Man and Wife - Wilkie Collins (phonics books TXT) 📗

before I got the chance I had been looking out for. I went home in good spirits (for me) to report what had happened, and found the brokers in the house carrying off the furniture which I had bought with my own money for sale by auction. I asked them how they dared touch it without my leave. They answered, civilly enough I must own, that they were acting under my husband’s orders; and they went on removing it before my own eyes, to the cart outside. I ran upstairs, and found my husband on the landing. He was in liquor again. It is useless to say what passed between us. I shall only mention that this was the first occasion on which he lifted his fist, and struck me.” V

“Having a spirit of my own, I was resolved not to endure it. I ran out to the Police Court, hard by.

“My money had not only bought the furniture⁠—it had kept the house going as well; paying the taxes which the Queen and the Parliament asked for among other things. I now went to the magistrate to see what the Queen and the Parliament, in return for the taxes, would do for me.

“ ‘Is your furniture settled on yourself?’ he says, when I told him what had happened.

“I didn’t understand what he meant. He turned to some person who was sitting on the bench with him. ‘This is a hard case,’ he says. ‘Poor people in this condition of life don’t even know what a marriage settlement means. And, if they did, how many of them could afford to pay the lawyer’s charges?’ Upon that he turned to me. ‘Yours is a common case,’ he said. ‘In the present state of the law I can do nothing for you.’

“It was impossible to believe that. Common or not, I put my case to him over again.

“ ‘I have bought the furniture with my own money, Sir,’ I says. ‘It’s mine, honestly come by, with bill and receipt to prove it. They are taking it away from me by force, to sell it against my will. Don’t tell me that’s the law. This is a Christian country. It can’t be.’

“ ‘My good creature,’ says he, ‘you are a married woman. The law doesn’t allow a married woman to call anything her own⁠—unless she has previously (with a lawyer’s help) made a bargain to that effect with her husband before marrying him. You have made no bargain. Your husband has a right to sell your furniture if he likes. I am sorry for you; I can’t hinder him.’

“I was obstinate about it. ‘Please to answer me this, Sir,’ I says. ‘I’ve been told by wiser heads than mine that we all pay our taxes to keep the Queen and the Parliament going; and that the Queen and the Parliament make laws to protect us in return. I have paid my taxes. Why, if you please, is there no law to protect me in return?’

“ ‘I can’t enter into that,’ says he. ‘I must take the law as I find it; and so must you. I see a mark there on the side of your face. Has your husband been beating you? If he has, summon him here I can punish him for that.’

“ ‘How can you punish him, Sir?’ says I.

“ ‘I can fine him,’ says he. ‘Or I can send him to prison.’

“ ‘As to the fine,’ says I, ‘he can pay that out of the money he gets by selling my furniture. As to the prison, while he’s in it, what’s to become of me, with my money spent by him, and my possessions gone; and when he’s out of it, what’s to become of me again, with a husband whom I have been the means of punishing, and who comes home to his wife knowing it? It’s bad enough as it is, Sir,’ says I. ‘There’s more that’s bruised in me than what shows in my face. I wish you good morning.’ ”

VI

“When I got back the furniture was gone, and my husband was gone. There was nobody but the landlord in the empty house. He said all that could be said⁠—kindly enough toward me, so far as I was concerned. When he was gone I locked my trunk, and got away in a cab after dark, and found a lodging to lay my head in. If ever there was a lonely, brokenhearted creature in the world, I was that creature that night.

“There was but one chance of earning my bread⁠—to go to the employment offered me (under a man cook, at a club). And there was but one hope⁠—the hope that I had lost sight of my husband forever.

“I went to my work⁠—and prospered in it⁠—and earned my first quarter’s wages. But it’s not good for a woman to be situated as I was; friendless and alone, with her things that she took a pride in sold away from her, and with nothing to look forward to in her life to come. I was regular in my attendance at chapel; but I think my heart began to get hardened, and my mind to be overcast in secret with its own thoughts about this time. There was a change coming. Two or three days after I had earned the wages just mentioned my husband found me out. The furniture-money was all spent. He made a disturbance at the club, I was only able to quiet him by giving him all the money I could spare from my own necessities. The scandal was brought before the committee. They said, if the circumstance occurred again, they should be obliged to part with me. In a fortnight the circumstance occurred again. It’s useless to dwell on it. They all said they were sorry for me. I lost the place. My husband went back with me to my lodgings. The next morning I caught him taking my purse, with the few shillings I had in