Read Ebook: A moment of madness and other stories (vol. 1 of 3) by Marryat Florence

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Ebook has 217 lines and 52587 words, and 5 pages

'It's all very fine for you to talk, but what am I to do with them cooped up in the house, on a day like this? If you had the charge of them, you'd turn them out anywhere, just to get rid of them.'

'Why don't you let the girl look after them?'

'Oh! well, don't bother me about it. Am I to have any dinner to-day or not?'

'I suppose Ann will bring it up when it is ready,' says his wife indifferently; 'you can't expect to be waited on as if you were the owner of Tresham Court.'

'D--n you! I wish you'd hold your tongue!' he answers angrily.

He calls it his dinner, for the good reason that it is the only dinner he ever gets, but it is a wretched mockery of the meal.

'What do you call this?' he says, as he examines the untempting-looking viands, and views with disgust the evident traces of black fingers on the edge of the dish. 'Take it away, and serve it me on a clean plate. I may be obliged to swallow any dog's meat you chose to put before me, but I'll be hanged if I'll eat the smuts off your servant's hands as well.'

Mrs Tresham, who is occupied at the other end of the table in cutting slices of bread and salt butter for the tribe of little cormorants by which she is surrounded, just turns her head and calls through the open door to the maid-of-all-work in the kitchen.

'Ann, come and fetch away this dish; your master says it is dirty.'

'Do it yourself!' roars her exasperated husband. 'It is quite bad enough that you are so lazy, you won't look after any of my comforts in my absence, without your refusing to set matters right now.'

His wife takes up the dish in silence, and leaves the apartment, whereupon two of the children, disappointed of their bread and butter, begin to cry. Roland Tresham, after threatening to turn them out of the room if they do not hold their tongues, leaves his seat and leans out of the open window, disconsolately. What a position it is in which to find his father's son! Outside, his neighbours are sitting in their shirt sleeves, smoking clay pipes in their strips of garden, or hanging over the railings talking with one another; in the road itinerant merchants are vending radishes, onions, and shellfish; whilst a strong, warm smell is wafted right under his nostrils from the pork-pie shop round the corner. Inside, the children are whimpering for the return of their mother round a soiled table-cloth which bears a piece of salt butter, warm and melting, a jar of treacle with a knife stuck in it, a stale loaf, a metal teapot, and knives and forks which have been but half-cleaned. A vision comes over Roland of that art-decorated drawing-room in Blue Street, with the porcelain tea-service, the silken clad figure, and the subtle perfume that pervaded the scene; and a great longing for all the delicacies and refinements of life comes over him, with a proportionate disgust for his surroundings. When his wife returns with the beefsteak, he pushes it from him. His appetite has vanished with the delay.

'I can't eat it,' he says impatiently. 'Take the filth away.'

'Well, it's the best I can do for you,' is her reply. 'It's quite enough for a woman to be nurse and housemaid, without turning cook into the bargain.'

'It is a long time since I have expected you to do anything to please me, Juliet; however, stop the mouths of those brats of yours, and send them to bed. I want the room to myself. I have work which must be done this evening.'

She supplies the children's wants, and hurries them from the room, whilst her husband sits sulking and dreaming of Blue Street. If his brother-in-law can only get him a foreign appointment, how gladly he will fly from this squalid home for ever. He pictures a life by the shores of the Mediterranean, in the forests of Brazil, on the plains of India, or the Australian colonies, and each and every one seems a paradise compared with that which he leads at present.

Mrs Tresham, putting her little ones to rest, feels also that, except for them, she would lay down her existence. She is utterly sick and wearied of her life. She is almost cross with Wilfrid and Bertie and Fred, because they will bolster one another, instead of lying down in their cots and going to sleep like pattern boys. For Baby Roland is whimpering for the breast, and two-year-old May is fractious with the pain of cutting her double teeth. Lily, her mother's help and companion, is the only one that waits patiently until her turn arrives to be undressed. But when the rest are at last subdued, or satisfied, and Juliet Tresham turns to attend to her eldest daughter, her trembling fingers have busied themselves but for a few seconds with strings and buttons, before her arms are cast around the child, and she bursts into a storm of tears.

'Mamma, why do you cry?' asks Lily anxiously.

'Oh, Lily, Lily! It is not my fault--it is not my fault.'

God help her, poor Juliet, it is not! Almost a girl in years, yet laden with cares such as few wives in her position are ever called upon to bear, she has sunk beneath the weight of an overwhelming load. Health and energy have failed her, and her husband's patience has not proved equal to the occasion, and so irritability and discontent have crept in on the one hand, and disgust and indifference on the other. And yet they loved each other once, oh! so dearly, and believed from their hearts they would have died sooner than give up their mutual affection.

But Mrs Tresham does not cry long. She persuades herself that the man downstairs is not worth crying for.

'Get into bed, Lily, darling, or papa will be coming up to see what we are about.'

'I didn't kiss papa nor wish him good-night,' says the child.

'No, no! it doesn't signify. He doesn't care for your kisses, nor for mine.'

She tucks her little girl into her bed and descends to the sitting-room again, feeling injured and hard of heart. Roland, as she enters, glances at her with a look of disgust.

'Your hair is half way down your back.'

She laughs slightly, and, pulling out the fastenings of her hair, lets the rippling mass fall over her shoulders. Roland used to admire it so much in the days gone by, and say it was the only gold he cared to possess. Has she any hope that he will recall his former feelings at the sight of her loosely falling locks? If so, she is mistaken, for he only remarks coldly,--

'I must beg you not to turn my room into a dressing-room. Go and put your hair up tidily. I hate to find it amongst my papers.'

'I believe you hate everything except your own comfort,' she replies. 'You're the most selfish man I ever came across.'

'Perhaps so! But as long as this house belongs to me, you'll be good enough to keep your opinions to yourself. If I can't have comfort when I come home, I will at least have peace.'

'It is by your own mismanagement if you do not.'

'How do you make that out? Has your want of money anything to do with my mismanagement? Have the children anything to do with it? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

'Ought I?' he returns, biting his lip. 'Then, perhaps, you'll be glad to hear that I have applied for a foreign appointment that will take me out to India, or the Brazils, for the remainder of my life.'

'Oh, Roland!' she cries, catching her breath; 'but not to leave us?'

'Certainly to leave you. That was the sole object of my application. Aren't you delighted to hear it? We lead a cat-and-dog life as things are at present, and the sooner we are separated the better.'

'Oh, don't be afraid! you will be provided for.'

'But if you should be ill?' suggests the woman fearfully.

'Then I shall die, perhaps, and so much the better. You have not made my life such a heaven to me that I shall lose much by its resignation.'

Then she falls upon his neck, weeping.

'Oh, Roland, Roland! do not speak to me like that.'

But he pushes her from him. He has had no dinner, and that is a trial that never improves the masculine temper.

'Don't make a fool of yourself!' he says roughly.

Juliet raises her head and dries her eyes. She is a proud woman and a high-spirited one, and never disposed to take a rebuff meekly.

'Just what I said,' remarks her husband indifferently. 'You are as sick of me as I am of you, and it's of no use disguising the truth from one another.'

'Was there? Well, you can't expect such things to last for ever, and you have really made my life such a hell to me of late that you can't be surprised if I look forward to any change as a blessing.'

'Oh! It has come to that, has it--that you want to get rid of me? Why don't you put the finishing stroke to your cruelty and say at once that you hate me?'

'I am afraid you are making me do something very much like it.'

'The truth is, you are tired of me, Roland! It is nursing your children and trying out of our scanty income to provide for your wants that has brought me down to what I am, and since I have ceased to please your eyes, I have wearied out your fancy.'

Her husband's handsome face--flushed and animated--turns towards her as she opens the door.

'What is the matter?' she exclaims hurriedly.

He has leapt from his seat and passed his fingers through his hair, which is all on end. His eyes flame like living fire; his whole frame is trembling; she thinks for the moment that he has gone mad.

'Roland, you are frightening me terribly! Have you had bad news?'

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