A Simpleton Part 36

May 4. Re-shaping and repairing elegant lace mantle, 1 8 Chip bonnet, feather, and flowers . . . . 4 4 May 20. Making and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g blue silk dress--material part found . . . . . . . . . . . 19 19 Five yards rich blue silk to match. . . . 4 2 June 1. Polonaise and jacket trimmed with lace-- material part found . . . . . . . . 17 17 June 8. One black silk dress, handsomely trimmed with jet guipure and lace . . . . . . 49 18

A few shreds and fragments of finery, bought at odd times, swelled the bill to L99 11s. 6d.--not to terrify the female mind with three figures.

And let no unsophisticated young lady imagine that the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, which const.i.tuted three-fourths of this bill, were worth anything. The word "lace," in Madame Cie's bill, invariably meant machine-made trash, worth tenpence a yard, but charged eighteen s.h.i.+llings a yard for one pennyworth of work in putting it on. Where real lace was used, Madame Cie always LET HER CUSTOMERS KNOW IT. Miss Lucas's bill for this year contained the two following little items:--

Rich gros de cecile polonaise and jacket to match, trimmed with Chantilly lace and valenciennes . . . 68 5 Superb robe de chambre, richly trimmed with skunk fur. 40 0

The customer found the stuff; viz., two shawls. Carolina found the nasty little pole-cats, and got twenty-four s.h.i.+llings for them; Madame Cie found THE REST.

But Christopher Staines had not Miss Lucas's bill to compare his wife's with. He could only compare the latter with their income, and with male notions of common sense and reason.

He went home, and into his studio, and sat down on his hard beech chair; he looked round on his books and his work, and then, for the first time, remembered how long and how patiently he had toiled for every hundred pounds he had made; and he laid the evidences of his wife's profusion and deceit by the side of those signs of painful industry and self-denial, and his soul filled with bitterness. "Deceit! deceit!"

Mrs. Staines heard he was in the house, and came to know about the trial. She came hurriedly in, and caught him with his head on the table, in an att.i.tude of prostration, quite new to him; he raised his head directly he heard her, and revealed a face, pale, stern, and wretched.

"Oh! what is the matter now?" said she.

"The matter is what it has always been, if I could only have seen it.

You have deceived me, and disgraced yourself. Look at those bills."

"What bills? Oh!"

"You have had an allowance for housekeeping."

"It wasn't enough."

"It was plenty, if you had kept faith with me, and paid ready money. It was enough for the first five weeks. I am housekeeper now, and I shall allow myself two pounds a week less, and not owe a s.h.i.+lling either."

"Well, all I know is, I couldn't do it: no woman could."

"Then, you should have come to me, and said so; and I would have shown you how. Was I in Egypt, or at the North Pole, that you could not find me, to treat me like a friend? You have ruined us: these debts will sweep away the last s.h.i.+lling of our little capital; but it isn't that, oh, no! it is the miserable deceit."

Rosa's eye caught the sum total of Madame Cie's bill, and she turned pale. "Oh, what a cheat that woman is!"

But she turned paler when Christopher said, "That is the one honest bill; for I gave you leave. It is these that part us: these! these! Look at them, false heart! There, go and pack up your things. We can live here no longer; we are ruined. I must send you back to your father."

"I thought you would, sooner or later," said Mrs. Staines, panting, trembling, but showing a little fight. "He told you I wasn't fit to be a poor man's wife."

"An honest man's wife, you mean: that is what you are not fit for. You will go home to your father, and I shall go into some humble lodging to work for you. I'll contrive to keep you, and find you a hundred a year to spend in dress--the only thing your heart can really love. But I won't have an enemy here in the disguise of a friend; and I won't have a wife about me I must treat like a servant, and watch like a traitor."

The words were harsh, but the agony with which they were spoken distinguished them from vulgar vituperation.

They overpowered poor Rosa; she had been ailing a little some time, and from remorse and terror, coupled with other causes, nature gave way. Her lips turned white, she gasped inarticulately, and, with a little piteous moan, tottered, and swooned dead away.

He was walking wildly about, ready to tear his hair, when she tottered; he saw her just in time to save her, and laid her gently on the floor, and kneeled over her.

Away went anger and every other feeling but love and pity for the poor, weak creature that, with all her faults, was so lovable and so loved.

He applied no remedies at first: he knew they were useless and unnecessary. He laid her head quite low, and opened door and window, and loosened all her dress, sighing deeply all the time at her condition.

While he was thus employed, suddenly a strange cry broke from him: a cry of horror, remorse, joy, tenderness, all combined: a cry compared with which language is inarticulate. His swift and practical eye had made a discovery.

He kneeled over her, with his eyes dilating and his hands clasped, a picture of love and tender remorse.

She stirred.

Then he made haste, and applied his remedies, and brought her slowly back to life; he lifted her up, and carried her in his arms quite away from the bills and things, that, when she came to, she might see nothing to revive her distress. He carried her to the drawing-room, and kneeled down and rocked her in his arms, and pressed her again and again gently to his heart, and cried over her. "O my dove, my dove! the tender creature G.o.d gave me to love and cherish, and have I used it harshly? If I had only known! if I had only known!"

While he was thus bemoaning her, and blaming himself, and crying over her like the rain,--he, whom she had never seen shed a tear before in all his troubles,--she was coming to entirely, and her quick ears caught his words, and she opened her lovely eyes on him.

"I forgive you, dear," she said feebly. "BUT I HOPE YOU WILL BE A KINDER FATHER THAN A HUSBAND."

These quiet words, spoken with rare gravity and softness, went through the great heart like a knife.

He gave a sort of s.h.i.+ver, but said not a word.

But that night he made a solemn vow to G.o.d that no harsh word from his lips should ever again strike a being so weak, so loving, and so beyond his comprehension. Why look for courage and candor in a creature so timid and shy, she could not even tell her husband THAT until, with her subtle sense, she saw he had discovered it?

CHAPTER XII.

To be a father; to have an image of his darling Rosa, and a fruit of their love to live and work for: this gave the sore heart a heavenly glow, and elasticity to bear. Should this dear object be born to an inheritance of debt, of poverty? Never.

He began to act as if he was even now a father. He entreated Rosa not to trouble or vex herself; he would look into their finances, and set all straight.

He paid all the bills, and put by a quarter's rent and taxes. Then there remained of his little capital just ten pounds.

He went to his printers, and had a thousand order-checks printed. These forms ran thus:--

"Dr. Staines, of 13 Dear Street, Mayfair (blank for date), orders of (blank here for tradesman and goods ordered), for cash. Received same time (blank for tradesman's receipt). Notice: Dr. Staines disowns all orders not printed on this form, and paid for at date of order."

He exhibited these forms, and warned all the tradespeople, before a witness whom he took round for that purpose.

He paid off Pearman on the spot. Pearman had met Clara, dressed like a pauper, her soldier having emptied her box to the very dregs, and he now offered to stay. But it was too late.

Staines told the cook Mrs. Staines was in delicate health, and must not be troubled with anything. She must come to him for all orders.

"Yes, sir," said she. But she no sooner comprehended the check system fully than she gave warning. It put a stop to her wholesale pilfering.

Rosa's cooks had made fully a hundred pounds out of her amongst them since she began to keep accounts.

Under the male housekeeper every article was weighed on delivery, and this soon revealed that the butcher and the fishmonger had habitually delivered short weight from the first, besides putting down the same thing twice. The things were sent back that moment, with a printed form, stating the nature and extent of the fraud.

The washerwoman, who had been pilfering wholesale so long as Mrs.

Staines and her sloppy-headed maids counted the linen, and then forgot it, was brought up with a run, by triplicate forms, and by Staines counting the things before two witnesses, and compelling the washerwoman to count them as well, and verify or dispute on the spot. The laundress gave warning--a plain confession that stealing had been part of her trade.