Chapter IV: ‘had the Chance Been with Us That Has Not Been.’

Alexis speeds homeward joyously, elate as if he had conquered fortune. He has borrowed money from a social inferior, and yet does not feel humiliated. That interview with Richard Plowden has cheered him wondrously. The patient, gentle soul working at monotonous task-work in a gloomy back parlour, with no outlook save blank wall and cistern, working uncomplainingly, nay, even cheerfully, has read him a lesson. There must be work for a strong, healthy fellow like himself when a cripple in a back room can earn his living. Alexis begins to think he has tried life at the wrong end, that in striving for some shabby-genteel, reduced-gentleman’s occupation, he has overlooked those lowlier and less sophisticated avocations which offer themselves to every honest man.

‘We’ll emigrate as soon as the little woman is strong enough for a sea voyage,’ he tells himself, ‘and I’ll turn shepherd on the Australian downs.’

Sibyl receives him with an eager look, full of questioning. She is sitting on the hearth-rug as he comes into the room, in her favourite attitude, looking into the fire, her ruffled hair golden in the ruddy light, her eyes heavy with thought or care.

His elated aspect tells her that he has been successful. She rises and runs to him, trembling with anxiety.

‘Have you got the money?’

‘Yes, Sibyl. Of all my friends, the one who could least afford to lose it was the only one to lend it. Here it is, little one. You must make it go a long way, for it has cost me sore humiliation.’

‘It was lent grudgingly, then?’

‘No; but it was refused heartlessly by the wrong person before I hit upon the right one. Make the most of it, my love, now you’ve got it.’

His wife takes the little parcel of money from his hand, slowly, looking downward, and without a word.

‘You are pleased, little woman?’

‘It was very good of you to try so hard,’ she answers in a low voice.

She begins to busy herself about her husband’s dinner without another word. This evening she gives him half a pound of rump-steak, an unwonted feast, at which his soul rejoices.

‘I am faring sumptuously to-day,’ he says, as she sits opposite to him, pouring out the tea with a listless, absent air, which he takes for physical languor. ‘I have had a superb luncheon already.’

All that evening Sibyl is unwontedly silent, and Alexis, not caring to describe his interview with Mrs. Gorsuch, has not much to tell her after he has related Richard Plowden’s generosity. He has recourse to the tattered leaves of ‘Don Juan,’ and sits sniggering over his favourite passages, and feeling as if he and the poet were both outside the human race generally, and could afford to ridicule and despise it.

He sallies forth early next morning, despite the snow, which now clothes the land as a garment, and goes straight to Brompton, to have another cheery talk with Dick Plowden, and to inquire whether that back parlour philosopher has hit upon any method by which he, Alexis, may earn his daily bread.

Richard is hopeful. He has an uncle engaged in a large shipping agent’s office, an uncle who would have obtained employment for Richard himself, had Richard’s legs been more serviceable in active life. To this uncle, Mr. Sampson Plowden, Dick writes a long letter, setting forth his friend’s capacities and desire for employment; and, armed with this recommendation, Alexis speeds to the offices of Messrs. Keel and Skrew, in a narrow alley out of Fenchurch Street. He sees Sampson Plowden, an active little elderly man, who asks him if he can write a good hand, and if he is quick at accounts. Alexis asks for a sheet of paper, and writes a few lines in a clerk-like hand, taking care to dot his i’s this time, and then volunteers to solve any arithmetical puzzle that Mr. Plowden likes to set him.

‘Well, I’ll take your word and Dick’s as to the book-keeping,’ replies Mr. Plowden. ‘We employ a good many clerks, and sometimes have to send one to Australia, which makes a vacancy. The next time this occurs you shall hear of it. The junior clerks are in my department, and it’s in my province to engage or dismiss them. I’ll bear you in mind, Mr. Stanmore.’

‘If you could send me to Australia,’ hazards Alexis, glowing with hope, ‘it would suit me admirably.’

‘Well, well, that would be a matter involving much consideration. However, you shall hear from me at the first opportunity.’

This is not much, but it is something; for Mr. Plowden looks like a man who means what he says, and Dick has given him a high character for integrity and kindness of heart. Alexis plods homewards, cheered and sustained by sorrow’s pole-star, Hope.

He lets himself in at number eleven, Dixon Street, the door being on the latch, and goes upstairs, prepared to find Sibyl in a brighter frame of mind than usual, busy at her needlework most likely, the lamp burning, the hearth swept, the evening meal set out, with neatness which lends its charm even to poverty.

The room looks curiously blank and dreary as he enters it. The fire has gone out; cheerless sight, with that white world outside, and the thermometer below freezing-point. There is no tea-tray, no white cloth on the table, no lamp burning. The dusk is just light enough to show him that the room is empty, and that no preparation has been made for his refreshment.

He goes back to the landing and calls over the balusters to his landlady: ‘Has my wife been out long, Mrs. Bonny?’

‘She went out just before dinner-time,’ screams a voice from below.

Dinner-time with Mrs. Bonny means one o’clock.

‘She has gone to buy things, I dare say,’ thinks Alexis, ‘gone to London most likely. She ought to have been home by half-past four, though, if she went as early as one. Did she leave any message, Mrs. Bonny?’ he asks, calling over the balusters again.

‘No,’ replies the landlady, curtly, ‘she didn’t leave no message, but she took a carpet bag.’

‘A carpet bag,’ repeats Alexis, with a puzzled air, as he goes back to the blank, cold room. ‘What could she want with a carpet bag? To bring the things home, perhaps,--foolish little thing! As if a parcel wasn’t lighter to carry than a carpet bag.’

He gropes for wood and coals in the bottom of the roomy cupboard, and lights a fire, patiently, toilfully, not unskilfully, with hands which have learned many offices unknown to the elegant Captain Secretan.

He is dispirited by his wife’s absence, but not angry. That placid, easy temper of his is full of tenderness and indulgence for the ‘little woman’ whose brief married life has been so full of care, who approaches the mystery of maternity under such sorrowful conditions. He lights his fire, brings out a loaf, a starveling slice of cheese, and some small-beer in a bottle, and sits by the hearth to eat his meal in the firelight. As he eats and drinks his eyes wander thoughtfully round the firelit room, jets of flame flashing and twinkling on the wainscot.

‘Not a bad old room by any means,’ he thinks, ‘if one had just enough money to live in it comfortably.’

He fancies that in Sampson Plowden’s friendship he has found the clue that shall extricate him from the maze of adversity. How happy Sibyl and he might be in this humble old room were he but employed as clerk at Messrs. Keel and Skrew’s with a salary of say thirty shillings a week! Not an ambitious desire, surely, in a young man whose family history is set forth with some flourish in Burke’s ‘Landed Gentry.’

‘I shall have something pleasant to tell the little woman when she comes home, at any rate,’ thinks Alexis, as he sips the flat fourpenny ale, put carefully away after last night’s supper.

A pert little flame spurts out of a knob of coal just at this moment, brightening the whole room, and Secretan’s eye, wandering idly as he muses, is attracted by a spot of white upon the sideboard.

‘A letter, by Jove!’ he exclaims. ‘Who the deuce can have written to me, when not a mortal knows my address?’

He rises--listlessly--apprehending no advantage from the letter, lights the lamp, and goes over to the sideboard. The letter is from his wife.

‘DEAR ALEXIS,

‘Our misery of the last few months has opened my eyes to the sad
truth that it would have been far better for both of us had we
never met, or had we been wise enough to defer our marriage till
we had some settled means of living. What am I but a burden to
you? How many situations there are in which you could get your
living were you alone and unfettered! while I could at least
return to the dull drudgery of teaching, and escape the pinch
of absolute poverty. Do not think me cold-hearted, dear Alexis,
when I tell you that I am weary of our continual struggle, and
that I have resolved to end it by an act which may provoke your
indignation, but which, I feel assured, will result in your
advantage. I set you free from the burden of a wife whom you have
found it too bitter a task to support. You have rarely uttered a
complaint, but I have seen despair in your face often enough to
learn that it has settled in your heart. Without me you may begin
the world afresh. Apart from you I shall have opportunities of
prosperity as Miss Faunthorpe, which I could never have as Mrs.
Secretan. If my lot changes, and fortune smiles, as I dare to
hope it will, you shall hear of me; and even if you blame me for
a separation which your anger may call a desertion, believe at
least that in severance, as in union, I shall be ever your true
and loyal wife,

‘SIBYL.’

Alexis reads and re-reads this letter like a man who hast lost the power of understanding his mother tongue, and pores over familiar words as though they were the hieroglyphics of an Assyrian inscription.

So cold, so heartless, so deliberate. His heart sickens at the thought of such cruelty. In all his adversity, with starvation staring him in the face, he has thought of his wife as part of himself; has never considered the responsibility of providing for her as doubling the difficulty of existence; has never for a moment remembered that life might be easier to him without her. He has been sorry for her, has thought of her deprivations, her endurance, but of the burden upon himself--never. All hopes and dreams of a happier future have centred themselves in her. To win a brighter home for her, to surround her with comfort, has been his one ambition. Reckless as his marriage was, he has never repented it. Fettered hand and foot as he has found himself by that ill-considered act, he has never wished the tie loosened.

He stands with the letter in his hand, repeating the words to himself incredulously. It must be a jest--a trick to test his love--anything but the base and bitter truth.

He puts the letter in his pocket at last, goes downstairs, and penetrates the sacred domain of Mrs. Bonny; namely, the front kitchen, which is at once the parlour or living-room, where Mr. Bonny, employed as a railway porter, tastes the sweets of domestic leisure, and the apartment in which Mrs. Bonny cooks for her lodgers. The back kitchen makes a cheerful bedroom, and in summer-time, when Mr. Bonny trains scarlet runners over the window, enjoys a rustic outlook.

Alexis is received somewhat coldly by Mrs. Bonny, that lady being intent upon frying sausages for the railway porter’s evening repast, and resenting all intrusion upon her private domain on principle. He questions her closely as to the mode and manner of his wife’s departure, but she can tell him no more than she has told him already. Mrs. Stanmore went out between twelve and one o’clock, carrying a small carpet bag.

‘I shouldn’t have known anything about it if I hadn’t happened to meet her as I was fetching of the dinner beer, our Mary Ann being washing, and no one else to fetch it.’

‘Did she say nothing to you?’

‘Not a word; she just gives me a nod, in her off-hand way, and walks on.’

That is all. Alexis goes upstairs again, heavily, slowly, and paces the deserted room. By-and-bye he pauses before a rickety old chest of drawers with brass handles and locks, opens a drawer, and finds it empty. It is the drawer that contained his wife’s poor remains of a wardrobe that had never been richly furnished, a few under garments, a collar or two, and so on. These she has evidently taken with her. Nothing could have been more deliberate than her departure.

Presently a curious idea occurs to him, improbable, but it takes a strong hold upon him nevertheless.

Has she gone to make away with herself? and is this heartless letter of hers a tender device to save him the pain of knowing that she had been driven by despair to suicide?

This seems to him more likely, more natural than that the wife he loves can desert him; can, with coldest calculation, barter love and truth against the chances of prosperity.

What those chances are he knows not. He is so ignorant of his wife’s family and surroundings as not to know that Sibyl Faunthorpe is the niece of Stephen Trenchard.

Why he is thus unenlightened is a question that can be only answered by a retrospect, and will be best answered in Sibyl’s own words.