THE BUTCHER'S BILLS.
CHAPTER I. HUSBAND AND WIFE.
I am going to tell a story of married life. My title will prepare thereader for something hardly heroic; but I trust it will not be foundlacking in the one genuine and worthy interest a tale ought tohave--namely, that it presents a door through which we may walk intoone region or another of the human heart, and there find ourselves notaltogether unacquainted or from home.
There was a law among the Jews which forbade the yoking together ofcertain animals, either because, being unequal in size or strength,one of them must be oppressed, or for the sake of some lesson thusembodied to the Eastern mind--possibly for both reasons. Half thetragedy would be taken out of social life if this law could be appliedto human beings in their various relations. I do not say that thiswould be well, or that we could afford to lose the result of thetragedy thus occasioned. Neither do I believe that there are so manyinstances of unequal yoking as the misprising judgments of men by menand women by women might lead us to imagine. Not every one declared bythe wisdom of acquaintance to have thrown himself or herself away musttherefore be set down as unequally yoked. Or it may even be that theinequality is there, but the loss on the other side. How some peoplecould ever have come together must always be a puzzle until one knowsthe history of the affair; but not a few whom most of us would judgequite unsuited to each other do yet get on pretty well from, thefirst, and better and better the longer they are together, and thatwith mutual advantage, improvement, and development. Essentialhumanity is deeper than the accidents of individuality; the common ismore powerful than the peculiar; and the honest heart will always belearning to act more and more in accordance with the laws of itsbeing. It must be of much more consequence to any lady that herhusband should be a man on whose word she can depend than that heshould be of a gracious presence. But if instead of coming nearer to atrue understanding of each other, the two should from the first keepfalling asunder, then something tragic may almost be looked for.
Duncan and Lucy Dempster were a couple the very mention of whoseChristian names together would have seemed amusing to the friends whohad long ceased to talk of their unfitness. Indeed, I doubt if intheir innermost privacy they ever addressed each other except as Mr.and Mrs. Dempster. For the first time to see them together, no onecould help wondering how the conjunction could have been effected.Dempster was of Scotch descent, but the hereditary high cheek-boneseemed to have got into his nose, which was too heavy a pendant forthe low forehead from which it hung. About an inch from the end ittook a swift and unexpected curve downwards, and was a curious andabnormal nose, which could not properly be assorted with any knownclass of noses. A long upper lip, a large, firm, and not quite uglymouth, with a chin both long and square, completed a face which, withits low forehead, being yet longer than usual, had a particularlyequine look. He was rather under the middle height, slender, and wellenough made--altogether an ordinary mortal, known on 'Change as anable, keen, and laborious man of business. What his special businesswas I do not know. He went to the city by the eight o'clock omnibusevery morning, dived into a court, entered a little square, rushed uptwo flights of stairs to a couple of rooms, and sat down in the backone before an office table on a hair-seated chair. It was a dingyplace--not so dirty as it looked, I daresay. Even the windows, beingof bad glass, did, I believe, look dirtier than they were. It was aplace where, so far as the eye of an outsider could tell, much ornothing might be doing. Its occupant always wore his hat in it, andhis hat always looked shabby. Some people said he was rich, othersthat he would be one day. Some said he was a responsible man, whateverthe epithet may have been intended to mean. I believe he was quite ashonest as the recognized laws of his trade demanded--and for how manycould I say more? Nobody said he was avaricious--but then he movedamongst men whose very notion was first to make money, after that tobe religious, or to enjoy themselves, as the case might be. And no oneeither ever said of him that he was a good man, or a generous. He wasabout forty years of age, looking somehow as if he had never beenyounger. He had had a fair education--better than is generallyconsidered necessary for mercantile purposes--but it would have beenhard to discover any signs of it in the spending of his leisure. OnSunday mornings he went with his wife to church, and when he came homehad a good dinner, of which now and then a friend took his share. Ifno stranger was present he took his wine by himself, and went to sleepin his easy chair of marone-coloured leather, while his wife sat onthe other side of the fire if it was winter, or a little way off bythe open window if it was summer, gently yawned now and then, andlooked at him with eyes a little troubled. Then he went off again bythe eight o'clock omnibus on Monday morning, and not an idea more orless had he in his head, not a hair's-breadth of difference was therein his conduct or pursuits, that he had been to church and had spentthe day out of business. That may, however, for anything I know, havebeen as much the clergyman's fault as his. He was the sort of man youmight call machine-made, one in whom humanity, if in no wisecaricatured, was yet in no wise ennobled.
His wife was ten years younger than he--hardly less thanbeautiful--only that over her countenance seemed to have gathered akind of haze of commonness. At first sight, notwithstanding, one couldnot help perceiving that she was china and he was delft. She wasgraceful as she sat, long-necked, slope-shouldered, and quite as tallas her husband, with a marked daintiness about her in the absence ofthe extremes of the fashion, in the quality of the lace she wore onher black silk dress, and in the wide white sleeves of fine cambricthat covered her arms from the shoulder to the wrist. She had amorally delicate air, a look of scrupulous nicety and lavender-storedlinen. She had long dark lashes; and when they rose, the eyelidsrevealed eyes of uncommon beauty. She had good features, good teeth,and a good complexion. The main feeling she produced and left was ofladyhood--little more.
Sunday afternoon came fifty-two times in the year. I mention thisbecause then always, and nearly then only, could one calculate onseeing them together. It came to them in a surburb of London, and thelook of it was dull. Doubtless Mr. Dempster's dinner and his reposeafter it were interesting to him, but I cannot help thinking his wifefound it dreary. She had, however, got used to it. The house was agood old one, of red brick, much larger than they required, but notexpensive, and had a general look of the refinement of its mistress.In the summer the windows of the dining-room would generally be open,for they looked into a really lovely garden behind the house, and thescent of the jasmine that crept all around them would come inplentifully. I wonder what the scent of jasmine did in DuncanDempster's world. Perhaps it never got farther than the generalante-chamber of the sensorium. It often made his wife sad--she couldnot tell why. To him I daresay it smelt agreeable, but I can hardlybelieve it ever woke in him that dreamy sensation it gave her--ofsomething she had not had enough of, she could not say what. When theheat was gone off a little he would walk out on the lawn, which waswell kept and well watered, with many flowering shrubs about it. Whyhe did so, I cannot tell. He looked at nothing in particular, onlywalked about for a few minutes, no doubt derived some pleasure of amild nature from something, and walked in again to tea. One might haveexpected he would have cultivated the acquaintance of his garden alittle, if it were only for the pleasure the contrast would give himwhen he got back to his loved office, for a greater contrast could notwell have been found than between his dingy dreary haunt onweekdays--a place which nothing but duty could have made other thanrepugnant to any free soul--and this nest of greenery and light andodour. Sweet scents floated in clouds invisible about the place;flower eyes and stars and bells and bunches shone and glowed andlurked all around; his very feet might have learned a lesson of thatwhich is beyond the sense from the turf he trod; but all the time, ifhe were not exactly seeing in his mind's eye the walls and tables ofhis office in the City square, his thoughts were not the less broodingover such business as he there transacted. For Mr. Dempster's was nota free soul. How could it be when all his energies were given tomaking money? This he
counted his _calling_--and I believe actuallycontrived to associate some feeling of duty with the notion of leavingbehind him a plump round sum of money, as if money in accumulation andfollowing flood, instead of money in peaceful current, were the goodthing for the world! Hence the whole realm of real life, the universeof thought and growth, was a high-hedged park to him, within which henever even tried to look--not even knowing that he was shut out fromit, for the hedge was of his own growing. What shall ever wake such aman to a sense of indwelling poverty, or make him begin to hungerafter any lowliest expansion? Does a reader retort, "The man wascomfortable, and why should he be troubled?" If the end of being, Ianswer, is only comfort in self, I yield. But what if there should beat the heart of the universe a Thought to which the being of such menis distasteful? What if to that Thought they look blots in light, uglythings? May there not lie in that direction some possible reason whythey should bethink themselves? Dempster, however, was not yet aclinker out of which all the life was burned, however much he lookedlike one. There was in him that which might yet burn--and give lightand heat.
On the Sunday evenings Mrs. Dempster would have gladly gone to churchagain, if only--though to herself she never allowed this for one ofher reasons--to slip from under the weight of her husband's presence.He seldom spoke to her more than a sentence at a time, but he did liketo have her near him, and I suppose held, through the bare presence,some kind of dull one-sided communication with her; what did a womanknow about business? and what did he know about except business? It istrue he had a rudimentary pleasure in music--and would sometimes askher to play to him, when he would listen, and after his fashion enjoy.But although here was a gift that might be developed until his soulcould echo the music of the spheres, the embodied souls of Handel orMendelssohn were to him but clouds of sound wrapped about kernels--letme say of stock or bonds.
For a year or so after their marriage it had been the custom that, thefirst thing after breakfast on Monday morning, she should bring himher account-book, that they might together go over her week'sexpenses. She must cultivate the business habits in which, he said, hefound her more than deficient. How could he endure in a wife whatwould have been preposterous in a clerk, and would have led to hisimmediate dismissal? It was in his eyes necessary that the same strictrecord of receipt and expenditure should be kept in the household asin the office; how else was one to know in what direction things weregoing? he said. He required of his wife, therefore, that everyindividual thing that cost money, even to what she spent upon her ownperson, should be entered in her book. She had no money of her own,neither did he allow her any special sum for her private needs; but hemade her a tolerably liberal weekly allowance, from which she had topay everything except house-rent and taxes, an arrangement which Icannot believe a good one, as it will inevitably lead someconscientious wives to self-denial severer than necessary, and on theother hand will tempt the vulgar nature to make a purse for herself bymean savings off everybody else. It was especially distasteful to Mrs.Dempster to have to set down every little article of personalrequirement that she bought. It would probably have seemed to her buta trifle had they both been young when they married, and had therebeen that tenderness of love between them which so soon setseverything more than right; but as it was, she could never get overthe feeling that the man was strange to her. As it was she would havegot over this. But there was in her a certain constitutional lack ofprecision, combined with a want of energy and a weakness of will, thatrendered her more than careless where her liking was not interested.Hence, while she would have been horrified at playing a wrong note orsinging out of tune, she not only had no anxiety, for the thing's ownsake, to have her accounts correct, but shrunk from every effort inthat direction. Now I can perfectly understand her recoil from thewhole affair, with her added dislike to the smallness of the thingrequired of her; but seeing she did begin with doing it after afashion, it is not so easy to understand why, doing it, she should notmake a consolation of doing it with absolute exactness. Not even herdread of her husband's dissatisfaction--which was by no meanssmall--could prevail to make her, instead of still trusting a memorythat constantly played her false, put down a thing at once, norpostpone it to a far less convenient season. Hence it came that heraccounts, though never much out, never balanced; and the weekly audit,while it grew more and more irksome to the one, grew more and moreunsatisfactory to the other. For to Mr. Dempster's dusty eyesexactitude wore the robe of rectitude, and before long, precisely andmerely from the continued unsatisfactory condition of her accounts, hebegan, in a hidden corner of his righteous soul, to reflect on themoral condition of his wife herself as unsatisfactory. Now such itcertainly was, but he was not the man to judge it correctly, or toperceive the true significance of her failing. In business, whilescrupulous as to the requirements of custom and recognized right, henevertheless did things from which her soul would have recoiled like"the tender horns of cockled snails;" yet it was to him not merely astrange and inexplicable fact that she should _never_ be able to showto a penny, nay, often not to a shilling or eighteenpence, how theweek's allowance went, but a painful one as indicating somethingbeyond perversity. And truly it was no very hard task he required ofher, for, seeing they had no children, only three servants, and sawlittle company, her housekeeping could not be a very heavy or involvedaffair. Perhaps if it had been more difficult she would have done itbetter, but anyhow she hated the whole thing, procrastinated, andsetting down several things together, was _sure_ to forget somearticle or mistake some price; yet not one atom more would shedistrust her memory the next time she was tempted. But it was a smallfault at worst, and if her husband had loved her enough to understandthe bearings of it in relation to her mental and moral condition hewould have tried to content himself that at least she did not exceedher allowance; and would of all things have avoided making such amatter a burden upon the consciousness of one so differently educated,if not constituted, from himself. It is but fair to add on the otherside that, if she had loved him after anything like a wifely ideal,which I confess was not yet possible to her, it would not have beenmany weeks before she had a first correct account to show him.Convinced, at length, that accuracy was not to be had from her, andsatisfying himself with dissatisfaction, he one morning threw from himthe little ruled book, and declared, in a wrath which he sought tosmother into dignified but hopeless rebuke, that he would troublehimself with her no further. She burst into tears, took up the book,left the room, cried a little, resolved to astonish him the nextMonday, and never set down another item. When it came, and breakfastwas over, he gave her the usual cheque, and left at once for town. Norhad the accounts ever again been alluded to between them.
Now this might have been very well, or at least not very ill, if bothhad done tolerably well thereafter--that is, if the one had continuedto attend to her expenditure as well as before, and the other, when hethrew away the account-book, had dismissed from his mind the wholematter. But Dempster was one of those dangerous men--more dangerous,however, to themselves than to others--who never forget, that is, getover, an offence or disappointment. They respect themselves so much,and, out of their respect for themselves, build so much upon success,set so much by never being defeated but always gaining their point,that when they are driven to confess themselves foiled, the confessionis made from the "poor dumb mouth" of a wound that cannot be healed.It is there for ever--will be there at least until they find anotherGod to worship than their own paltry selves. Hence it came that thebourn between the two spiritual estates yawned a little wider at onepoint, and a mist of dissatisfaction would not unfrequently rise froma certain stagnant pool in its hollow. The cause was paltry in onesense, but nothing to which belongs the name of _Cause_ can fail tomingle the element of awfulness even with its paltriness. Its worsteffect was that it hindered approximation in other parts of theirmarching natures.
And as to Mrs. Dempster, I am sorry for the apparent justificationwhich what I have to confess concerning her must give to the severewhims of such husba
nds as hers: from that very Monday morning shebegan to grow a little careless about her expenditure--which she hadnever been before. By degrees bill after bill was allowed to filchfrom the provision of the following week, and when that was devoured,then from that of the week after. It was not that she was in the leastmore expensive upon herself, or that she consciously wasted anything;but, altogether averse to housekeeping, she ceased to exercise thesame outlook upon the expenditure of the house, did not keep herhorses together, left the management more and more to her cook; whilethe consciousness that she was not doing her duty made her more andmore uncomfortable, and the knowledge that things were going fartherand farther wrong, made her hate the idea of accounts worse and worse,until she came at length to regard them with such a loathing as mighthave fitted some extreme of moral evil. The bills which were supposedby her husband to be regularly settled every week were at last monthsbehind, and the week's money spent in meeting the most pressing of itsdemands, while what it could no longer cover was cast upon the growingheap of evil for the time to come.
I must say this for her, however, that there was a small sum of moneyshe expected on the death of a crazy aunt, which, if she could but layhold of it without her husband's knowledge, she meant to devote to theclearing off of everything, when she vowed to herself to do better inthe time to come.
The worst thing in it all was that her fear of her husband keptincreasing, and that she felt more and more uncomfortable in hispresence. Hence that troubled look in her eye, always more marked whenher husband sat dozing in his chair of a Sunday afternoon.
It was natural, too, that, although they never quarrelled, theirintercourse should not grow of a more tender character. Seldom wasthere a salient point in their few scattered sentences ofconversation, except, indeed, it were some piece of news either had tocommunicate. Occasionally the wife read something from the newspaper,but never except at her husband's request. In general he enjoyed hisnewspaper over a chop at his office. Two or three times since theirmarriage--now eight years--he had made a transient resolve pointing atthe improvement of her mind, and to that end had taken from his greatglass-armoured bookcase some _standard_ work--invariably, I believe,upon party-politics--from which he had made her read him a chapter.But, unhappily, she had always got to the end of it without gainingthe slightest glimmer of a true notion of what the author was drivingat.
It almost moves me to pity to think of the vagueness of thatrudimentary humanity in Mr. Dempster which made him dream of doingsomething to improve his wife's mind. What did he ever do to improvehis own? It is hard to understand how horses find themselves socomfortable in their stables that, be the day ever so fine, thecountry ever so lovely, the air ever so exhilarating, they are alwaysrejoiced to get back into their dull twilight: it is harder to me tounderstand how Mr. Dempster could be so comfortable in his own mindthat he never wanted to get out of it, even at the risk of beingbeside himself; but no doubt the dimness of its twilight had a gooddeal to do with his content. And then there is that in every humanmind which no man's neighbour, nay, no man himself, can understand. Myneighbour may in his turn be regarding my mind as a gloomy place tolive in, while I find it no undesirable residence--though chieflybecause of the number of windows it affords me for looking out of it.Still, if Dempster's dingy office in the City was not altogether asufficing type of the mind that used it, I consider it a very fairlygood one.
But wherein was Mrs. Dempster so very different from her husband as Irudely fancy some of my readers imagining her? Whatever may have beenher reasons for marrying him--one would suppose they must have beenweighty--to do so she must have been in a very undeveloped condition,and in that condition she still remained. I do not mean that she wasless developed than ninety-nine out of the hundred: most women affectme only as valuable crude material out of which precious things aremaking. How much they might be, must be, shall be! For now they standlike so many Lot's-wives--so many rough-hewn marble blocks, rather, ofwhich a Divinity is shaping the ends. Mrs. Dempster had all the makingof a lovely woman, but notwithstanding her grace, her beauty, hersweetness, her lark-like ballading too, she was a very ordinary womanin that region of her which knew what she meant when she said "I." Ofthis fact she had hardly a suspicion, however; for until aspirationbrings humility, people are generally pretty well satisfied withthemselves, having no idea what poor creatures they are. She saw inher mirror a superior woman, regarded herself as one of the finerworks of creation. The worst was that from the first she had countedherself superior to her husband, and in marrying him had felt notmerely that she was conferring a favour, which every husband wouldallow, but that she was lowering herself without elevating him. Now itis true that she was pleasanter to look at, that her manners weresweeter, and her notions of the becoming far less easily satisfiedthan his; also that she was a little less deficient in vague reverencefor certain forms of the higher than he. But I know of nothing in herto determine her classification as of greater value than he, exceptindeed that she was on the whole rather more honest. She read novelsand he did not; she passed shallow judgment, where he scorned tojudge; she read all the middling poetry that came in her way, andcopied books full of it; but she could no more have appreciated one ofMilton's or Shakspere's smallest poems than she could have laughedover a page of Chinese. She liked to hear this and that popularpreacher, and when her husband called his sermons humbug, she heard itwith a shocked countenance; but was she better or worse than herhusband when, admiring them as she did, she permitted them to have nomore influence upon her conduct than if they had been the meresthumbug ever uttered by ambitious demagogue? In truth, I cannot seethat in the matter of worth there was much as yet to choose betweenthem.
It is hardly necessary, then, to say that there was little appreciableapproximation of any kind going on between them. If only they wouldhave read Dickens together! Who knows what might have come of it! Butthis dull close animal proximity, without the smallest consciousnearness of heart or mind or soul--and so little chance, from verylack of wants, for showing each other kindnesses--surely it is akilling sort of thing! And yet, and yet, there is always asomething--call it habit, or any poorest name you please--grows upbetween two who are much together, at least when they neither quarrelnor thwart each other's designs, which, tending with its roots towardsthe deeper human, blossoms into--a wretched little flower indeed, yetafar off partaking of the nature of love. The Something seldom revealsits existence until they are parted. I suspect that with not a few,Death is the love-messenger at the stroke of whose dart the stream oflove first begins to flow in the selfish bosom.
It is now necessary to mention a little break in the monotony of Mrs.Dempster's life, which, but for what came afterwards, could claim norecord. One morning her page announced Major Strong, and possibly shereceived the gentleman who entered with a brighter face than she hadever shown her husband. The major had just arrived from India. He hadbeen much at her father's house while she was yet a mere girl, beingthen engaged to one of her sisters, who died after he went abroad, andbefore he could return to marry her. He was now a widower, afine-looking, frank, manly fellow. The expression of his countenancewas little altered, and the sight of him revived in the memory of Mrs.Dempster many recollections of a happy girlhood, when the prospect ofsuch a life as she now led with tolerable content would have seemedsimply unendurable. When her husband came home she told him as much ashe cared to hear of the visitor she had had, and he made no objectionto her asking him to dine the next Sunday. When he arrived Mr.Dempster saw a man of his own age, bronzed and big, with not muchwaist left, but a good carriage and pleasant face. He made himselfagreeable at dinner, appreciated his host's wine, and told goodstories that pleased the business man as showing that he knew "whatwas what." He accorded him his more particular approval, speaking tohis wife, on the ground that he was a man of the world, with none ofthe army slang about him. Mr. Dempster was not aware that he hadhimself more business peculiarities than any officer in her majesty'sservice had military ones.
> After this Major Strong frequently called upon Mrs. Dempster. Theywere good friends, and did each other no harm whatever, and thehusband neither showed nor felt the least jealousy. They sangtogether, occasionally went out shopping, and three or four times wenttogether to the play. Mr. Dempster, so long as he had his usualcomforts, did not pine in his wife's absence, but did show a littlemore pleasure when she came home to him than usually when he came hometo her. This lasted for a few months. Then the major went back toIndia, and for a time the lady missed him a good deal, which,considering the dulness of her life, was not very surprising orreprehensible.