A Mummer’s Wife by George Moore (page 7)

where you are rehearsing Montgomery’s opera. You cannot deny it,’ she cried. ‘Mrs. Forest is her name,’ and reading in his face certain signs of his culpability her anger increased, her teeth were set and her eyes glared.

Dick feared she was going mad, and with an instinctive movement he put out his arms to restrain her.

‘Don’t touch me! don’t touch me!’ she screamed, and struck at him with clenched fists, and then feeling that her blows were but puny she went for him like a bird of prey, all her fingers distended.

‘Take that, and that, and that, you beast! Oh, you beast! you beast! you beast!’

Her shrieks rang through the house as she pursued him round the furniture; he retreating like a lumbering bull striving to escape from her claws.

‘How do you like that?’ she cried, as she tore at him with her nails again. ‘That will teach you to go messing about after other women. I’ll settle you before I’ve done with you.’

Chairs were thrown down, the coal-scuttle was upset, and at last, as Dick tried to get out of the room, Kate stumbled against a rosewood cabinet, sending one of the green vases with its glass shade crashing to the ground, summoning the landlady.

Dick spoke about his wife having had a fit.

‘Fit or no fit, I hope you’ll leave my house to-morrow.’

‘Meanwhile,’ Dick answered, ‘will you leave my room?’ and he shut the door in the face of the indignant householder.

Kate, who had now recovered herself a little, poured out a large glass of raw gin, and to her surprise Dick made no attempt to prevent her drinking it.

‘As soon as she drinks herself helpless the better,’ he thought, as he went into the bedroom to attend to his wounds. The scratches she had given him before their marriage were nothing to these. One side of his nose was well-nigh ripped open, and there were two big, deep gashes running right across his face, from the cheek-bone to his ear. It was very lucky, he thought, she hadn’t had his eye out, and it might be as well to go round to the apothecary’s and get some vaseline, some antiseptic treatment, for nails are poisonous, he added, and his eyes going round the room caught sight of his clothes in disorder. ‘Ah! she has been at my clothes,’ and he took up the classical cartoons and his letters and put them away into his pocket, and went into the sitting room, and tried to explain to his wife that he was going out to see if he could get something from the apothecary to heal the wounds she had given him.

Kate did not answer. ‘She’s dead drunk,’ he said, and it seemed to him that he couldn’t do better than to undress her and put her into bed, and when he had done this he lay down upon a sofa hoping that he would wake first, and be able to get out of the house without disturbing her, leaving word with the landlady that he would come back as soon as his rehearsal was over, and make arrangements to leave her house since she didn’t wish them to stay any longer. He fell asleep thinking that he might find his landlady in a different mood, and might persuade her in the morning to allow them to stay on. The vase, of course, should be paid for. There was a kindly look in her pleasant country face when she wasn’t angry; his torn face might win her pity, and not wishing to increase his troubles, she would probably allow them to stay on; if she didn’t he would have to find another lodging that very afternoon, which would be unfortunate, for his engagements were many. As it was he’d have to hasten to keep an appointment which he had made with Mrs. Forest in the National Gallery. ‘She really will have to make some alterations in her second act,’ he said, going to the glass. Kate had clawed him with a vengeance, and he’d have to tell Laura how he came by his torn face; and after some consideration it seemed to him that it would be well to admit that he had received these wounds in a conflict with a wife who was, unfortunately, given to drink. It was on these thoughts he fell asleep, and overslept himself, he feared, but Kate was still asleep, and without awakening her he stole downstairs to visit the landlady in her parlour, but hearing his step she bounced out of the room with a view, no doubt, to repeating the warning she had given him overnight, but the sight of his torn face brought pity into hers, and she said;

‘Oh, Mr. Lennox, I’m so sorry for you.’

A little sympathetic conversation followed; and Dick went off to meet Laura, whom he recognized in the woman who leaned over the railings between the pillars, seemingly attracted by the view across Trafalgar Square. She still wore her green silk dress, the one which he had first seen her in on the pier at Hastings, and the long draggled feather boa.

‘She doesn’t spend money on dress,’ he thought as he lifted his hat with not quite the same ceremonious gesture as usual, for he didn’t wish to exhibit his scars yet.

‘So here you are, Dick, and I waiting for you on the steps of this gallery, glorious with all the imaginations of the heroes.’

‘She hasn’t seen the scratches yet,’ he said to himself, and turned from the light instinctively, preferring that she should make the discovery indoors, rather than out of doors. His wounds would appear less in the gallery than in the open air. ‘Why didn’t she take a little more trouble with her make-up?’ he asked himself, and then reproved himself for describing it as a make-up. ‘She’s not made up,’ he said to himself, ‘she’s painted,’ and he wondered how it was that she could plaster her dark skin so flagrantly with carmine, and put her eyebrows so high up in the forehead. ‘Yet the face,’ he said, ‘is a finely moulded one, and compelling when she forgets her cosmetics,’ and while Dick regretted that she didn’t show more skill with these, he heard her telling him that she would prefer to stop and talk with him in the gallery devoted to the Italian pictures than elsewhere; ‘the sublime conceptions of Raphael raise me above myself.’ And then, as if afraid that her words would seem vainglorious to Dick, she said: ‘You’re always in the same mood, never rising above yourself or sinking below yourself, finding it difficult to understand the pain that those who live mostly in the spiritual plane experience lest they fall into a lower plane. Not that I regard you, Dick, as a lower plane, but your plane is not mine, and that is why you’re so necessary to me, and why, perhaps, I’m so necessary to you, or would be if I’im not. Come, let us sit here in front of the Raphael and talk, since we must, of comic opera. It’s a pity we’re not talking of the _Parcoe_ who have been in my mind all the morning,’ and she began to recite some verses that she had written. But, interrupting herself suddenly, she cried: ‘Dick, who has been scratching you? How did your face get torn like that–who’s been scratching you?’ and Dick answered:

‘My wife.’

‘Your wife? But you never told me that you were married.’

‘If I’d told you I was married I would have had to tell you that my wife is a drunkard and is rapidly drinking herself to death, a thing that no man likes to speak about.’

‘My poor friend, I didn’t mean to reprove you. How did all this come about?’

It wouldn’t do to admit that Kate had discovered Laura’s letters and poems in his pockets, and so he told the story of a former experience with his wife, and had barely finished it when Laura begged of him to tell her how he had met his wife. And when he had told her the story, to which she listened solemnly, she answered, and there was the same gravity in her voice as in her face: ‘All this comes, my dear Dick, of lewdness.’

‘But, Laura, I was faithful to my wife.’

‘But she was the wife of another man,’ Laura replied, ‘not that that is an insuperable barrier, but you brought, I fear, lewdness into your conjugal life, and lewdness is fatal to happiness whether it be indulged within or outside the bonds of wedlock. I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘that you had to leave Yarmouth before my lecture on the chastity of the marriage state.’

‘It wouldn’t have mattered,’ Dick replied, ‘for my wife had taken to drink long before we met at Hastings.’ An answer that darkened Laura’s face despite all the paint she wore, and encouraged Dick to ask her if she had never felt the thorns of passion prick her when she ran away from her convent school.

She seemed uncertain what answer she should return, but only for a moment; and recovering herself quickly she maintained that it wasn’t passion, which is but another name for lewdness, but imagination that had prompted this elopement, and that if she had gone to Bulgaria it was to seek there a nobler life than the one she had left behind.

‘It was the immortal that drew me,’ she said.

‘Even so,’ Dick answered, ‘the mortal seems necessary for the immortal, and to provide him with a habitation a woman must give herself to a man.’

‘That,’ she replied, ‘is one of the penalties entailed by our first parents upon women, but one that is entailed upon a condition that you have not respected, but which I have striven always to respect myself. It would be impossible for me to give myself to a man unless I thought I was going to bear him a child.’

It was on Dick’s lips to remind Laura that a woman can always think she is going to bear a child, but he refrained, it seeming to him that his purpose would be better served by allowing Laura to justify herself as she pleased, and he waited for an opportunity to speak to her about the alteration which he deemed altogether necessary in the second act. But Laura was away on her favourite theme, and in the end he had recourse to his watch.

‘My dear Laura, I’m due at rehearsal in ten minutes from now.’

‘Well, let’s go,’ she cried.

‘But, my dear, this is what I’ve come to tell you. The second act,’–and he explained the difficulty which would have to be removed. ‘Now, like a dear, good girl, will you go home and do this and bring it down to the theatre to-morrow morning at eleven so that we may have an opportunity of going through it together before rehearsal?’

In the meantime, Kate lay on her bed, helpless as ever, just as Dick had left her; and it was not until he had given his preliminary instructions to the ballet-girls, and Montgomery had struck the first notes of his opening chorus, that a ray of consciousness pierced through the heavy, drunken stupor that pressed upon her brain. With vague movements of hands, she endeavoured to fasten the front of her dress, and with a groan rolled herself out of the light; but her efforts to fall back into insensibility were unavailing, and like the dawn that slips and swells through the veils of night, a pale waste of consciousness forced itself upon her. First came the curtains of the bed, then the bare blankness of the wall, and then the great throbbing pain that lay like a lump of lead just above her forehead. Her mouth was clammy as if it were filled with glue, her limbs weak as if they had been beaten to a pulp by violent blows. She was all pain, but, worse still, a black horror of her life crushed and terrified her, until she buried her face in the pillow and wept and moaned for mercy. But to remain in bed was impossible. The pallor of the place was intolerable, and sliding her legs over the side she stood, scarcely able to keep her feet. The room swam as if in a mist; she held her head with clasped hands; the top of it seemed to be lifting off, and it was with much difficulty that she staggered as far as the chest of drawers, where she remained for some minutes trying to recover herself, thinking of what had happened overnight. She had been drunk, she knew that, but where was Dick? Where had he gone? What had she said to him? All mental effort was agony; but she had to think, and straining at the threads of memory, she strove to follow one to the end. But it was no use, it soon became hopelessly entangled, and with a low cry she moaned, ‘Oh, my poor head! my poor head! I cannot, cannot remember.’ But the question: what has become of Dick? still continued to torture her, till, raising her face suddenly from her arm, she hitched up her falling skirts, and seeing at that moment the bottle on the table, she went into the sitting-room and poured herself out a little, which she mixed with water.

‘Just a drop,’ she murmured to herself, ‘to pull me together. It was his fault; until he put me in a passion I was all right.’

Spreading and definite thoughts began to emerge, and for a long time she sat moodily thinking over her wrongs, and as her thoughts wavered they grew softer and more argumentative. She considered the question from all sides, and, reasoning with herself, was disposed to conclude that it was not all her fault. If she did drink, it was jealousy that drove her to it. Why wasn’t he faithful to her who had given up everything for him? Why did he want to be always running after a lot of other women? Where was he now, she’d like to know? As this question appeared in the lens of her thought, she raised her head, and although boozed the memory of Mrs. Forest’s letters filled her mind.

‘Oh yes, that’s where he’s gone to, is it?’ she murmured to herself. ‘So he’s down with his poetess at the Opera Comique, rehearsing Montgomery’s opera.’

A determination to follow him slowly formed itself in her mind, and she managed to map out the course that she would have to pursue. It seemed to her that she was beset with difficulties. To begin with, she did not know where the theatre was, and she could not conceal from herself the fact that she was scarcely in a fit state to take a long walk through the London streets. The spirit drunk on an empty stomach had gone to her head; she reeled a little when she walked; and her own incapacity to act maddened her. Oh, good heavens! how her head was splitting! What would she not give to be all right just for a couple of hours, just long enough to go and tell that beast of a husband of hers what a pig he was, and let the whole theatre know how he was treating his wife. It was he who drove her to drink. Yes, she would go and do this. It was true her head seemed as if it were going to roll off her shoulders, but a good sponging would do it good, and then a bottle or two of soda would put her quite straight–so straight that nobody would know she had touched a drop.

It took Kate about half an hour to drench herself in a basin, and regardless of her dress, she let her hair lie dripping on her shoulders. The landlady brought her up the soda-water, and seeing what a state her lodger was in, she placed it on the table without a word, without even referring to the notice to quit she had given overnight; and steadying her voice as best she could, Kate asked her to call a cab.

‘Hansom, or four-wheeler?’

‘Fo-four wheel-er–if you please.’

‘Yes, that’ll suit you best,’ said the woman, as she went downstairs. ‘You’d perhaps fall out of a hansom. If I were your husband I’d break every bone in your body.’

But Kate was now much soberer, and weak and sick she leaned back upon the hard cushions of the clattering cab. Her mouth was full of water, and the shifting angles of the streets produced on her an effect similar to sea-sickness. London rang in her ears; she could hear a piano tinkling; she saw Dick directing the movements of a line of girls. Then her dream was brought to an end by a gulp. Oh! the fearful nausea; and she did not feel better until, flooding her dress and ruining the red velvet seat, all she had drunk came up. But the vomit brought her great relief, and had it not been for a little dizziness and weakness, she would have felt quite right when she arrived at the stage-door. In a terrible state of dirt and untidiness she was surely, but she noticed nothing, her mind being now fully occupied in thinking what she should say, first to the stage-door-keeper, and then to her husband.

At the corner of Wych Street she dismissed the cab, and this done she did not seem to have courage enough for anything. She felt as if she would like to sit down on a doorstep and cry. The menacing threats, the bitter upbraidings she had intended, all slipped from her like dreams, and she felt utterly wretched.

At that moment, in her little walk up the pavement she found herself opposite a public-house. Something whispered in her ear that after her sickness one little nip of brandy was necessary, and would put her straight in a moment. She hesitated, but someone pushed her from behind and she went in. A four of brandy freshened her up wonderfully, enabling her to think of what she had come to do, and to remember how badly she was being treated. A second drink put light into her eyes and wickedness into her head, and she felt she could, and would, face the devil. ‘I’ll give it to him; I’ll teach him that I’m not to be trodden on,’ she said to herself as she strutted manfully towards the stage-door, walking on her heels so as to avoid any unsteadiness of gait.

The man in the little box was old and feeble. He said he would send her name by the first person going down; but Kate was not in a mood to brook delays, and, profiting by his inability to stop her, she banged through the swinging door and commenced the descent of a long flight of steps. Below her was the stage, and between the wings she could see the girls arranged in a semicircle. Dick, with a big staff in hand, stood in front of the footlights directing the movements of a procession which was being formed; the piano tinkled merrily on the O.P. side.

‘Mr. Chappel, will you be good enough to play the “Just put this in your pocket” chorus over again?’ cried Dick, stamping his staff heavily upon the boards.

‘Now then, girls, I hear a good deal too much talking going on at the back there. I dare say it’s very amusing; but if you’d try to combine business with pleasure—Now, who did I put in section one?’

Kate hesitated a moment, arrested by the tones of his voice, and she could not avoid thinking of the time when she used to play Clairette; besides, ail the well-known faces were there. Our lives move as in circles; no matter what strange vicissitudes we pass through, we generally find ourselves gliding once more into the well-known grooves, and Dick, in forming the present company, had naturally fallen back upon the old hands, who had travelled with him in the country. They were nearly all there. Mortimer, with his ringlets and his long nasal drawl, stood, as usual, in the wings, making ill-natured remarks. Dubois strutted as before, and tilting his bishop’s hat, explained that he would take no further engagement as a singer; if people would not let him act they would have to do without him. With her dyed hair tucked neatly away under her bonnet Miss Leslie smiled as agreeably as ever. Beaumont alone seemed to be missing, and Montgomery, in all the importance of a going-to-be-produced author, strode along up and down the stage, apparently busied in thought, the tails of a Newmarket coat still flapping about his thin legs; and when he appeared in profile against the scenery he looked, as he always had done, like the flitting shadow thrown by an enormous magic-lantern.

Kate sullenly watched them, gripping the rail of the staircase tightly. The momentary softening of heart, occasioned by the remembrance of old times, died away in the bitterness of the thought that she who had counted for so much was now pushed into a corner to live forgotten or disdained. Why was she not rehearsing there with them? she asked herself. At once the answer came. Because your husband hates you–because he wants to make love to another woman. Then, like one crazed, she clattered down the iron spiral staircase to the stage. She did not even hear Mortimer and Dubois cry out as she pushed past, ‘There’s Mrs. Lennox!’

In the middle of the stage, however, she looked round, discountenanced by the silence and the crowd, and, hoping to calm her, Dick advised her, in whispers, to go upstairs to his room. But this was the signal for her to break forth.

‘Go up to your room?’ she screamed. ‘Never, never! Do you suppose it is to talk to you that I came here? No, I despise you too much. I hate you, and I want every one here to know how you treat me.’

With a dull stare she examined the circle of girls who stood whispering in groups, as if she were going to address one in particular, and several drew back, frightened. Dick attempted to say something, but it seemed that the very sound of his voice was enough.

‘Go away, go away!’ she exclaimed at the top of her voice. ‘Go away; don’t touch me! Go to that woman of yours–Mrs. Forest–go to her, and be damned, you beast! You know she’s paying for everything here. You know that you are—-‘

‘For goodness’ sake remember what you’re saying,’ said Dick, interrupting, and trembling as if for his life. He cast an anxious glance around to see if the lady in question was within hearing. Fortunately she was not on the stage.

The chorus crowded timidly forward looking like a school in their walking-dresses. The carpenters had ceased to hammer, and were peeping down from the flies; Kate stood balancing herself and staring blindly at those who surrounded her. Leslie and Montgomery, in the position of old friends, were endeavouring to soothe her, whilst Mortimer and Dubois argued passionately as to when they had seen her drunk for the first time. The first insisted that when she had joined them at Hanley she was a bit inebriated; the latter declared that it had begun with the champagne on her wedding day.

‘Don’t you remember, Dick was married with a scratched face?’

‘To judge from present appearances,’ said the comedian, forcing his words slowly through his nose, ‘he’s likely to die with one.’ At this sally three supers retired into the wings holding their sides, and Dubois, furious at being outdone in a joke, walked away in high dudgeon, calling Mortimer an unfeeling brute.

In the meantime the drunken row was waxing more furious every moment. Struggling frantically with her friends, Kate called attention to the sticking-plaster on Dick’s face, and declared that she would do for him.

‘You see what I gave him last night, and he deserved it. Oh! the beast! And I’ll give him more; and if you knew all you wouldn’t blame me. It was he who seduced me, who got me to run away from home, and he deserts me for other women. But he shan’t, he shan’t, he shan’t; I’ll kill him first; yes, I will, and nobody shall stop me.’

Dick listened quite broken with shame for himself and for her; as an excuse for the absence of his wife from the theatre he had told Mortimer and Hayes that London did not agree with her, and that she had to spend most of her time at the seaside. All had condoled with him, and when they were searching London for a second lady, all had agreed that Mrs. Lennox was just the person they wanted for the part. What a pity, they said, she was not in town. At the present moment Dick wished her the other side of Jordan. For all he knew, she might remain screaming at him the whole day, and if Mrs. Forest came back–well, he didn’t know what would happen; the whole game would then be up the spout. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to tell Montgomery of the danger his piece was in; he and Kate had always been friends; she might listen to him.

Such were Dick’s reflections as he stood bashfully trying to avoid the eyes of his ballet-girls. For the life of him he didn’t know which way to look. In front of him was a wall of people, whereon certain faces detached themselves. He saw Dubois’ mumming mug widening with delight until the grin formed a semi-circle round the Jew nose. Mortimer looked on with the mock earnestness of a tortured saint in a stained-glass window. Pity was written on all the girls’ faces; all were sorry for Dick, especially a tall woman who forgot herself so completely that she threw her arms about a super and sobbed on his shoulder.

But Kate still continued to advance, although held by Montgomery and Miss Leslie. The long black hair hung in disordered masses; her brown eyes were shot with golden lights; the green tints in her face became, in her excessive pallor, dirty and abominable in colour, and she seemed more like a demon than a woman as her creams echoed through the empty theatre.

‘By Jove! we ought to put up _Jane Eyre_,’ said Mortimer. ‘If she were to play the mad woman like that, we’d be sure to draw full houses.’

‘I believe you,’ said Dubois; but at that moment he was interrupted by a violent scream, and suddenly disengaging herself from those who held her, Kate rushed at Dick. With one hand she grappled him by the throat, and before anyone could interfere she succeeded in nearly tearing the shirt from his back.

When at length they were separated, she stood staring and panting, every fibre of her being strained with passion; but she did not again burst forth until someone, in a foolish attempt to pacify her, ventured to side with her in her denunciation of her husband.

‘How should such as you dare to say a word against him! I will not hear him abused! No, I will riot; I say he’s a good man. Yes, yes! He is a good man, the best man that ever lived!’ she exclaimed, stamping her foot on the boards, ‘the best man that ever lived! I will not hear a word against him! No, I will not! He’s my husband; he married me! Yes he did; I can show my certificate, and that’s more than any one of you can.

I know you, a damned lot of hussies! I know you; I was one of you myself. You think I wasn’t. Well, I can prove it. You go and ask Montgomery if I didn’t play Serpolette all through the country, and Clairette too. I should like to see any of you do that, with the exception of Lucy, who was always a good friend to me; but the rest of you I despise as the dirt under my feet; so do you think that I would permit you–that I came here to listen to my husband being abused, and by such as you! If he has his faults he’s accountable to none but me.’

Here she had to pause for lack of breath; and Dick, who had been pursuing his shirt-stud, which had rolled into the foot-lights, now drew himself up, and in his stage-commanding voice declared the rehearsal to be over. A few of the girls lingered, but they were beckoned away by the others, who saw that the present time was not suitable for the discussion of boots, tights, and dressing-rooms. There was no one left but Leslie, Montgomery, Dick, Kate, and Harding, who, twisting his moustache, watched and listened apparently with the greatest interest.

‘Oh, you’ve no idea what a nice woman she used to be, and is, were it not for that cursed drink,’ said Montgomery, with the tears running down his nose. ‘You remember her, Leslie, don’t you? Isn’t what I say true? I never liked a woman so much in my life.’

‘You were a friend of hers, then?’ said Harding.

‘I should think I was.’

‘Then you never were–Yes, yes, I understand. A little friendship flavoured with love. Yes, yes. Wears better, perhaps, than the genuine article. What do you think, Leslie?’

‘Not bad,’ said the prima donna, ‘for people with poor appetites. A kind of diet suitable for Lent, I should think.’

‘Ah! a title for a short story, or better still for an operetta. What do you think, Montgomery? Shall I do you a book entitled _Lovers in Lent_, or _A Lover’s Lent_? and Leslie will–‘

‘No, I won’t. None of your forty days for me.’

‘I can’t understand how you people can go on talking nonsense with a scene so terrible passing under your eyes,’ cried the musician, as he pointed to Kate, who was calling after Dick as she staggered in pursuit of him up the stairs towards the stage-door.

‘Well, what do you want me to do?’

‘She’ll disgrace him in the street.’

‘I can’t help that. I never interfere in a love affair; and this is evidently the great passion of a life.’

Montgomery cast an indignant glance at the novelist and rushed after his friends; but when he arrived at the stage-door he saw the uselessness of his interference.

It was in the narrow street; the heat sweltered between the old houses that leaned and lolled upon the huge black traversing beams like aged women on crutches; and Kate raved against Dick in language that was fearful to hear amid the stage carpenters, the chorus-girls, the idlers that a theatre collects standing with one foot in the gutter, where vegetable refuse of all kinds rotted. Her beautiful black hair was now hanging over her shoulders like a mane; someone had trodden on her dress and nearly torn it from her waist, and, in avid curiosity, women with dyed hair peeped out of a suspicious-looking tobacco shop. Over the way, stuck under an overhanging window, was an orange-stall; the proprietress stood watching, whilst a crowd of vermin-like children ran forward, delighted at the prospect of seeing a woman beaten. Close by, in shirt-sleeves, the pot-boy flung open the public-house door, partly for the purpose of attracting custom, half with the intention of letting a little air into the bar-room.

‘Oh, Kate! I beg of you not to go in there,’ said Dick; ‘you’ve had enough; do come home!’

‘Come home!’ she shrieked, ‘and with you, you beast! It was you who seduced me, who got me away from my husband.’

This occasioned a good deal of amusement in the crowd, and several voices asked for information.

‘And how did he manage to do that, marm?’ said one.

‘With a bottle of gin. What do you think?’ cried another.

There were moments when Dick longed for the earth to open; but he nevertheless continued to try to prevent Kate from entering the public-house.

‘I will drink! I will drink! I will drink! And not because I like it, but to spite you, because I hate you.’

When she came out she appeared to be a little quieted, and Dick tried very hard to persuade her to get into a cab and drive home. But the very sound of his voice, the very sight of him, seemed to excite her, and in a few moments she broke forth into the usual harangue. Several times the temptation to run away became almost irresistible, but with a noble effort of will he forced himself to remain with her. Hoping to avoid some part of the ridicule that was being so liberally showered upon him, he besought of her to keep up Drury Lane and not descend into the Strand.

‘You don’t want to be seen with me; I know, you’d prefer to walk there with Mrs. Forest. You think I shall disgrace you. Well, come along, then.

‘”Look at me here! look at me there! Criticize me everywhere!
I am so sweet from head to feet,
And most perfect and complete.”‘

‘That’s right, old woman, give us a song. She knows the game,’ answered another.

Raising his big hat from his head, Dick wiped his face, and as if divining his extreme despair, Kate left off singing and dancing, and the procession proceeded in quiet past several different wine-shops. It was not until they came to Short’s she declared she was dying of thirst and must have a drink. Dick forbade the barman to serve her, and brought upon himself the most shocking abuse. Knowing that he would be sure to meet a crowd of his ‘pals’ at the Gaiety bar, he used every endeavour to persuade her to cross the street and get out of the sun.

‘Don’t bother me with your sun,’ she exclaimed surlily; and then, as if struck by the meaning of the word, she said, ‘But it wasn’t a son, it was a daughter; don’t you remember?’

‘Oh, Kate! how can you speak so?’

‘Speak so? I say it was a daughter, and she died; and you said it was my fault, as you say everything is my fault, you beast! you venomous beast! Yes, she did die. It was a pity; I could have loved her.’

At this moment Dick felt a heavy hand clapped on his shoulder, and turning round he saw a pal of his.

‘What, Dick, my boy! A drunken chorus lady; trying to get her home? Always up to some charitable action.’

‘No; she’s my wife.’

‘I beg your pardon, old chap; you know I didn’t mean it;’ and the man disappeared into the bar-room.

‘Yes, I’m his wife,’ Kate shrieked after him. ‘I got that much right out of him at least; and I played the Serpolette in the _Cloches_.’

‘”Look at me here, look at me there,”‘

she sang, flirting with her abominable skirt, amused by the applause of the roughs. ‘But I’m going to have a drink here,’ she said, suddenly breaking off.

‘No, you can’t, my good woman,’ said the stout guardian at the door.

‘And why–why not?’

‘That don’t matter. You go on, or I’ll have to give you in charge.’

Kate was not yet so drunk that the words ‘in charge’ did not frighten her, and she answered humbly enough, ‘I’m here wi-th–my hu-s-band, and as you’re so im-impertinent I shall go-go elsewhere.’

At the next place they came to Dick did not protest against her being served, but waited, confident of the result, until she had had her four of gin, and came reeling out into his arms. Shaking herself free she stared at him, and when he was fully recognized, cursed him for his damned interference. She could now scarcely stand straight on her legs, and, after staggering a few yards further, fell helplessly on the pavement.

Calling a cab, he bundled her into it and drove away.

XXVII

‘Oh, Dick, dear, what did I do yesterday? Do tell me about yesterday. Was I very violent? And those wounds on your face, I didn’t do that; don’t tell me that I did. Dick, Dick, are you going to leave me?’

‘I have to attend to my business, Kate.’

‘Ah, your business! Your business! Mrs. Forest is your business; you’ve no other business but her now. And that is what is driving me to drink.’

‘Oh, Kate, don’t begin it again. I’ve a rehearsal—-‘

‘Yes, the rehearsal of her opera and Montgomery’s music. I did think he was my friend; yet he is putting up her opera to music, and all the while he was setting it you were telling me lies about _Chilperic_, saying that I was to play the Fredegonde, and all the principal parts in the great Herve festival, that the American–but there was no American. It was cruel of you, Dick, to shut me up here with nobody to speak to; nothing to do but to wait for you hour after hour, and when you come home to hear nothing from you but lies, nothing but lies! _Chilperic, Le Petit Faust, L’Oeil Creve, Trone d’Ecosse, Marguerite de Navarre, La Belle Poule_. And all the music I’ve learnt hoping that I would be allowed to sing it; and yet you expect that a woman who is deceived like that can abstain from drink. Why, you drive me to it, Dick. An angel from heaven wouldn’t abstain from drink. Away you go in the morning to Mrs. Forest–to her opera.’

‘But, Kate, there’s nothing between me and Mrs. Forest. She is a very clever woman, and I am doing her opera for her. How are we to live if you come between me and my business?’

‘Womanizing is your business,’ Kate answered suddenly.

‘Well, don’t let us argue it,’ Dick answered. He tied his shoe-strings and sought for his hat.

‘So you’re going,’ she said; ‘and when shall I see you again?’

‘I shall try to get home for dinner.’

‘What time?’

‘Not before eight.’

‘I shall not see you before twelve,’ she replied, and she experienced a sad sinking of the heart when she heard the door close behind him, a sad sinking that she would have to endure till she heard his latchkey, and that would not be for many hours, perhaps not till midnight. She did not know how she would be able to endure all these hours; to sleep some of them away would be the best thing she could do, and with that intention she drew down the blind and threw herself on the bed, and lay between sleeping and waking till the afternoon. Then, feeling a little better, she rang and asked for a cup of tea. It tasted very insipid, but she gulped it down as best she could, making wry faces and feeling more miserable than ever she had felt before; afraid to look back on yesterday, afraid to look forward on the morrow, she bethought herself of the past, of the happy days when Montgomery used to come and teach her to sing, and her triumphs in the part of Clairette; she was quite as successful in Serpolette; people had liked her in Serpolette, and to recall those days more distinctly she opened a box in which she kept her souvenirs: a withered flower, a broken cigarette-holder, two or three old buttons that had fallen from his clothes, and a lock of hair, and it was under these that the prize of prizes lay–a string of false pearls. She liked to run them through her fingers and to see them upon her neck. She still kept the dresses she wore in her two favourite parts: the stockings and the shoes, and having nothing to do, no way of passing the time away, she bethought herself of dressing herself in the apparel of her happy days, presenting, when the servant came up with her dinner, a spectacle that almost caused Emma to drop the dish of cold mutton.

‘Lord, Mrs. Lennox, I thought I see a ghost; you in that white dress, oh, what lovely clothes!’

‘These were the clothes I used to wear when I was on the stage.’

‘But law, mum, why aren’t you on the stage now?’

Kate began to tell her story to the servant-girl, who listened till a bell rang, and she said:

‘That’s Mr. So-and-So ringing for his wife; I must run and see to it. You must excuse me, mum.’

The cold mutton and the damp potatoes did not tempt her appetite, and catching sight of herself in the glass, bitter thoughts of the wrongs done to her surged up in her mind. The tiny nostrils dilated and the upper lip contracted, and for ten minutes she stood, her hands grasping nervously at the back of her chair; the canine teeth showed, for the project of revenge was mounting to her head. ‘He’ll not be back till midnight; all this while he is with Leslie and Mrs. Forest, or some new girl perhaps. Yet when he returns to me, when he is wearied out, he expects to find me sober and pleased to see him. But he shall never see me sober or pleased to see him again.’ On these words she walked across the room to the fire-place, and putting her hand up the chimney brought down a bottle of Old Tom, and sat moodily sipping gin and water till she heard his key in the lock.

‘He’s back earlier than I expected,’ she said.

Dick entered in his usual deliberate, elephantine way. Kate made no sign till he was seated, then she asked what the news was.

It was clearly out of the question to tell her that he had been round to tea with one of the girls; to explain how he had wheedled Mrs. Forest into all sorts of theatrical follies was likewise not to be thought of as a subject of news, and as to making conversation out of the rest of the day’s duties, he really didn’t see how he was to do it. Miss Howard had put out the entire procession by not listening to his instructions; Miss Adair, although she was playing the Brigand of the Ultramarine Mountains, had threatened to throw up her part if she were not allowed to wear her diamond ear-rings. The day had gone in deciding such questions, had passed in drilling those infernal girls; and what interest could there be in going through it all over again? Besides, he never knew how or where he might betray himself, and Kate was so quick in picking up the slightest word and twisting it into extraordinary meanings, that he really would prefer to talk about something else.

‘I can’t understand how you can have been out all day without having heard something. It is because you want to keep me shut up here and not let me know anything of your going-on; but I shall go down to the theatre to-morrow and have it out of you.’

‘My dear, I assure you that I was at the rehearsal all day. The girls don’t know their music yet, and it puts me out in my stage arrangement. I give you my word that is all I heard or saw to-day. I’ve nothing to conceal from you.’

‘You’re a liar, and you know you are!’

Blows and shrieks followed.

‘I shall pull that woman’s nose off; I know I shall!’

‘I give you my word, my dear, that I’ve been the whole day with Montgomery and Harding cutting the piece.’

‘Cutting the piece! And I should like to know why I’m not in that piece. I suppose it was you who kept me out of it. Oh, you beast! Why did you ever have anything to do with me? It’s you who are ruining me. Were it not for you, do you think I should be drinking? Not I–it was all your fault.’

Dick made no attempt to answer. He was very tired. Kate continued her march up and down the room for some moments in silence, but he could see from the twitching of her face and the swinging of her arms that the storm was bound to burst soon. Presently she said:

‘You go and get me something to drink; I’ve had nothing all this evening.’

‘Oh, Kate dear! I beg of–‘

‘Oh, you won’t, won’t you? We’ll see about that,’ she answered as she looked around the room for the heaviest object she could conveniently throw at him.

Seeing how useless it would be to attempt to contradict her in her present mood, Dick rose to his feet and said hurriedly:

‘Now there’s no use in getting into a passion, Kate. I’ll go, I’ll go.’

‘You’d better, I can tell you.’

‘What shall I get, then?’

‘Get me half a pint of gin, and be quick about it–I’m dying of thirst.’

Even Dick, accustomed as he was now to these scenes, could not repress a look in which there was at once mingled pity, astonishment and fear, so absolutely demoniacal did this little woman seem as she raved under the watery light of the lodging-house gas, her dark complexion gone to a dull greenish pallor. By force of contrast she called to his mind the mild-eyed workwoman he had known in the linen-draper’s shop in Hanley, and he asked himself if it were possible that she and this raging creature, more like a tiger in her passion than a human being, were one and the same person? He could not choose but wonder. But another scream came, bidding him make haste, or it would be worse for him, and he bent his head and went to fetch the gin.

In the meantime Kate’s fury leaped, crackled, and burnt with the fierceness of a house in the throes of conflagration, and in the smoke-cloud of hatred which enveloped her, only fragments of ideas and sensations flashed like falling sparks through her mind. Up and down the room she walked swinging her arms, only hesitating for some new object whereon to wreak new fury. Suddenly it struck her that Dick had been too long away–that he was keeping her waiting on purpose; and grinding her teeth, she muttered:

‘Oh, the beast! Would he–would he keep me waiting, and since nine this morning I’ve been alone!’

In an instant her resolve was taken. It came to her sullenly, obtusely, like the instinct of revenge to an animal. She did not stop to consider what she was doing, but, seizing a large stick, the handle of a brush that happened to have been broken, she stationed herself at the top of the landing. A feverish tremor agitated her as she waited in the semi-darkness of the stairs. But at last she heard the door open, and Dick came up slowly with his usual heavy tread. She made neither sign nor stir, but allowed him to get past her, and then, raising the brush-handle, she landed him one across the back. The poor man uttered a long cry, and the crash of broken glass was heard.

‘What did you hit me like that for?’ he cried, holding himself with both hands.

‘You beast, you! I’ll teach you to keep me waiting! You would, would you! Do you want another? Go into the sitting-room.’

Dick obeyed humbly and in silence. His only hope was that the landlady had not been awakened, and he felt uneasily at his pockets, through which he could feel the gin dripping down his legs.

‘Well, have you brought the drink I sent you for? Where is it?’

‘Well,’ replied Dick, desirous of conciliating at any price, ‘it was in my pocket, but when you hit me with that stick you broke it.’

‘I broke it?’ cried Kate, her eyes glistening with fire.

‘Yes, dear, you did; it wasn’t my fault.’

‘Wasn’t your fault! Oh, you horrid wretch! you put it there on purpose that I should break it.’

‘Oh, now really, Kate,’ he cried, shocked by the unfairness of the accusation, ‘how could I know that you were going to hit me there?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care; what’s that to me? But what I’m sure of is that you always want to spite me, that you hate me, that you would wish to see me dead, so that you might marry Mrs. Forest.’

‘I can’t think how you can say such things. I’ve often told you that Mrs. Forest and I–‘

‘Oh! don’t bother me. I’m not such a fool. I know she keeps you, and she will have to pay me a drink to-night. Go and get another bottle of gin; and mind you pay for it with the money she gave you to-day. Yes, she shall stand me a drink to-night!’

‘I give you my word I haven’t another penny-piece upon me; it’s just the accident–‘

But Dick did not get time to finish the sentence; he was interrupted by a heavy blow across the face, and like a panther that has tasted blood, she rushed at him again, screaming all the while: ‘Oh, you’ve no money! You liar! you liar! So you would make me believe that she does not give you money, that you have no money of hers in your pocket. You would keep it all for yourself; but you shan’t, no, you shan’t, for I will tear it from you and throw it in your face! Oh, that filthy money! that filthy money!’

The patience with which be bore with her was truly angelic. He might easily have felled her to the ground with one stroke, but he contented himself with merely warding off the blows she aimed at him. From his great height and strength, he was easily able to do this, and she struck at him with her little womanish arms as she might against a door.

‘Take down your hands,’ she screamed, exasperated to a last degree. ‘You would strike me, would you? You beast! I know you would.’

Her rage had now reached its height. Showing her clenched teeth, she foamed at the mouth, the bloodshot eyes protruded from their sockets, and her voice grew more and more harsh and discordant. But, although the excited brain gave strength to the muscles and energy to the will, unarmed she could do nothing against Dick, and suddenly becoming conscious of this she rushed to the fireplace and seized the poker. With one sweep of the arm she cleared the mantel-board, and the mirror came in for a tremendous blow as she advanced round the table brandishing her weapon; but, heedless of the shattered glass, she followed in pursuit of Dick, who continued to defend himself dexterously with a chair. And it is difficult to say how long this combat might have lasted if Dick’s attention had not been interrupted by the view of the landlady’s face at the door; and so touched was he by the woman’s dismay when she looked upon her broken furniture, that he forgot to guard himself from the poker. Kate took advantage of the occasion and whirled the weapon round her head. He saw it descending in time, and half warded off the blow; but it came down with awful force on the forearm, and glancing off, inflicted a severe scalp wound. The landlady screamed ‘Murder!’ and Dick, seeing that matters had come to a crisis, closed in upon his wife, and undeterred by yells and struggles, pinioned her and forced her into a chair.

‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! You’re all bleeding, sir,’ cried the landlady; ‘she has nearly killed you.’

‘Never mind me. But what are we to do? I think she has gone mad this time.’

‘That’s what I think,’ said the landlady, trying to make herself heard above Kate’s shrieks.

‘Well, then, go and fetch a doctor, and let’s hear what he has to say,’ replied Dick, as he changed his grip on Kate’s arm, for in a desperate struggle she had nearly succeeded in wrenching herself free. The landlady retreated precipitately towards the door.

‘Well, will you go?’

‘Yes, yes, I’ll run at once.’

‘You’d better,’ yelled the mad woman after her. ‘I’ll give it to you! Let me go! Let me go, will you?’

But Dick never ceased his hold of her, and the blood, dripping upon her; trickled in large drops into her ears, and down into her neck and bosom.

‘You’re spitting on me, you beast! You filthy beast! I’ll pay you out for this.’ Then she perceived that it was blood; the intonation of her voice changed, and in terror she screamed, ‘Murder! murder! He’s murdering me! Is there no one here to save me?’

The minutes seemed like eternities. Dick felt himself growing faint, but should he lose his power over her before the doctor arrived, the consequences might be fatal to himself, so he struggled with her for very life.

At last the door was opened, and a man walked into the room, tripping in so doing over a piece of the broken mirror. It was the doctor, and accustomed as he was to betray surprise at nothing, he could not repress a look of horror on catching sight of the scene around him.

The apartment was almost dismantled; chairs lay backless about the floor amid china shepherdesses and toreadors; pictures were thrown over the sofa, and a huge pile of wax fruit–apples and purple grapes–was partially reflected in a large piece of mirror that had fallen across the hearthrug.

‘Come, help me to hold her,’ said Dick, raising his blood-stained face.

With a quick movement the doctor took possession of Kate’s arms. ‘Give me a sheet from the next room; I’ll soon make her fast.’

The threat of being tied had its effect. Kate became quieter, and after some trouble they succeeded in carrying her into the next room and laying her on the bed. There she rolled convulsively, beating the pillows with her arms. The landlady stationed herself at the door to give notice of any further manifestation of fury, whilst Dick explained the circumstances of the case to the doctor.

After a short consultation, he agreed to sign an order declaring that in his opinion Mrs. Lennox was a dangerous lunatic.

‘Will that be enough,’ said Dick, ‘to place her in an asylum?’

‘No, you’ll have to get the opinion of another doctor.’

The possibility of being able to rid himself of her was to him like the sudden dawning of a new life, and Dick rushed off, bleeding, haggard, wild-looking as he was, to seek for another doctor who would concur in the judgment of the first, asking himself if it were possible to see Kate in her present position, and say conscientiously that she was a person who could be safely trusted with her liberty? And to his great joy this view was taken by the second authority consulted, and having placed his wife under lock and key, Dick lay down to rest a happier man than he had been for many a day. The position in his mind was, of course, the means he should adopt to place her in the asylum. Force was not to be thought of; persuasion must be first tried. So far he was decided, but as to the arguments he should advance to induce her to give up her liberty he knew nothing, nor did he attempt to formulate any scheme, and when he entered the bedroom next morning he relied more on the hope of finding her repentant, and appealing to and working on her feelings of remorse than anything else. ‘The whole thing,’ as he put it, ‘depended upon the humour he should find her in.’

And he found her with stains of blood still upon her face, amid the broken furniture, and she asked calmly but with intense emotion:

‘Dick, did he say I was mad?’

‘Well, dear, I don’t know that he said you were mad except when you were the worse for drink, but he said–‘

‘That I might become mad,’ she interposed, ‘if I don’t abstain from drink. Did he say that?’

‘Well, it was something like that, Kate. You know I only just escaped with my life.’

‘Only just escaped with your life, Dick! Oh, if I’d killed you, if I’d killed you! If I’d seen you lying dead at my feet!’ and unable to think further she fell on her knees and reached out her arms to him. But he did not take her to his bosom, and she sobbed till, touched to the heart, he strove to console her with kind words, never forgetting, however, to introduce a hint that she was not responsible for her actions.

‘Then I’m really downright mad?’ said Kate, raising her tear-stained face from her arms. ‘Did the doctor say so?’

This was by far too direct a question for Dick to answer; it were better to equivocate.

‘Well, my dear–mad? He didn’t say that you were always mad, but he said you were liable to fits, and that if you didn’t take care those fits would grow upon you, and you would become–‘

Then he hesitated as he always did before a direct statement.

‘But what did he say I must do to get well?’

‘He advised that you should go to a home where you would not be able to get hold of any liquor and would be looked after’

‘You mean a madhouse. You wouldn’t put me in a madhouse, Dick?’

‘I wouldn’t put you anywhere where you didn’t like to go; but he said nothing about a madhouse.’

‘What did he say, then?’

‘He spoke merely of one of those houses which are under medical supervision, and where anyone can go and live for a time; a kind of hospital, you know.’

The argument was continued for an hour or more. Kate wept and protested against being locked up as a mad woman; while he, conscious of the strong hold he had over her, reminded her in a thousand ways of the danger she ran of awakening one morning to find herself a murderess. Yet it is difficult to persuade anyone voluntarily to enter a lunatic asylum, no matter how irrefutable the reasons advanced may be, and it was not until Dick on one side skilfully threatened her with separation, and tempted her on the other with the hope of being cured of her vice and living with him happily ever afterwards, that she consented to enter Dr. —-‘s private asylum, Craven Street, Bloomsbury. But even then the battle was not won, for when he suggested going off there at once, he very nearly brought another fit of passion down on his head. It was only the extreme lassitude and debility produced from the excesses of last night that saved him.

‘Oh, Dick, dear! if you only knew how I love you! I would give my last drop of blood to save you from harm.’

‘I know you would, dear; it’s the fault of that confounded drink,’ he answered, his heart tense with the hope of being rid of her. Then the packing began. Kate sat disconsolate on the sofa, and watched Dick folding up her dresses and petticoats. It seemed to her that everything had ended, and wearily she collected the pearls which had been scattered in last night’s skirmishing. Some had been trodden on, others were lost, and only about half the original number could be found, and shaken with nervousness and lassitude, Kate cried and wrung her hands. Dick sat next her, kind, huge, and indifferent, even as the world itself.

‘But you’ll come and see me? You promise me that you’ll come–that you’ll come very often.’

‘Yes, dear, I’ll come two or three times a week; but I hope that you’ll be well soon–very soon.’

XXVIII

The hope Dick expressed that his wife would soon be well enough to return home was, of course, untrue, his hope being that she would never cross the doors of the house in Bloomsbury whither he was taking her. The empty bed awaiting him was so great a relief that he fell on his knees before it and prayed that the doctors might judge her to be insane, unsafe to be at large. To wake up in the morning alone in his bed, and to be free to go forth to his business without question seemed to him like Heaven. But the pleasures of Heaven last for eternity, and Dick’s delight lasted but for two days. Two days after Kate had gone into the asylum a letter came from one of the doctors saying that Mrs. Lennox was not insane, and would have to be discharged.

Dick sank into a chair and lay there almost stunned, plunged in despair that was like a thick fog, and it did not lift until the door opened and Kate stood before him again.

He raised his head and looked at her stupidly, and interpreting his vacant face, she said:

‘Dick, you’re sorry to have me back again.’

‘Sorry, Kate? Well, if things were different I shouldn’t be sorry. But you see the blow you struck me with the poker very nearly did for me; I haven’t been the same man since.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I must go back to the asylum or the home, whatever you call it, and tell them that I am mad.’

‘There’s no use in doing that, Kate, they wouldn’t believe you. Here is the letter I’ve just received; read it.’

‘But, Dick, there must be some way out of this dreadful trouble, and yet there doesn’t seem to be any. Try to think, dear, try to think. Can you think of anything, dear? I don’t think I shall give way again. If I only had something to do; it’s because I’m always alone; because I love you; because I’m jealous of that woman.’

‘But, Kate, if I stop here with you all day we shall starve. I must go to business.’

‘Ah, business! Business! If I could go to business too. The days when we used to rehearse went merrily enough.’

‘You were the best Clairette I ever saw,’ Dick answered; ‘better than Paola Mariee, and I ought to know, for I rehearsed you both.’

‘I shall never play Clairette again,’ Kate said sadly. ‘I’ve lost my figure and the part requires a waist.’

‘You might get your waist again,’ Dick said, and the words seemed to him extraordinarily silly, but he had to say something.

‘If I could only get to work again,’ she muttered to herself, and then turning to Dick–

‘Dick, if I could get to work again; any part would do; it doesn’t matter how small, just to give me something to think about, that’s all, to keep my mind off it. If the baby had not died I should have had her to look after and that would have done just as well as a part. But I’ve disgraced you in company; I don’t blame you, you couldn’t have me in it, and I couldn’t bring myself to sing in that opera.’

‘Yes, you would only break out again, Kate. Those jealous fits are terrible. You think you could restrain yourself, but you couldn’t; and all that would come of a row between you and Mrs. Forest would be that I should lose my job.’

‘I know, Dick, I know,’ Kate cried painfully, ‘but I promise you that I never will again. You may go where you please and do what you please. I will never say a word to you again.’

‘I’m sure you believe all that you say, Kate, but I cannot get you a job. I may hear of something. Meanwhile—-‘

‘Meanwhile I shall have to stay here and alone and no way of escaping from the hours, those long dreary hours, no way but one. Dick, I’m sorry they did not keep me in the asylum, it would have been better for both of us if they had; and if I could go back there again, if you will take me back, I will try to deceive the doctors.’

‘You mean, Kate, that you would play the mad woman? I doubt if any woman could do it sufficiently well to deceive the doctors. There was an Italian woman,’ and they talked of the great Italian actress for some time and then Dick said: ‘Well, Kate, I must be about my business. I’m sorry to leave you.’

‘No, Dick, you’re not.’

‘I am, dear, in a way. But if I hear of anything—-‘ and he left the house knowing that there was no further hope for himself. He was tied to her and might be killed by her in his sleep, but that would not matter. What did matter was the thought that was always at the back of his mind, that she was alone in that Islington lodging-house craving for drink, striving to resist it, falling back into drink and might be coming down raving to the theatre to insult him before the company. Insult him before the company! That had been done, she had done her worst, and he was indifferent whether she came again, only she must not meet Mrs. Forest. On the whole he felt that his sorrow was with Kate herself rather than himself or with Mrs. Forest. ‘God only knows,’ he said as he rushed down the stairs, ‘what will become of her.’

Kate was asking herself the same question–what was to become of her? Would it be possible for her to find work to do that would keep her mind away from the drink? She seemed for the moment free from all craving, but she knew what the craving is, how overpowering in the throat it is, and how when one has got one mouthful one must go on and on, so intense is the delight of alcohol in the throat of the drunkard. But there was no craving upon her, and it might never come again. Every morning she awoke in great fear, but was glad to find that there was no craving in her throat, and when she went out she rejoiced that the public-houses offered no attraction to her. She became brave; and fear turned to contempt, and at the bottom of her heart she began to jeer at the demon which had conquered and brought her to ruin and which she had in turn conquered. But there was, a last mockery she did not dare, for she knew that the demon was but biding his time. He seemed, however, to go on biding it, and Dick, finding Kate reasonable every evening, came home to dinner earlier so that the day should not appear to her intolerably long. But his business often detained him, and one night coming home late he noticed that she looked more sullen than usual, that her eyes drooped as if she had been drinking. A month of scenes of violence followed; ‘not a single day as far as I can remember for a fortnight’ he said one day on leaving the house and running to catch his bus to the Strand, ‘have we had a quiet evening.’ When he returned that night she ran at him with a knife, and he had only just time to ward off the blow. The house rang with shrieks and cries of all sorts, and the Lennoxes were driven from one lodging-house, to another. Trousers, dresses, hats, boots and shoes, were all pawned. The comic and the pitiful are but two sides of the same thing, and it was at once comic and pitiful to see Dick, with one of the tails of his coat lost in the scrimmage, talking at one o’clock in the morning to a dispassionate policeman, while from the top windows the high treble voice of a woman disturbed the sullen tranquillity of the London night.

And yet Dick continued with her–continued to allow himself to be beaten, scratched, torn to pieces almost as he would be by a wild beast. Human nature can habituate itself even to pain, and it was so with him. He knew that his present life was as a Nessus shirt on his back, and yet he couldn’t make up his mind to have done with it. In the first place, he pitied his wife; in the second, he did not know how to leave her; and it was not until after another row with Kate for having been down to the theatre that he summoned up courage to walk out of the house with a fixed determination never to return again. Kate was too tipsy at the time to pay much attention to the announcement he made to her as he left the room. Besides, ‘Wolf!’ had been cried so often that it had now lost its terror in her ears, and it was not until next day that she began to experience any very certain fear that Dick and she had at last parted for ever. But when, with a clammy, thirsty mouth, she sat rocking herself wearily, and the long idleness of the morning hours became haunted with irritating remembrances of her shameful conduct, of the cruel life she led the man she loved, the black gulf of eternal separation became, as it were, etched upon her mind; and she heard the cold depths reverberating with vain words and foolish prayers. Then her thin hands trembled on her black dress, and waves of shivering passed over her. She thought involuntarily that a little brandy might give her strength, and as soon hated herself for the thought. It was brandy that had brought her to this. She would never touch it again. But Dick had not left her for ever; he would come back to her; she could not live without him. It was terrible! She would go to him, and on her knees beg his pardon for all she had done. He would forgive her. He must forgive her. Such were the fugitive thoughts that flashed through Kate’s mind as she hurried to and fro, seeking for her bonnet and shawl. She would go down to the theatre and find him; she would be sure to hear news of him there, she said, as she strove to brush away the mist that obscured her eyes. She could see nothing; things seemed to change their places, and so terrible were the palpitations of her heart that she was forced to cling to any piece of furniture within reach. But by walking very slowly she contrived to reach the stage-door of the Opera Comique, feeling very weak and ill.

‘Is Mr Lennox in?’ she asked, at the same time trying to look conciliatingly at the hard-faced hall-keeper.

‘No, ma’am, he ain’t,’ was the reply.

‘Who attended the rehearsal to-day, then?’

‘There was no rehearsal to-day, ma’am–leastways Mr. Lennox dismissed the rehearsal at half-past twelve.’

‘And why?’

‘Ah! that I cannot tell you.’

‘Could you tell me where Mr. Lennox would be likely to be found?’

‘Indeed I couldn’t, ma’am; I believe he’s gone into the country.’

‘Gone into the country!’ echoed Kate.

‘But may I ask, ma’am, if you be Mrs. Lennox? Because if you be, Mr. Lennox left a letter to be given to you in case you called.’

Her eyes brightened at the idea of a letter. To know the worst would be better than a horrible uncertainty, and she said eagerly:

‘Yes, I’m Mrs. Lennox; give me the letter.’

The hall-keeper handed it to her, and she walked out of the narrow passage into the street, so as to be free from observation. With anxious fingers she tore open the envelope, and read,

‘MY DEAR KATE,

‘It must be now as clear to you as it is to me that it is quite impossible for us to go on living together. There is no use in our again discussing the whys and the wherefores; we had much better accept the facts of the case in silence, and mutually save each other the pain of trying to alter what cannot be altered.

‘I have arranged to allow you two pounds a week. This sum will be paid to you every Saturday, by applying to Messrs. Jackson and Co., Solicitors, Arundel Street, Strand.

‘Yours very affectionately,
‘RICHARD LENNOX.’

Kate mechanically repeated the last words as she walked gloomily through the glare of the day. ‘Two pounds a week.’ she said, and with nothing else; not a friend, and the thought passed through her mind that she could not have a friend, she had fallen too low, yet from no fault of her own nor Dick’s, and it was that that frightened her. A terrible sense of loneliness, of desolation, was created in her heart. For her the world seemed to have ended, and she saw the streets and passers-by with the same vague, irresponsible gaze as a solitary figure would the universal ruin caused by an earthquake. She had no friends, no occupation, no interest of any kind in life; everything had slipped from her, and she shivered with a sense of nakedness, of moral destitution. Nothing was left to her, and yet she felt, she lived, she was conscious. Oh yes, horribly conscious. And that was the worst; and she asked herself why she could not pass out of sight, out of hearing and feeling of all the crying misery with which she was surrounded, and in a state of emotive somnambulism she walked through the crowds till she was startled from her dreams by hearing a voice calling after her, ‘Kate! Kate!–Mrs. Lennox!’

It was Montgomery.

‘I’m so glad to have met you–so glad, indeed, for we have not seen much of each other. I don’t know how it was, but somehow it seemed to me that Dick did not want me to go and see you. I never could make out why, for he couldn’t have been jealous of me,’ he added a little bitterly. ‘But perhaps you’ve not heard that it’s all up as regards my piece at the Opera Comique,’ he continued, not noticing Kate’s dejection in his excitement.

‘No, I haven’t heard,’ she answered mechanically.

‘It doesn’t matter much, though, for I’ve just been down to the Gaiety, and pretty well settled that it’s to be done in Manchester, at the Prince’s; so you see I don’t let the grass grow under my feet, for my row with Mrs. Forest only occurred this morning. But what’s the matter, Kate? What has happened?’

‘Oh, nothing, nothing. Tell me about Mrs. Forest first; I want to know.’

‘Well, it’s the funniest thing you ever heard in your life; but you won’t tell Dick, because he forbade me ever to speak to you about Mrs. Forest–not that there is anything but business between them; that I swear to you. But do tell me, Kate, what is the matter? I never saw you look so sad in my life. Have you had any bad news?’

‘No, no. Tell me about Mrs. Forest and your piece; I want to hear,’ she exclaimed excitedly.

‘Well, this is it,’ said Montgomery, who saw in a glance that she was not to be contradicted, and that he had better get on with his story. ‘In the first place, you know that the old creature has gone in for writing librettos herself, and has finished one about Buddhism, an absurdity; the opening chorus is fifty lines long, but she won’t cut one; but I’ll tell you about that after. I was to get one hundred for setting this blessed production to music, and it was to follow my own piece, which was in rehearsal. Well, like a great fool, I was explaining to Dubois the bosh I was writing by the yard for this infernal opera of hers. I couldn’t help it; she wouldn’t take advice on any point. She has written the song of the Sun-god in hexameters. I don’t know what hexameters are, but I would as soon set Bradshaw–leaving St. Pancras nine twenty-five, arriving at–ha! ha! ha!–with a puff, puff accompaniment on the trombone.’

‘Go on with the story,’ cried Kate.

‘Well, I was explaining all this,’ said Montgomery, suddenly growing serious, ‘when out she darted from behind the other wing–I never knew she was there. She called me a thief, and said she wouldn’t have me another five minutes in her theatre. Monti, the Italian composer, was sent for. I was shoved out, bag and baggage, and there will be no more rehearsals till the new music is ready. That’s all.’

‘I’m very sorry for you–very sorry,’ said Kate very quietly, and she raised her hand to brush away a tear.

‘Oh, I don’t care; I’d sooner have the piece done in Manchester. Of course it’s a bore, losing a hundred pounds. But, oh, Kate! do tell me what’s the matter; you know you can confide in me; you know I’m your friend.’

At these kind words the cold deadly grief that encircled Kate’s heart like a band of steel melted, and she wept profusely. Montgomery drew her arm into his and pleaded and begged to be told the reason of these tears; but she could make no answer, and pressed Dick’s letter into his hand with a passionate gesture. He read it at a glance, and then hesitated, unable to make up his mind as to what he should do. No words seemed to him adequate wherewith to console her, and she was sobbing so bitterly that it was beginning to attract attention in the streets. They walked on without speaking for a few yards, Kate leaning upon Montgomery, until a hackney coachman, guessing that something was wrong signed to them with his whip.

‘Where are you living, dear?’

Kate told him with some difficulty, and having directed the driver, he lapsed again into considering what course he should adopt. To put off the journey was impossible; Dick had promised to meet him there. It was now three o’clock. He had therefore three hours to spend with Kate–with the woman whom he had loved steadfastly throughout a loveless life. He had no word of blame for Dick; he had heard stories that had made his blood run cold; and yet, knowing her faults as he did, he would have opened his arms had it been possible, and crying through the fervour of years of waiting, said to her, ‘Yes, I will believe in you; believe in me and you shall be happy.’ There had never been a secret between them; their souls had been for ever as if in communication; and the love, unacknowledged in words, had long been as sunlight and moonlight, lighting the spaces of their dream-life. To the woman it had been as a distant star whose pale light was a presage of quietude in hours of vexation; to the man it seemed as a far Elysium radiant with sweet longing, large hopes that waxed but never waned, and where the sweet breezes of eternal felicity blew in musical cadence.

And yet he was deceived in nothing. He knew now as he had known before, that although this dream might haunt him for ever, he should never hold it in his arms nor press it to his lips; and in the midst of this surging tide of misery there arose a desire that, glad in its own anguish, bade him increase the bitterness of these last hours by making a confession of his suffering; and, exulting savagely in the martyrdom he was preparing for himself, he said:

‘You know, Kate–I know you must know–you must have guessed that I care for you. I may as well tell you the truth now–you are the only woman I ever loved.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I always thought you cared for me. You have been very kind–oh! very kind, and I often think of it. Ah! everybody has, all my life long, been very good to me; it is I alone who am to blame, who am in fault. I have, I know I have, been very wicked, and I don’t know why. I did not mean it; I know I didn’t, for I’m not at heart a wicked woman. I suppose things must have gone against me; that’s about all.’

Montgomery pushed his glasses higher on his nose, and after a long silence he said:

‘I’ve often thought that had you met me before you knew Dick, things might have been different. We should have got on better, although you might never have loved me so well.’

Kate raised her eyes, and she said:

‘No one will ever know how I have loved, how I still love that man. Oftentimes I think that had I loved him less I should have been a better wife. I think he loved me, but it was not the love I dreamed of. Like you, I was always sentimental, and Dick never cared for that sort of thing.’

‘I think I should have understood you better,’ said Montgomery; and the conversation came to a pause. A vision of the life of devotion spent at the feet of an ideal lover, that life of sacrifice and tenderness which had been her dream, and which she had so utterly failed to attain, again rose up to tantalize her like a glittering mirage: and she could not help wondering whether she would have realized this beautiful, this wonderful might-have-been if she had chosen this other man.

‘But I suppose you’ll make it up with Dick,’ said Montgomery somewhat harshly.

Kate awoke from her reverie with a start, and answered sorrowfully that she did not know, that she was afraid Dick would never forgive her again.

‘I don’t remember if I told you that I’m going to see him in Manchester; he promised to go up there to make some arrangements about my piece.’

‘No, you didn’t tell me.’

‘Well, I’ll speak to him. I’ll tell him I’ve seen you. I fancy I shall be able to make it all right,’ he added, with a feeble smile.

‘Oh! how good you are–how good you are,’ cried Kate, clasping her hands. ‘If he will only forgive me once again, I’ll promise, I’ll swear to him never to-to–‘

Here Kate stopped abashed, and burying her face in her hands, she wept bitterly. The tenderness, the melancholy serenity of their interview, had somehow suddenly come to an end. Each was too much occupied with his or her thoughts to talk much, and the effort to find phrases grew more and more irritating. Both were very sad, and although they sighed when the clock struck the hour of farewell, they felt that to pass from one pain to another was in itself an assuagement. Kate accompanied Montgomery to the station. He seemed to her to be out of temper; she to him to be further away than ever. The explanation that had taken place between them had, if not broken, at least altered the old bonds of sympathy, without creating new ones; and they were discontented, even like children who remember for the first time that to-day is not yesterday.

They felt lonely watching the parallel lines of platforms; and when Montgomery waved his hand for the last time, and the train rolled into the luminous arch of sky that lay beyond the glass roofing, Kate turned away overpowered by grief and cruel recollections. When she got home, the solitude of her room became unbearable; she wanted someone to see, someone to console her. She had a few shillings in her pocket, but she remembered her resolutions and for some time resented the impervious clutch of the temptation. But the sorrow that hung about her, that penetrated like a corrosive acid into the very marrow of her bones, grew momentarily more burning, more unendurable. Twenty times she tried to wrench it out of her heart. The landlady brought her up some tea; she could not drink it; it tasted like soapsuds in her mouth. Then, knowing well what the results would be, she resolved to go out for a walk.

Next day she was ill, and to pull herself together it was necessary to have a drink. It would not do to look too great a sight in the Solicitor’s office where Dick had told her in his letter to go to get her money. There she found not two, but five pounds awaiting her, and this enabled her to keep up a stage of semi intoxication until the end of the week.

She at last woke up speechless, suffering terrible palpitations of the heart, but she had strength enough to ring her bell, and when the landlady came to her she nearly lost her balance and fell to the ground, so strenuously did Kate lean and cling to her for support. After gasping painfully for some moments Kate muttered: ‘I’m dying. These palpitations and the pain in my side.’

The landlady asked if she would like to see the doctor, and with difficulty obtained her consent that the doctor should be sent for.

‘I’ll send at once,’ she said.

‘No, not at once,’ Kate cried. ‘Pour me out a little brandy and water, and I’ll see how I am in the course of the day.’

The woman did as was desired, and Kate told her that she felt better, and that if it wasn’t for the pains in her side she’d be all right.

The landlady looked a little incredulous; but her lodger had only been with her a fortnight, and so carefully had the brandy been hidden, and the inebriety concealed, that although she had her doubts, she was not yet satisfied that Kate was an habitual drunkard. Certainly appearances were against Mrs. Lennox; but as regards the brandy-bottle, she had watched it very carefully, and was convinced that scarcely more than sixpennyworth of liquor went out of it daily. The good woman did not know how it was replenished from another bottle that came sometimes from under the mattress, sometimes out of the chimney. And the disappearance of the husband was satisfactorily accounted for by the announcement that he had gone to Manchester to produce a new piece. Besides, Mrs. Lennox was a very nice person; it was a pleasure to attend to her, and during the course of the afternoon Mrs. White called several times at the second floor to inquire after her lodger’s health.

But there was no change for the better. Looking the picture of wretchedness, Kate lay back in her chair, declaring in low moans that she never felt so ill in her life-that the pain in her side was killing her. At first, Mrs. White seemed inclined to make light of all this complaining, but towards evening she began to grow alarmed, and urged that the doctor should be sent for.

‘I assure you, ma’am,’ she said, ‘it’s always better to see a doctor. The money is never thrown away; for even if there’s nothing serious the matter, it eases one’s mind to be told so.’

Kate was generally easy to persuade, but fearing that her secret drinking would be discovered, she declined for a long time to take medical advice. At last she was obliged to give way, and the die having been cast, she commenced to think how she might conceal part of the truth. Something of the coquetry of the actress returned to her, and, getting up from her chair, she went over to the glass to examine herself, and brushing back her hair, she said sorrowfully:

‘I’m a complete wreck. I can’t think what’s the matter with me, and I’ve lost all my hair. You’ve no idea, Mrs. White, of the beautiful hair I used to have; it used to fall in armfuls over my shoulders; now, it’s no more than a wisp.’

‘I think you’ve a great deal yet,’ replied Mrs. White, not wishing to discourage her.

‘And how yellow I am too!’

To this Mrs. White mumbled something that was inaudible, and Kate thought suddenly of her rouge-pot and hare’s-foot. Her ‘make-up,’ and all her little souvenirs of Dick, lay securely packed away in an old band-box.

‘Mrs. White,’ she said, ‘might I ask you to get me a jug of hot water?’

When the woman left the room, everything was spread hurriedly over the toilet-table. To see her, one would have thought that the call-boy had knocked at the door for the second time. A thin coating of cold cream was passed over the face and neck; then the powder-puff changed what was yellow into white, and the hare’s-foot gave a bloom to the cheeks. The pencil was not necessary, her eyebrows being by nature dark and well-defined. Then all disappeared again into the band-box, a drain was taken out of the bottle whilst she listened to steps on the stairs, and she had just time to get back to her chair when the doctor entered. She felt quite prepared to receive him. Mrs. White, who had come up at the same time, locked uneasily around; and, after hesitating about the confines of the room, she put the water-jug on the rosewood cabinet, and said:

‘I think I’ll leave you alone with the doctor, ma’am; if you want me you’ll ring.’

Mr. Hooper was a short, stout man, with a large bald forehead, and long black hair; his small eyes were watchful as a ferret’s, and his fat chubby hands were constantly laid on his knee-caps.

‘I met Mrs. White’s servant in the street,’ he said, looking at Kate as if he were trying to read through the rouge on her face, ‘so I came at once. Mrs. White, with whom I was speaking downstairs, tells me that you’re suffering from a pain in your side.’

‘Yes, doctor, on the right side; and I’ve not been feeling very well lately.’

‘Is your appetite good? Will you let me feel your pulse?’

‘No, I’ve scarcely any appetite at all–particularly in the morning. I can’t touch anything for breakfast.’

‘Don’t you care to drink anything? Aren’t you thirsty?’

Kate would have liked to have told a lie, but fearing that she might endanger her life by doing so, she answered:

‘Oh yes! I’m constantly very thirsty.’

‘Especially at night-time?’

It was irritating to have your life read thus; and Kate felt angry when she saw this dispassionate man watching the brandy-bottle, which she had forgotten to put away.

‘Do you ever find it necessary to take any stimulant?’

Grasping at the word ‘necessary,’ she replied:

‘Yes, doctor; my life isn’t a very happy one, and I often feel so low, so depressed as it were, that if I didn’t take a little something to keep me up I think I should do away with myself.’

‘Your husband is an actor, I believe?’

‘Yes; but he’s at present up in Manchester, producing a new piece. I’m on the stage, too. I’ve been playing a round of leading parts in the provinces, but since I’ve been in London I’ve been out of an engagement.’

‘I just asked you because I noticed you used a little powder, you know, on the face. Of course, I can’t judge at present what your complexion is; but have you noticed any yellowness about the skin lately?’

The first instinct of a woman who drinks is to conceal her vice, and although she was talking to a doctor, Kate was again conscious of a feeling of resentment against the merciless eyes which saw through all the secrets of her life. But, cowed, as it were, by the certitude expressed by the doctor’s looks and words, she strove to equivocate, and answered humbly that she noticed her skin was not looking as clear as it used to. Dr. Hooper then questioned her further. He asked if she suffered from a sense of uncomfortable tension, fullness, weight, especially after meals; if she felt any pain in her right shoulder? and she confessed that he was right in all his surmises.

‘Do tell me, doctor, what is the matter with me. I assure you I’d really much sooner know the worst.’

But the doctor did not seem inclined to be communicative, and in reply to her question he merely mumbled something to the effect that the liver was out of order.

‘I will send you over some medicine this evening,’ he said, ‘and if you don’t feel better to-morrow send round for me, and don’t attempt to get up. I think,’ he added, as he took up his hat to go, ‘I shall be able to put you all right. But you must follow my instructions; you mustn’t frighten yourself, and take as little of that stimulant as possible.’

Kate answered that it was not her custom to take too much, and she tried to look surprised at the warning. She nevertheless derived a good deal of comfort from the doctor’s visit, and during the course of the evening succeeded in persuading herself that her fears of the morning were ill-founded and, putting the medicine that was sent her away for the present, she helped herself from a bottle that was hidden in the upholstery. The fact of having a long letter to write to Dick explaining her conduct, made it quite necessary that she should take something to keep her up; and sitting in her lonely room, she drank on steadily until midnight, when she could only just drag her clothes from her back and throw herself stupidly into bed. There she passed a night full of livid-hued nightmares, from which she awoke shivering, and suffering from terrible palpitations of the heart. The silence of the house filled her with terrors, cold and obtuse as the dreams from which she awakened. Strength to scream for help she had none; and thinking she was going to die, she sought for relief and consolation in the bottle that lay hidden under the carpet. When the drink took effect upon her she broke out into a profuse perspiration, and she managed to get a little sleep; but when her breakfast was brought up about eleven o’clock in the morning, so ill did she seem that the servant, fearing she was going to drop down dead, begged to be allowed to fetch the doctor. But rejecting all offers of assistance, Kate lay moaning in an armchair, unable even to taste the cup of tea that the maid pressed upon her. She consented to take some of the medicines that were ordered her, but whatever good they might have produced was discounted by the constant nip-drinking she kept up during the afternoon. The next day she was very ill indeed, and Mrs. White, greatly alarmed, insisted on sending for Dr. Hooper.

He did not seem astonished at the change in his patient. Calmly and quietly he watched for some moments in silence.

The bed had curtains of a red and antiquated material, and these contrasted with the paleness of the sheets wherein Kate lay, tossing feverishly. Most of the ‘make-up’ had been rubbed away from her face; and through patches of red and white the yellow skin started like blisters. She was slightly delirious, and when the doctor took her hand to feel her pulse she gazed at him with her big staring eyes and spoke volubly and excitedly.

‘Oh! I’m so glad you’ve come, for I wanted to speak to you about my husband. I think I told you that he’d gone to Manchester to produce a new piece. I don’t know if I led you to suppose that he’d deserted me, but if I did I was wrong to do so, for he has done nothing of the kind. It’s true that we aren’t very happy together, but I dare say that is my fault. I never was, I know, as good a wife to him as I intended to be; but then, he made me jealous and sometimes I was mad. Yes, I think I must have been mad to have spoken to him in the way I did. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter now, does it, doctor? But I don’t know what I’m saying. Still, you won’t mention that I’ve told you anything. It’s as likely as not that he’ll forgive me, just as he did before; and we may yet be as happy as we were at Blackpool. You won’t tell him, will you, doctor?’

‘No, no, I won’t,’ said Dr. Hooper, quietly and firmly. ‘But you mustn’t talk as much as you do; if you want to see your husband, you must get well first.’

‘Oh yes! I must get well; but tell me, doctor, how long will that take?’

‘Not very long, if you will keep quiet and do what I tell you. I want you to tell me how the pain in your side is?’

‘Very bad; far worse than when I saw you last. I feel it now in my right shoulder as well.’

‘But your side–is it sore when you touch it? Will you let me feel?’

Without waiting for a reply, he passed his hand under the sheet. ‘Is it there that it pains you?’

‘Yes, yes. Oh! You’re hurting me.’

Then the doctor walked aside with the landlady, who had been watching the examination of the patient with anxious eyes. She said:

‘Do you think it’s anything very dangerous? Is it contagious? Had I better send her to the hospital?’

‘No, I should scarcely think it worth while doing that; she will be well in a week, that is to say if she is properly looked after. She’s suffering from acute congestion of the liver, brought on by–‘

‘By drink,’ said Mrs. White. ‘I suspected as much.’

‘You’ve too much to do, Mrs. White, with all your children, to give up your time to nursing her; I shall send someone round as soon as possible, but, in the meantime, will you see that her diet is regulated to half a cup of beef-tea, every hour or so. If she complains of thirst, let her have some milk to drink, and you may mix a little brandy with it.’ To-night I shall send round a sleeping-draught.’

‘You’re sure, doctor, there is nothing catching, for you know that, with all my children in the house—-‘

‘You need not be alarmed, Mrs. White.’

‘But do you think, doctor, it will be an expensive illness? for I know very little about her circumstances.’

‘I expect she’ll be all right in a week or ten days, but what I fear for is her future. I’ve had a good deal of experience in such matters, and I’ve never known a case of a woman who cured herself of the vice of intemperance. A man sometimes, a woman never.’

The landlady sighed and referred to all she had gone through during poor Mr. White’s lifetime; the doctor spoke confidingly of a lady who was at present under his charge; and, apparently overcome with pity for suffering humanity, they descended the staircase together. On the doorstep the conversation was continued.

‘Very well, then, doctor, I will take your advice; but at the end of a week or so, when she is quite recovered, I shall tell her that I’ve let her rooms. For, as you say, a woman rarely cures herself, and before the children the example would be dreadful.’

‘I expect to see her on her feet in about that time, then you can do as you please, I shall call tomorrow.’

Next day the professional nurse took her place by the bedside. The sinapism which the doctor ordered was applied to the hepatic region, and a small dose of calomel was administered.

Under this treatment she improved rapidly; but unfortunately, as her health returned her taste for drink increased in a like proportion. Indeed, it was almost impossible to keep her from it, and on one occasion she tried very cunningly to outwit the nurse, who had fallen asleep in her chair. Waiting patiently until the woman’s snoring had become sufficiently regular to warrant the possibility of a successful attempt being made on the brandy-bottle, Kate slipped noiselessly out of bed. The unseen night-light cast a rosy glow over the convex side of the basin, without, however, disturbing the bare darkness of the wall, Kate knew that all the bottles stood in a line upon the chest of drawers, but it was difficult to distinguish one from the other, and the jingling she made as she fumbled amid them awoke the nurse, who divining at once what was happening, arose quickly from her chair and advancing rapidly towards her, said:

‘No, ma’am, I really can’t allow it; it’s against the doctor’s orders.’

‘I’m not going to die of thirst to please any doctor. I was only going to take a little milk, I suppose there’s no harm in that?’

‘Not the least, ma’am, and if you’d called me you should have had it.’

It was owing to this fortuitous intervention that when Dr. Hooper called a couple of days after to see his patient he was able to certify to a remarkable change for the better in her. All the distressing symptoms had disappeared; the pain in her side had died away; the complexion was clearer. He therefore thought himself justified in ordering for her lunch a little fish and some weak brandy and water; and to Kate, who had not eaten any solid food for several days, this first meal took the importance of a very exceptional event. Sitting by her bedside Dr. Hooper spoke to her.

‘Now, Mrs. Lennox,’ he said, ‘I want to give you a word of warning. I’ve seen you through what I must specify as a serious illness; dangerous I will not call it, although I might do so if I were to look into the future and anticipate the development the disease will most certainly take, unless, indeed, you will be guided by me, and make a vow against all intoxicating liquors.’

At this direct allusion to her vice Kate stopped eating, and putting down the fork looked at the doctor.

‘Now, Mrs. Lennox, you mustn’t be angry,’ he continued in his kind way. ‘I’m speaking to you in my capacity as a medical man, and I must warn you against the continuous nip-drinking which, of course, I can see you’re in the habit of indulging in, and which was the cause of the illness from which you are recovering. I will not harrow your feelings by referring to all the cases that have come under my notice where shame, disgrace, ruin, and death were the result of that one melancholy failing–drink.’

‘Oh, sir!’ cried Kate, broken-hearted, ‘if you only knew how unhappy I’ve been, how miserable I am, you would not speak to me so. I’ve my failing, it is true, but I’m driven to it. I love my husband better than anything in the world, and I see him mixed up always with a lot of girls at the theatre, and it sends me mad, and then I go to drink so as to forget.’

‘We’ve all got our troubles; but it doesn’t relieve us of the burden; it only makes us forget it for a short time, and then, when consciousness returns to us, we only remember it all the more bitterly. No, Mrs. Lennox, take my advice. In a few days, when you’re well, go to your husband, demand his forgiveness, and resolve then never to touch spirits again.’

‘It’s very good of you to speak to me in this way,’ said Kate, tearfully, ‘and I will take your advice, The very first day that I am strong enough to walk down to the Strand I will go and see my husband, and if he will give me another trial, he will not, I swear to you, have cause to repent it. Oh!’ she continued, ‘you don’t know how good he’s been to me, how he has borne with me. If it hadn’t been that he tried my temper by flirting with other women we might have been happy now.’

Then, as Kate proceeded to speak of her trials and temptations, she grew more and more excited and hysterical, until the doctor, fearing that she would bring on a relapse, was forced to plead an engagement and wish her good-bye.

As he left the room she cried after him, ‘The first day I’m well enough to go out I’ll go and see my husband.’

XXIX

The next few days passed like dreams. Kate’s soul, tense with the longing for reconciliation, floated at ease over the sordid miseries that lay within and without her, and enraptured with expectation, she lived in a beautiful paradise of hope.

So certain did she feel of being able to cross out the last few years of her life, that her mind was scarcely clouded by a doubt of the possibility of his declining to forgive her–that he might even refuse to see her. The old days seemed charming to her, and looking back, even she seemed to have been perfect then. There her life appeared to have begun. She never thought of Hanley now. Ralph and Mrs. Ede were like dim shadows that had no concern in her existence. The potteries and the hills were as the recollections of childhood, dim and unimportant. The footlights and the applause of audiences were also dying echoes in her ears. Her life for the moment was concentrated in a loving memory of a Lancashire seashore and a rose-coloured room, where she used to sit on the knees of the man she adored. The languors and the mental weakness of convalescence were conducive to this state of mental exaltation. She loved him better than anyone else could love him; she would never touch brandy again. He would take her back, and they would live as the lovers did in all the novels she had ever read. These illusions filled Kate’s mind like a scarf of white mist hanging around the face of a radiant morning, and as she lay back amid the pillows, or sat dreaming by the fireside in the long evenings that were no longer lonely to her, she formed plans, and considered how she should plead to Dick in this much-desired interview. During this period dozens of letters were written and destroyed, and it was not until the time arrived for her to go to the theatre to see him that she could decide upon what she could write. Then hastily she scribbled a note, but her hand trembled so much that before she had said half what she intended the paper was covered with blotched and blurred lines.

‘It won’t do to let him think I’m drunk again,’ she said to herself, as she threw aside what she had written and read over one of her previous efforts. It ran as follows:

‘MY DARLING DICK,–

‘You will, I am sure, be sorry to hear that I have been very ill. I am now, however, much better; indeed, I may say quite recovered. During my illness I have been thinking over our quarrels, and I now see how badly, how wickedly, I have behaved to you on many occasions. I do not know, and I scarcely dared to hope, that you will ever forgive me, but I trust that you will not refuse to see me for a few minutes. I have not, I assure you, tasted spirits for some weeks, so you need not fear I will kick up a row. I will promise to be very quiet. I will not reproach you, nor get excited, nor raise my voice. I shall be very good, and will not detain you but for a very short time. You will not, you cannot, oh, my darling! deny me this one little request–to see you again, although only for a few minutes.

‘Your affectionate wife,
‘KATE’

Compared with the fervid thoughts of her brain, these words appeared to her weak and poor, but feeling that for the moment, at least, she could not add to their intensity, she set out on her walk, hoping to find her husband at the theatre.

It was about eight o’clock in the evening. A light, grey fog hung over the background of the streets, and the line of the housetops was almost lost in the morose shadows that fell from a soot-coloured sky. Here and there a chimney-stack or the sharp spire of a church tore the muslin-like curtains of descending mist; and vague as the mist were her thoughts. The streets twisted, wriggling their luminous way through slime and gloom, whilst at every turning the broad, flaring windows of the public-houses marked the English highway. But Kate paid no attention to the red-lettered temptations, Docile and hopeful as a tired animal thinking of its stable, she walked through the dark crowd that pressed upon her, nor did she even notice when she was jostled, but went on, a heedless nondescript–a something in a black shawl and a quasi-respectable bonnet, a slippery stepping-stone between the low women who whispered and the workwoman who hurried home with the tin of evening beer in her hand. Like one held and guided by the power of a dream, she lost consciousness of all that was not of it. Thoughts of how Dick would receive her and forgive her were folded, entangled and broken within narrow limits of time; half an hour passed like a minute, and she found herself at the stage-door of the theatre. Drawing the letter from her pocket, she said to the hall-keeper:

‘Will you kindly give Mr. Lennox this letter? Has he arrived yet?’

‘Yes, but he’s busy for the moment. But,’ the man added, as he examined Kate’s features narrowly, ‘you’ll excuse me, I made a mistake; Mr. Lennox isn’t in the theatre.’

At that moment the swinging door was thrust open, and the call-boy screamed:

‘Mr. Lennox says you’re not to let Miss Thomas pass to-night, and if there are any letters for him I’m to take them in.’

‘Here’s one; will you give it to Mr. Lennox?’ said Kate, eagerly thrusting forward her note. ‘Say that I’m waiting for an answer.’

The stage-door keeper tried to interpose, but before he could explain himself the boy had rushed away.

‘All letters should be given to me,’ he growled as he turned away to argue with Miss Thomas, who had just arrived. In a few minutes the call-boy came back.

‘Will you please step this way,’ he said to Kate.

‘No, you shan’t,’ cried the hall-keeper; ‘if you try any nonsense with me I shall send round for a policeman.’

Kate started back frightened, thinking these words were addressed to her, but a glance showed her that she was mistaken.

‘Oh! how dare you talk to me like that? You’re an unsophisticated beast!’ cried Miss Thomas.

‘Pass under my arm, ma’am,’ said the hall-keeper; ‘I don’t want this one to get through.’ And amid a storm of violent words and the strains of distant music Kate went up a narrow staircase that creaked under the weight of a group of girls in strange dresses. When she got past them she saw Dick at the door of his room waiting for her. The table was covered with letters, the walls with bills announcing, ‘a great success.’

He took her hand and placed her in a chair, and at first it seemed doubtful who would break an awkward and irritating silence. At last Dick said:

‘I’m sorry to hear, Kate, that you’ve been ill; you’re looking well now.’

‘Yes, I’m better now,’ she replied drearily; ‘but perhaps if I’d died it would have been as well, for you can never love me again.’

‘You know, my dear,’ he said, equivocating, ‘that we didn’t get on well together.’

‘Oh, Dick! I know it. You were very good to me, and I made your life wretched on account of my jealousy; but I couldn’t help it, for I loved you better than a woman ever loved a man. I cannot tell you, I cannot find words to express how much I love you; you’re everything to me. I lived for your love; I’m dying of it. Yes, Dick, I’m dying for love of you; I feel it here; it devours me like a fire, and what is so strange is, that nothing seems real to me except you. I never think of anything but of things that concern you. Anything that ever belonged to you I treasure up as a relic. You know the chaplet of pearls I used to wear when we played _The Lovers Knot_. Well, I have them still, although all else has gone from me. The string was broken once or twice, and some of the pearls were lost, but I threaded them again, and it still goes round my neck. I was looking at them the other day, and it made me very sad, for it made me think of the happy days–ah, the very happy days!–we have had together before I took to —-. But I won’t speak of that. I’ve cured myself. Yes, I assure you, Dick, I’ve cured myself; and it is for that I’ve come to talk to you. Were I not sure that I would never touch brandy again I would not ask you to take me back, but I’d sooner die than do what I have done, for I know that I never will. Can you–will you–my own darling Dick, give me another trial?’

The victory hung in the balance, but at that moment a superb girl, in all the splendour of long green tights, and resplendent with breastplate and spear, flung open the door.

‘Look here, Dick,’ she began, but seeing Kate, she stopped short, and stammered out an apology.

‘I shall be down on the stage in a minute, dear,’ he said, rising from his chair. The door was shut, and they were again alone; but Kate felt that chance had gone against her. The interruption had, with a sudden shock, killed the emotions she had succeeded in awakening, and had supplied Dick with an answer that would lead him, by a way after his own heart, straight out of his difficulty.

‘My dear,’ he said, rising from his chair, ‘I’m glad you’ve given up