Neighbours on the Green; My Faithful Johnny

‘No; this is the dining-room. I thought it would be quieter and pleasanter for you, in case any one should call.’

‘Ah! yes, that was very considerate for my feelings,’ she said, ‘but I am used to it, I am always thrust into a corner now. It did not use to be so before that man came and ruined me. Whereabouts is it that he lives?’

‘You can see the house from the window,’ said I.

Then she went to the window and looked out. She shook her clenched fist at the cottage; her face grew dark like a sky covered by a thunder-cloud. She came back and seated herself in front of me, wrapping herself close in my shawl.

‘When I married him I was as beautiful as the day. That was what they all said,’ she began. ‘I was nineteen, and the artists used to go on their knees to me to sit to them. I might have married anybody. I don’t know why it was that I took him, I must have been mad; twenty years older than me at the least, and nothing to recommend him. Of course he was rich. Ah! and I was so young, and thought money could buy everything, and that it would last for ever. We had a house in town and a house in the country, and he gave me a lovely phaeton for the park, and we had a carriage and pair. It was very nice at first. He was always a curious man, never satisfied, but we did very well at first. He was not a man to make a woman happy, but still I got on well enough till he sent me away.’

‘He sent you away!’

‘Yes. Oh! that was nothing; that got to be quite common. When he thought I was enjoying myself, all at once he would say, “Pack up your things; we shall go to the country to-morrow;” always when I was enjoying myself.’

‘But if he went with you, that was not sending you away.’

‘Then it was taking me away—which is much the same—from all I cared for; and he did not always go with me. The last two times I was sent by myself as if I had been a prisoner. And then, at last, after years and years of oppression, he turned me out of the house,’ she said—‘turned me out! He dared to do it. Oh! only think how I hated him. He said every insult to me a man could say, and he turned me out of his house, and bade me never come back. One day I was there the mistress of all, with everything heart could desire, and the next day I was turned out, without a penny, without a home, still so pretty as I was, and at my age!’

‘Oh! that was terrible,’ I cried, moved more by her rising passion than by her words—‘that was dreadful. How could he do it? But you went to your friends—?’

‘I had no friends. My people were all dead, and I did not know much about them when they were living. He separated me from everybody, and he told lies of me—lies right and left. He had made up his mind to destroy me,’ she cried, bursting into sobs. ‘Oh! what a devil he is! Everything I could desire one day, and the next turned out!’

Looking at her where she sat, something came into my throat which choked me and kept me from speaking: and yet I felt that I must make an effort.

‘Without any—cause?’ I faltered with a mixture of confusion and pain.

‘Cause?’

‘I mean, did not he allege something—say something? He must have given some—excuse—for himself.’

She looked at me very composedly, not angry, as I had feared.

‘Cause? excuse?’ she repeated. ‘Of course he said it was my fault.’

She kept her eyes on me when she said this; no guilty colour was on her face, no flush even of shame at the thought of having been slandered. She was a great deal calmer than I was; indeed I was not calm at all, but disturbed beyond the power of expression, not knowing what to think.

‘He is very clever,’ she went on. ‘I am clever myself, in a kind of a way, but not a match for him. Men have education, you see. They are trained what to do; but I was so handsome that nobody thought I required any training. If I had been as clever as he is, ah! he would not have found it so easy. He drove me into a trap, and then he shut me down fast. That is four years ago. Fancy, four years without anything, wandering about, none of the comforts I was used to! I wonder how I gave in at the time: it was because he had broken my spirit. But I am different now; I have made up my mind, until he behaves to me as he ought, I will give him no peace, no grace!’

‘But you must not be revengeful,’ I said, knowing less and less what to say. ‘And if you were not happy together before, I am afraid you would not be so now.’

She did not make any answer; a vague sort of smile flitted over her face, then she gave a little shiver as of cold, and wrapped the shawl closer. ‘A shawl suits me,’ she said, ‘especially since I am so thin. Do you think a woman loses as much as they say by being thin? It is my heart-disease. When it comes on it is very bad, though afterwards I feel just as well as usual. But it must tell on one’s looks. Could you tell that I was thin by my face?’

‘No,’ I said, and I did not add, though it was on my lips, ‘O woman, one could not tell by your face that you were not an angel or a queen. And what are you? What are you?’ Alas! she was not an angel, I feared.

A little while longer she sat musing in silence. How little she had told me after all. How much more she must know in that world within herself to which she had now retired. At length she turned to me, her face lighted up with the most radiant smile. ‘Shall I be a great trouble to you?’ she asked. ‘Am I taking up anybody’s room?’

She spoke as a favourite friend might speak who had arrived suddenly, and did not quite know what your arrangements were, though she was confident nothing could make her coming a burden to you. She took away my breath.

‘N—no,’ I said; and then I took courage and added: ‘But your friends will be expecting you—the people where you live: and you are better now–’

I could not, had my life depended on it, have said more.

‘Oh, they will not mind much,’ she said. ‘I don’t live anywhere in particular. When one thinks that one’s own husband, the man who is bound to support one, has a home, and is close at hand, how do you think one can stay in a miserable lodging! But he does not care: he will sit there doing his horrible problems, and what is it to him if I were to die at his door! He would be glad. Yes, he would be glad. He would have me carted away as rubbish. He cares for nothing but his books and his experiments. I have sat at his door a whole night begging him to take me in, begging out of the cold and the snow, and his light has burnt steady, and he has gone on with his work, and then he has gone to bed and taken no notice. Oh, my God! I should have let him in had he been a cat or a dog.’

‘Oh, surely, surely you must be mistaken,’ I cried.

‘I am not mistaken. I heard the window open; he looked down at me, and then he went away. I know he knew me: and so he did last night. He knew I was there; and he had a fire lighted in the room where he works. So he knew it was cold, too; and I his wife, his lawful wedded wife, sitting out in the chill. Some time or other he thinks it will be too much for me, and I shall die, and he will be free.’

‘It is too dreadful to think of,’ said I. ‘I don’t think he could have known that you were there.’

She smiled without making any further reply. She held out her thin hands to the fire with a little nervous shiver. They would have been beautiful hands had they not been so thin, almost transparent. She wore but one ring, her wedding-ring; and that was so wide that it was secured to her finger with a silk thread. I suppose she perceived that I looked at it. She held it up to me with a smile.

‘See,’ she said, ‘how worn it is. But I have never put it off my finger; never gone by another name, or done anything to forfeit my rights. Whatever he may say against me, he cannot say that.’

At this moment she espied a chair in a corner which looked more comfortable than the one she was seated in, and rose and wheeled it to the fire. She said no ‘By’r leave’ to me, but did it as if she had been at home; there was something so natural and simple in this that I did not know how to object to it, but yet—I have had many a troublesome responsibility thrown upon me by strangers, but I was never so embarrassed or perplexed in my life. She drew the easy chair to the fire, she found a footstool and put her feet on it, basking in the warmth. She had my velvet slippers on her feet, my Indian shawl round her shoulders, and here she was settled and comfortable—for how long? I dared not even guess. A sick sort of consciousness came upon me that she had established herself and meant to stay.

After a while, during which I sat and watched, sitting bolt upright on my chair and gazing with a consternation and bewilderment which I cannot express upon her graceful attitude as she reclined back, wooing every kind of comfort, she suddenly drew her chair a little nearer to me and put her hand upon my knee.

‘Look here,’ she said hurriedly, ‘you must see him for me. If any one could move him to do his duty it would be you. You must see him, and tell him I am—willing to go back. Perhaps he may not listen to you at first, but if you keep your temper and persevere–’

‘I?’ said I, dismayed.

‘Yes, indeed, who else? only you could do it. And if you are patient with him and keep your temper—the great thing with him is to keep your temper—I never could do it, but you could. It would not be difficult to you. You have not got that sort of a nature, one can see it in your face.’

‘But you mistake me, I—I could not take it upon myself,’ I gasped.

‘Not when I ask you? You might feel you were not equal to it, I allow. But when I ask you? Oh, yes, you can do it. It is not so very hard, only to keep your temper, and to take no denial—no denial! Make him say he will not be so unkind any more. Oh, how tired it makes me even to think of it!’ she cried, suddenly putting up her hands to her face. ‘Please don’t ask me any more, but do it—do it! I know you can.’

And then she sat and rocked herself gently with her hands clasped over her face. This explanation had been too much for her, and somehow I felt that I was blamable, that it was my fault. I sat by her in a kind of dream, wondering what had happened to me. Was I under a spell? I did not seem able to move a step or raise a hand to throw off this burden from me. And the curious thing was that she never thanked me, never expressed, nor apparently felt, any sort of gratitude to me, but simply signified her will, and took my acquiescence as a right.

CHAPTER VII

I cannot tell how I got through that day: she got through it very comfortably, I think. In the evening she asked me to go into the pretty room she had been in last night.

‘I am so fond of what is pretty,’ she said; ‘I like everything that is nice and pleasant. I never would sit in any but the best rooms in the house if I had a house like this.’

‘But—someone might come in,’ I said. ‘To be sure the time for callers is over, but still my neighbours are very intimate with me, and some one might come in.’

‘Well?’ she said, looking up in my face. ‘If they do, I don’t mind. You may have objections perhaps, but I have none. I don’t mind.’

‘Oh! if you don’t mind,’ I said in my consternation; and I took up the cushion she had placed in her chair, and carried it humbly for her, while she made her way to the drawing-room.

I think I was scarcely in possession of my senses. I was dazed. The whole position was so extraordinary. I was ashamed to think of any one coming in and finding her there: not because I was ashamed of her, but for my own sake. What was I to say to anybody? How was I to explain myself? I had taken her in without knowing anything of her, and she had taken possession of my house. Fortunately, no one came that night. She placed herself on the sofa, where she had lain in her wretchedness the night before. She stretched herself out upon it, lying back with an air of absolute enjoyment. She had got a book—a novel—which she was reading, not taking very much notice of me; but now and then she would pause to say a word. I think had any one seen us seated together that evening, without knowing anything of the circumstances, he would have decided that she was the lady of the house and I her humble and rather stupid companion. But I was more than rather stupid—I felt like a fool; and that in nothing more than this—that I could not for my life tell what to do.

‘Nobody is coming to-night, I suppose?’ she said at last, putting down her book.

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘I thought from what you said you had always some one coming; and I like seeing people; I should like of all things to see some of the people here. Do you think if they saw me it would make any difference–? Oh, I can’t tell you exactly what I mean. I mean—but it is so very unpleasant to be always obliged to explain;’ and then she yawned: and then she said: ‘I am so tired; I think I shall go to bed. Hush! was not that some one at the door?’