for his wife and children. Of course he declared it was not so, and his feelings were hurt; but he admitted the strong affection. I was his mate as he described it, his nearest and dearest – I and the children; but the sea was his comrade, to whom he had grown accustomed – his foster mother, who had nursed him so long that she had made him feel like a part of her. A foster mother is not much of a rival to a wife so loved as I am, but, oh, how jealous of her I was!

However, I don't believe that his affection for the sea had anything to do with it. I doubt very much whether that affection was as genuine as it appeared. My conviction is that he was in terror of the possible indignity of having to live upon my money. Such utter nonsense! – when wife and husband are absolutely one, as we were.

CHAPTER IV

THE BROKEN CIRCLE

I had my heart's desire at last – with the usual calamitous result. Of course it came when I least expected it, and in the paltriest kind of way – merely because a workman, whom I had engaged to put a new stove into the children's play-room, chose to leave his job unfinished until over Sunday, instead of clearing it off on Saturday morning, as he easily might have done. There was no school on Saturday, and it was a wet, cold day, when even the boys had to be kept indoors; so there was nothing for it but to turn them and Phyllis into the dining-room – my nice dining-room, which had lately had a new carpet – while I took the drawing-room for myself and Lily, to keep her out of harm's way. She was not very well – nor was I; and I confess that I was in a cross mood. I had all my four children with me then, safe under my wing, and did not know how well off I was!

During the morning they were fairly good, preparing their lessons most of the time; but after dinner they were at a loss for amusement, tired of the house, restless and mischievous – very wearing to a mother whose nerves were out of tune. Even Lily became fractious. I gave her a doll and some picture-books and my work-basket to play with, but she fiddled with them, and fidgeted, and would not settle to anything. She kept listening to the noises from the dining-room – the boys paid no heed to my repeated calls to them to be quiet – and uttering monotonous whinings to be allowed to go there.

"Mother, do let me go and play with the others."

"No, Lily; little girls must not romp about with rough boys."

"Phyllis is a little girl, and she's romping with them."

"Phyllis hasn't a bad cold, as you have."

"My cold is quite better now, mother."

"No, it isn't. It is only a little better. And we mustn't let it get worse again by running into draughts."

"There are no draughts in the dining-room, mother. It's all shut up. I can put the flannel round my neck, mother."

Oh, I could have smacked her! But of course I didn't, poor little ailing mite – barely three years old; besides, my attention was constantly distracted by the boys, who, when not rushing into and out of the hall, yelling and slamming doors as if they wanted to bring the house down, were scuffling and thumping within the dining-room in a way to make me tremble for my good furniture. I went to them once or twice to read the riot act, and each time they left off what they were doing the moment they heard me, sat mumchance while I scolded them, almost laughing in my face, and went on worse than ever directly my back was turned. Boys will be boys, Tom used to tell me, in his easy-going way, but I don't believe in letting boys defy their mother with impunity. And when presently I heard the yapping of a dog in addition to their own shouts and cries, I was at the end of my patience with them, determined to assert myself effectually once for all.

Rushing into the dining-room, before they had time to hear me coming, this is what I saw. The window open – cakes of mud all over the new carpet – Bobby's dog, streaming with rain, on the nice tablecloth, barking at Phyllis's cat planted on a silk sofa cushion, which she was tearing and ravelling in her frantic claws – the children standing round, Phyllis holding her cat, Bobby his dog, and Harry inciting the impotent animals to fly at one another, all three consumed with laughter, as if it were the greatest fun in the world.

The first thing I did was to dash at Waif, knocking him out of Bobby's hands and off the table – and I shall never forgive myself for that as long as I live. It was a shabby mongrel terrier which Bobby had picked up in the street one day on his way from school, and been allowed to cure of starvation and a lame leg and keep for his own particular pet; and the mutual devotion of the pair was a joke of the family. Waif was now fat and strong, though as ugly as before, but when he scrambled up from the fall I had given him he limped a little on the leg that had been broken; and Bobby snatched him into his arms again, and turned upon me with blazing eyes – Bobby, who had never given me impudence in the whole course of his life.

"Hit me, mother," said he, "if you like, but don't hit him – for nothing at all."

"You call that nothing?" I cried, and pointed to the pretty terra-cotta cloth – one mass of smears and muddy footmarks. Ah, my precious boy! What would a thousand terra-cotta tablecloths matter now?

He seemed quite surprised to discover that a dog brought in from the rain and a garden that was a perfect swamp could be wet and dirty, and stared open-mouthed at the damage done. I marched him to the window and made him drop Waif out, tossed the scratching kitten after him, shut down the sash and locked it, and then turned to Harry. For Harry was the eldest, the ringleader, the one who ought to have known better and who set the example for the rest.

"You do this on purpose to vex me," I cried vehemently, "and because you know I am ill to-day, and that father is away!" I did not quite mean that, but one cannot help saying rather more than one means in such moments of acute exasperation.

"Do what?" returned Harry, looking as surprised as Bobby had done. "I'm not doing anything. And you never told us you were ill."

"I have a raging headache," I said – and so I had as the result of the long day's worry. "And I have been telling you the whole afternoon to be quiet, and the more I tell you, the more you disobey me. Look at that beautiful new carpet – ruined for ever! Look at that lovely cushion – simply scratched to pieces! And a great, big boy like you, who ought to be a comfort to his mother – "

But there is no need to repeat all I said to him; indeed, I cannot remember it; but my blood was up, and I know I scolded him severely. And he answered me back, as he alone of all the children dared to do, which of course made things worse; for if there is one thing I cannot stand it is impertinence. He was just telling me that, if I chose to regard him as a ruffian and a cad, he could not help it, when we heard a distant door open – the way a door opens to the hand of the master of the house.

"There!" I exclaimed passionately. "There's your father! We'll see what he says to the way you treat me when his back is turned."

Tom came in, with that bright look he always wears when he sees us after an absence. How could I have had the heart to extinguish it, and to make his children quake at sight of his dear face, instead of flying to welcome him, as was the rule on his return! But a mother's authority must be upheld. I said so to Tom, and he said I was perfectly right, and that it was his business to see it done. He bade me explain what was the matter, and I did so, softening things a little – more and more as I went on – since, after all, it was nothing so very dreadful. Perhaps I had been a little hasty and hard; I thought so when I saw how Tom was taking it. He had that inexorable look of the commander confronted with mutiny – as if really I were accusing the poor boys of murder at the least. And when I saw how they stood before him – Bob downcast and tearful, and Harry with his head up, teeth and hands clenched, too proud to quail – oh, I would have given anything to save them! But it was too late.

"I am sure they didn't mean it," I protested, laying my hand on Harry's shoulder, which felt as rigid as iron under it. "We can overlook it this time, father, dear."

"The one thing I will never overlook," he replied, "is misconduct towards you when I leave you unprotected. If they don't know the first rudiments of manliness – at their age – I must try to teach them."

"But that is not the way to teach them!" I cried – almost shrieked – as he signed to them to pass out of the room before him. "Oh, Tom, don't! don't! It is all my fault!"

Harry turned and looked at me with an ice-cold smile, as if his face were galvanised, and said calmly, "It is all right, mother. It is quite right." And then the three of them left me, Tom himself sternly keeping me back when I tried to follow; and presently, with my head buried in the torn pillow and my hands over my ears, I heard an agonised wail from poor little Bob. Not from Harry, of course; he would be cut to pieces before he would deign to cry out. Oh, what brutes men are! I hated Tom – though he was Tom – with a hatred that was perfectly murderous while it lasted.

We had our tea together alone – a thing that had never happened before, on his first evening, since we had had a child old enough to sit up at table. I had sent the little girls to bed – Phyllis for punishment, Lily for her throat, and because I felt I could not stand her chatter – and he had sent the boys. There were the usual first-night delicacies – sweetbreads, wild ducks, honey in the combs – and for once they were uneaten and unnoticed. All my preparations for his home-coming were thrown away. He was glum and silent, evidently as upset as I was, with no appetite for anything. As for me, I felt as if a crumb of bread would choke me. And I would not speak to him – I could not – with that shriek of Bobby's in my ears.

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