`Todgers's, bless you! No!' cried Mr. Bailey. `I haven't got nothin, to do with Todgers's. I cut that connexion long ago. He's been a-dining with my governor at the West-end. Didn't you know he was a-coming to see us?'
`No,' she said, faintly.
`Oh yes! We're heavy swells too, and so I tell you. Don't you come out, a-catching cold in your head. I'll wake him!' Mr. Bailey expressing in his demeanour a perfect confidence that he could carry him in with ease, if necessary, opened the coach door, let down the steps, and giving Jonas a shake, cried `We've got home, my flower! Tumble up, then!'
He was so far recovered as to be able to respond to this appeal, and to come stumbling out of the coach in a heap, to the great hazard of Mr. Bailey's person. When he got upon the pavement, Mr. Bailey first butted at him in front, and then dexterously propped him up behind; and having steadied him by these means, he assisted him into the house.
`You go up first with the light,' said Bailey to Mr Jonas, `and we'll foller. Don't tremble so. He won't hurt you. When I've had a drop too much, I'm full of good natur myself.'
She went on before; and her husband and Bailey, by dint of tumbling over each other, and knocking themselves about, got at hast into the sitting-room above stairs, where Jonas staggered into a seat.
`There!' said Mr. Bailey. `He's all right now. You ain't got nothing to cry for, bless you! He's righter than a trivet!'
The ill-favoured brute, with dress awry, and sodden face, and rumpled hair, sat blinking and drooping, and rolling his idiotic eyes about, until, becoming conscious by degrees, he recognised his wife and shook his fist at her.
`Ah!' cried Mr. Bailey, squaring his arms with a sudden emotion. `What, you're wicious, are you? Would you though! You'd better not!'
`Pray, go away!' said Merry. `Bailey, my good boy, go home. Jonas!' she said; timidly laying her hand upon his shoulder, and bending her head down over him. `Jonas!'
`Look at her!' cried Jonas, pushing her off with his extended arm. `look here! Look at her! Here's a bargain for a man!'
`Dear Jonas!'
`Dear Devil!' he replied, with a fierce gesture. `You're a pretty clog to be tied to a man for life, you mewling, white-faced cat! Get out of my sight!'
`I know you don't mean it, Jonas. You wouldn't say it if you were sober.'
With affected gaiety she gave Bailey a piece of money, and again implored him to be gone. Her entreaty was so earnest, that the boy had not the heart to stay there. But he stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and listened.
`I wouldn't say it if I was sober!' retorted Jonas. `You know better.
Have I never said it when I was sober?'
`Often, indeed!' she answered through her tears.
`Hark ye!' cried Jonas, stamping his foot upon the ground. `You made me bear your pretty humours once, and ecod I'll make you bear mine now.
I always promised myself I would. I married you that I might. I'll know who's master, and who's slave!'
`Heaven knows I am obedient!' said the sobbing girl. `Much more so than I ever thought to be!'
Jonas laughed in his drunken exultation. `What! you're finding it out, are you! Patience, and you will in time! Griffins have claws, my girl.
There's not a pretty slight you ever put upon me, nor a pretty trick you ever played me, nor a pretty insolence you ever showed me, that I won't pay back a hundred-fold. What else did I marry you for? You, too!' he said, with coarse contempt.
It might have softened him to hear her turn a little fragment of a song he used to say he liked; trying, with a heart so full, to win him back.
`Oho!' he said, `you're deaf, are you? you don't hear ee, eh? So much the better for you. I hate you. I hate myself, for having, been fool enough to strap a pack upon my back for the pleasure of treading on it whenever I choose. Why, things have opened to me, now, so that I might marry almost where I liked. But I wouldn't; I'd keep single. I ought to be single, among the friends I know. Instead of that, here I am, tied like a log to you.
Pah! Why do you show your pale face when I come home? Am I never to forget you?'
`How late it is!' she said cheerfully, opening the shutter after an interval of silence. `Broad day, Jonas!'
`Broad day or black night, what do I care!' was the kind rejoinder.
`The night passed quickly, too. I don't mind sitting up, at all.'
`Sit up for me again, if you dare!' growled Jonas.
`I was reading,' she proceeded, `all night long. I began when you went out, and read till you came home again. The strangest story, Jonas! and true, the book says. I'll tell it you to-morrow.'
`True, was it?' said Jonas, doggedly.
`So the book says.'
`Was there anything in it, about a man's being determined to conquer his wife, break her spirit, bend her temper, crush all her humours like so many nut-shells--kill her, for aught I know?' said Jonas.
`No. Not a word,' she answered quickly.
`Oh!' he returned. `That'll be a true story though, before long; for all the book says nothing about it. It's a lying book, I see. A fit book for a lying reader. But you're deaf. I forgot that.'
There was another interval of silence; and the boy was stealing away, when he heard her footstep on the floor, and stopped. She went up to him, as it seemed, and spoke lovingly: saying that she would defer to him in everything and would consult his wishes and obey them, and they might be very happy if he would be gentle with her. He answered with an imprecation, and--
Not with a blow? Yes. Stem truth against the base-souled villain with a blow.
No angry cries; no loud reproaches. Even her weeping and her sobs were stifled by her clinging round him. She only said, repeating, it in agony of heart, how could he, could he, could he! And lost utterance in tears.
Oh woman, God beloved in old Jerusalem! The best among us need deal lightly with thy faults, if only for the punishment thy nature will endure, in bearing heavy evidence against us on the Day of Judgment!