The worst of anybody who is not a regular author or authoress trying to write out incidents of their life, or things that they know about which they think will be interesting, is that there is always some interruption or other just as one is getting to the point. When I was writing my “Memoirs” as a servant, of course, it was dreadful, for anybody who knows anything about it knows how little time a servant gets to herself, and when she does have a quiet half-hour to sit still in the kitchen, writing is out of the question, because there is no quiet if you are with other servants; and if you are by yourself there is sure to be plenty for you to do.
How I ever managed to get those “Memoirs” done at all will always be a mystery to me; and the more I look back on the difficulties I had to encounter, the more wonderful it seems.
When I began to put down things about our life and adventures in the ‘Stretford Arms,’ I thought to myself, “Now I am my own mistress, I shall be able to have a quiet hour now and then, and to take more trouble with my composition;” but, bless you, I am not sure that I am not worse off, so far as authorship is concerned, now than when I was a servant.
I declare I never get a real quiet hour, for there is always something to be seen to, or somebody wanting to see me; and if it isn’t that, it’s baby or Harry.
To tell you the truth, I sometimes think Harry is a little jealous of my writing. I don’t mean jealous in a{156} bad sense; but, from one or two remarks he has let drop, he doesn’t like my going and shutting myself away and writing. He says when we have half an hour to spare we might as well spend it together.
Of course I am always glad to have a quiet hour with my husband, but it’s no good my trying to write while he’s in the room. He will keep on talking to me, and nothing will stop him; and if he doesn’t speak, I think every minute that he is going to, and that’s worse, for it makes me nervous and fidgety, and the ideas all get mixed up in my head together, and I can’t tell my story straightforward, as I always like to do.
Sometimes it is a whole fortnight before I get a chance of writing anything in my book that I keep, and it has been even longer than that.
This is what a real author or authoress never has to put up with. I believe, from what I’ve heard, that they have a beautiful room full of dictionaries for the hard words and the foreign words, and maps hung all round the room, and they sit in it all day long quite quiet, and nobody is allowed to come in and interrupt.
I should think anybody could write like that. It must be very easy, if you’ve got anything in you at all. But it’s very different when you’ve got a house, and an hotel, and servants, and a baby, and a husband to look after, and if you take your eyes off for a minute, something is bound to go wrong.
Once or twice while I have been sitting in my own room writing, having given orders that I was not to be disturbed, something has gone wrong, and Harry has said, “You were writing your book, I suppose;” and I’ve said, “Yes”; and then he’s said, “It’s my opinion, my dear, that if you don’t make haste and finish that book, that book will finish us.”
Of course to anybody who hates what they call “pens and ink”—and some people do, like poison—writing seems dreadfully silly and a waste of time; and I’m afraid that Harry, with all his good qualities, hasn’t much respect for literature. He certainly hasn’t the slightest idea how difficult it is to write. I once said to him that I believed he thought I could make out a bill with one{157} hand and write my “Memoirs” with the other, and talk to a customer at the same time, and all he said was, “Why not?”
“Why not!” It really made me so cross I could have cried with vexation; for it was just when I had got in rather a muddle with my book about the ‘Stretford Arms,’ finding that the housemaid had taken a lot of pages that I had written notes on and lighted the fire with them, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the notes were.
All I remembered that was on them was some things I had taken down about Tom Dexter, our odd man, the one whose story I began to tell you when I was interrupted; but what the others were it was weeks before I remembered, and I quite wore myself out trying to think.
If there is one thing that annoys me more than another, it is trying to think of something I particularly want to think of and can’t.
Sometimes Harry will say, “What was the name of that man, or that woman, or that gentleman, or that lady,” as the case may be; and if I can’t think of it, it worries me all day, and I keep saying, perhaps, dozens of names, and not the right one; and after the house is closed and we’re gone to bed, it keeps me awake, and I keep on saying names over and over till Harry gets quite wild, and says, “Oh, bother the name! Do go to sleep, my dear. I want to be up at six to-morrow morning.”
Then I leave off trying to think the name out loud, and I think it to myself, and perhaps, after about an hour’s agony, I suddenly recollect it, and then I’m obliged to get it off my mind by waking Harry up and telling it him before I forget it.
It’s bad enough with a name, but it’s worse with a thing. I remember once in service tying a piece of cotton round my finger to remind me to do something that I particularly didn’t want to forget, and I went to bed with the cotton on my finger, and never thought any more about it until the next afternoon, and then I was a whole day trying to remember what I’d tied the cotton round my finger for; and go mad over it I really thought I should, it kept me on such tenter-hooks all the time.
What was in the notes that stupid girl destroyed I{158} don’t suppose I shall ever remember: that is, not anything worth remembering.
The notes about our odd man, of course, I recollected, because they didn’t matter, he being in our service still at the time, and I could get all I wanted about him by talking to him.
When I was interrupted I had told you as far as where he went into the casual ward, with his wife and little girl, and how he came out.
It must have been a dreadful experience for him, poor fellow, seeing that it was not his own fault that the misery and ruin had come to him, after years of hard work.
When he got out of the casual ward, he and his wife and child walked along the streets, and his wife began to cry and to say it was all her fault, and she had brought him to it, and if she was dead he would be a happier man.
He tried to comfort her, and said it was no use talking about being dead. She could make him much happier by living, if she’d only give up the dreadful drink. He said they couldn’t go much lower than they’d got; now was the time to begin to go up again. If he tried and got work, would she keep straight, so that they could get a home together again?
“No; she knew she couldn’t,” she said. “It was no use. If she ever got any money again, she knew the temptation would be too strong for her—she’d tried over and over again to stop herself, and it was no use. She’d go away and leave Tom free, and then he might have a chance, and perhaps, some day, it might all come right; but she was sure, if she stopped with him, she would only keep him down as low as he was now, and perhaps bring him to worse, for she might bring him to crime.”
Tom didn’t argue any more with her, because it was no use: she was in that weak, low, dreadful state that people are in who have drunk a great deal and then can’t get it. Sometimes, in cases I have known of the sort, I’ve thought it would be a mercy, if people with that awful curse upon them, settled themselves quickly, for the sake of their friends and relations and those about them. If they are treated very skilfully when force is used to make them{159} leave off, or if they are kept where they can’t get anything, and taken very great care of, they may, and do sometimes, get cured; but, as a rule, all the trouble and anxiety are of no use, and the dreadful end comes.
I have known such sad cases—most people in our line do know of them—that my heart has bled to think about them. It is such an awful thing—that slow, deliberate suicide by drink, those awful living wrecks, hardly human in their horribleness, that the poor victims of the disease—for it must be a disease—become.
I thought of what I knew while Tom Dexter was telling me his story, and I quite understood what an awful position it was for a man to be placed in: loving his wife as he did, and she loving him, and it all having come about through her grief at the loss of her boy, made it doubly terrible.
Really, it makes you shudder sometimes when you think what awful tragedies there are in some people’s lives; and oh, how thankful we ought to be who live peacefully and happily, and never know the dark and awful side that there is to life!
Tom told me that he himself almost gave up when he heard his wife talk like that, and the thought came into his head that it would be much better if they all three went to some nice quiet part of the canal, that was near where they were, and dropped in, and then there would be no more trouble for any of them.
He was thinking that when, as they were walking along, he met an old friend of his that he hadn’t seen for a long time—a man that had worked with him, but had married a widow who kept a public-house, and was now well off.
He saw that things were bad with Tom at a glance—he saw it by his face and his clothes, and the clothes of his wife and child; but he was a good fellow, and instead of passing by on the other side, as many would have done, he came up to Tom, and took his hand, and said, “Hullo, old fellow! I’m sorry to see you under water. What does it mean?”
Tom stopped a minute and talked to him, and told him as well as he could without “rounding on his missus,” as{160} he called it, and then his friend said, “Well, Tom, I’m awfully sorry, old fellow. Look here! let me lend you a couple of sovereigns, and you can pay me back as soon as you get a bit straight.”
The tears came into Tom’s eyes, and his throat swelled up; but, before he could say anything, his friend had turned off sharp and gone away.
Tom showed the sovereigns to his wife, and said, “There, my lass, look at that! there’s a chance for us to make another start. It’s a bit of good luck, and it’s a good omen; it means what the old proverb says, that when things are at the worst they will mend. Let us both try; we’ve had a rough lesson, and if we’ve learnt it, perhaps it will be all the better for us for the rest of our lives.”
Tom’s wife didn’t say anything, but only turned her head away.
That night he got a bit of a lodging for himself and his wife and his child, and he went to bed full of hope and faith in the future, and he determined the first thing in the morning to get out and look for work.
But when he woke up in the morning his wife was gone. She had got up quietly, while he was fast asleep, and had gone away, and left a bit of a note saying she was sure she should bring him to ruin again, and she didn’t want to do it now he had another chance. For his own sake and the sake of the child it was better he should be rid of her, for she was only a burden and a curse to him. If ever she cured herself, and felt that she could trust herself, she would come back to him; but if she didn’t, it was just as well he should never know what had become of her.
It was an awful letter for poor Tom to find just as everything looked so promising, and it dashed his hopes to the ground and made him very miserable.
He told me that when he read that letter he felt so low that the temptation came to him to go out and drink to drown his trouble and black thoughts that came into his mind. Then he thought of the little girl—the poor little girl, that had suffered so much already—and he made up his mind that he would do his duty by her, and{161} be father and mother to her both, now her mother had gone away and left her; and he knelt down by her bed-side where she was fast asleep, and made a vow that he would never touch a drop of drink again as long as he lived.
He spent the whole of the first day trying to find some trace of his wife, but it was no good. Nobody knew them where they had taken the lodging, and no one had noticed the woman go away. He had a d............