that you were never to look for me here? Is it likely that I should give you money now, simply because you have disobeyed me!”
“Where else was I to find you?”
“Why should you have found me at all? I don’t want you to find me. I shall give you nothing;—not a penny. You know very well that we’ve had all that out before. When I put you into business I told you that we were to see no more of each other.”
“Business!” she said. “I never could make enough out of the shop to feed a bird.”
“That wasn’t my fault. Putting you there cost me over a hundred pounds, and you consented to take the place.”
“I didn’t consent. I was obliged to go there because you took my other home away from me.”
“Have it as you like, my dear. That was all I could do for you;—and more than most men would have done, when all things are considered.” Then he got up from the sofa, and stood himself on the hearthrug, with his back to the fireplace. “At any rate, you may be sure of this, Jane;—that I shall do nothing more. You have come here to torment me, but you shall get nothing by it.”
“I have come here because I am starving.”
“I have nothing for you. Now go;” and he pointed to the door. Nevertheless, for more than three years of his life this woman had been his closest companion, his nearest friend, the being with whom he was most familiar. He had loved her according to his fashion of loving, and certainly she had loved him. “Go,” he said repeating the word very angrily. “Do as I bid you, or it will be the worse for you.”
“Will you give me a sovereign?”
“No;—I will give you nothing. I have desired you not to come to me here, and I will not pay for you coming.”
“Then I will not go;” and the woman sat down upon a chair at the foot of the table. “I will not go till you have given me something to buy food. You may put me out of the room if you can, but I will lie at the door of the stairs. And if you get me out of the house, I will sit upon the doorstep.”
“If you play that game, my poor girl, the police will take you.”
“Let them. It has come to that with me, that I care for nothing. Out of this I will not go till you give me money—unless I am put out.”
And for this she had dressed herself with so much care, mending her gloves, and darning her little fragments of finery! He stood looking at her, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets,—looking at her and thinking what he had better do to rid himself of her presence. If he even quite resolved to take that little final journey of which we have spoken, with the pistol in his hand, why should he not go and leave her there? Or, for the matter of that, why should he not make her his heir to all remainder of his wealth? What he still had left was sufficient to place her in a seventh heaven of the earth. He cared but little for her, and was at this moment angry with her; but there was no one for whom he cared more, and no friend with whom he was less angry. But then his mind was not quite made up as to that final journey. Therefore he desired to rid himself and his room of the nuisance of her presence.
“Jane,” he said, looking at her again with that assumed tranquillity of which I have spoken, “you talk of starving and of being ruined,—”
“I am starving. I have not a shilling in the world.”
“Perhaps it may be a comfort to you in your troubles to know that I am, at any rate, as badly off as you are? I won’t say that I am starving, because I could get food to eat at this moment if I wanted it; but I am utterly ruined. My property,—what should have been mine,—has been left away from me. I have lost the trumpery seat in Parliament for which I have paid so much. All my relations have turned their backs upon me—”
“Are you not going to be married?” she said, rising quickly from her chair and coming close to him.
“Married! No;—but I am going to blow my brains out. Look at that pistol, my girl. Of course you won’t think that I am in earnest,—but I am.”
She looked up into his face piteously. “Oh! George,” she said, “you won’t do that?”
“But I shall do that. There is nothing else left for me to do. You talk to me about starving. I tell you that I should have no objection to be starved, and so be put an end to in that way. It’s not so bad as some other ways when it comes gradually. You and I, Jane, have not played our cards very well. We have staked all that we had, and we’ve been beaten. It’s no good whimpering after what’s lost. We’d better go somewhere else and begin a new game.”
“Go where?” said she.
“Ah!—that’s just what I can’t tell you.”
“George,” she said, “I’ll go anywhere with you. If what you say is true,—if you’re not going to be married, and will let me come to you, I will work for you like a slave. I will indeed. I know I’m poorly looking now—”
“My girl, where I’m going, I shall not want any slave; and as for your looks—when you go there too,—they’ll be of no matter, as far as I am able to judge.”
“But, George, where are you going?”
“Wherever people do go when their brains are knocked out of them; or, rather, when they have knocked out their own brains,—if that makes any difference.”
“George,”—she came up to him now, and took hold of him by the front of his coat, and for the moment he allowed her to do so,—”George, you frighten me. Do not do that. Say that you will not do that!”
“But I am just saying that I shall.”
“Are you not afraid of God’s anger? You and I have been very wicked.”
“I have, my poor girl. I don’t know much about your wickedness. I’ve been like Topsy;—indeed I am a kind of second Topsy myself. But what’s the good of whimpering when it’s over?”
“It isn’t over; it isn’t over,—at any rate for you.”
“I wish I knew how I could begin again. But all this is nonsense, Jane, and you must go.”
“You must tell me, first, that you are not going to—kill yourself.”
“I don’t suppose I shall do it tonight,—or, perhaps, not tomorrow. Very probably I may allow myself a week, so that your staying here can do no good. I merely wanted to make you understand that you are not the only person who has come to grief.”
“And you are not going to be married?”
“No; I’m not going to be married, certainly.”
“And I must go now?”
“Yes; I think you’d better go now.” Then she rose and went, and he let her leave the room without giving her a shilling! His bantering tone, in speaking of his own position, had been successful. It had caused her to take herself off quietly. She knew enough of his usual manner to be aware that his threats of self destruction were probably unreal; but, nevertheless, what he had said had created some feeling in her heart
