CHAPTER V.
WHAT CAME OF IT.
Meantime, things were going, as they should, in rather a dull fashion
with Duncan Dempster. His chariot wheels were gone, and he drove
heavily. The weather was good; he seldom failed of the box-seat on the
omnibus; a ray of light, the first he had ever seen there, visited his
table, reflected from a new window on the opposite side of a court
into the heart of his dismal back office; and best of all, business
was better than usual. Yet was Dempster not cheerful. He was not,
indeed, a man an acquaintance would ever have thought of calling
cheerful; but in grays there are gradations; and however differently a
man's barometer may be set from those of other people, it has its ups
and downs, its fair weather and foul. But not yet had he an idea how
much his mental equilibrium had been dependent upon the dim
consciousness of having that quiet uninterested wife in the
comfortable house at Hackney. It had been stronger than it seemed, the
spidery, invisible line connecting that office and that house, along
which had run twice a day the hard dumpling that dwelt in Mr.
Dempster's bosom. Vaguely connected with that home after all must have
been that endless careful gathering of treasure in the city; for now,
though he could no more stop making money than he could stop
breathing, it had not the same interest as formerly. Indeed, he had
less interest than before in keeping his lungs themselves going. But
he kept on doing everything as usual.
Not one of the men he met ever said a word to him about his wife. The
general impression was that she had left him for preferable society,
and no one wondered at her throwing aside such "a dry old stick," whom
even the devoted slaves of business contemned as having nothing in him
but business.
A further change was, however, in progress within him. The first sign
of it was that he began to doubt whether his wife had indeed been
false to him--had forsaken him in any other company than that of
Death. But there was one great difficulty in the way of the
conclusion. It was impossible for him to imagine suicide as proceeding
from any cause but insanity, and what could have produced the disorder
in one who had no cares or anxieties, everything she wanted, and
nothing to trouble her, a devoted husband, and a happy home? Yet the
mere idea made him think more pitifully, and so more tenderly of her
than before. It had not yet occurred to him to consider whether he
might not have had something to do with her conduct or condition.
Blame was a thing he had never made acquaintance with--least of all in
the form of self-blame. To himself he was simply all right--the poised
centre of things capable of righteous judgment on every one else. But
it must not be forgotten how little he knew about his own affairs at
all; his was a very different condition from that of one who had
closed his eyes and hardened his heart to suspicions concerning
himself. His eyes had never yet been opened to anything but the order
of things in the money world--its laws, its penalties, its
rewards--those he did understand. But apparently he was worth
troubling. A slow dissatisfaction was now preying upon him--a sense of
want--of not having something he once had, a vague discomfort, growing
restless. This feeling was no doubt the worse that the birth of the
child had brought such a sudden rush of fresh interest into his
occupation, which doubt concerning that birth had again so suddenly
checked; but even if the child should prove after all his own, a
supposition he was now willing to admit as possibly a true one, he
could never without his mother feel any enthusiasm about him, even
such enthusiasm as might be allowed to a man who knew money from
moonshine, and common sense from hysterics. Yet once and again, about
this time, the nurse coming into the room after a few minutes'
absence, found him bending over the sleeping infant, and, as she
described him, "looking as if he would have cried if he had only known
how."
One frosty evening in late autumn the forsaken husband came from
London--I doubt if he would now have said "home"--as usual, on the top
of the omnibus. His was a tough nature physically, as well as morally,
and if he had found himself inside an omnibus he would have thought he
was going to die. The sun was down. A green hue rose from the horizon
half-way to the zenith, but a pale yellow lingered over the vanished
sun, like the gold at the bottom of a chrysolite. The stars were
twinkling small and sharp in the azure overhead. A cold wind blew in
little gusts, now from this side, now from that, as they went steadily
along. The horses' hoofs rang loud on the hard road. The night got
hold of him: it was at this season, and on nights like these, that he
had haunted the house of Lucy's father, doing his best to persuade her
to make him, as he said, a happy man. It now seemed as if then, and
then only, he had been a happy man. Certainly, of all his life, it was
the time when he came nearest to having a peep out of the upper
windows of the house of life. He had been a dweller in the lower
regions, a hewer of wood to the god of the cellar; and after his
marriage, he had gone straight down again to the temple of the earthy
god--to a worship whose god and temple and treasure caves will one day
drop suddenly from under the votary's feet, and leave him dangling in
the air without even a pocket about him--without even his banker's
book to show for his respectability.
The night, I say, recalled the lovely season of his courtship, and
again, in the mirror of loss, he caught a glimpse of things beyond
him. Ah, if only that time and its hopes had remained with him! How
different things would have been now! If Lucy had proved what he
thought her!--remained what she seemed--the gentle, complaisant,
yielding lady he imagined her, promising him a life of bliss! Alas,
she would not even keep account of five pounds a week to please him!
He never thought whether he, on his part, might not have, in some
measure, come short of her expectations in a husband; whether she, the
more lovely in inward design and outward fashion, might not have
indulged yet more exquisite dreams of bliss which, by devotion to his
ideal of life, he had done his part in disappointing. He only thought
what a foolishness it all was; that thus it would go on to the end of
the book; that youth after youth would have his turn of such a wooing,
and such a disappointment. Sunsets, indeed! The suns of man's
happiness never did anything but set! Out of money even--and who could
say there was any poetry in that?--there was not half the satisfaction
to be got that one expected. It was all a mess of expectations and
disappointments mashed up together--nothing more. That was the
world--on a fair judgment.
Such were his reflections till the driver pulled up for him to get
down at his own gate. As he got down the said driver glanced up
curiously at the row of windows on the first floor, and as soon as Mr.
Dempster's back was turned, pointed to them with the butt-end of his
whip, and nodded queerly to the gentleman who sat on his other side.
"That's more'n I've seen this six weeks," he said. "There's something
more'n common up this evenin', sir."
There was light in the drawing-room--that was all the wonder; but at
those windows Mr. Dempster himself looked so fixedly that he had
nearly stumbled up his own door-steps.
He carried a latch-key now, for he did not care to stand at the door
till the boy answered the bell; people's eyes, as they passed, seemed
to burn holes in the back of his coat.
He opened the street door quietly, and went straight up the stair to
the drawing-room. Perhaps he thought to detect some liberty taken by
his servants. He was a little earlier than usual. He opened that door,
took two steps into the room, and stood arrested, motionless. With his
shabby hat on his head, his shabby greatcoat on his back--for he
grudged every penny spent on his clothes--his arms hanging down by his
sides, and his knees bent, ready to tremble, he looked not a little
out of keeping in the soft-lighted, dainty, delicate-hued
drawing-room. Could he believe his eyes? The light of a large lamp was
centred upon a gracious figure in white--his wife, just as he used to
see her before he married her! That was the way her hair would break
loose as she ran down the stair to meet him!--only then there was no
baby in her lap for it to full over like a torrent of unlighted water
over a white stone! It was a lovely sight.
He had stood but a moment when she looked up and saw him. She started,
but gave no cry louder than a little moan. Instantly she rose.
Turning, she laid the baby on the sofa, and flitted to him like a
wraith. Arrived where he stood yet motionless, she fell upon her knees
and clasped his. He was far too bewildered now to ask himself what
husbands did in such circumstances, and stood like a block.
"Husband! husband!" she cried, "forgive me." With one hand she hid her
face, although it was bent to the ground, and with the other held up
to him a bit of paper. He took it from the thin white fingers; it
might explain something--help him out of this bewilderment, half
nightmare, half heavenly vision. He opened it. Nothing but a
hundred-pound note! The familiar sight of bank paper, however, seemed
to restore his speech.
"What does this mean, Lucy? Upon my word! Permit me to say--"
He was growing angry.
"It is to pay the butcher," she said, with a faltering voice.
"Damn the butcher!" he cried. "I hope you've got something else to say
to me! Where have you been all this time?"
"At my mother's. I've had a brain fever, and been out of my mind. It
was all about the butcher's bill."
Dempster stared. Perhaps he could not understand how a woman who would
not keep accounts should be to such a degree troubled at the result of
her neglect.
"Look at me, if you don't believe me," she cried, and as she spoke she
rose and lifted her face to his.
He gazed at it for a moment--pale, thin, and worn; and out of it shone
the beautiful eyes, larger than before, but shimmering uncertain like
the stars of a humid night, although they looked straight into his.
Something queer was suddenly the matter with his throat--something
he had never felt before--a constriction such as, had he been
superstitious, he might have taken for the prologue to a rope. Then
the thought came--what a brute he must be that his wife should have
been afraid to tell him her trouble! Thereupon he tried to speak, but
his throat was irresponsive to his will. Eve's apple kept sliding up
and down in it, and would not let the words out. He had never been so
served by members of his own body in his life before! It was positive
rebellion, and would get him into trouble with his wife. There it was!
Didn't he say so?
"Can't you forgive me, Mr. Dempster?" she said, and the voice was so
sweet and so sad! "It is my own money. Aunt Lucy is dead, and left it
me. I think it will be enough to pay all my debts; and I promise
you--I do promise you that I will set down every halfpenny after this.
Do try me once again--for baby's sake."
This last was a sudden thought. She turned and ran to the sofa.
Dempster stood where he was, fighting the strange uncomfortable
feeling in his throat. It would not yield a jot. Was he going to die
suddenly of choking? Was it a judgment upon him? Diphtheria, perhaps!
It was much about in the City!
She was back, and holding up to him their sleeping child.
The poor fellow was not half the brute he looked--only he could _not_
tell what to do with that confounded lump in his throat! He dared not
try to speak, for it only choked him the more. He put his arms round
them both, and pressed them to his bosom. Then, the lump in his throat
melted and ran out at his eyes, and all doubt vanished like a mist
before the sun. But he never knew that he had wept. His wife did, and
that was enough.
The next morning, for the first time in his life, he lost the eight
o'clock omnibus.
The following Monday morning she brought her week's account to him. He
turned from it testily, but she insisted on his going over it. There
was not the mistake of a halfpenny. He went to town with a smile in
his heart, and that night brought her home a cheque for ten pounds
instead of five.
One day, in the middle of the same week, he came upon her sitting over
the little blue-and-red-ruled book with a troubled countenance. She
took no notice of his entrance.
"Do leave those accounts," he said, "and attend to me."
She shook her head impatiently, and made him no other answer. One
moment more, however, and she started up, threw her arms about his
neck, and cried triumphantly,
"It's buttons!--fourpence-halfpenny I paid for buttons!"
