"Do for me? Hang me," said Mr. Hayes, flourishing a stick, and
perfectly pot-valiant, "do you think I care for a bastard and a--?"
He did not finish the sentence, for the woman ran at him like a
savage, knife in hand. He bounded back, flinging his arms about
wildly, and struck her with his staff sharply across the forehead.
The woman went down instantly. A lucky blow was it for Hayes and
her: it saved him from death, perhaps, and her from murder.
All this scene--a very important one of our drama--might have been
described at much greater length; but, in truth, the author has a
natural horror of dwelling too long upon such hideous spectacles:
nor would the reader be much edified by a full and accurate
knowledge of what took place. The quarrel, however, though not more
violent than many that had previously taken place between Hayes and
his wife, was about to cause vast changes in the condition of this
unhappy pair.
Hayes was at the first moment of his victory very much alarmed; he
feared that he had killed the woman; and Wood started up rather
anxiously too, with the same fancy. But she soon began to recover.
Water was brought; her head was raised and bound up; and in a short
time Mrs. Catherine gave vent to a copious fit of tears, which
relieved her somewhat. These did not affect Hayes much--they rather
pleased him, for he saw he had got the better; and although Cat
fiercely turned upon him when he made some small attempt towards
reconciliation, he did not heed her anger, but smiled and winked in
a self-satisfied way at Wood. The coward was quite proud of his
victory; and finding Catherine asleep, or apparently so, when he
followed her to bed, speedily gave himself up to slumber too, and
had some pleasant dreams to his portion.
Mr. Wood also went sniggering and happy upstairs to his chamber.
The quarrel had been a real treat to him; it excited the old man-
-tickled him into good-humour; and he promised himself a rare
continuation of the fun when Tom should be made acquainted with the
circumstances of the dispute. As for his Excellency the Count, the
ride from Marylebone Gardens, and a tender squeeze of the hand,
which Catherine permitted to him on parting, had so inflamed the
passions of the nobleman, that, after sleeping for nine hours, and
taking his chocolate as usual the next morning, he actually delayed
to read the newspaper, and kept waiting a toy-shop lady from
Cornhill (with the sweetest bargain of Mechlin lace), in order to
discourse to his chaplain on the charms of Mrs. Hayes.
She, poor thing, never closed her lids, except when she would have
had Mr. Hayes imagine that she slumbered; but lay beside him,
tossing and tumbling, with hot eyes wide open and heart thumping,
and pulse of a hundred and ten, and heard the heavy hours tolling;
and at last the day came peering, haggard, through the
window-curtains, and found her still wakeful and wretched.
Mrs. Hayes had never been, as we have seen, especially fond of her
lord; but now, as the day made visible to her the sleeping figure
and countenance of that gentleman, she looked at him with a contempt
and loathing such as she had never felt even in all the years of her
wedded life. Mr. Hayes was snoring profoundly: by his bedside, on
his ledger, stood a large greasy tin candlestick, containing a lank
tallow-candle, turned down in the shaft; and in the lower part, his
keys, purse, and tobacco-pipe; his feet were huddled up in his
greasy threadbare clothes; his head and half his sallow face muffled
up in a red woollen nightcap; his beard was of several days' growth;
his mouth was wide open, and he was snoring profoundly: on a more
despicable little creature the sun never shone. And to this sordid
wretch was Catherine united for ever. What a pretty rascal history
might be read in yonder greasy day-book, which never left the
miser!--he never read in any other. Of what a treasure were yonder
keys and purse the keepers! not a shilling they guarded but was
picked from the pocket of necessity, plundered from needy
wantonness, or pitilessly squeezed from starvation. "A fool, a
miser, and a coward! Why was I bound to this wretch?" thought
Catherine: "I, who am high-spirited and beautiful (did not HE tell
me so?); I who, born a beggar, have raised myself to competence, and
might have mounted--who knows whither?--if cursed Fortune had not
baulked me!"
As Mrs. Cat did not utter these sentiments, but only thought them,
we have a right to clothe her thoughts in the genteelest possible
language; and, to the best of our power, have done so. If the
reader examines Mrs. Hayes's train of reasoning, he will not, we
should think, fail to perceive how ingeniously she managed to fix
all the wrong upon her husband, and yet to twist out some
consolatory arguments for her own vanity. This perverse
argumentation we have all of us, no doubt, employed in our time.
How often have we,--we poets, politicians, philosophers,
family-men,--found charming excuses for our own rascalities in the
monstrous wickedness of the world about us; how loudly have we
abused the times and our neighbours! All this devil's logic did
Mrs. Catherine, lying wakeful in her bed on the night of the
Marylebone fete, exert in gloomy triumph.
It must, however, be confessed, that nothing could be more just than
Mrs. Hayes's sense of her husband's scoundrelism and meanness; for
if we have not proved these in the course of this history, we have
proved nothing. Mrs. Cat had a shrewd observing mind; and if she
wanted for proofs against Hayes, she had but to look before and
about her to find them. This amiable pair were lying in a large
walnut-bed, with faded silk furniture, which had been taken from
under a respectable old invalid widow, who had become security for a
prodigal son; the room was hung round with an antique tapestry
(representing Rebecca at the Well, Bathsheba Bathing, Judith and
Holofernes, and other subjects from Holy Writ), which had been many
score times sold for fifty pounds, and bought back by Mr. Hayes for
two, in those accommodating bargains which he made with young
gentlemen, who received fifty pounds of money and fifty of tapestry
in consideration of their hundred-pound bills. Against this
tapestry, and just cutting off Holofernes's head, stood an enormous
ominous black clock, the spoil of some other usurious transaction.
Some chairs, and a dismal old black cabinet, completed the furniture
of this apartment: it wanted but a ghost to render its gloom
complete.
Mrs. Hayes sat up in the bed sternly regarding her husband. There
is, be sure, a strong magnetic influence in wakeful eyes so
examining a sleeping person (do not you, as a boy, remember waking
of bright summer mornings and finding your mother looking over you?
had not the gaze of her tender eyes stolen into your senses long
before you woke, and cast over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell
of peace, and love, and fresh springing joy?) Some such influence
had Catherine's looks upon her husband: for, as he slept under
them, the man began to writhe about uneasily, and to burrow his head
in the pillow, and to utter quick, strange moans and cries, such as
have often jarred one's ear while watching at the bed of the
feverish sleeper. It was just upon six, and presently the clock
began to utter those dismal grinding sounds, which issue from clocks
at such periods, and which sound like the death-rattle of the
departing hour. Then the bell struck the knell of it; and with this
Mr. Hayes awoke, and looked up, and saw Catherine gazing at him.
Their eyes met for an instant, and Catherine turned away, burning
red, and looking as if she had been caught in the commission of a
crime.
A kind of blank terror seized upon old Hayes's soul: a horrible icy
fear, and presentiment of coming evil; and yet the woman had but
looked at him. He thought rapidly over the occurrences of the last
night, the quarrel, and the end of it. He had often struck her
before when angry, and heaped all kinds of bitter words upon her;
but, in the morning, she bore no malice, and the previous quarrel
was forgotten, or, at least, passed over. Why should the last
night's dispute not have the same end? Hayes calculated all this,
and tried to smile.
"I hope we're friends, Cat?" said he. "You know I was in liquor
last night, and sadly put out by the loss of that fifty pound.
They'll ruin me, dear--I know they will."
Mrs. Hayes did not answer.
"I should like to see the country again, dear," said he, in his most
wheedling way. "I've a mind, do you know, to call in all our money?
It's you who've made every farthing of it, that's sure; and it's a
matter of two thousand pound by this time. Suppose we go into
Warwickshire, Cat, and buy a farm, and live genteel. Shouldn't you
like to live a lady in your own county again? How they'd stare at
Birmingham! hey, Cat?"
And with this Mr. Hayes made a motion as if he would seize his
wife's hand, but she flung his back again.
"Coward!" said she, "you want liquor to give you courage, and then
you've only heart enough to strike women."
"It was only in self-defence, my dear," said Hayes, whose courage
had all gone. "You tried, you know, to--to--"
"To STAB you, and I wish I had!" said Mrs. Hayes, setting her teeth,
and glaring at him like a demon; and so saying she sprung out of
bed. There was a great stain of blood on her pillow. "Look at it,"
said she. "That blood's of your shedding!" and at this Hayes fairly
began to weep, so utterly downcast and frightened was the miserable
man. The wretch's tears only inspired his wife with a still greater
rage and loathing; she cared not so much for the blow, but she hated
the man: the man to whom she was tied for ever--for ever! The bar
between her and wealth, happiness, love, rank perhaps. "If I were
free," thought Mrs. Hayes (the thought had been sitting at her
pillow all night, and whispering ceaselessly into her ear)--,"If I
were free, Max would marry me; I know he would:--he said so
yesterday!"
* * *
As if by a kind of intuition, old Wood seemed to read all this
woman's thoughts; for he said that day with a sneer, that he would
wager she was thinking how much better it would be to be a Count's
lady than a poor miser's wife. "And faith," said he, "a Count and a
chariot-and-six is better than an old skinflint with a cudgel." And
then he asked her if her head was better, and supposed that she was
used to beating; and cut sundry other jokes, which made the poor
wretch's wounds of mind and body feel a thousand times sorer.
Tom, too, was made acquainted with the dispute, and swore his
accustomed vengeance against his stepfather. Such feelings, Wood,
with a dexterous malice, would never let rest; it was his joy, at
first quite a disinterested one, to goad Catherine and to frighten
Hayes: though, in truth, that unfortunate creature had no occasion
for incitements from without to keep up the dreadful state of terror
and depression into which he had fallen.
For, from the morning after the quarrel, the horrible words and
looks of Catherine never left Hayes's memory; but a cold fear
followed him--a dreadful prescience. He strove to overcome this
fate as a coward would--to kneel to it for compassion--to coax and
wheedle it into forgiveness. He was slavishly gentle to Catherine,
and bore her fierce taunts with mean resignation. He trembled
before young Billings, who was now established in the house (his
mother said, to protect her against the violence of her husband),
and suffered his brutal language and conduct without venturing to
resist.
The young man and his mother lorded over the house: Hayes hardly
dared to speak in their presence; seldom sat with the family except
at meals; but slipped away to his chamber (he slept apart now from
his wife) or passed the evening at the public-house, where he was
constrained to drink--to spend some of his beloved sixpences for
drink!
And, of course, the neighbours began to say, "John Hayes neglects
his wife." "He tyrannises over her, and beats her." "Always at the
public-house, leaving an honest woman alone at home!"
The unfortunate wretch did NOT hate his wife. He was used to
her--fond of her as much as he could be fond--sighed to be friends
with her again--repeatedly would creep, whimpering, to Wood's room,
when the latter was alone, and begged him to bring about a
reconciliation. They WERE reconciled, as much as ever they could
be. The woman looked at him, thought what she might be but for him,
and scorned and loathed him with a feeling that almost amounted to
insanity. What nights she lay awake, weeping, and cursing herself
and him! His humility and beseeching looks only made him more
despicable and hateful to her.
If Hayes did not hate the mother, however, he hated the boy--hated
and feared him dreadfully. He would have poisoned him if he had had
the courage; but he dared not: he dared not even look at him as he
sat there, the master of the house, in insolent triumph. O God! how
the lad's brutal laughter rung in Hayes's ears; and how the stare of
his fierce bold black eyes pursued him! Of a truth, if Mr. Wood
loved mischief, as he did, honestly and purely for mischief's sake,
he had enough here. There was mean malice, and fierce scorn, and
black revenge, and sinful desire, boiling up in the hearts of these
wretched people, enough to content Mr. Wood's great master himself.
Hayes's business, as we have said, was nominally that of a
carpenter; but since, for the last few years, he had added to it
that of a lender of money, the carpenter's trade had been neglected
altogether for one so much more profitable. Mrs. Hayes had exerted
herself, with much benefit to her husband, in his usurious business.
&nbs
p; She was a resolute, clear-sighted, keen woman, that did not love
money, but loved to be rich and push her way in the world. She
would have nothing to do with the trade now, however, and told her
husband to manage it himself. She felt that she was separated from
him for ever, and could no more be brought to consider her interests
as connected with his own.
The man was well fitted for the creeping and niggling of his
dastardly trade; and gathered his moneys, and busied himself with
his lawyer, and acted as his own bookkeeper and clerk, not without
satisfaction. His wife's speculations, when they worked in concert,
used often to frighten him. He never sent out his capital without a
pang, and only because he dared not question her superior judgment
and will. He began now to lend no more: he could not let the money
out of his sight. His sole pleasure was to creep up into his room,
and count and recount it. When Billings came into the house, Hayes
had taken a room next to that of Wood. It was a protection to him;
for Wood would often rebuke the lad for using Hayes ill: and both
Catherine and Tom treated the old man with deference.
At last--it was after he had collected a good deal of his money--
Hayes began to reason with himself, "Why should I stay?--stay to be
insulted by that boy, or murdered by him? He is ready for any
crime." He determined to fly. He would send Catherine money every
year. No--she had the furniture; let her let lodgings--that would
support her. He would go, and live away, abroad in some cheap
place--away from that boy and his horrible threats. The idea of
freedom was agreeable to the poor wretch; and he began to wind up
his affairs as quickly as he could.
Hayes would now allow no one to make his bed or enter his room; and
Wood could hear him through the panels fidgeting perpetually to and
fro, opening and shutting of chests, and clinking of coin. At the
least sound he would start up, and would go to Billings's door and
listen. Wood used to hear him creeping through the passages, and
returning stealthily to his own chamber.
One day the woman and her son had been angrily taunting him in the
presence of a neighbour. The neighbour retired soon; and Hayes, who
had gone with him to the door, heard, on returning, the voice of
Wood in the parlour. The old man laughed in his usual saturnine
way, and said, "Have a care, Mrs. Cat; for if Hayes were to die
suddenly, by the laws, the neighbours would accuse thee of his
death."
Hayes started as if he had been shot. "He too is in the plot,"
thought he. "They are all leagued against me: they WILL kill me:
they are only biding their time." Fear seized him, and he thought
of flying that instant and leaving all; and he stole into his room
and gathered his money together. But only a half of it was there:
in a few weeks all would have come in. He had not the heart to go.
But that night Wood heard Hayes pause at HIS door, before he went to
listen at Mrs. Catherine's. "What is the man thinking of?" said
Wood. "He is gathering his money together. Has he a hoard yonder
unknown to us all?"
Wood thought he would watch him. There was a closet between the two
rooms: Wood bored a hole in the panel, and peeped through. Hayes
had a brace of pistols, and four or five little bags before him on
the table. One of these he opened, and placed, one by one,
five-and-twenty guineas into it. Such a sum had been due that
day--Catherine spoke of it only in the morning; for the debtor's
name had by chance been mentioned in the conversation. Hayes
commonly kept but a few guineas in the house. For what was he
amassing all these? The next day, Wood asked for change for a
twenty-pound bill. Hayes said he had but three guineas. And, when
asked by Catherine where the money was that was paid the day before,
said that it was at the banker's. "The man is going to fly," said
Wood; "that is sure: if he does, I know him--he will leave his wife