Man and Wife, Wilkie Collins [best ebook reader android .TXT] 📗

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 anything 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 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 family⁠—a place in the country, this time.

“I found myself now in a haven of peace. I was among worthy kindhearted 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 goodbye. 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 he 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