Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins (ebook reader screen .TXT) đ
- Author: Wilkie Collins
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âIn a yearâs time the money in the bank was gone; and my husband was out of employment. He always got workâbeing a first-rate hand when he was soberâand 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.
âThe 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 husbandâs 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.
âHaving a spirit of my own, I was resolved not to endure it. I ran out to the Police Court, hard by.
âMy money had not only bought the furnitureâit 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.
â âIs your furniture settled on yourself?â he says, when I told him what had happened.
âI didnât understand what he meant. He turned to some person who was sitting on the bench with him. âThis is a hard case,â he says. âPoor people in this condition of life donât even know what a marriage settlement means. And, if they did, how many of them could afford to pay the lawyerâs charges?â Upon that he turned to me. âYours is a common case,â he said. âIn the present state of the law I can do nothing for you.â
âIt was impossible to believe that. Common or not, I put my case to him over again.
â âI have bought the furniture with my own money, Sir,â I says. âItâs 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. Donât tell me thatâs the law. This is a Christian country. It canât be.â
â âMy good creature,â says he, âyou are a married woman. The law doesnât allow a married woman to call any thing her ownâunless she has previously (with a lawyerâs 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 canât hinder him.â
âI was obstinate about it. âPlease to answer me this, Sir,â I says. âIâve 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?â
â âI canât enter into that,â says he. âI 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.â
â âHow can you punish him, Sir?â says I.
â âI can fine him,â says he. âOr I can send him to prison.â
â âAs to the fine,â says I, âhe can pay that out of the money he gets by selling my furniture. As to the prison, while heâs in it, whatâs to become of me, with my money spent by him, and my possessions gone; and when heâs out of it, whatâs 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? Itâs bad enough as it is, Sir,â says I. âThereâs more thatâs bruised in me than what shows in my face. I wish you good-morning.â
6.
âWhen 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 saidâkindly 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.
âThere was but one chance of earning my breadâto go to the employment offered me (under a man cook, at a club). And there was but one hopeâthe hope that I had lost sight of my husband forever.
âI went to my workâand prospered in itâand earned my first quarterâs wages. But itâs not good for a woman to be situated as I was; friendless and alone, with her things that she took a pride in sold away from her, and with nothing to look forward to in her life to come. I was regular in my attendance at chapel; but I think my heart began to get hardened, and my mind to be overcast in secret with its own thoughts about this time. There was a change coming. Two or three days after I had earned the wages just mentioned my husband found me out. The furniture-money was all spent. He made a disturbance at the club, I was only able to quiet him by giving him all the money I could spare from my own necessities. The scandal was brought before the committee. They said, if the circumstance occurred again, they should be obliged to part with me. In a fortnight the circumstance occurred again. Itâs 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 againâthis time knocking me down.
âI went once more to the police court, and told my storyâto another magistrate this time. My only petition was to have my husband kept away from me. âI donât want to be a burden on othersâ (I says) âI donât want to do any thing but whatâs right. I donât 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?â
âThe 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 possessedânamely, my furnitureâthe 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 worldâand 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 chanceânamely, to get time to turn round in, and to escape him again. I got a monthâs freedom from him, by charging him with knocking me down. The magistrate (happening to be young, and new to his business) sent him to prison, instead of fining him. This gave me time to get a character from the club, as well as a special testimonial from good Mr. Bapchild. With the help of these, I obtained a place in a private familyâa place in the country, this time.
âI 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 whatâs 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 sheepâthatâs what you find them.
âMore than six months passed, and I saved a little money again.
âOne night, just as we were going to bed, there was a loud ring at the bell. The footman answered the doorâand I heard my husbandâs 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. Ifâinstead of my running off from himâit 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.
âMy husband took me back to London.
âAs 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 didnât 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 amendmentâand 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, âThereâs no
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