Men's Wives Part 8

Bendigo forthwith to open the door and let him go forth.

Mr. Bendigo, smiling with exceeding archness, and putting a finger covered all over with diamond rings to his extremely aquiline nose, inquired of Mr. Walker whether he saw anything green about his face?

intimating by this gay and good-humoured interrogatory his suspicion of the unsatisfactory nature of the doc.u.ment handed over to him by Mr.

Walker.

"Hang it, sir!" says Mr. Walker, "go and get the cheque cashed, and be quick about it. Send your man in a cab, and here's a half-crown to pay for it." The confident air somewhat staggers the bailiff, who asked him whether he would like any refreshment while his man was absent getting the amount of the cheque, and treated his prisoner with great civility during the time of the messenger's journey.

But as Captain Walker had but a balance of two pounds five and twopence (this sum was afterwards divided among his creditors, the law expenses being previously deducted from it), the bankers of course declined to cash the Captain's draft for two hundred and odd pounds, simply writing the words "No effects" on the paper; on receiving which reply Walker, far from being cast down, burst out laughing very gaily, produced a real five-pound note, and called upon his host for a bottle of champagne, which the two worthies drank in perfect friends.h.i.+p and good-humour. The bottle was scarcely finished, and the young Israelitish gentleman who acts as waiter in Cursitor Street had only time to remove the flask and the gla.s.ses, when poor Morgiana with a flood of tears rushed into her husband's arms, and flung herself on his neck, and calling him her "dearest, blessed Howard," would have fainted at his feet; but that he, breaking out in a fury of oaths, asked her how, after getting him into that sc.r.a.pe through her infernal extravagance, she dared to show her face before him? This address speedily frightened the poor thing out of her fainting fit--there is nothing so good for female hysterics as a little conjugal sternness, nay, brutality, as many husbands can aver who are in the habit of employing the remedy.

"My extravagance, Howard?" said she, in a faint way; and quite put off her purpose of swooning by the sudden attack made upon her--"Surely, my love, you have nothing to complain of--"

"To complain of, ma'am?" roared the excellent Walker. "Is two hundred guineas to a music-master nothing to complain of? Did you bring me such a fortune as to authorise your taking guinea lessons? Haven't I raised you out of your sphere of life and introduced you to the best of the land? Haven't I dressed you like a d.u.c.h.ess? Haven't I been for you such a husband as very few women in the world ever had, madam?--answer me that."

"Indeed, Howard, you were always very kind," sobbed the lady.

"Haven't I toiled and slaved for you--been out all day working for you?

Haven't I allowed your vulgar old mother to come to your house--to my house, I say? Haven't I done all this?"

She could not deny it, and Walker, who was in a rage (and when a man is in a rage, for what on earth is a wife made but that he should vent his rage on her?), continued for some time in this strain, and so abused, frightened, and overcame poor Morgiana that she left her husband fully convinced that she was the most guilty of beings, and bemoaning his double bad fortune, that her Howard was ruined and she the cause of his misfortunes.

When she was gone, Mr. Walker resumed his equanimity (for he was not one of those men whom a few months of the King's Bench were likely to terrify), and drank several gla.s.ses of punch in company with his host; with whom in perfect calmness he talked over his affairs. That he intended to pay his debt and quit the spunging-house next day is a matter of course; no one ever was yet put in a spunging-house that did not pledge his veracity he intended to quit it to-morrow. Mr. Bendigo said he should be heartily glad to open the door to him, and in the meantime sent out diligently to see among his friends if there were any more detainers against the Captain, and to inform the Captain's creditors to come forward against him.

Morgiana went home in profound grief, it may be imagined, and could hardly refrain from bursting into tears when the sugar-loaf page asked whether master was coming home early, or whether he had taken his key; she lay awake tossing and wretched the whole night, and very early in the morning rose up, and dressed, and went out.

Before nine o'clock she was in Cursitor Street, and once more joyfully bounced into her husband's arms; who woke up yawning and swearing somewhat, with a severe headache, occasioned by the jollification of the previous night: for, strange though it may seem, there are perhaps no places in Europe where jollity is more practised than in prisons for debt; and I declare for my own part (I mean, of course, that I went to visit a friend) I have dined at Mr. Aminadab's as sumptuously as at Long's.

But it is necessary to account for Morgiana's joyfulness; which was strange in her husband's perplexity, and after her sorrow of the previous night. Well, then, when Mrs. Walker went out in the morning, she did so with a very large basket under her arm. "Shall I carry the basket, ma'am?" said the page, seizing it with much alacrity.

"No, thank you," cried his mistress, with equal eagerness: "it's only--"

"Of course, ma'am," replied the boy, sneering, "I knew it was that."

"Gla.s.s," continued Mrs. Walker, turning extremely red. "Have the goodness to call a coach, sir, and not to speak till you are questioned."

The young gentleman disappeared upon his errand: the coach was called and came. Mrs. Walker slipped into it with her basket, and the page went downstairs to his companions in the kitchen, and said, "It's a-comin'!

master's in quod, and missus has gone out to p.a.w.n the plate." When the cook went out that day, she somehow had by mistake placed in her basket a dozen of table-knives and a plated egg-stand. When the lady's-maid took a walk in the course of the afternoon, she found she had occasion for eight cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, (marked with her mistress's cipher), half-a-dozen pair of shoes, gloves, long and short, some silk stockings, and a gold-headed scent-bottle. "Both the new cashmeres is gone," said she, "and there's nothing left in Mrs. Walker's trinket-box but a paper of pins and an old coral bracelet." As for the page, he rushed incontinently to his master's dressing-room and examined every one of the pockets of his clothes; made a parcel of some of them, and opened all the drawers which Walker had not locked before his departure.

He only found three-halfpence and a bill stamp, and about forty-five tradesmen's accounts, neatly labelled and tied up with red tape.

These three worthies, a groom who was a great admirer of Trimmer the lady's-maid, and a policeman a friend of the cook's, sat down to a comfortable dinner at the usual hour, and it was agreed among them all that Walker's ruin was certain. The cook made the policeman a present of a china punch-bowl which Mrs. Walker had given her; and the lady's-maid gave her friend the "Book of Beauty" for last year, and the third volume of Byron's poems from the drawing-room table.

"I'm dash'd if she ain't taken the little French clock, too," said the page, and so indeed Mrs. Walker had; it slipped in the basket where it lay enveloped in one of her shawls, and then struck madly and unnaturally a great number of times, as Morgiana was lifting her store of treasures out of the hackney-coach. The coachman wagged his head sadly as he saw her walking as quick as she could under her heavy load, and disappearing round the corner of the street at which Mr. b.a.l.l.s's celebrated jewellery establishment is situated. It is a grand shop, with magnificent silver cups and salvers, rare gold-headed canes, flutes, watches, diamond brooches, and a few fine specimens of the old masters in the window, and under the words--

b.a.l.l.s, JEWELLER,

you read

Money Lent.

in the very smallest type, on the door.

The interview with Mr. b.a.l.l.s need not be described; but it must have been a satisfactory one, for at the end of half an hour Morgiana returned and bounded into the coach with sparkling eyes, and told the driver to GALLOP to Cursitor Street; which, smiling, he promised to do, and accordingly set off in that direction at the rate of four miles an hour. "I thought so," said the philosophic charioteer. "When a man's in quod, a woman don't mind her silver spoons;" and he was so delighted with her action, that he forgot to grumble when she came to settle accounts with him, even though she gave him only double his fare.

"Take me to him," said she to the young Hebrew who opened the door.

"To whom?" says the sarcastic youth; "there's twenty HIM'S here. You're precious early."

"To Captain Walker, young man," replied Morgiana haughtily; whereupon the youth opening the second door, and seeing Mr. Bendigo in a flowered dressing-gown descending the stairs, exclaimed, "Papa, here's a lady for the Captain." "I'm come to free him," said she, trembling, and holding out a bundle of bank-notes. "Here's the amount of your claim, sir--two hundred and twenty guineas, as you told me last night." The Jew took the notes, and grinned as he looked at her, and grinned double as he looked at his son, and begged Mrs. Walker to step into his study and take a receipt. When the door of that apartment closed upon the lady and his father, Mr. Bendigo the younger fell back in an agony of laughter, which it is impossible to describe in words, and presently ran out into a court where some of the luckless inmates of the house were already taking the air, and communicated something to them which made those individuals also laugh as uproariously as he had previously done.

Well, after joyfully taking the receipt from Mr. Bendigo (how her cheeks flushed and her heart fluttered as she dried it on the blotting-book!), and after turning very pale again on hearing that the Captain had had a very bad night: "And well he might, poor dear!" said she (at which Mr.

Bendigo, having no person to grin at, grinned at a marble bust of Mr. Pitt, which ornamented his sideboard)--Morgiana, I say, these preliminaries being concluded, was conducted to her husband's apartment, and once more flinging her arms round her dearest Howard's neck, told him with one of the sweetest smiles in the world, to make haste and get up and come home, for breakfast was waiting and the carriage at the door.

"What do you mean, love?" said the Captain, starting up and looking exceedingly surprised.

"I mean that my dearest is free; that the odious little creature is paid--at least the horrid bailiff is."

"Have you been to Baroski?" said Walker, turning very red.

"Howard!" said his wife, quite indignant.

"Did--did your mother give you the money?" asked the Captain.

"No; I had it by me" replies Mrs. Walker, with a very knowing look.

Walker was more surprised than ever. "Have you any more by you?" said he.

Mrs. Walker showed him her purse with two guineas. "That is all, love,"

she said. "And I wish," continued she, "you would give me a draft to pay a whole list of little bills that have somehow all come in within the last few days."

"Well, well, you shall have the cheque," continued Mr. Walker, and began forthwith to make his toilet, which completed, he rang for Mr. Bendigo, and his bill, and intimated his wish to go home directly.

The honoured bailiff brought the bill, but with regard to his being free, said it was impossible.

"How impossible?" said Mrs. Walker, turning very red: and then very pale. "Did I not pay just now?"

"So you did, and you've got the res.h.i.+pt; but there's another detainer against the Captain for a hundred and fifty. Eglantine and Mossrose, of Bond Street;--perfumery for five years, you know."

"You don't mean to say you were such a fool as to pay without asking if there were any more detainers?" roared Walker to his wife.

"Yes, she was though," chuckled Mr. Bendigo; "but she'll know better the next time: and, besides, Captain, what's a hundred and fifty pounds to you?"

Though Walker desired nothing so much in the world at that moment as the liberty to knock down his wife, his sense of prudence overcame his desire for justice: if that feeling may be called prudence on his part, which consisted in a strong wish to cheat the bailiff into the idea that he (Walker) was an exceedingly respectable and wealthy man. Many worthy persons indulge in this fond notion, that they are imposing upon the world; strive to fancy, for instance, that their bankers consider them men of property because they keep a tolerable balance, pay little tradesmen's bills with ostentatious punctuality, and so forth--but the world, let us be pretty sure, is as wise as need be, and guesses our real condition with a marvellous instinct, or learns it with curious skill. The London tradesman is one of the keenest judges of human nature extant; and if a tradesman, how much more a bailiff? In reply to the ironic question, "What's a hundred and fifty pounds to you?" Walker, collecting himself, answers, "It is an infamous imposition, and I owe the money no more than you do; but, nevertheless, I shall instruct my lawyers to pay it in the course of the morning: under protest, of course."

"Oh, of course," said Mr. Bendigo, bowing and quitting the room, and leaving Mrs. Walker to the pleasure of a tete-a-tete with her husband.

And now being alone with the partner of his bosom, the worthy gentleman began an address to her which cannot be put down on paper here; because the world is exceedingly squeamish, and does not care to hear the whole truth about rascals, and because the fact is that almost every other word of the Captain's speech was a curse, such as would shock the beloved reader were it put in print.

Fancy, then, in lieu of the conversation, a scoundrel, disappointed and in a fury, wreaking his brutal revenge upon an amiable woman, who sits trembling and pale, and wondering at this sudden exhibition of wrath.

Fancy how he clenches his fists and stands over her, and stamps and screams out curses with a livid face, growing wilder and wilder in his rage; wrenching her hand when she wants to turn away, and only stopping at last when she has fallen off the chair in a fainting fit, with a heart-breaking sob that made the Jew-boy who was listening at the key-hole turn quite pale and walk away. Well, it is best, perhaps, that such a conversation should not be told at length:--at the end of it, when Mr. Walker had his wife lifeless on the floor, he seized a water-jug and poured it over her; which operation pretty soon brought her to herself, and shaking her black ringlets, she looked up once more again timidly into his face, and took his hand, and began to cry.

He spoke now in a somewhat softer voice, and let her keep paddling on with his hand as before; he COULDN'T speak very fiercely to the poor girl in her att.i.tude of defeat, and tenderness, and supplication.