A Husband's Ordeal; or, the Confessions of Gerald Brownson, etc

Front matter

Hart Street Bloomsbury London Light Literature i. A MYSTERY OF THE CORDILLERA: A Tale of Adventure in the Andes. By Arthur Mason Bourne. With Six Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 312 pp. Cloth, 3s. 6d. net. II. HOW TO WRITE FICTION, especially the Art of Short Story Writing. A Study in Technique. Crown 8vo, 192 pp. Cloth, 3s. 6d. net. Part First. — Short Story Writing. — The Different Kinds of Short Stories — General Outline of Method of Writing — Material for Short Stories — The Central Idea — The Soul of the Story — Character Study — The Setting of a Story. Part Second. — The General Principles of Fiction. — The Difference between the Short Story and the Novel — How to Obtain a Good Command of Language — Narrative, Description, and Dialogue — Har mony of Style — Plot Construction — Imagination and Reality — The Use of Models in Writing Fiction — Contrast — Motive — What makes a Story Worth Telling — How to Observe Men and Women — The Test of Ability — Conclusion.

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Chapter I The Beginning Of The Fatality

Perhaps it was selfish of me to marry, as my wife often declared, when temper and pessimism quelled, for a time, the deep, true love which had always been as much hers for me as mine for her. This is not, however, why I have taken up the pen in place of my much more familiar pencil, brush, or graver, to set down the record of that terrible tragedy in which circumstance alone made us both involuntary actors. That is the story I have to tell, and the reasons for telling it will appear in due course. I — Gerald Brownson — am an artist, and have been one from the advent in early childhood of my first cheap box of colours. My struggles and difficulties have been of the usual kind, and with these A struggles and difficulties, except incidentally, my narrative has no concern. I was orphaned early, and left totally unprovided for, but, when only a boy, I obtained a position in a Eepository for Artists' Materials, where I was aided by my appreciative employer, and eventually enabled to set up on my own account, and find regular employment as a book illustrator and a technical draughtsman for two or three trade jour nals.

While still a very young man, I found, or thought myself, justified in marrying just where my inclination prompted, in a word, for love, pure and simple, and during two or three years my matrimonial existence was Edenic. Edenic, too, in a very literal manner, seeing that I had rented a pretty little detached house, surrounded by an old fashioned garden, situated in a quiet village in Surrey called Longfield, whence I could run up to London in less than an hour, and attend to the business side of my artistic labours. My wife was the only daughter of an Indian civil servant, a widoAver, who died suddenly, just after our wedding. Knowing that he had only his pension, and feeling, as I have always thought since, his end approaching, he had hurried on the marriage. I met his daughter first whilst visiting Brighton on a sketching commission for an illustrated periodical.

I selected Longfield as a residence, because the house was cheap, the garden large and pretty. The neighbourhood abounded in beautiful woodlands, and there were near my house one or two picturesque lakes. At this period I had a burning, though sup pressed, ambition to distinguish myself as a painter of trees, and as my bread-and-cheese work necessarily consumed most of my time, I wished to live amid such natural surroundings as might help me insensibly in the direction of that higher art whereto my whole soul was then devoted. I had learned my life lessons in a school of very hard work, and wore neither long hair nor sported a velvet coat, nor, indeed, in any way rendered myself absurd. There was nothing in the least Bohemian in my habits. My aim was simply to earn a living, and gradually to win the requisite leisure and freedom from pressing pecuniary cares, that would enable me to cultivate seriously my inherent bent for the delineation of all forms of tree life.

Here, indeed, lay my weakness, for I could rarely forego an opportunity of introducing trees into my taskwork, and often when executing drawings for A Husband 's Ordeal 4 a trade paper, I have had to remove my beloved trees as being out of place, which, indeed, they often were. On the whole, however, I prospered, being re cognised as industrious, and all the time that could be spared from taskwork, was spent among the pine-woods around our home. I did my Avork at home, in a little studio con trived out of a conservatory, opening into the garden behind and communicating with a small room at the end of the passage leadirig from the front door. My poor wife, it must be confessed, was much alone, and had but little of my company. Our honeymoon had been cut cruelly short by the death of her father, to whom she was most fondly attached.

My wife, my Eve, as I often called her — her name was Evelyn — was very, very dear to me, and if I gave her little of my time, she filled a large place in my thoughts and engrossed all my feelings. As month succeeded month, I loved her more and more. She did not really like the country, and could she have had her will, she would have resided in London. Her ideal, I knew, was a flat in some central quarter whence she could easily reach Eegent Street, the principal art galleries, and especially the theatres. She loved gazing into shop-windows quite as much as I loved gazing on trees, and I knew when, after our honeymoon, we went home to " Five Oaks " at Longfield, that she was making a painful sacrifice for my sake. All her own friends and relatives lived in London or Brighton, and she was very lonely at Longfield.

Yet what could I do ? For me to live in London simply meant giving up the one thing outside my wife, for which I lived and toiled. I had myself many " friends " in the way of business, men who knew and appreciated my tire less industry, and who knew me, too, as a man ever ready to execute difficult technical work — which, by the way, I most heartily detested — and thus I had little reason for worldly anxiety so long as I did the taskwork I so hated. But of friends true, dear, and familiar, I had but one, and of him I must now speak, because it was through following his well-meant, but, as it proved, fatal advice, that I prepared the ground for the dreadful tragedy I have to record, as a vindication both of my wife and myself from the most cruel charges that could well be brought against any human beings by the most unfeeling of self-constituted public censors.

But there ! I must not let a righteous passion mount up to white heat. The friend referred to was George Kiss, a journalist, an old bachelor, who had known me all my life. He had known my father too, and I had gradually come to regard him — a man nearly thrice my age — almost as a second parent. He occupied two attics in Staple Inn, Holborn, and boasted that he could lock up house at any moment and be free to roam wherever inclination prompted. His roamings were varied, extending abroad, and on returning, he always managed to write some sketches, which, as he observed, kept the pot boiling until the next fit of restlessness seized him. Now it happened when I was about eighteen that a certain episode occurred in my life, which was, indeed, the cause of these confessions, and except to the one principal actress therein at the time of my marriage, the true circumstances were known only to George Kiss.

The facts briefly were these : — At the period referred to, I had overgrown my strength, and exhausted my brain in over-study. I had, in a word, quite worn myself out, and my employer, a kind-hearted man, knowing I had no relatives, decided to send me at his own expense for a month to a place in Kent, where a teuant of his cultivated a small fruit farm. "That'll set you up, my boy," he said, "if anything will. You'll be in nice time for a course of ripe fruit. Stay all you can in the open air. 'Tis a lovely place. Rise and roost early, and you'll return to me worth twice your money." 'Twas kindly meant, and I felt very grateful indeed, for love of the country has ever been Avith me a passion, and I had not then seen a wood or meadow for some years. My few things were promptly packed, and I found myself on the way to the Crays, one of the loveliest spots in Kent.

Ah ! had I only known ! It had been better for me to have fought it out in hot and dusty London, with the consump tion that they said had attacked me, than ever to have set foot amid the beautiful apple and cherry orchards of the Garden of England ! But who can foresee the future ? As I neared my destination, my spirits rose high. Never, so it seemed, had I looked upon so bright and fair a picture, and when I arrived at Rose Cottage, where my employer's tenant lived, I felt a strange wild joy pulsing through every vein. The family consisted of Mr. Mowforth, his wife, and an only child, a daughter of about fifteen years old, at that time away on a visit to an aunt. Mr. Mowforth was a jolly man, whose face resembled one of his own apples, and who seemed to spend his whole waking time in the open air cultivating fruit and breeding pigs.

Mrs. Mowforth was his very opposite, being a thin, sour woman, " always doing," as her husband laughingly said, and " never done." She was, I soon discovered, perpetually finding fault, which clearly explained why Mr. Mowforth spent all his time out of doors. He smoked all day long, and indulged a great deal too much in some particularly strong ale which he had on draught, and was never tired of pronouncing " to be meat and drink in a convenient form ! " The house was dirty and untidy, the furniture old and shabby, and the very beds did not look clean, though Mrs. Mowforth was perpetually pro claiming her cleanliness and grumbling because her daughter Sara was away just when they had a visitor. Mr. Mowforth only laughed, and said it was of no consequence, but I did not wonder, on hearing the bitter words that his wife showered upon him, that he passed so much time in the garden and orchards, and wondered how he managed in winter.

For some days I was thoroughly happy. I re velled in the fruit-laden orchards, and lay for hours amid the sweet-smelling grass. Rapidly I regained strength, ate and slept well, and physically became a new creature. I should mention that besides being an aspiring artist, I had poetical aspirations too, and had perpetrated much rhyme on all conceivable subjects. Still, I had the sense to know that poetry never paid, Avhereas the pencil and brush did enable one to earn money. Now, however, at the Crays I fell from sheer idleness into a fit of poetic musing, and somehow my very surroundings plunged me into that senti mental state which often comes over impressionable lads, and which was, as will presently appear, the cause of my getting into my first serious trouble, and which was, indeed, the beginning of the frightful fatality that henceforth was to dog my path in life with a persistency and a force equally cruel aud deadly.

Chapter II

I MARRY It seems, though I knew nothing of the fact then, that my employer, Mr. James, who was reputedly rich, had dropped some remark to the Mowforths, when collecting his rent, that he had adopted me, and meant to make a man of me, being convinced that I had both talent and sense. In truth, Mr. James had no intention of doing more than aiding me in my artistic career, but the effect of his remark was to possess the mind of Mrs. Mowforth with the idea that it would be a splendid thing to encourage her daughter to engage my affections, and when, in about a week, Miss Mowforth returned home, we — boy and girl — were designedly left very much to ourselves. Well, the story must be told, dreadful as it is in its issues, and I must nerve myself to deal at all events with facts, and reduce them as plainly as possible to a brief statement, the prelude only, alas ! to the terrible confessions to follow. / Marry 11 Sara Mowforth at that time was undoubtedly what is popularly called a rustic beauty.

She had fine black and rather bold eyes, red cheeks, beautiful long and very dark hair, and a graceful though somewhat heavy figure. I was myself a lanky, lean, long sort of a youth, as some one once called me, and by the law of contrast, considered Sara a very paragon of loveliness, and the ideal of all maidenly perfections 1 We were thrown, as I have said, a great deal together ; we picked fruit for market, wandered through the cornfields, and, in a word, became, as all who saw us thought, a most affectionate couple. One day I confess I yielded to a boyish impulse, and somehow it all ended in an exchange of foolish vows of mutual constancy and — I kissed her. Well, to most that will sound trivial enough, but unhappily it was destined to prove anything but trivial in the end, and what was that day begun in idleness and folly, Avas foredoomed to end in sorrow and in tears.

I had always had, as I trust I have still, a chivalric regard and delicate reverence for woman, but Avith me this episode of boyish love-making was only a piece of poetic fancy, of senti ment without root in my heart, or foundation in my mind. I can honestly affirm that there was no more passion about it than that I feel when amid a group of beautiful trees. I kissed her merely because she put her pretty blooming face so close to mine, and if often when we met, this kind of thing continued, it was due to that entire surrender to a present agreeable sensation, which, after all, is the true cause of half the folly, vice, and sin which curse mankind. Bemember I am telling these things without any reserve. Doubtless I ought not to have done as I did, but these are the facts, and all I ask is one favour — that of suspended judgment until I have told all my dreadful story.

I imagine Mrs. Mowforth knew from the first how matters were between me and Sara. By some means she induced my indulgent master to let me stay another month. For a while, I quite yielded to the idyllic charm of a life that so exactly suited me. Although I spent nearly all my time with Sara, I began to compose and address to her some weak, boyish rhymes, and moreover drew up a scheme whereby she was to improve her very neglected education. I must have been very conceited, and doubtless, had I really loved her, I should have been less I Marry 13 vexed by her solecisms in speech and her general inability to spell properly. When my visit was nearly over, I had to show a gentleman round the plantations — some one, Mr. Mowforth said, from London, commissioned to Avrite an article on fruit-growing in Kent.

It was thus that I became acquainted with George Kiss, who from something in my conversation and something in my face, as he afterwards informed me, took a great liking to me, and knowing my art aspirations, promised to help me to some illustrating work in connection with journalism, and this in due course he did. When I returned at last to London and work, I saw much of Mr. Kiss, and somehow he found out all about my foolish attachment to Miss Mowforth. It was not long before he quite dis illusioned me, and in the issue Mr. Kiss advised me to write to Mr. Mowforth, who was, he said, an honest man, and point out that I had no prospect of being able to make a home of my own for many years, and that under such circumstances an engage ment between me and his daughter would be unfair to her and only a clog to me.

That I readily agreed to all this, and that I greatly rejoiced when Mr. Mowforth wrote to say I was quite right, surely shows that on my side there was then no real love, and such I solemnly affirm was the case. Thus the matter ended, and I rejoiced exceed ingly. Sara wrote to me one letter, ill spelled and worded, reproaching me for my cruelty, and quoting some high-flown and foolish verses I had made about her one day when we were resting in a cornfield. I was concerned to think that she had taken everything that had passed between us, so seriously, but my eyes had now been opened, and I quite agreed with Mr. Kiss that Sara was not in any way suited to be my wife. Once he said — " Gerald, you have had a great escape. Some day you will be a good artist. If you were ever married to that girl at the Crays, I should pity you, for either you'd take to drink, or you'd ill treat her.

Believe me, I've seen what it means for a man of intellect and refinement, to be yoked to a pretty slattern whose one idea and desire is gross pleasure." Time passed on, I heard no more of the Mow forths. In the midst of my study and toil, I forgot all about that episode at the Crays. My health was I Marry i 15 entirely restored, aud I had for some time set up as an artist on my own account. Mr. Kiff proved my true friend, and it came about that within a little less than ten years from my memorable visit to the Kentish fruit farm, I found myself very seriously attached to the lady whom I subsequently married. I have said, when referring to my Avife, that she was a lady. Well, no one who once knew her could doubt that ; and her father, much as he desired to see his daughter " settled," as he termed it, would never, I am convinced, have consented to accept for a son-in-law any one, however rich, of low birth and ill-breeding.

Now, though I had from the first to make my own living, I am well descended both on the paternal and maternal sides, and can boast of descent from more than one baronial house famous in English history. My wife had strong prejudices, and especially did she hate aught that was vulgar, coarse, or com mon, and above all things, like her father, did she hate and abhor a lie. He had, indeed, so incul cated this feeling into her infant mind, that it had become a part of her very nature. For a lie she would admit of no excuse, be the occasion what it might, and for a liar, she had no mercy. To tell a lie, she said, was despicable and always the sure sign of the coward, and there was nothing she hated so much. The night before my marriage, I passed with my friend George Kiss. From him I had received much substantial kindness as well as excellent advice.

George Kiss had been at first greatly opposed to my marriage, but when I assured him that if I gave up my Eve, I should be fit for nothing more in this Avorld — which was fact, not fancy, seeing that she had engrossed all my thoughts — he gave way grimly. I assured him, in perfect good faith, that once I had for my wife the woman whom I loved, I should be ready and able to devote myself wholly to my art. I remember, too, hearing him mutter, while knocking the ashes out of his pipe — " Very well for him, but what will it be for her ? " Then I broke in eagerly to explain that my wife quite understood that I should have to work hard, andthat, moreover, she desired me to exert myself, and if she could not help me actively, she would never be a hindrance. She had said, / Marry 17 indeed, " So long as you work at home, I shall have nothing to complain of.

I cannot be a neglected wife while my husband stays in the same house with me." I thought George Kiss — dear, good, gruff old George, as we called him — somewhat profanely sneered at this enthusiasm on the part of my Eve ; but then was he not an old bachelor, and had he not proclaimed that throughout his whole life he had never felt the least touch of what is called the tender passion ? But upon this last evening of my single blessed ness, something happened which was to exercise a most momentous influence over my whole future, and alas ! over that of one dearer far to me than life itself. That evening I had found Kiss in the front attic, which served him for office, sitting-room, and kitchen. He was busy cooking some plaice for supper, which he did in a highly original Avay, by laying them in a deep dish half-full of spirit, which he lighted, and when the flames expired, the fish were done, he declared, to a turn !

I was not then particular as to what I ate, and cared more for tobacco than for fine cookery, being nearly as great a smoker as Kiff himself. B I suppose the consciousness of the great change at hand, had rendered me unusually animated and decidedly confidential. I expatiated on the many charms, graces, and virtues of my Eve, and grew so effusive on this theme, that suddenly Kiff ex claimed — " What a difference, Gerald, between the real and the false! This beats all your fine poetry in the time of the Crays ; your words ring out as your rhymes certainly never did." The allusion to that painful episode of my visit to the Mowforth family did not exactly please me. All that folly was past and done with, dead and buried, I fondly thought, and the very memory thereof had grown dim and obscure.

Kiff saw that he had pained me, and changing his bantering tone, inquired whether my prospective father-in-law, or my wife to be, knew anything of that episode. I assured him that, so far as my knowledge went, they did not. Kiff smoked on thoughtfully, then laying down his pipe, he said — " I have been listening, Gerald, attentively to all you have been saying of the many perfectious of your bride of tomorrow, and I strongly advise you never to utter one word about that affair of yours / Marry 19 at the Crays. I know how impulsive you are, and that you hate mysteries, but do not be so foolish as to let your wife know that you have had any prior attachment. I am no bad physiognomist, and the portrait you showed me the other day of the lady you are about to marry, is certainly that of a true, pure woman, but she is one who would neither forgive nor forget an injury, and in my opinion, Gerald, decidedly a woman who, if once jealous, seriously jealous I mean, might be easily changed into something far worse than what is usually un derstood as a virago.

Take my advice, let it be a clear board between you. I know that you love her and her alone, and you would really wrong her to allow a suspicion once to enter her mind. She is, I feel sure, one of those people who so very easily create their own unhappiness if only they can have the smallest excuse for so doing. She is a pessimist, Gerald, or I never saw one, and nothing but a great, a whole, and an undivided love will preserve her from drifting into misery, at all events, when the shades of middle age come closing in. You have told me a great deal about her, and I put all things together — her portrait, her handwriting, her likes and dislikes ; and above all things, I beg you never to let her imagine that you have ever paid attention to any girl. Indeed, I warn you that she will have much difficulty in putting up with your devotion to your art.

Do not try her any farther than that. You and I know that that silly engagement of yours was but the sickly fancy of a silly boy, and in great part due to a designing mother. The girl was quite common, and never could have won your real regards. In a word, you can, I think, say with perfect justice, that your wife to be is your first and only love." I have condensed our conversation on that memorable evening, but this was the substance of what then passed, and when I and George Kiff parted, he had quite convinced me that it was my duty to entirely suppress the Crays incident, and prevent my wife to be from having any knowledge of the way in which I had once been connected with the Mowforth family. Such was George Kiss's serious advice, That advice I took and strictly followed, and its awful consequences will appear in the following narrative.

Chapter III

"MY HUSBAND HAS NEVER GIVEN ME THAT KIND OF TROUBLE" It is not easy to live decently by art, unless you have made a great name or are willing to degrade your talents to unworthy ends. Still more diffi cult is it for a man to live on art who, like myself, never went out at all into society, and was studi ously intent on seriously cultivating a branch of oil-painting for which he had not found any market at all ! Thus for several years I had struggled on at Longfield, just making both ends meet, and just, but only just, keeping out of debt. We — my wife and I — had suffered trials, the greatest being the loss of two infants in three years, and at the period Avhen this narrative opens we were still childless. This caused a keen sorrow to each of us, though in very differing Avays. I had eagerly looked for children to vary and brighten my wife's lonely life, ji and, by engrossing all her strong maternal instincts, to give me more time for my art.

At this period I had really no leisure to cultivate social relations in the neighbourhood, and my wife was reluctant to make any advances. I suggested now and then inviting a few friends we knew, but Eve declared that if we could not entertain properly, we ought not to attempt entertaining at all. For servant we had only a country girl, very clumsy and stupid, and my wife averred that it would kill her to let any of her own friends see the way in which we lived. This galled me much ; it meant a question of money, and amounted, I thought, to the charge that I did not earn enough. My wife estimated art by prices, and sometimes I dared not call her attention to a piece of work whereon I had reason to pride myself, because she would be sure to ask me what it had yielded, and somehow I could never convince her that to be poorly paid was not necessarily equivalent to being an inferior artist.