A Woman's Burden: A Novel

"It is very good, I think," replied Miriam. "And what do you think of doing?"

"Blessed if I know." He spoke fretfully and with discontent. "The thing is, what am I fit for?"

"What are you fit for? – what any man worthy of the name is fit for – work – hard work. Do you remember how I always told you it would be your salvation. Well, now it has come – no longer is it a matter of choice with you, but one of necessity. Will you be angry with me if I say that I am glad it is all over between Hilda Marsh and you? She was not the woman for you. She was not fit to be any poor man's wife. You have everything before you now. In robbing you of what you had come to think of as your inheritance, Providence befriended you – not the opposite. Your uncle's money would have been your ruin, Gerald." His face brightened at the sound of his name on her lips. "Yes, you know it would. You know how weak you are, how you love pleasure, self-indulgence – how already you have indulged your love of it far too much. Oh, do try now, I beg of you. Let me help you if I can. I will do anything if it will help to put you on your feet again. Who is there you can go and see? Tell me you will try."

She had risen from her seat and was standing by his side. He looked so dull, so heavy-eyed, so despairing.

"Gerald, this chance is thrown right in your way. Don't neglect it."

"You put new life in me, Miriam – and indeed I have tried. I have vowed that I would overcome my weakness. And when I am with you I feel as if I really could. But somehow, when I am alone, the feeling goes, and I can't go on. You know I am not religious, but I tell you I have prayed for help to do what you would have me do. But it hasn't come to me. Life is too much for me alone. If I had you to help me – "

"I will help you!"

"Oh, Miriam, if only you would – if I could think that I should have you by me, that you would not leave me, I believe I could succeed, Miriam." He looked at her, and took her hand and grasped it hard. "I know I am a wreck compared to what I was, that I am weak, and poor, and helpless. You know how I am handicapped. But I feel that with you – if you would take me – life would all be different. I could work for you. With you I should feel safe, without you I am doomed. Will you take pity on me? – will you marry me, Miriam?"

She looked at him and smiled so sadly.

"I will help you, Gerald. I will stay beside you – always. Your life shall be my life – but not because I pity you, Gerald – because I love you!"

PART II

CHAPTER I.

5A, ROSARY MANSIONS

The neighbourhood of West Kensington is nothing if not genteel. It is, moreover, by no means a costly area, and is thus in every way calculated to recommend itself to those about to marry on an income somewhat sharply defined. And the income of Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Arkel was somewhat sharply defined. They accordingly looked around West Kensington, and succeeded in finding, on the fifth floor of a palatial red-brick erection, a flat to suit their requirements at the very moderate rental of fifty pounds a year. This they took on a three years' agreement, and proceeded to embellish with a sufficiency of furniture and upholstery, which if not valuable, was in eminently good taste. But their good fortune did not stop here – it extended even to the securing of a "cook-general," a model of her kind, who not only spared the china to an extent almost uncanny, but did not object to "do" the dining-room, and asked for no more than three nights out a week. Thus blessed, and with a gross income of three hundred pounds per annum, Mr. and Mrs. Arkel commenced their married life for all the world as content as if their address had been Grosvenor Square.

For two years Fortune had continued to smile on them in an unobtrusive yet perfectly satisfactory manner, and they were now celebrating the second anniversary of their wedding-day by witnessing the performance of a certain masterpiece of farcical comedy from the centre of the dress-circle of the Avenue Theatre. To those who may think such an extravagance unjustifiable in the circumstances, let it be said at once that the tickets had not been paid for, but were a present from the hands of the author of the piece himself, who was for the time being finding a Klondyke in the, to him, wholly inexplicable mania of the London public for the child of his brain. For the rest the evening's expenditure was strictly limited to a sixpenny bill of the play, and two second-class return tickets by the Metropolitan Railway.

The play over, Mr. and Mrs. Arkel returned home to a cold supper, at peace with themselves and all the world. With the temperature at something under forty they considered themselves justified in lighting the fire. But this was easier said than done, for the West Kensington chimneys, excellent as they may seem to the naked eye, are at times disconcerting in their refractoriness, and on this especial evening this especial chimney chose to be unusually so. At last, by the aid of his morning paper – carefully brought home in the pocket of his tail-coat – and a rather alarming expenditure of faggots, Gerald contrived to induce something approaching a cheerful blaze. That done, he got into the arm-chair, and prepared to enjoy his final pipe.

The excursion to the theatre had been so "out of the usual," so wholly commemorative in character, that it was natural that, after expression of appreciation or otherwise of their friend's production, they should fall into a gentle retrospect.

"It was a lucky day, Miriam, old girl, when I dropped in on you at the Pitt Hotel," said Gerald. "If you hadn't consented then to become my domestic angel, I suppose I should have been dead by this time, or in a lunatic asylum, or worse!"

"Gerald, don't. I won't have you talk like that. You have worked hard, and I am proud of you. Lots of men have done for less without half your weaknesses."

"Well, there's no denying it is jolly rough on any man to have to give up a life like mine, and go and grub in a beastly office."

"I say you have done more than well, dear. But don't call the office 'beastly,' Gerald. They have done everything to show their appreciation of you. Remember, you started with three pounds a week, and they are now giving you six. I often think it was very good of the Major to get you so good a start."

"I owe nothing to the Major," returned Gerald hotly. "What he did, he did as a salve to his own conscience, that was all. It's no use, Miriam, I can't forget that it was through him I lost everything – not that I regret the exchange so far as Hilda is concerned. You are worth a hundred of her any day. You know, dear, I don't regret that. Still, I can't help feeling sore when I think that Dundas got everything and I nothing. I can see now that Hilda was no loss. She showed her hand pretty plainly. I believe she'd have married Beelzebub himself for money. Anyhow, directly she knew I was out of it, she made very short work of me."

"But, dear, you told me yourself that her father made her give you up!"

"I don't fancy she required so much 'making.' But don't let's talk about her now. Do you know, Miriam, I used to think Dundas was rather sweet on you."

Miriam shook her head and laughed.

"Nonsense, dear. He liked to talk to me, nothing more. Besides, if he had been ever so in love with me, I wouldn't have married him. I'm afraid I had too soft a spot for someone else!"

The young man chuckled inwardly at this allusion to her preference for himself. He was as vain as ever. But to Miriam's mind there came back the recollection of a certain day at the Pitt Hotel – it was strange how indissolubly connected was that hotel with the greater issues of her life – when Major Dundas had come to her and asked her to be his wife, only to be told that she was already engaged to his cousin. She recalled, too, his great generosity – so ill-appreciated, she was forced to confess, by the recipient of it – in straightway using every endeavour to procure for his more successful rival a berth in a shipping-office where he had some influence. He had even gone so far as to offer her an income, which of course she had refused. And he had promised always to be her friend. After that she had seen him no more. He had drifted back to Lesser Thorpe, there to do his work as lord of the manor, and twelve months later had capitulated to Hilda. She could see it all in her mind's eye – the good-natured, simple, easy-going soldier, and the pretty, covetous, artful girl, backed by her poverty-stricken, designing parents, and, as a result, Miss Hilda Marsh the lady of the manor of Lesser Thorpe.

All this passed rapidly through her mind now as she sat gazing into the fire. Her two years of married life had not engendered in her any admiration for her husband's character. She was obliged to confess that it was not to be admired. By dint of much exertion of her superior moral force over him she had so far succeeded as to keep in check his innate tendencies to lapse. She had kept him to his work, and it was only fair to him to say he had worked. He had even proved to have more capacity than she had ever credited him with. Strong as her feeling was for him, there had been times when she had come very near being ashamed of it. She could not account for it. She only knew that it existed – had existed from the moment when they first had met. It was a thing almost apart from her life, and yet wholly of it. There were times when she tried to persuade herself that it was pity she had felt for him – that pity which is so akin to love. But in her heart of hearts she knew better – she knew that it was rather that fierce passion which no woman can control; which exists of itself and for itself, and is outside and utterly unaffected by any admiration or lack of it, and which comes but once in the lifetime of any man or woman. This was the feeling inspired in her by Gerald Arkel, and she had not been proof against it. It had whirled her off her feet, and she was now irrevocably committed to it. She had married a child – a weak, vain, selfish, pleasure-loving child, with instincts tending all towards destruction. The tinkle of a glass aroused her from her reverie. She looked up at him.

"Gerald dear, don't take any more whiskey; you have had two glasses already."

"Luck in odd numbers," he replied gaily, "we don't celebrate our anniversary more than once a year. Just one more, Miriam, and then to bed."

She looked at him in reproof.

"It's the thin end of the wedge, Gerald – you know your weakness!"

He turned on her angrily.

"I ought to; you're always telling me of it."

"Gerald, that is unjust. You know I speak only for your good."

"People invariably do when they have anything disagreeable to say. Hang it, Miriam, you might leave me alone for once in a way. I am awfully sick of your everlasting preaching. Goodness knows I've given up quite enough for you as it is. I never get the taste of a glass of wine; a drop of whiskey at night's my only comfort."

"A comfort which means ruin to you, Gerald – you know it."

"Jove! how like a woman that is – always ready to picture the worst of horrors. Why, I'd like you to see some fellows! What they drink in a night would keep me going a twelvemonth."

"Gerald, how can you speak so foolishly when you know how it is with you! Didn't you beg of me – "

"Oh, damn it, do leave me alone. Preach, preach, preach, from morning till night. After all you're not such a purified saint as all that yourself. You forget you sang in the chorus at a music-hall once!"

"I did, and you knew it, and why I had to do it, before you married me."

"Perhaps I did; but there are some things you took precious good care I should not know – Jabez, for instance! Who is he?"

She did not flinch, although she was hurt to the quick. She looked into the fire, with her head resting on her hand.

"Jabez is a man with whom you can have nothing to do. He passed out of my life two years ago. I have never seen him since."

"He was evidently very much in it once. Oh, Julia told me all about your little goings on – how you met him on the quiet, and gave him money, and worse even than that!"

"Gerald, what do you mean?"

"Why, what I say. According to Mrs. Darrow, you primed this chap to steal Uncle Barton's will."

"And you believe that?"

"I – I don't know. I can't say. At all events he threatened to kill my uncle, and the old man was killed the very next night!"

"He was not killed by Jabez."