A Simpleton

C >> Charles Reade >> A Simpleton


The grocer's books told a similar tale.

The debtor put his hand to his heart, and stood a moment. The very
grocer pitied him, and said, "There's no harry, doctor; a trifle on
account, if settlement in full not convenient just now. I see you have
been kept in the dark."

"No, no," said Christopher; "I'll pay every shilling." He gave one gulp,
and hurried away.

At the fishmonger's, the same story, only for a smaller amount.

A bill of nineteen pounds at the very pastrycook's; a place she had
promised him, as her physician, never to enter.

At the draper's, thirty-seven pounds odd.

In short, wherever she had dealt, the same system: partial payments, and
ever-growing debt.

Remembering Madame Cie, he drove in a cab to Regent Street, and asked
for Mrs. Staines's account.

"Shall I send it, sir?"

"No; I will take it with me."

"Miss Edwards, make out Mrs. Staines's account, if you please."

Miss Edwards was a good while making it out; but it was ready at last.
He thrust it into his pocket, without daring to look at it there; but
he went into Verrey's, and asked for a cup of coffee, and perused the
document.

The principal items were as follows:--

May 4. Re-shaping and repairing elegant lace mantle, 1 8
Chip bonnet, feather, and flowers . . . . 4 4
May 20. Making and trimming 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 trimmings, which
constituted 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 shillings 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 shillings 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 attitude 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 shilling 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 shilling 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 God 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 shiver, but said not a word.

But that night he made a solemn vow to God 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.

He kept the house well for three pounds a week, exclusive of coals,
candles, and wine. His wife had had five pounds, and whatever she asked
for dinner-parties, yet found it not half enough upon her method.

He kept no coachman. If he visited a patient, a man in the yard drove
him at a shilling per hour.

By these means, and by working like a galley slave, he dragged his
expenditure down almost to a level with his income.

Rosa was quite content at first, and thought herself lucky to escape
reproaches on such easy terms.

But by and by so rigorous a system began to gall her. One day she
fancied a Bath bun; sent the new maid to the pastry-cook's. Pastry-cook
asked to see the doctor's order. Maid could not show it, and came back
bunless.

Rosa came into the study to complain to her husband.

"A Bath bun," said Staines. "Why, they are colored with annotto, to
save an egg, and annotto is adulterated with chromates that are poison.
Adulteration upon adulteration. I'll make you a real Bath bun." Off
coat, and into the kitchen, and made her three, pure, but rather heavy.
He brought them her in due course. She declined them languidly. She was
off the notion, as they say in Scotland.

"If I can't have a thing when I want it, I don't care for it at all."
Such was the principle she laid down for his future guidance.

He sighed, and went back to his work; she cleared the plate.

One day, when she asked for the carriage, he told her the time was now
come for her to leave off carriage exercise. She must walk with him
every day, instead.

"But I don't like walking."

"I am sorry for that. But it is necessary to you, and by and by your
life may depend on it."

Quietly, but inexorably, he dragged her out walking every day.

In one of these walks she stopped at a shop window, and fell in love
with some baby's things. "Oh! I must have that," said she. "I must. I
shall die if I don't; you'll see now."

"You shall," said he, "when I can pay for it," and drew her away.

The tears of disappointment stood in her eyes, and his heart yearned
over her. But he kept his head.

He changed the dinner hour to six, and used to go out directly
afterwards.

She began to complain of his leaving her alone like that.

"Well, but wait a bit," said he; "suppose I am making a little money by
it, to buy you something you have set your heart on, poor darling!"

In a very few days after this, he brought her a little box with a slit
in it. He shook it, and money rattled; then he unlocked it, and poured
out a little pile of silver. "There," said he, "put on your bonnet, and
come and buy those things."

She put on her bonnet, and on the way she asked how it came to be all in
silver.

"That is a puzzler," said he, "isn't it?"

"And how did you make it, dear? by writing?"

"No."

"By fees from the poor people?"

"What, undersell my brethren! Hang it, no! My dear, I made it honestly,
and some day I will tell you how I made it; at present, all I will tell
you is this: I saw my darling longing for something she had a right to
long for; I saw the tears in her sweet eyes, and--oh, come along, do. I
am wretched till I see you with the things in your hand."

They went to the shop; and Staines sat and watched Rosa buying
baby-clothes. Oh, it was a pretty sight to see this modest young
creature, little more than a child herself, anticipating maternity, but
blushing every now and then, and looking askant at her lord and master.
How his very bowels yearned over her!

And when they got home, she spread the things on a table, and they
sat hand in hand, and looked at them, and she leaned her head on his
shoulder, and went quietly to sleep there.

And yet, as time rolled on, she became irritable at times, and
impatient, and wanted all manner of things she could not have, and made
him unhappy.

Then he was out from six o'clock till one, and she took it into her head
to be jealous. So many hours to spend away from her! Now that she wanted
all his comfort.

Presently, Ellen, the new maid, got gossiping in the yard, and a groom
told her her master had a sweetheart on the sly, he thought; for he
drove the brougham out every evening himself; "and," said the man, "he
wears a mustache at night."

Ellen ran in, brimful of this, and told the cook; the cook told the
washerwoman; the washerwoman told a dozen families, till about two
hundred people knew it.

At last it came to Mrs. Staines in a roundabout way, at the very moment
when she was complaining to Lady Cicely Treherne of her hard lot. She
had been telling her she was nothing more than a lay-figure in the
house.

"My husband is housekeeper now, and cook, and all, and makes me
delicious dishes, I can tell you; SUCH curries! I couldn't keep the
house with five pounds a week, so now he does it with three: and I never
get the carriage, because walking is best for me; and he takes it out
every night to make money. I don't understand it."

Lady Cicely suggested that perhaps Dr. Staines thought it best for her
to be relieved of all worry, and so undertook the housekeeping.

"No, no, no," said Rosa; "I used to pay them all a part of their bills,
and then a little more, and so I kept getting deeper; and I was ashamed
to tell Christie, so that he calls deceit; and oh, he spoke to me so
cruelly once! But he was very sorry afterwards, poor dear! Why are girls
brought up so silly? all piano, and no sense; and why are men sillier
still to go and marry such silly things? A wife! I am not so much as a
servant. Oh, I am finely humiliated, and," with a sudden hearty naivete
all her own, "it serves me just right."

While Lady Cicely was puzzling this out, in came a letter. Rosa opened
it, read it, and gave a cry like a wounded deer.

"Oh!" she cried, "I am a miserable woman. What will become of me?"

The letter informed her bluntly that her husband drove his brougham out
every night to pursue a criminal amour.

While Rosa was wringing her hands in real anguish of heart, Lady Cicely
read the letter carefully.

"I don't believe this," said she quietly.

"Not true! Why, who would be so wicked as to stab a poor, inoffensive
wretch like me, if it wasn't true?"

"The first ugly woman would, in a minute. Don't you see the witer
can't tell you where he goes? Dwives his bwougham out! That is all your
infaumant knows."

"Oh, my dear friend, bless you! What have I been complaining to you
about? All is light, except to lose his love. What shall I do? I will
never tell him. I will never affront him by saying I suspected him."

"Wosa, if you do that, you will always have a serpent gnawing you. No;
you must put the letter quietly into his hand, and say, 'Is there any
truth in that?'"

"Oh, I could not. I haven't the courage. If I do that, I shall know by
his face if there is any truth in it."

"Well, and you must know the twuth. You shall know it. I want to know
it too; for if he does not love you twuly, I will nevaa twust myself to
anything so deceitful as a man."

Rosa at last consented to follow this advice.

After dinner she put the letter into Christopher's hand, and asked him
quietly was there any truth in that: then her hands trembled, and her
eyes drank him.

Christopher read it, and frowned; then he looked up, and said, "No, not
a word. What scoundrels there are in the world! To go and tell you that,
NOW! Why, you little goose! have you been silly enough to believe it?"

"No," said she irresolutely. "But DO you drive the brougham out every
night?"

"Except Sunday."

"Where?"

"My dear wife, I never loved you as I love you now; and if it was not
for you, I should not drive the brougham out of nights. That is all I
shall tell you at present; but some day I'll tell you all about it."

He took such a calm high hand with her about it, that she submitted to
leave it there; but from this moment the serpent doubt nibbled her.

It had one curious effect, though. She left off complaining of trifles.

Now it happened one night that Lady Cicely Treherne and a friend were at
a concert in Hanover Square. The other lady felt rather faint, and Lady
Cicely offered to take her home. The carriages had not yet arrived,
and Miss Macnamara said to walk a few steps would do her good: a smart
cabman saw them from a distance and drove up, and touching his hat said,
"Cab, ladies?"

It seemed a very superior cab, and Miss Macnamara said "Yes" directly.

The cabman bustled down and opened the door; Miss Macnamara got in
first, then Lady Cicely; her eye fell on the cabman's face, which was
lighted full by a street-lamp, and it was Christopher Staines!

He started and winced; but the woman of the world never moved a muscle.

"Where to?" said Staines, averting his head.

She told him where, and when they got out, said, "I'll send it you by
the servant."

A flunkey soon after appeared with half-a-crown, and the amateur
coachman drove away. He said to himself, "Come, my mustache is a better
disguise than I thought."

Next day, and the day after, he asked Rosa, with affected carelessness,
had she heard anything of Lady Cicely.

"No, dear; but I dare say she will call this afternoon: it is her day."

She did call at last, and after a few words with Rosa, became a little
restless, and asked if she might consult Dr. Staines.

"Certainly, dear. Come to his studio."

"No; might I see him here?"

"Certainly." She rang the bell, and told the servant to ask Dr. Staines
if he would be kind enough to step into the drawing-room.

Dr. Staines came in, and bowed to Lady Cicely, and eyed her a little
uncomfortably.

She began, however, in a way that put him quite at his ease. "You
remember the advice you gave us about my little cousin Tadcastah."

"Perfectly: his life is very precarious; he is bilious, consumptive,
and, if not watched, will be epileptical; and he has a fond, weak
mother, who will let him kill himself."

"Exactly: and you wecommended a sea voyage, with a medical attendant to
watch his diet, and contwol his habits. Well, she took other advice, and
the youth is worse; so now she is fwightened, and a month ago she asked
me to pwopose to you to sail about with Tadcastah; and she offered me
a thousand pounds a year. I put on my stiff look, and said, 'Countess,
with every desiah to oblige you, I must decline to cawwy that offah to a
man of genius, learning, and weputation, who has the ball at his feet in
London.'"

"Lord forgive you, Lady Cicely."

"Lord bless her for standing up for my Christie."

Lady Cicely continued: "Now, this good lady, you must know, is not
exactly one of us: the late earl mawwied into cotton, or wool, or
something. So she said, 'Name your price for him.' I shwugged my
shoulders, smiled affably, and as affectedly as you like, and changed
the subject. But since then things have happened. I am afwaid it is my
duty to make you the judge whether you choose to sail about with that
little cub--Rosa, I can beat about the bush no longer. Is it a fit thing
that a man of genius, at whose feet we ought all to be sitting with
reverence, should drive a cab in the public streets? Yes, Rosa Staines,
your husband drives his brougham out at night, not to visit any other
lady, as that anonymous wretch told you, but to make a few misewable
shillings for you."

"Oh, Christie!"

"It is no use, Dr. Staines; I must and will tell her. My dear, he drove
ME three nights ago. He had a cabman's badge on his poor arm. If you
knew what I suffered in those five minutes! Indeed it seems cruel to
speak of it--but I could not keep it from Rosa, and the reason I muster
courage to say it before you, sir, it is because I know she has other
friends who keep you out of their consultations; and, after all, it is
the world that ought to blush, and not you."

Her ladyship's kindly bosom heaved, and she wanted to cry; so she took
her handkerchief out of her pocket without the least hurry, and
pressed it delicately to her eyes, and did cry quietly, but without any
disguise, like a brave lady, who neither cried nor did anything else she
was ashamed to be seen at.

As for Rosa, she sat sobbing round Christopher's neck, and kissed him
with all her soul.

"Dear me!" said Christopher. "You are both very kind. But, begging your
pardon, it is much ado about nothing."

Lady Cicely took no notice of that observation. "So, Rosa dear," said
she, "I think you are the person to decide whether he had not better
sail about with that little cub, than--oh!"

"I will settle that," said Staines. "I have one beloved creature to
provide for. I may have another. I MUST make money. Turning a brougham
into a cab, whatever you may think, is an honest way of making it, and
I am not the first doctor who has coined his brougham at night. But if
there is a good deal of money to be made by sailing with Lord Tadcaster,
of course I should prefer that to cab-driving, for I have never made
above twelve shillings a night."

"Oh, as to that, she shall give you fifteen hundred a year."

"Then I jump at it."

"What! and leave ME?"

"Yes, love: leave you--for your good; and only for a time. Lady Cicely,
it is a noble offer. My darling Rosa will have every comfort--ay, every
luxury, till I come home, and then we will start afresh with a good
balance, and with more experience than we did at first."

Lady Cicely gazed on him with wonder. She said, "Oh! what stout hearts
men have! No, no; don't let him go. See; he is acting. His great heart
is torn with agony. I will have no hand in parting man and wife--no, not
for a day." And she hurried away in rare agitation.

Rosa fell on her knees, and asked Christopher's pardon for having been
jealous; and that day she was a flood of divine tenderness. She repaid
him richly for driving the cab. But she was unnaturally cool about Lady
Cicely; and the exquisite reason soon came out. "Oh yes! She is very
good; very kind; but it is not for me now! No! you shall not sail about
with her cub of a cousin, and leave me at such a time."

Christopher groaned.

"Christie, you shall not see that lady again. She came here to part us.
SHE IS IN LOVE WITH YOU. I was blind not to see it before."

Next day, as Lady Cicely sat alone in the morning-room thinking over
this very scene, a footman brought in a card and a note. "Dr. Staines
begs particularly to see Lady Cicely Treherne."

The lady's pale cheek colored; she stood irresolute a single moment. "I
will see Dr. Staines," said she.

Dr. Staines came in, looking pale and worn; he had not slept a wink
since she saw him last.

She looked at him full, and divined this at a glance. She motioned
him to a seat, and sat down herself, with her white hand pressing her
forehead, and her head turned a little away from him.




CHAPTER XIII.


He told her he had come to thank her for her great kindness, and to
accept the offer.