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

with me to keep me company. Having no friend to ask in, I went to the street door and stood looking at the people passing this way and that.

“A stray dog, sniffing about, came up to me. Generally I dislike dogs and beasts of all kinds. I called this one in and gave him his supper. He had been taught (I suppose) to sit up on his hind-legs and beg for food; at any rate, that was his way of asking me for more. I laughed⁠—it seems impossible when I look back at it now, but for all that it’s true⁠—I laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks, at the little beast on his haunches, with his ears pricked up and his head on one side and his mouth watering for the victuals. I wonder whether I was in my right senses? I don’t know.

“When the dog had got all he could get he whined to be let out to roam the streets again.

“As I opened the door to let the creature go his ways, I saw my husband crossing the road to come in. ‘Keep out’ (I says to him); ‘tonight, of all nights, keep out.’ He was too drunk to heed me; he passed by, and blundered his way upstairs. I followed and listened. I heard him open his door, and bang it to, and lock it. I waited a bit, and went up another stair or two. I heard him drop down on to his bed. In a minute more he was fast asleep and snoring.

“It had all happened as it was wanted to happen. In two minutes⁠—without doing one single thing to bring suspicion on myself⁠—I could have smothered him. I went into my own room. I took up the towel that I had laid ready. I was within an inch of it⁠—when there came a rush of something up into my head. I can’t say what it was. I can only say the horrors laid hold of me and hunted me then and there out of the house.

“I put on my bonnet, and slipped the key of the street door into my pocket. It was only half past nine⁠—or maybe a quarter to ten. If I had any one clear notion in my head, it was the notion of running away, and never allowing myself to set eyes on the house or the husband more.

“I went up the street⁠—and came back. I went down the street⁠—and came back. I tried it a third time, and went round and round and round⁠—and came back. It was not to be done The house held me chained to it like a dog to his kennel. I couldn’t keep away from it. For the life of me, I couldn’t keep away from it.

“A company of gay young men and women passed me, just as I was going to let myself in again. They were in a great hurry. ‘Step out,’ says one of the men; ‘the theater’s close by, and we shall be just in time for the farce.’ I turned about and followed them. Having been piously brought up, I had never been inside a theater in my life. It struck me that I might get taken, as it were, out of myself, if I saw something that was quite strange to me, and heard something which would put new thoughts into my mind.

“They went in to the pit; and I went in after them.

“The thing they called the farce had begun. Men and women came on to the stage, turn and turn about, and talked, and went off again. Before long all the people about me in the pit were laughing and clapping their hands. The noise they made angered me. I don’t know how to describe the state I was in. My eyes wouldn’t serve me, and my ears wouldn’t serve me, to see and to hear what the rest of them were seeing and hearing. There must have been something, I fancy, in my mind that got itself between me and what was going on upon the stage. The play looked fair enough on the surface; but there was danger and death at the bottom of it. The players were talking and laughing to deceive the people⁠—with murder in their minds all the time. And nobody knew it but me⁠—and my tongue was tied when I tried to tell the others. I got up, and ran out. The moment I was in the street my steps turned back of themselves on the way to the house. I called a cab, and told the man to drive (as far as a shilling would take me) the opposite way. He put me down⁠—I don’t know where. Across the street I saw an inscription in letters of flame over an open door. The man said it was a dancing-place. Dancing was as new to me as play-going. I had one more shilling left; and I paid to go in, and see what a sight of the dancing would do for me. The light from the ceiling poured down in this place as if it was all on fire. The crashing of the music was dreadful. The whirling round and round of men and women in each other’s arms was quite maddening to see. I don’t know what happened to me here. The great blaze of light from the ceiling turned blood-red on a sudden. The man standing in front of the musicians waving a stick took the likeness of Satan, as seen in the picture in our family Bible at home. The whirling men and women went round and round, with white faces like the faces of the dead, and bodies robed in winding-sheets. I screamed out with the terror of it; and some person took me by the arm and put me outside the door. The darkness did me good: it was comforting and delicious⁠—like a cool hand laid on a hot head. I went walking