Materfamilias

I was in that state of mind and health that when, early in the afternoon, I heard him come stumbling in, my solicitude for him suddenly passed, and only the bitter sense of grievance remained. The grocer had been calling in person, insolent about his account, which indeed had been growing to awful dimensions; and I was fairly sick of the whole thing. It was not my poor old fellow's fault, for he gave me his money as fast as he got it, but somehow I felt as if it was. And when he dumped down on the sofa beside me to look at Bobby, I began at once – without even kissing him – to pour out all my woes.

I was reckless with misery and headache, and did not care what I said. I told him things I had been scrupulously keeping from him for months – things which I imagined would harrow him frightfully, much to my sorrow when it would be too late. And he – even he– seemed callous! He mumbled a soothing word or two, and fell silent. I asked him for advice and sympathy, and he never answered me.

Looking at him, I saw that his eyes were shut, his head dropped, his great frame reeling as he sat, trying to prop himself with his broad hands on his broad, outspread knees.

"Tom," I cried in despair, "you're not listening to a word I'm saying!"

He jerked himself up.

"I beg your pardon, Polly. The fact is, I'm dead-beat, my dear. It has been foggy, you know, and I haven't dared to turn in these two nights."

It seemed as if everything was determined to go wrong. I could see that his eyelids were swollen and gummy, and that he was half stupefied with fatigue.

"What a shame it is!" I passionately complained. "What wretches those owners are – sitting at home in their armchairs, wallowing in luxury, while they make you slave like this – and give you next to nothing for it!"

"It's no fault of theirs," said he. "They can't help the weather. And when I've had a few hours' sleep I shall be as right as ninepence. Then we'll talk things over, pet, and I'll see what can be done."

I rose, with my sick child in my arms, and he stumbled after me into our bedroom. For the first time it was not ready for him. I had been so distracted with my numerous worries that I had forgotten to make the bed and put away the litter left from all our morning toilets; the place was a perfect pigsty for him to go into. And he coming so tired from the sea – looking to his home for what little comfort his hard life afforded him! When I saw the state of things, I burst into tears. With an extremely grubby handkerchief he wiped them away, and kissed me and comforted me.

"What the deuce does it matter?" quoth he. "Why, bless your heart, I could sleep on the top of a gatepost. Just toss the things on anyhow – here, don't you bother – I'll do it."

He was contented with anything, but I felt shamed and heart-broken to have failed him in a matter of this kind – the more so because he was so unselfish and unexacting, so unlike ordinary husbands who think wives are made for no other purpose than to keep them always comfortable. In ten minutes he was snoring deeply, and I was trying not to drop tears into the little stew I was cooking for his tea.

"At least he shall have a nice tea," I determined, "though goodness knows how I am going to pay for it."

Poor baby was easier, and asleep in his cradle; the two others had gone to play with a neighbour's children. So the house was at peace for a time, and that was a relief. It was also an opportunity for thinking – for all one's cares to obtrude themselves upon the mind – and the smallest molehills looked mountains under the shadow of my physical weariness.

Having arranged the tea-table and made up the fire, I sat down for a moment, with idle hands in my lap; and I was just coming to the sad conclusion that life wasn't worth living – wicked woman that I was! – when I heard the evening postman. Expecting nothing, except miserable little bills with "account rendered" on them, I trailed dejectedly to the street door. Opening it, a long-leaved book was thrust under my nose, and I was requested to sign for a registered letter.

"Ah-h-h!" I breathed deeply, while flying for a pen. "It is that ever-blessed Aunt Kate – I know it is! She seems to divine the exact moment by instinct."

I scribbled my name, received the letter, saw my father's handwriting, and turned into the house, much sobered. For father, who was a bad correspondent – like me – had intimated more than once that he was finding it as much as he could do to make ends meet, with his rapidly increasing family.

I sat down by the fire, opened the much-sealed envelope, and looked for the more or less precious enclosure. I expected a present of five pounds or so, and I found a draft for a hundred. The colour poured into my face, strength and vigour into my body, joy and gladness into my soul, as I held the document to the light and stared at it, to make sure my eyes had not deceived me. Oh, what a pathetic thing it is that the goodness of life should so depend upon a little money! Even while I thought that hundred pounds was all, I was intoxicated with the prospect before me – bills paid, children able to have change of air, Tom and I relieved from a thousand heartaches and anxieties which, though they could not sour him, yet spoiled the comfort of our home because they sapped my strength and temper.

I ran to wake him and tell him how all was changed in the twinkling of an eye; but when I saw him so heavily asleep, my duty as a sailor's wife restrained me. Nothing short of the house burning over his head would have justified me in disturbing him. I went back to my rocking-chair to read my father's letter.

Well, here was another shock – two or three shocks, each sharper than the last. My beloved aunt was dead. She had had an uncertain heart for several years, and it had failed her suddenly, as is the way of such. She went to church on a Sunday night, returned in good spirits and apparently good health, ate a hearty supper, retired to her room as usual, and was found dead in her bed next morning when her maid took in her tea. This sad news sufficed me for some minutes. Seen through a curtain of thick tears, the words ran into each other, and I could not read further. Dear, dear Aunt Kate! She was an odd, quick-tempered old lady, cantankerous at times; but how warm-hearted, how just and generous, how good to me, even when I did not care to please her! When one is a wife, and especially when one is a mother, all other relationships lose their binding power; but still I could not help crying for a little while over the loss of Aunt Kate. And I can honestly say that I did not think of her money until after I had wiped my eyes and resumed reading. When I turned over a leaf and saw the word, I remembered the importance of her will to all her relatives. I said to myself, "After all, the hundred pounds does come from her. It is her legacy to me." And I was sordid enough to feel a pang of disappointment because – being her last bequest – it was so small.

"We buried her yesterday," wrote father, "and the will was read after the funeral, and has proved a great and painful surprise to us. She has left the bulk of her money to a man I never even heard of, an engineer in India. Uncle John says his father was an admirer of hers when she was a girl, but she never mentioned the name – Keating – to me, and I can't understand the thing at all. She was always eccentric, and some of us think we might contest the will with a fair chance of success. However, my lawyer advises to the contrary, and my wife also; so I, for one, shall let it go.

"She has not altogether forgotten her own family. There are a number of small legacies, including £2,000 for myself, which will come in very usefully just now, though not a tithe of what I expected. I have also some plate and furniture. You, my dear girl, are the best off of us all. Besides jewellery and odds and ends, she has left you the interest of £10,000 (in Government securities) for life, your children after you. This will give you an income of £300 a year – small, but absolutely safe – and relieve my mind of many anxieties on your behalf." He went on to tell me about powers of attorney and other legal matters that I did not understand and thought unworthy of notice at such a moment. He also explained that lawyers were a dilatory race, and that he was advancing £100 to tide me over the interval that must elapse before affairs were settled.

Again I went into my room and looked at Tom. How could he sleep in a house so charged with wild excitement! I regret to say it was that, and not grief, which made my heart throb so that I wonder he did not feel the bedstead shaking, and the very floor and walls. I ached with suppressed exclamations; I tingled with an intolerable restlessness, as if bitten by a thousand fleas. And still he lay like a log, drawing his breath deeply and slowly, with soft, comfortable grunts; and still, in an agony of self-control, I refrained from touching him. Baby woke up, moist and smiling. His tooth was through; he seemed to know that it was his business to get well at once. It is not only misfortunes that never come singly; good luck is a thing that seldom rains but it pours. Harry and Phyllis came home, took their tea peaceably, and went to bed like lambs. I sent Maria, with half a sovereign, to a savoury cook-shop where they sold fowls and hams and all sorts of nice things ready for table, and she brought back a supper fit for a prince.

"It is all right, Maria," I assured her, in my short-breathed, vibrating voice, seeing her wonder at my extravagance. "I am rich now. I can afford the captain something better than a twice-cooked stew. Spend it all, Maria, on the best things you can get. And you shall have your wages to-morrow, and a present of a new frock."

When all was ready – the glazed chicken, the juicy slices of pink ham, the wedge of rich Stilton, the bottle of English ale – I returned again to my unconscious spouse. It was ten o'clock, and he had been sleeping with all his might for seven hours. Surely that was enough! Especially as he still had the whole night before him. I stroked his hair – I kissed his forehead – I kissed his shut eyes. He can resist everything but that; when I kiss his eyes he is obliged to stir and murmur and want kisses for his lips. He stirred now, and turned up his dear old face.

"Pol – "

"Yes, darling, it's me. Are you awake?"

He sighed luxuriously.

"Tommy, are you awake?"

"Wha's th' time?"

"It's awfully late. Come, you won't sleep to-night if you don't get up now."

"Oh, sha'n't I? I could sleep for a week if I had the chance. Ah-hi-ow!" He yawned like a drowsy lion. "I'd sooner have twenty gales than one fog, Polly."

"I know you would. But never mind about gales and fogs and trivial things of that kind. I've something far, far more important to talk to you about – something that will make your very hair stand on end with astonishment. Only I want to be quite sure first that you are awake enough to take it in."

He called his faculties together in a moment as if I had been the look-out man reporting breakers, and was all alive and alert to deal summarily with the situation, whatever it might be. And I rushed upon my story, showed him the letter and the draft, and poured out a jumbled catalogue of all the things we could now do that wanted doing – beginning with a leaking kettle and ending with his professional appointment, which I had decided must be resigned forthwith.

"And we will live together always and always, like other husbands and wives, only that we shall be a thousand times happier," I concluded, as I led him in to his supper, hanging on his arm.

"No more fogs and gales, to wear you out and perhaps drown you in the end, but your bed every night, and your armchair by the fire, your home and family, and me —me– "

"Little woman! But you mustn't forget, pet, that I'm not thirty-eight till next birthday. A man can't give up work and sink into armchairs at that age."

"Of course he can't. We can find some nice post ashore. There are plenty of things, if you look for them."

"Not for sailor men, who know nothing but their trade."

"Oh, heaps – any amount of heaps! And you can take your time, of course. No need to hurry for a year or two. You want a long holiday. You have never had one yet. And I want you. What's the use of money, if we can't enjoy it together? We have not had so much as one whole month to ourselves since we were married."

"Well, a sailor's wife must accept the conditions, you know."

"Yes, when necessary. But it is not necessary now that we are people of independent means."

"Three hundred a year isn't three thousand. And we've got to educate the kids, and put by for them."

"No need to put by for them when they are to have my money after I am dead."

"For myself, then. You wouldn't like to die and leave me to sell matches in the streets?"

"Oh, Tom, don't talk about dying – now that it's so sweet to be alive!"

"My dear, you began it. I vote we don't talk any more at all, but eat our supper and go to bed. Here, sit down by me, and let us gorge. I have had nothing since morning, and this table excites me to frenzy."

We cut off the breast of the chicken for the children and a leg for Maria, and demolished the rest. We drank the beer between us, out of one tumbler; we devoured half of a crusty loaf, and cheese sufficient for a dozen nightmares; and I never felt so well in my life as I did after it. Tom said the same.

But sleep was far away – even from him. We had to arrange our programme for the morning – the fetching of Nurse Barber to take care of baby, the business at the bank, the settlings of pressing accounts, the beginnings of our innumerable shoppings; and whenever a silence fell that I knew I should not break, something forced me to turn over in bed with a violent fling and make loud ejaculations.

"Oh, dear, kind, sweet Aunt Kate! To think that I am so pleased at having her money that I cannot cry because she is dead! Oh, Tom, Tom! To think that we never need owe a penny again – never, never, as long as we live!"