The inhabitants of Croix-Daurade kept early hours. Towards eleven o'clock, the company rose and separated for the night. Except the two neighbours, nobody had enjoyed the supper, and even the two neighbours, having eaten their fill, were as glad to get home as the rest. In the little confusion of parting, Monsieur Chaubard completed the astonishmentof the guests at the extraordinary change in him, by slipping away alone, without waiting to bid anybody good night.
The widow Mirailhe and her nieces withdrew to their bed-rooms, and left the three brothers by themselves in the parlour.
"Jean," said Thomas Siadoux, "I have a word to say to you. You stared at our good Monsieur Chaubard in a very offensive manner all through the evening. What did you mean by it?"
"Wait till to-morrow," said Jean; "and perhaps I may tell you."
He lit his candle, and left them. Both the brothers observed that his hand trembled, and that his manner—never very winning—was, on that night, more serious and more unsociable than usual.
When post-time came on the morning of the twenty-seventh, no letter arrived from Saturnin Siadoux. On consideration, the family interpreted this circumstance in a favourable light. If the master of the house had not written to them, it followed, surely, that he meant to make writing unnecessary by returning on that day.
As the hours passed, the widow and her nieces looked out, from time to time, for the absent man. Towards noon, they observed a little assembly ofpeople approaching the village. Ere long, on a nearer view, they recognised at the head of the assembly, the chief magistrate of Toulouse, in his official dress. He was accompanied by his Assessor (also in official dress), by an escort of archers, and by certain subordinates attached to the town-hall. These last appeared to be carrying some burden, which was hidden from view by the escort of archers. The procession stopped at the house of Saturnin Siadoux; and the two daughters, hastening to the door, to discover what had happened, met the burden which the men were carrying, and saw, stretched on a litter, the dead body of their father.
The corpse had been found that morning on the banks of the river Lers. It was stabbed in eleven places with knife or dagger wounds. None of the valuables about the dead man's person had been touched; his watch and his money were still in his pockets. Whoever had murdered him, had murdered him for vengeance, not for gain.
Some time elapsed before even the male members of the family were sufficiently composed to hear what the officers of justice had to say to them. When this result had been at length achieved, and when the necessary inquiries had been made, no information of any kind was obtained which pointed to the murderer, in the eye of the law. After expressing his sympathy, and promising that every available meansshould be tried to effect the discovery of the criminal, the chief magistrate gave his orders to his escort, and withdrew.
When night came, the sister and the daughters of the murdered man retired to the upper part of the house, exhausted by the violence of their grief. The three brothers were left once more alone in the parlour, to speak together of the awful calamity which had befallen them. They were of hot Southern blood, and they looked on one another with a Southern thirst for vengeance in their tearless eyes.
The silent younger son was now the first to open his lips.
"You charged me yesterday," he said to his brother Thomas, "with looking strangely at Monsieur Chaubard all the evening; and I answered that I might tell youwhyI looked at him when to-morrow came. To-morrow has come, and I am ready to tell you."
He waited a little, and lowered his voice to a whisper when he spoke again.
"When Monsieur Chaubard was at our supper-table last night," he said, "I had it in my mind that something had happened to our father, and that the priest knew it."
The two elder brothers looked at him in speechless astonishment.
"Our father has been brought back to us a murderedman!" Jean went on, still in a whisper. "I tell you, Louis—and you, Thomas—that the priest knows who murdered him."
Louis and Thomas shrank from their younger brother, as if he had spoken blasphemy.
"Listen," said Jean. "No clue has been found to the secret of the murder. The magistrate has promised us to do his best—but I saw in his face that he had little hope. We must make the discovery ourselves—or our father's blood will have cried to us for vengeance, and cried in vain. Remember that—and mark my next words. You heard me say yesterday evening, that I had met Monsieur Chaubard on his way to Toulouse in excellent health and spirits. You heard our old friend and neighbour contradict me at the supper-table, and declare that he had seen the priest, some hours later, go into our church here with the face of a panic-stricken man. You saw, Thomas, how he behaved when you went to fetch him to our house. You saw, Louis, what his looks were like when he came in. The change was noticed by everybody—what was the cause of it?Isaw the cause in the priest's own face, when our father's name turned up in the talk round the supper-table. Did Monsieur Chaubard join in that talk? He was the only person present who never joined in it once. Did he change it, on a sudden, whenever it came his way? It came his way fourtimes; and four times he changed it—trembling, stammering, turning whiter and whiter, but still, as true as the Heaven above us, shifting the talk off himself, every time! Are you men? Have you brains in your heads? Don't you see, as I see, what this leads to? On my salvation I swear it—the priest knows the hand that killed our father!"
The faces of the two elder brothers darkened vindictively, as the conviction of the truth fastened itself on their minds.
"Howcould he know it?" they inquired, eagerly.
"He must tell us himself," said Jean.
"And if he hesitates—if he refuses to open his lips?"
"We must open them by main force."
They drew their chairs together after that last answer, and consulted, for some time, in whispers.
When the consultation was over, the brothers rose and went into the room where the dead body of their father was laid out. The three kissed him, in turn, on the forehead—then took hands together, and looked, meaningly, in each other's faces—then separated. Louis and Thomas put on their hats, and went at once to the priest's residence; while Jean withdrew by himself to the great room at the back of the house, which was used for the purposes of the oil-factory.
Only one of the workmen was left in the place. He was watching an immense cauldron of boiling linseed-oil.
"You can go home," said Jean, patting the man kindly on the shoulder. "There is no hope of a night's rest for me, after the affliction that has befallen us—I will take your place at the cauldron. Go home, my good fellow—go home."
The man thanked him, and withdrew. Jean followed, and satisfied himself that the workman had really left the house. He then returned, and sat down by the boiling cauldron.
Meanwhile, Louis and Thomas presented themselves at the priest's house. He had not yet retired to bed, and he received them kindly—but with the same extraordinary agitation in his face and manner which had surprised all who saw him on the previous day. The brothers were prepared beforehand with an answer, when he inquired what they wanted of him. They replied immediately that the shock of their father's horrible death had so seriously affected their aunt and their eldest sister, that it was feared the minds of both might give way, unless spiritual consolation and assistance were afforded to them that night. The unhappy priest—always faithful and self-sacrificing where the duties of his ministry were in question—at once rose to accompany the young men back to the house. He evenput on his surplice, and took the crucifix with him, to impress his words of comfort all the more solemnly on the afflicted women whom he was called on to succour.
Thus innocent of all suspicion of the conspiracy to which he had fallen a victim, he was taken into the room where Jean sat waiting by the cauldron of oil; and the door was locked behind him.
Before he could speak, Thomas Siadoux openly avowed the truth.
"It is we three who want you," he said—"not our aunt, and not our sister. If you answer our questions truly, you have nothing to fear. If you refuse——" He stopped, and looked toward Jean and the boiling cauldron.
Never, at the best of times, a resolute man; deprived, since the day before, of such resources of energy as he possessed, by the mental suffering which he had undergone in secret—the unfortunate priest trembled from head to foot, as the three brothers closed round him. Louis took the crucifix from him, and held it; Thomas forced him to place his right hand on it; Jean stood in front of him and put the questions.
"Our father has been brought home a murdered man," he said. "Do you know who killed him?"
The priest hesitated; and the two elder brothers moved him nearer to the cauldron.
"Answer us, on peril of your life," said Jean. "Say, with your hand on the blessed crucifix, do you know the man who killed our father?"
"I do know him."
"When did you make the discovery?"
"Yesterday."
"Where?"
"At Toulouse."
"Name the murderer."
At those words, the priest closed his hand fast on the crucifix, and rallied his sinking courage.
"Never!" he said firmly. "The knowledge I possess was obtained in the confessional. The secrets of the confessional are sacred. If I betray them, I commit sacrilege. I will die first!"
"Think!" said Jean. "If you keep silence, you screen the murderer. If you keep silence, you are the murderer's accomplice. We have sworn over our father's dead body to avenge him—if you refuse to speak, we will avenge him onyou. I charge you again, name the man who killed him."
"I will die first," the priest reiterated, as firmly as before.
"Die then!" said Jean. "Die in that cauldron of boiling oil."
"Give him time," cried Louis and Thomas, earnestly pleading together.
"We will give him time," said the youngerbrother. "There is the clock yonder, against the wall. We will count five minutes by it. In those five minutes, let him make his peace with God—or make up his mind to speak."
They waited, watching the clock. In that dreadful interval, the priest dropped on his knees and hid his face. The time passed in dead silence.
"Speak! for your own sake, for our sakes, speak!" said Thomas Siadoux, as the minute hand reached the point at which the five minutes expired.
The priest looked up—his voice died away on his lips—the mortal agony broke out on his face in great drops of sweat—his head sank forward on his breast.
"Lift him!" cried Jean, seizing the priest on one side. "Lift him, and throw him in!"
The two elder brothers advanced a step—and hesitated.
"Lift him, on your oath over our father's body!"
The two brothers seized him on the other side. As they lifted him to a level with the cauldron, the horror of the death that threatened him, burst from the lips of the miserable man in a scream of terror. The brothers held him firm at the cauldron's edge. "Name the man!" they said for the last time.
The priest's teeth chattered—he was speechless. But he made a sign with his head—a sign in the affirmative. They placed him in a chair, and waited patiently until he was able to speak.
His first words were words of entreaty. He begged Thomas Siadoux to give him back the crucifix. When it was placed in his possession, he kissed it, and said faintly, "I ask pardon of God for the sin that I am about to commit." He paused; and then looked up at the younger brother, who still stood in front of him. "I am ready," he said. "Question me, and I will answer."
Jean repeated the questions which he had put, when the priest was first brought into the room.
"You know the murderer of our father?"
"I know him."
"Since when?"
"Since he made his confession to me yesterday, in the cathedral of Toulouse."
"Name him."
"His name is Cantegrel."
"The man who wanted to marry our aunt?"
"The same."
"What brought him to the confessional?"
"His own remorse."
"What were the motives for his crime?"
"There were reports against his character; and he discovered that your father had gone privately to Narbonne to make sure that they were true."
"Did our father make sure of their truth?"
"He did."
"Would those discoveries have separated our auntfrom Cantegrel if our father had lived to tell her of them?"
"They would. If your father had lived, he would have told your aunt that Cantegrel was married already; that he had deserted his wife at Narbonne; that she was living there with another man, under another name; and that she had herself confessed it in your father's presence."
"Where was the murder committed?"
"Between Villefranche and this village. Cantegrel had followed your father to Narbonne; and had followed him back again to Villefranche. As far as that place, he travelled in company with others, both going and returning. Beyond Villefranche, he was left alone at the ford over the river. There Cantegrel drew the knife to kill him, before he reached home and told his news to your aunt."
"How was the murder committed?"
"It was committed while your father was watering his pony by the bank of the stream. Cantegrel stole on him from behind, and struck him as he was stooping over the saddle-bow."
"This is the truth, on your oath?"
"On my oath, it is the truth."
"You may leave us."
The priest rose from his chair without assistance. From the time when the terror of death had forcedhim to reveal the murderer's name, a great change had passed over him. He had given his answers with the immoveable calmness of a man on whose mind all human interests had lost their hold. He now left the room, strangely absorbed in himself; moving with the mechanical regularity of a sleep-walker; lost to all perception of things and persons about him. At the door he stopped—woke, as it seemed, from the trance that possessed him—and looked at the three brothers with a steady changeless sorrow, which they had never seen in him before, which they never afterwards forgot.
"I forgive you," he said, quietly and solemnly. "Pray for me, when my time comes."
With those last words, he left them.
The night was far advanced; but the three brothers determined to set forth instantly for Toulouse, and to place their information in the magistrate's hands, before the morning dawned.
Thus far, no suspicion had occurred to them of the terrible consequences which were to follow their night-interview with the priest. They were absolutely ignorant of the punishment to which a man in holy orders exposed himself, if he revealed the secrets of the confessional. No infliction of that punishment had been known in their neighbourhood—for,at that time, as at this, the rarest of all priestly offences was a violation of the sacred trust confided to the confessor by the Roman Church. Conscious that they had forced the priest into the commission of a clerical offence, the brothers sincerely believed that the loss of his curacy would be the heaviest penalty which the law could exact from him. They entered Toulouse that night, discussing the atonement which they might offer to Monsieur Chaubard, and the means which they might best employ to make his future life easy to him.
The first disclosure of the consequences which would certainly follow the outrage they had committed, was revealed to them when they made their deposition before the officer of justice. The magistrate listened to their narrative with horror vividly expressed in his face and manner.
"Better you had never been born," he said, "than have avenged your father's death, as you three have avenged it. Your own act has doomed the guilty and the innocent to suffer alike."
Those words proved prophetic of the truth. The end came quickly, as the priest had foreseen it, when he spoke his parting words.
The arrest of Cantegrel was accomplished without difficulty, the next morning. In the absence of any other evidence on which to justify this proceeding,the private disclosure to the authorities of the secret which the priest had violated, became inevitable. The Parliament of Languedoc was, under these circumstances, the tribunal appealed to; and the decision of that assembly immediately ordered the priest and the three brothers to be placed in confinement, as well as the murderer Cantegrel. Evidence was then immediately sought for, which might convict this last criminal, without any reference to the revelation that had been forced from the priest—and evidence enough was found to satisfy judges whose minds already possessed the foregone certainty of the prisoner's guilt. He was put on his trial, was convicted of the murder, and was condemned to be broken on the wheel. The sentence was rigidly executed, with as little delay as the law would permit.
The cases of Monsieur Chaubard, and of the three sons of Siadoux, next occupied the judges. The three brothers were found guilty of having forced the secret of a confession from a man in holy orders, and were sentenced to death by hanging. A far more terrible expiation of his offence awaited the unfortunate priest. He was condemned to have his limbs broken on the wheel, and to be afterwards, while still living, bound to the stake, and destroyed by fire.
Barbarous as the punishments of that period were,accustomed as the population was to hear of their infliction, and even to witness it, the sentences pronounced in these two cases dismayed the public mind; and the authorities were surprised by receiving petitions for mercy from Toulouse, and from all the surrounding neighbourhood. But the priest's doom had been sealed. All that could be obtained, by the intercession of persons of the highest distinction, was, that the executioner should grant him the mercy of death, before his body was committed to the flames. With this one modification, the sentence was executed, as the sentence had been pronounced, on the curate of Croix-Daurade.
The punishment of the three sons of Siadoux remained to be inflicted. But the people, roused by the death of the ill-fated priest, rose against this third execution, with a resolution before which the local government gave way. The cause of the young men was taken up by the hot-blooded populace, as the cause of all fathers and all sons; their filial piety was exalted to the skies; their youth was pleaded in their behalf; their ignorance of the terrible responsibility which they had confronted in forcing the secret from the priest, was loudly alleged in their favour. More than this, the authorities were actually warned that the appearance of the prisoners on the scaffold would be the signal for an organised revolt and rescue. Under this serious pressure,the execution was deferred, and the prisoners were kept in confinement until the popular ferment had subsided.
The delay not only saved their lives, it gave them back their liberty as well. The infection of the popular sympathy had penetrated through the prison doors. All three brothers were handsome, well-grown young men. The gentlest of the three in disposition—Thomas Siadoux—aroused the interest and won the affection of the head-gaoler's daughter. Her father was prevailed on at her intercession to relax a little in his customary vigilance; and the rest was accomplished by the girl herself. One morning, the population of Toulouse heard, with every testimony of the most extravagant rejoicing, that the three brothers had escaped, accompanied by the gaoler's daughter. As a necessary legal formality, they were pursued, but no extraordinary efforts were used to overtake them: and they succeeded, accordingly, in crossing the nearest frontier.
Twenty days later, orders were received from the capital, to execute their sentence in effigy. They were then permitted to return to France, on condition that they never again appeared in their native place, or in any other part of the province of Languedoc. With this reservation they were left free to live where they pleased, and to repent the fatal act whichhad avenged them on the murderer of their father at the cost of the priest's life.
Beyond this point the official documents do not enable us to follow their career. All that is now known has been now told of the village-tragedy at Croix-Daurade.
The postman's knocks at my door have been latterly more frequent than usual; and out of the increased number of letters left for me, it has happened that an unusually large proportion have contained wedding cards. Just as there seem to be certain days when all the beautiful women in London take to going out together, certain days when all the people we know appear to be conspiring to meet us at every turn in one afternoon's walk—so there seem to be times and seasons when all our friends are inexplicably bent on getting married together. Capricious in everything, the law of chances is especially whimsical, according to my experience, in its influence over the solemnisation of matrimony. Six months ago, there was no need for me to leave a single complimentary card anywhere, for weeks and weeks together. Just at the present time, I find myself in danger of wearing out my card-case by incessant use. My friends are marrying recklessly in all sorts of opposite directions, and are makingthe bells a greater nuisance than usual in every parish of London.
These curious circumstances have set me thinking on the subject of marriage, and have recalled to my mind certain reflections in connection with that important change in life, which I first made when I was not quite such an incurably-settled old bachelor as I am at the present moment.
It occurred to me, at that past time, and it occurs to me still, that while great stress is laid in ordinary books and ordinary talk on the personal interest which a man has himself, and on the family interest which his near relations have also, in his marrying an affectionate and sensible woman, sufficient importance has not been attached to the interest of another sort, which the tried and worthy friends of his bachelor days ought to feel, and, for the most part, do feel, in his getting a good wife. It really and truly depends upon her, in more cases than I should like to enumerate, whether her husband's friendships are to be continued, after his marriage, in all their integrity, or are only to be maintained as a mere social form. It is hardly necessary for me to repeat—but I will do so, in order to avoid the slightest chance of misconstruction—that I am here speaking only of the worthiest, the truest, the longest-tried friends of a man's bachelor days. Towards these every sensible married womanfeels, as I believe, that she owes a duty for her husband's sake. But, unfortunately, there are such female phenomena in the world as fond wives and devoted mothers, who are anything rather than sensible women the moment they are required to step out of the sphere of their conjugal and maternal instincts. Women of this sort have an unreasonable jealousy of their husbands in small things; and on the misuse of their influence to serve the interests of that jealousy, lies but too often the responsibility of severing such friendships as no man can hope to form for the second time in the course of his life. By the severing of friendships, I do not mean the breaking off of all intercourse, but the fatal changing of the terms on which a man lives with his friend—the casting of the first slight shadow which alters the look of the whole prospect. It is astonishing by what a multitude of slight threads the firm continuity of brotherly regard is maintained. Many a woman has snapped asunder all the finer ligaments which once connected her husband and his friend; and has thought it enough if she left the two still attached by the coarser ties which are at the common disposal of all the world. Many a woman—delicate, affectionate, and kind within her own narrow limits—has committed that heavy social offence, and has never felt afterwards a single pang of pity or remorse.
These bold words will be unpopular enough, I am afraid, with certain readers; but I am an old bachelor, and I must have licence to speak the unwelcome truth. I respect and admire a good husband and father, but I cannot shake off the equally sincere reverence that I feel for a good friend; and I must be allowed to tell some married ladies—what Society ought to tell them a little oftener—that there are other affections, in this world, which are noble and honourable, besides those of conjugal and parental origin. It may be an assertion of a very shocking and unexpected kind, but I must nevertheless be excused for saying, that some of the best wives and mothers in the land have given the heart-ache to some of the best friends. While they have been behaving like patterns of conjugal propriety, they have been estranging men who would once have gone to the world's end to serve each other. I, as a single man, can say nothing of the dreadful wrench—not the less dreadful because it is inevitable—when a father and mother lose a daughter, in order that a lover may gain a wife. But I can speak feelingly of the shock of losing a dear friend, in order that a bride may gain a devoted husband. Nothing shall ever persuade me (possibly because I am not married) that there is not a flaw of some sort in the love for a wife which is made complete, in some people's eyes, by forced contributionsfrom the love which belongs to a friend. I know that a man and woman who make a happy marriage have gained the summit of earthly felicity; but do they never reach that enviable eminence without having trampled underfoot something venerable, or something tender, by the way?
Bear with me, indignant wives, if I recall the long-past time when one of the handsomest women I ever saw, took my dearest friend away from me, and destroyed, in one short day, the whole pleasant edifice that we two had been building up together since we were boys at school.
I shall never be as fond of any human being again, as I was of that one friend, and, until the beautiful woman came between us, I believe there was nothing in this world that he would not have sacrificed and have done for me. Even while he was courting, I kept my hold on him. Against opposition on the part of his bride and her family, he stipulated that I should be his best man on the wedding-day. The beautiful woman grudged me my one small corner in his heart, even at that time; but he was true to me—he persisted—and I was the first to shake hands with him when he was a married man. I had no suspicion then that I was to lose him from that moment. I only discovered the truth when I went to pay my first visit to the bride and bridegroom at their abode in the country. I found a beautifulhouse, exquisitely kept from top to bottom; I found a hearty welcome; I found a good dinner and an airy bed-room; I found a pattern husband and a pattern wife: the one thing I did not find was my old friend. Something stood up in his clothes, shook hands with me, pressed wine on me, called me by my Christian name, and inquired what I was doing in my profession. It was certainly something that had a trick of looking like my former comrade and brother; something that nobody in my situation could have complained of with the smallest reason; something with all the brightness of the old metal about it, but without the sterling old ring; something, in short, which made me instinctively take my chamber-candlestick early on the first night of my arrival, and say good night while the beautiful woman and pattern wife was present to keep her eye on me.
Can I ever forget the language of that eye on that occasion!—the volumes it spoke in one glance of cruel triumph! "No more sacred secrets between you two," it said, brightly. "When you trust him now, you must trust me. You may sacrifice yourself for your love of him over and over again still, but he shall make no sacrifices now for you, until he has first found out how they affect my convenience and my pleasure. Your place in his heart now, is where I choose it to be. I have stormed the citadel, and Iwill bring children by-and-by to keep the ramparts; and you, the faithful old soldier of former years—you have got your discharge, and may sit and sun yourself as well as you can at the outer gates. You have been his truest friend, but he has another now, and need trouble you no longer, except in the capacity of witness of his happiness. This, you will observe, is in the order of nature, and in the recognised fitness of things; and he hopes you will see it—and so do I. And he trusts you will sleep well under his (and my) new roof—and so do I. And he wishes you good night—and so do I!"
Many, many years have passed since I first learned these hard truths; but I can never forget the pang that it cost me to get them by heart at a moment's notice. My old friend lives still—that is to say, I have an intimate acquaintance, who asks me to all his dinners, and who made me godfather to one of his children; but the brother of my love, who died to me on the day when I paid him the marriage visit, has never come back to life since that time. On the altar at which we two once sacrificed, the ashes lie cold. A model husband and father has risen from them, and that result is, I suppose, the only one that any third person has a right to expect. It may be so; but, to this day, I cannot help thinking that the beautiful woman would have donebetter if she could have made a fond husband, without at the same time marring a good friend.
Readers will, I am afraid, not be wanting, who will be inclined to tell me that the lady to whom I have been referring, only asserted the fair privilege that was hers by right of marriage; and that my sense of injury springs from the touchy selfishness of an old bachelor. Without attempting to defend myself, I may at least be allowed to inquire into the lady's motive for using her privilege—or, in plainer terms, for altering the relations in which my friend and I had stood towards one another since boyhood.
Her idea, I presume to have been, that, if I preserved my old footing with her husband, I should be taking away some part of his affection that belonged to her. According to my idea of it, she was taking away something which had belonged to me, and which no effort on her part could afterwards convert to her own use. It is hard to make some women understand that a husband's heart—let him be ever so devoted and affectionate—has vacant places in it which they can never hope to fill. It is a house in which they and their children, naturally and properly, occupy all the largest apartments and supply all the prettiest furniture; but there are spare rooms which they cannot enter, which are reserved all through the lease of life for inevitable guests of somesort from the world outside. It is better to let in the old friend than some of the substituted visitors, who are sure, sooner or later, to enter where there are rooms ready for them, by means of pass-keys obtained without the permission of the permanent tenants. Am I wrong in making such assertions as these? I should be willing enough to think it probable—being only a bachelor—if my views were based on mere theory. But my opinions, such as they are, have been formed with the help of proofs and facts. I have met with bright examples of wives who have strengthened their husbands' friendships as they never could have been strengthened except under the influence of a woman's care, employed in the truest, the tenderest, the most delicate way. I have seen men rescued from the bad habits of half a lifetime by the luck of keeping faithful friends who were the husbands of sensible wives. It is a very trite and true remark that the deadliest enmities between men have been occasioned by women. It is not less certain—though it is a far less widely-accepted truth—that some (I wish I could say many) of the strongest friendships have been knit most closely by women's helping hands.
The real fact seems to be, that the general idea of the scope and purpose of the Institution of Marriage is a miserably narrow one. The same senseless prejudice which leads some people, when driven toextremes, to the practical confession (though it may not be made in plain words) that they would rather see murder committed under their own eyes, than approve of any project for obtaining a law of divorce which shall be equal in its operation on husbands and wives of all ranks who cannot live together, is answerable also for the mischievous error in principle of narrowing the practice of the social virtues, in married people, to themselves and their children. A man loves his wife—which is, in other words, loving himself—and loves his offspring, which is equivalent to saying that he has the natural instincts of humanity; and, when he has gone thus far, he has asserted himself as a model of all the virtues of life, in the estimation of some people. In my estimation, he has only begun with the best virtues, and has others yet to practise before he can approach to the standard of a socially complete man. Can there be a lower idea of Marriage than the idea which makes it, in fact, an institution for the development of selfishness on a large and respectable scale? If I am not justified in using the word selfishness, tell me what character a good husband presents (viewed plainly as a man) when he goes out into the world, leaving all his sympathies in his wife's boudoir, and all his affections up-stairs in the nursery, and giving to his friends such shreds and patches of formal recognition, in place of true love and regard, as consist in asking them to an occasional dinner-party,and granting them the privilege of presenting his children with silver mugs? He is a model of a husband, the ladies will say. I dare not contradict them; but I should like to know whether he is also a model of a friend?
No. Bachelor as I am, I have a higher idea of Marriage than this. The social advantages which it is fitted to produce ought to extend beyond one man and one woman, to the circle of society amid which they move. The light of its beauty must not be shut up within the four walls which enclose the parents and the family, but must flow out into the world, and shine upon the childless and the solitary, because it has warmth enough and to spare, and because it may make them, even in their way, happy too. I began these few lines by asking sympathy and attention for the interest which a man's true friends have, when he marries, in his choosing a wife who will let them be friends still, who will even help them to mingling in closer brotherhood, if help they need. I lay down the pen, suggesting to some ladies—affectionately suggesting, if they will let me use the word, after some of the bold things I have said—that it is in their power to deprive the bachelor of the sole claim he has left to social recognition and preeminence, by making married men what many of them are, and what more might be—the best and truest friends that are to be found in the world.
Ladies and gentlemen. Give me five minutes' sympathy and attention. I have something serious to say to you.
I am a married man, with an income which is too miserably limited to be worth mentioning. About a month since, my wife advanced me one step nearer to the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors, by presenting me with another child. On five previous occasions, her name had appeared in the List of British Mothers which adorns the daily Supplement of the Times newspaper. At each of these trying periods (I speak entirely of myself when I use the word "trying") she was attended by the same Monthly Nurse. On this last, and sixth, occasion, we were not so fortunate as to secure the services of our regular functionary. She was already engaged; and a new Nurse, with excellent recommendations, was, therefore, employed in her stead. When I first heard of her, and was told that her name was Mrs. Bullwinkle, I laughed. It was then the beginning ofthe month. It is now the end of it, and I write down that once comical name with a settled gravity which nothing can disturb.
We all know Mrs. Gamp. My late Monthly Nurse is the exact antipodes of her. Mrs. Bullwinkle is tall and dignified; her complexion is fair; her Grecian nose is innocent of all convivial colouring; her figure is not more than agreeably plump; her manners are icily composed; her dress is quiet and neat; her age cannot be more than five-and-thirty; her style of conversation, when she talks, is flowing and grammatical—upon the whole, she appears to be a woman who is much too ladylike for her station in life. When I first met Mrs. Bullwinkle on the stairs, I felt inclined to apologise for my wife's presumption in engaging her services. Though I checked this absurd impulse, I could not resist answering the new nurse's magnificent curtsy by expressing a polite hope that she would find her situation everything that she could wish, under my roof.
"I am not accustomed to exact much, sir," said Mrs. Bullwinkle. "The cook seems, I am rejoiced to say, to be an intelligent and attentive person. I have been giving her some little hints on the subject of my meals. I have ventured to tell her, that I eat little and often; and I think she thoroughly understands me."
I am ashamed to say I was not so sharp as thecook. I did not thoroughly understand Mrs. Bullwinkle, until it became my duty, through my wife's inability to manage our domestic business, to settle the weekly bills. I then became sensible of an alarming increase in our household expenditure. If I had given two dinner-parties in the course of the week, the bills could not have been more exorbitant: the butcher, the baker, and the grocer could not have taken me at a heavier pecuniary disadvantage. My heart sank as I thought of my miserable income. I looked up piteously from the bills to the cook for an explanation.
The cook looked back at me compassionately, shook her head, and said:
"Mrs. Bullwinkle."
I reckoned up additional joints, additional chops, additional steaks, fillets, kidneys, gravy beef. I told off a terrible supplement to the usual family consumption of bread, flour, tea, sugar, and alcoholic liquids. I appealed to the cook again; and again the cook shook her head, and said, "Mrs. Bullwinkle."
My miserable income obliges me to look after sixpences, as other men look after five-pound notes. Ruin sat immovable on the pile of weekly bills, and stared me sternly in the face. I went up into my wife's room. The new nurse was not there. The unhappy partner of my pecuniary embarrassments was reading a novel. My innocent infant wassmiling in his sleep. I had taken the bills with me. Ruin followed them up-stairs, and sat spectral on one side of the bed, while I sat on the other.
"Don't be alarmed, love," I said, "if you hear the police in the house. Mrs. Bullwinkle has a large family, and feeds them all out of our provisions. A search shall be instituted, and slumbering Justice shall be aroused. Look at these joints, these chops, these steaks, these fillets, these kidneys, these gravy beefs!"
My wife shook her head, exactly as the cook had shaken hers; and answered, precisely as the cook had answered, "Mrs. Bullwinkle."
"But where does she hide it all?" I exclaimed.
My wife shut her eyes, and shuddered.
"John!" she said, "I have privately consulted the doctor; and the doctor says Mrs. Bullwinkle is a Cow."
"If the doctor had to pay these bills," I retorted savagely, "he would not be quite so free with his jokes."
"He is in earnest, dear. He explained to me, what I never knew before, that a Cow is an animal with many stomachs——"
"What!" I cried out, in amazement; "do you mean to tell me that all these joints, these chops, these steaks, these fillets, these kidneys, these gravy beefs—these loaves, these muffins, these mixed biscuits—these teas, these sugars, these brandies, gins,sherries, and beers, have disappeared in one week, down Mrs. Bullwinkle's throat?"
"All, John," said my wife, sinking back on the pillow with a groan.
It was impossible to look at the bills and believe it. I questioned and cross-questioned my wife, and still elicited nothing but the one bewildering answer, "All, John." Determined—for I am a man of a logical and judicial mind—to have this extraordinary and alarming case properly investigated, I took out my pocket-book and pencil, and asked my wife if she felt strong enough to make a few private entries for my satisfaction. Finding that she willingly accepted the responsibility, I directed her to take down, from her own personal investigation, a statement of Mrs. Bullwinkle's meals, and of the time at which she partook of each of them, for twenty-four hours, beginning with one morning and ending with another. After making this arrangement, I descended to the parlour, and took the necessary business measures for using the cook as a check upon her mistress. Having carefully instructed her to enter, on the kitchen slate, everything that was sent up to Mrs. Bullwinkle, for twenty-four hours, I felt that my machinery for investigating the truth was now complete. If the statement of the mistress, in bed on the second floor, agreed with the statement of the cook, in the distant sphere of the kitchen, there could be nodoubt that I had obtained reliable information on the mysterious subject of Mrs. Bullwinkle's meals.
In due time, the two reports were sent in, and I had an opportunity of understanding at last, what "eating little and often" really meant, in the case of my wife's monthly nurse. Except in one particular, to be hereafter adverted to, both statements agreed exactly. Here is the List, accompanied by a correct time-table, of Mrs. Bullwinkle's meals, beginning with the morning of Monday and ending with the morning of Tuesday. I certify, on my honour as a British husband and housekeeper, that the copy is correctly taken from my wife's entries in my pocket-book, checked impartially by the cook's slate:[E]
I can certify that the above List correctly, and even moderately, represents Mrs. Bullwinkle's daily bill of fare, for one month. I can assert, from my own observation, that every dish, at every hour of the day, which went up to her full, invariably camedown from her empty. Mrs. Bullwinkle was not a wasteful eater. She could fully appreciate, in roast meat, for example, the great value of "lean;" but she was not, on that account, insensible to the humbler merits of fat, skin, and "outside." All—emphatically, all—was fish that came to her net; and the net itself, as I can personally testify, was never once over-weighted and never out of order. I have watched, in the case of this perfectly unparalleled human cormorant, for symptoms of apoplexy, or at least of visible repletion, with a dreadful and absorbing interest; and have, on no occasion, been rewarded by making the smallest discovery. Mrs. Bullwinkle was never, while in my service, even so much as partially intoxicated. Her face was never flushed; her articulation was never thickened; her brain was never confused; her movements were never uncertain. After the breakfast, the two morning snacks, and the dinner,—all occurring within the space of six hours,—she could move about the room with unimpeded freedom of action; could keep my wife and the baby in a state of the strictest discipline; could curtsy magnificently, when the unoffending master, whom she was eating out of house and home, entered the room, preserving her colour, her equilibrium, and her staylaces, when she sank down and when she swelled up again, without the vestige of an apparent effort. During the month ofher devastating residence under my roof, she had two hundred and forty-eight meals, including the snacks; and she went out of the house no larger and no redder than she came in. After the statement of one such fact as that, further comment is superfluous.
I leave this case in the hands of the medical and the married public. I present it, as a problem, to physiological science. I offer it, as a warning, to British husbands with limited incomes. While I write these lines, while I give my married countrymen this friendly caution, my wife is weeping over the tradesmen's bills; my children are on half-allowance of food; my cook is worked off her legs; my purse is empty. Young husbands, and persons about to marry, commit to memory the description here given of my late monthly nurse! Avoid a tall and dignified woman, with a flowing style of conversation and impressively ladylike manners! Beware, my struggling friends, my fellow-toilers along the heavily-taxed highways of domestic happiness—beware of Mrs. Bullwinkle!
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, AND CHARING CROSS.