Materfamilias Part 4

Does love fly out of the window when poverty walks in at the door? No, no--of course not! Only when love is an imitation love, selfish and cowardly, as true love can never be. I am sure ours stayed with us always, no matter how cramped and starved. We never felt a regret for having married each other, even when the practical consequences were most unpleasant--never, never, not for a single instant. And yet--and yet--well, it is all over now. One need not make one's self gratuitously uncomfortable by reviving memories of hardships long gone by, and never likely to be repeated.

Another thing. _Is_ it fair that a sea-captain should have such miserable wage for such magnificent work? He has no play-hours, like other working men, no nights' rest, no evenings at home, no Sat.u.r.day holidays--no Sundays even--and no comfort of his wife and family. He is exposed to weather that you would not turn a dog into, and to fatigue only measured by the extent of human endurance; and accepts both without a thought of protest. He has the most awful responsibilities continually on his mind, as to which he is more inflexibly conscientious than any landsman living; and he is broken and ruined if an accident happens that he is but technically to blame for and did his utmost to prevent. Yet all he gets in return is a paltry twenty pounds a month! At least, that is what Tom got--with an English certificate and a record without a flaw. It is because sailors are not money-grubbers, as landsmen are, that the money-grubbers take advantage of them.

Tom used to bring his money home and give it all to me, and he almost apologised for having to ask for a little now and then, to provide himself with clothes and tobacco. Moreover, he never pried into my spendings, though anxious that I should be strict and careful, and pleased to be asked to advise me and to audit my small accounts. In this he was the most gentlemanly husband I ever heard of. And of course I strained every nerve to manage for the best, and prove myself worthy of the confidence reposed in me. But I was not much of a housekeeper in those days. At home Miss Coleman had attended to everything, even to the buying of my frocks; for my father had never made me an allowance--which I do think is so wrong of fathers! If you are not taught the value of money when you are a girl, how are you to help muddling and blundering when you are a married woman?--especially if you marry a poor man. I thought at first that twenty pounds a month was riches. But even at the first, and though we used enough of Aunt Kate's wedding present to cover the cost of setting up a house, there seemed nothing left over at the month's end, try as I would to be economical. When the second draft came I had doctor's and nurse's fees like lead upon my mind; we did not invest that hundred at all, and it melted like smoke. And then--before Harry was fairly out of arms--Phyllis was born, and I was delicate for a long time; without a second servant my nursery cares would have killed me. I thought Aunt Kate would have sent me help again, but she did not--perhaps because I had neglected to write to her, being always so taken up with household cares. And I got into arrears with the tradesmen, and into the way of paying them "something on account," as I could spare the money and not as it was due; and this wrecked the precise system that Tom had made such a point of, so that I kept things from him rather than have him worried when he wanted rest. And it was miserable to be struggling by myself, weighed down with sordid anxieties, tossing awake at night to think and think what I could do, never any nearer to a solution of the everlasting difficulty, but rather further and further off. And I know I was very cross and fretful--how could I help it?--and that my poor boy must often have found the home that should have cheered him a depressing place. He seemed not to like to sleep while I was muddling about, and used to look after the children, or clean the knives and boots, when he should have been recruiting in his bed for the next voyage. For I was again obliged to do as I could with one poor maid-of-all-work, and I am afraid--I really am a little afraid sometimes--that I have a tendency to be inconsiderate when I have much to think of.

By the time that Bobby was born--we had then been five years married--all the romance of youth seemed to have departed from us, dear as we were to one another. Our talk when we met was of butchers and bakers, rents and rates, the wants of the house and how they could be met or otherwise; and we had to shout sometimes to make ourselves heard above the noise of crying babies and the clack of the sewing-machine. It was exactly like the everyday, commonplace, perfunctory, prosaic married life that we saw all around us, and to the level of which we had thought it impossible that _we_ should ever sink.

Tom says, no. On second thoughts I do too. The everyday marriage was not dignified with those great moments of welcome and farewell, those tragic hours of the night when the husband was fighting the wind and sea and the wife listening to the rattle of the windows with her heart in her mouth--such as, for the time being, uplifted us above all things tame and petty. And what parents, jogging along in the groove of easy custom, can realize the effect of trials such as some of those that our peculiar circ.u.mstances imposed on us, in keeping the wine of life from growing flat and stale. The same thing happened at Bobby's birth as at Harry's, Tom was perforce away, and I might have died alone without his knowing it. Three months later the little one took convulsions and was given up by the doctor; and the father again was out of reach, and might have come home to find his baby underground. Never shall I forget those times of anguish and rapture--and many besides, which proved that nothing in the world was of any consequence to speak of compared with our value to one another.

But we forget so soon! And the little things have such power to swamp the big ones. They are like the dust and sand of the desert, which cover everything if not continually dredged away. And all those little debts and privations and schemings and strugglings to make ends meet that would not meet, were enough to choke one. Especially as Bobby cut his teeth with more trouble than any baby I ever had, and as I, what with one thing and another, grew quite disheartened and out of health, so that I never knew what it was not to feel tired.

The ign.o.ble sorrows of this period--which I hate to think of--seemed to culminate on the morning of the day that I am going to tell of--at the end of which they were so joyfully dispelled.

Bobby had cried incessantly through the night, so that I had only slept in s.n.a.t.c.hes, just enough to make me feel more heavy and yawny than if I had not slept at all. I dragged myself dispiritedly out of bed, dying for the cup of tea which did not appear till an hour after its time, and was then brought to me rank and cold from standing, with no milk in it.

"I forgot to put the can out last night," was Maria's cheerful explanation, "and I waited in hopes that the milkman would come back, but he didn't. And, please'm, what shall I do about the children's breakfast?"

"You mean to say you never left a drop over from yesterday, in case of accidents?" I demanded, tears rushing into my eyes. "Oh, Ma-_ria!_"

It sounds a poor thing to cry about, but I appeal to mothers to say if I was a fool. Bobby was a bottle baby, and we had all our milk from one cow on his account; and he was ill, and the dairy at least a mile away.

Rarely had I trusted Maria to remember to put the can out for the morning supply, delivered before she was up; I used to hang it on the nail myself. But last night, having my hands so full, I had contented myself with telling her twice over not to forget it. With this result!

At any moment the poor child might awake and cry for food, and a spoonful of stale dregs was all I had for him.

There and then, with clenched teeth and a lump in my throat, and boots on my feet that had mere rags of soles to them, I set off with the milk-can to that distant dairy. It was a thick morning, and presently rained in torrents. When I arrived, drenched to the skin, I was told that all the milk was with the cart, and I had to wait half an hour until the proprietress could be persuaded to give me a little. She was unsympathetic and disobliging--I suppose because I had not paid her husband for three months. On my return home Bobby, in Maria's arms, was shrieking himself into another fit of convulsions; and the other children, catching their deaths of cold in their nightgowns, were paddling about on flagstones and oilcloth, fighting and squalling, and trying to light the dining-room fire. They imagined they were helping, but had spilled coals all over the carpet and used the crumb-brush to spread the black dust afterwards; and the wonder is that they didn't burn the house down.

It was not quite just perhaps--poor little things, they _were_ trying their best--but the first thing I did was to box the ears of both of them and send them back to bed. I don't think I ever saw them, as babies, take so small a punishment so greatly to heart. They snuffled and sulked for hours--wouldn't even show an interest in the apricot jam and boiled rice that I gave them for their breakfast and imagined would be a treat to them--and were more vexatious and tiresome than words can say.

"I wish father was home," Harry kept muttering, in that moody way of his; it is the thing he always said when he wanted to be particularly aggravating. "Phyllis, I wish father was here, don't you?"

"Oh," I cried, "you don't wish it more than I do! If father were here, he'd pretty soon make you behave yourselves. _He_ wouldn't let you drive your mother distracted when she's already got so much to worry her, with poor little brother sick and all." Tears were in my eyes, as they must have seen, but the heartless little brats were not in the least affected.

And father's absence was an extra anxiety, for he was hours and hours behind his time. The papers reported fogs along the coast, and I thought of shipwrecks as the day wore on, and began to feel that it would be quite consistent with the drift of things if I were to get news presently that the Bendigo had gone down. I knew how he dreaded fogs, which made a good navigator as helpless as a bad one, and wondered if it implied an instinctive presentiment that a fog was to be his ruin! I remembered his telling me that if ever he was so unfortunate as to lose his ship, he should cast himself away along with her; and the appalling idea filled me not with anguish only, but with a sort of indignation against him.

"And he with a young family depending on him!" I cried in my heart--as if he had already done it--"and a wife who would die if he went from her!"

I was in that state of mind and health that when, early in the afternoon, I heard him come stumbling in, my solicitude for him suddenly pa.s.sed, and only the bitter sense of grievance remained. The grocer had been calling in person, insolent about his account, which indeed had been growing to awful dimensions; and I was fairly sick of the whole thing. It was not my poor old fellow's fault, for he gave me his money as fast as he got it, but somehow I felt as if it was. And when he dumped down on the sofa beside me to look at Bobby, I began at once--without even kissing him--to pour out all my woes.

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 pa.s.sionately 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 doc.u.ment 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 t.i.the 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 a.s.sured 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?"