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
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 be
gan 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
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 be 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?
"I got away from him once more, and found good employment once
more. It don't matter how, and it don't matter where. My story is
always the same thing, over and over again. Best get to the end.
"There was one change, however, this time. My employment was not
in a private family. I was also allowed to teach cookery to young
women, in my leisure hours. What with this, and what with a
longer time passing on the present occasion before my husband
found me out, I was as comfortably off as in my position I could
hope to be. When my work was done, I went away at night to sleep
in a lodging of my own. It was only a bedroom; and I furnished it
myself--partly for the sake of economy (the rent being not half
as much as for a furnished room); and partly for the sake of
cleanliness. Through all my troubles I always liked things neat
about me--neat and shapely and good.
"Well, it's needless to say how it ended. He found me out
again--this time by a chance meeting with me in the street.
"He was in rags, and half starved. But that didn't matter now.
All he had to do was to put his hand into my pocket and take what
he wanted. There is no limit, in England, to what a bad husband
may do--as long as he sticks to his wife. On the present
occasion, he was cunning enough to see that he would be the loser
if he disturbed me in my employment. For a while things went on
as smoothly as they could. I made a pretense that the work was
harder than usual; and I got leave (loathing the sight of him, I
honestly own) to sleep at the place where I was employed. This
was not for long. The fit took him again, in due course; and he
came and made a disturbance. As before, this was not to be borne
by decent people. As before, they were sorry to part with me. As
before, I lost my place.
"Anot
her woman would have gone mad under it. I fancy it just
missed, by a hair's breadth, maddening Me.
"When I looked at him that night, deep in his drunken sleep, I
thought of Jael and Sisera (see the book of Judges; chapter 4th;
verses 17 to 21). It says, she 'took a nail of the tent, and took
a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the
nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he
was fast asleep and weary. So he died.' She did this deed to
deliver her nation from Sisera. If there had been a hammer and a
nail in the room that night, I think I should have been
Jael--with this difference, that I should have done it to deliver
myself.
"With the morning this passed off, for the time. I went and spoke
to a lawyer.
"Most people, in my place, would have had enough of the law
already. But I was one of the sort who drain the cup to the
dregs. What I said to him was, in substance, this. 'I come to ask
your advice about a madman. Mad people, as I understand it, are
people who have lost control over their own minds. Sometimes this
leads them to entertaining delusions; and sometimes it leads them
to committing actions hurtful to others or to themselves. My
husband has lost all control over his own craving for strong
drink. He requires to be kept from liquor, as other madmen
require to be kept from attempting their own lives, or the lives
of those about them. It's a frenzy beyond his own control, with
_him_--just as it's a frenzy beyond their own control, with
_them._ There are Asylums for mad people, all over the country,
at the public disposal, on certain conditions. If I fulfill those
conditions, will the law deliver me from the misery of being
married to a madman, whose madness is drink?'--'No,' says the
lawyer. 'The law of England declines to consider an incurable
drunkard as a fit object for restraint, the law of England leaves
the husbands and wives of such people in a perfectly helpless
situation, to deal with their own misery as they best can.'
"I made my acknowledgments to the gentleman and left him. The
last chance was this chance--and this had failed me.
7.
"The thought that had once found its way into my mind already,
now found its way back again, and never altogether left me from
that time forth. No deliverance for me but in death--his death,
or mine.
"I had it before me night and day; in chapel and out of chapel
just the same. I read the story of Jael and Sisera so often that
the Bible got to open of itself at that place.
"The laws of my country, which ought to have protected me as an
honest woman, left me helpless. In place of the laws I had no
friend near to open my heart to. I was shut up in myself. And I
was married to that man. Consider me as a human creature, and
say, Was this not trying my humanity very hardly?
"I wrote to good Mr. Bapchild. Not going into particulars; only
telling him I was beset by temptation, and begging him to come
and help me. He was confined to his bed by illness; he could only
write me a letter of good advice. To profit by good advice people
must have a glimpse of happiness to look forward to as a reward
for exerting themselves. Religion itself is obliged to hold out a
reward, and to say to us poor mortals, Be good, and you shall go
to Heaven. I had no glimpse of happiness. I was thankful (in a
dull sort of way) to good Mr. Bapchild--and there it ended.
"The time had been when a word from my old pastor would have put
me in the right way again. I began to feel scared by myself. If
the next ill usage I received from Joel Dethridge found me an
unchanged woman, it was borne in strongly on my mind that I
should be as likely as not to get my deliverance from him by my
own hand.
"Goaded to it, by the fear of this, I humbled myself before my
relations for the first time. I wrote to beg their pardon; to own
that they had proved to be right in their opinion of my husband;
and to entreat them to be friends with me again, so far as to let