Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages by Rudyard Kipling, Ella D\'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

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VICTORIAN SHORT STORIES OF TROUBLED MARRIAGES

CONTENTS

THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE by Rudyard Kipling

IRREMEDIABLE by Ella D'Arcy

'A POOR STICK' by Arthur Morrison

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE by Arthur Conan Doyle

THE PRIZE LODGER by George Gissing

THE BRONCKHORST DIVORCE-CASE

By Rudyard Kipling

(_Civil and Military Gazette_, 26 September 1884)

In the daytime, when she moved about me,
In the night, when she was sleeping at my side,--
I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence,
Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her--
Would God that she or I had died!

--CONFESSIONS

There was a man called Bronckhorst--a three-cornered, middle-aged man in
the Army--grey as a badger, and, some people said, with a touch of
country-blood in him. That, however, cannot be proved. Mrs. Bronckhorst
was not exactly young, though fifteen years younger than her husband.
She was a large, pale, quiet woman, with heavy eyelids over weak eyes,
and hair that turned red or yellow as the lights fell on it.

Bronckhorst was not nice in any way. He had no respect for the pretty
public and private lies that make life a little less nasty than it is.
His manner towards his wife was coarse. There are many things--including
actual assault with the clenched fist--that a wife will endure; but
seldom a wife can bear--as Mrs. Bronckhorst bore--with a long course of
brutal, hard chaff, making light of her weaknesses, her headaches, her
small fits of gaiety, her dresses, her queer little attempts to make
herself attractive to her husband when she knows that she is not what
she has been, and--worst of all--the love that she spends on her
children. That particular sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dear
to Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped into it, meaning no
harm, in the honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock of
endearments run short, and so go to the other extreme to express their
feelings. A similar impulse makes a man say, '_Hutt_, you old beast!'
when a favourite horse nuzzles his coat-front. Unluckily, when the
reaction of marriage sets in, the form of speech remains, and, the
tenderness having died out, hurts the wife more than she cares to say.
But Mrs. Bronckhorst was devoted to her 'Teddy' as she called him.
Perhaps that was why he objected to her. Perhaps--this is only a theory
to account for his infamous behaviour later on--he gave way to the
queer, savage feeling that sometimes takes by the throat a husband
twenty years married, when he sees, across the table, the same, same
face of his wedded wife, and knows that, as he has sat facing it, so
must he continue to sit until the day of its death or his own. Most men
and all women know the spasm. It only lasts for three breaths as a rule,
must be a 'throw-back' to times when men and women were rather worse
than they are now, and is too unpleasant to be discussed.

Dinner at the Bronckhorsts' was an infliction few men cared to undergo.
Bronckhorst took a pleasure in saying things that made his wife wince.
When their little boy came in at dessert Bronckhorst used to give him
half a glass of wine, and, naturally enough, the poor little mite got
first riotous, next miserable, and was removed screaming. Bronckhorst
asked if that was the way Teddy usually behaved, and whether Mrs.
Bronckhorst could not spare some of her time 'to teach the little beggar
decency'. Mrs. Bronckhorst, who loved the boy more than her own life,
tried not to cry--her spirit seemed to have been broken by her marriage.
Lastly, Bronckhorst used to say, 'There! That'll do, that'll do. For
God's sake try to behave like a rational woman. Go into the
drawing-room.' Mrs. Bronckhorst would go, trying to carry it all off
with a smile; and the guest of the evening would feel angry and
uncomfortable.

After three years of this cheerful life--for Mrs. Bronckhorst had no
women-friends to talk to--the station was startled by the news that
Bronckhorst had instituted proceedings _on the criminal count_, against
a man called Biel, who certainly had been rather attentive to Mrs.
Bronckhorst whenever she had appeared in public. The utter want of
reserve with which Bronckhorst treated his own dishonour helped us to
know that the evidence against Biel would be entirely circumstantial and
native. There were no letters; but Bronckhorst said openly that he would
rack Heaven and Earth until he saw Biel superintending the manufacture
of carpets in the Central Jail. Mrs. Bronckhorst kept entirely to her
house, and let charitable folks say what they pleased. Opinions were
divided. Some two-thirds of the station jumped at once to the conclusion
that Biel was guilty; but a dozen men who knew and liked him held by
him. Biel was furious and surprised. He denied the whole thing, and
vowed that he would thrash Bronckhorst within an inch of his life. No
jury, we knew, would convict a man on the criminal count on native
evidence in a land where you can buy a murder-charge, including the
corpse, all complete for fifty-four rupees; but Biel did not care to
scrape through by the benefit of a doubt. He wanted the whole thing
cleared; but, as he said one night, 'He can prove anything with
servants' evidence, and I've only my bare word.' This was almost a month
before the case came on; and beyond agreeing with Biel, we could do
little. All that we could be sure of was that the native evidence would
be bad enough to blast Biel's character for the rest of his service; for
when a native begins perjury he perjures himself thoroughly. He does not
boggle over details.

Some genius at the end of the table whereat the affair was being talked
over, said, 'Look here! I don't believe lawyers are any good. Get a man
to wire to Strickland, and beg him to come down and pull us through.'

Strickland was about a hundred and eighty miles up the line. He had not
long been married to Miss Youghal, but he scented in the telegram a
chance of return to the old detective work that his soul lusted after,
and next time he came in and heard our story. He finished his pipe and
said oracularly, 'We must get at the evidence. Oorya bearer, Mussulman
_khit_ and sweeper _ayah_, I suppose, are the pillars of the charge. I
am on in this piece; but I'm afraid I'm getting rusty in my talk.'

He rose and went into Biel's bedroom, where his trunk had been put, and
shut the door. An hour later, we heard him say, 'I hadn't the heart to
part with my old make-ups when I married. Will this do?' There was a
loathly _fakir_ salaaming in the doorway.

'Now lend me fifty rupees,' said Strickland, 'and give me your Words of
Honour that you won't tell my wife.'

He got all that he asked for, and left the house while the table drank
his health. What he did only he himself knows. A _fakir_ hung about
Bronckhorst's compound for twelve days. Then a sweeper appeared, and
when Biel heard of _him_, he said that Strickland was an angel
full-fledged. Whether the sweeper made love to Janki, Mrs. Bronckhorst's
_ayah_, is a question which concerns Strickland exclusively.

He came back at the end of three weeks, and said quietly, 'You spoke the
truth, Biel. The whole business is put up from beginning to end. Jove!
It almost astonishes _me_! That Bronckhorst beast isn't fit to live.'

There was uproar and shouting, and Biel said, 'How are you going to
prove it? You can't say that you've been trespassing on Bronckhorst's
compound in disguise!'

'No,' said Strickland. 'Tell your lawyer-fool, whoever he is, to get up
something strong about "inherent improbabilities" and "discrepancies of
evidence". He won't have to speak, but it will make him happy, _I_'m
going to run this business.'

Biel held his tongue, and the other men waited to see what would happen.
They trusted Strickland as men trust quiet men. When the case came off
the Court was crowded. Strickland hung about in the veranda of the
Court, till he met the Mohammedan _khitmutgar_. Then he murmured a
_fakir's_ blessing in his ear, and asked him how his second wife did.
The man spun round, and, as he looked into the eyes of 'Estreekin
Sahib', his jaw dropped. You must remember that before Strickland was
married, he was, as I have told you already, a power among natives.
Strickland whispered a rather coarse vernacular proverb to the effect
that he was abreast of all that was going on, and went into the Court
armed with a gut trainer's-whip.

The Mohammedan was the first witness, and Strickland beamed upon him
from the back of the Court. The man moistened his lips with his tongue
and, in his abject fear of 'Estreekin Sahib', the _fakir_ went back on
every detail of his evidence--said he was a poor man, and God was his
witness that he had forgotten everything that Bronckhorst Sahib had told
him to say. Between his terror of Strickland, the Judge, and Bronckhorst
he collapsed weeping.

Then began the panic among the witnesses. Janki, the _ayah_, leering
chastely behind her veil, turned grey, and the bearer left the Court. He
said that his Mamma was dying, and that it was not wholesome for any man
to lie unthriftily in the presence of 'Estreekin Sahib'.

Biel said politely to Bronckhorst, 'Your witnesses don't seem to work.
Haven't you any forged letters to produce?' But Bronckhorst was swaying
to and fro in his chair, and there was a dead pause after Biel had been
called to order.

Bronckhorst's Counsel saw the look on his client's face, and without
more ado pitched his papers on the little green-baize table, and mumbled
something about having been misinformed. The whole Court applauded
wildly, like soldiers at a theatre, and the Judge began to say what he
thought.

* * * * *

Biel came out of the Court, and Strickland dropped a gut trainer's-whip
in the veranda. Ten minutes later, Biel was cutting Bronckhorst into
ribbons behind the old Court cells, quietly and without scandal. What
was left of Bronckhorst was sent home in a carriage; and his wife wept
over it and nursed it into a man again. Later on, after Biel had managed
to hush up the counter-charge against Bronckhorst of fabricating false
evidence, Mrs. Bronckhorst, with her faint, watery smile, said that
there had been a mistake, but it wasn't her Teddy's fault altogether.
She would wait till her Teddy came back to her. Perhaps he had grown
tired of her, or she had tried his patience, and perhaps we wouldn't cut
her any more, and perhaps the mothers would let their children play with
'little Teddy' again. He was so lonely. Then the station invited Mrs.
Bronckhorst everywhere, until Bronckhorst was fit to appear in public,
when he went Home and took his wife with him. According to latest
advices, her Teddy did come back to her, and they are moderately happy.
Though, of course, he can never forgive her the thrashing that she was
the indirect means of getting for him.

* * * * *

What Biel wants to know is, 'Why didn't I press home the charge against
the Bronckhorst brute, and have him run in?'

What Mrs. Strickland wants to know is, 'How _did_ my husband bring such
a lovely, lovely Waler from your station? I know _all_ his money
affairs; and I'm _certain_ he didn't _buy_ it.'

What I want to know is, 'How do women like Mrs. Bronckhorst come to
marry men like Bronckhorst?'

And my conundrum is the most unanswerable of the three.

IRREMEDIABLE

By Ella D'Arcy

(_Monochromes_, London: John Lane, 1893)

A young man strolled along a country road one August evening after a
long delicious day--a day of that blessed idleness the man of leisure
never knows: one must be a bank clerk forty-nine weeks out of the
fifty-two before one can really appreciate the exquisite enjoyment of
doing nothing for twelve hours at a stretch. Willoughby had spent the
morning lounging about a sunny rickyard; then, when the heat grew
unbearable, he had retreated to an orchard, where, lying on his back in
the long cool grass, he had traced the pattern of the apple-leaves
diapered above him upon the summer sky; now that the heat of the day was
over he had come to roam whither sweet fancy led him, to lean over
gates, view the prospect, and meditate upon the pleasures of a
well-spent day. Five such days had already passed over his head, fifteen
more remained to him. Then farewell to freedom and clean country air!
Back again to London and another year's toil.

He came to a gate on the right of the road. Behind it a footpath
meandered up over a grassy slope. The sheep nibbling on its summit cast
long shadows down the hill almost to his feet. Road and fieldpath were
equally new to him, but the latter offered greener attractions; he
vaulted lightly over the gate and had so little idea he was taking thus
the first step towards ruin that he began to whistle 'White Wings' from
pure joy of life.

The sheep stopped feeding and raised their heads to stare at him from
pale-lashed eyes; first one and then another broke into a startled run,
until there was a sudden woolly stampede of the entire flock. When
Willoughby gained the ridge from which they had just scattered, he came
in sight of a woman sitting on a stile at the further end of the field.
As he advanced towards her he saw that she was young, and that she was
not what is called 'a lady'--of which he was glad: an earlier episode in
his career having indissolubly associated in his mind ideas of feminine
refinement with those of feminine treachery.

He thought it probable this girl would be willing to dispense with the
formalities of an introduction, and that he might venture with her on
some pleasant foolish chat.

As she made no movement to let him pass he stood still, and, looking at
her, began to smile.

She returned his gaze from unabashed dark eyes, and then laughed,
showing teeth white, sound, and smooth as split hazelnuts.

'Do you wanter get over?' she remarked familiarly.

'I'm afraid I can't without disturbing you.'

'Dontcher think you're much better where you are?' said the girl, on
which Willoughby hazarded:

'You mean to say looking at you? Well, perhaps I am!'

The girl at this laughed again, but nevertheless dropped herself down
into the further field; then, leaning her arms upon the cross-bar, she
informed the young man: 'No, I don't wanter spoil your walk. You were
goin' p'raps ter Beacon Point? It's very pretty that wye.'

'I was going nowhere in particular,' he replied; 'just exploring, so to
speak. I'm a stranger in these parts.'

'How funny! Imer stranger here too. I only come down larse Friday to
stye with a Naunter mine in Horton. Are you stying in Horton?'

Willoughby told her he was not in Orton, but at Povey Cross Farm out in
the other direction.

'Oh, Mrs. Payne's, ain't it? I've heard aunt speak ovver. She takes
summer boarders, don't chee? I egspeck you come from London, heh?'

'And I expect you come from London too?' said Willoughby, recognizing
the familiar accent.

'You're as sharp as a needle,' cried the girl with her unrestrained
laugh; 'so I do. I'm here for a hollerday 'cos I was so done up with the
work and the hot weather. I don't look as though I'd bin ill, do I? But
I was, though: for it was just stiflin' hot up in our workrooms all
larse month, an' tailorin's awful hard work at the bester times.'

Willoughby felt a sudden accession of interest in her. Like many
intelligent young men, he had dabbled a little in Socialism, and at one
time had wandered among the dispossessed; but since then, had caught up
and held loosely the new doctrine--it is a good and fitting thing that
woman also should earn her bread by the sweat of her brow. Always in
reference to the woman who, fifteen months before, had treated him ill;
he had said to himself that even the breaking of stones in the road
should be considered a more feminine employment than the breaking of
hearts.

He gave way therefore to a movement of friendliness for this working
daughter of the people, and joined her on the other side of the stile in
token of his approval. She, twisting round to face him, leaned now with
her back against the bar, and the sunset fires lent a fleeting glory to
her face. Perhaps she guessed how becoming the light was, for she took
off her hat and let it touch to gold the ends and fringes of her rough
abundant hair. Thus and at this moment she made an agreeable picture, to
which stood as background all the beautiful, wooded Southshire view.

'You don't really mean to say you are a tailoress?' said Willoughby,
with a sort of eager compassion.

'I do, though! An' I've bin one ever since I was fourteen. Look at my
fingers if you don't b'lieve me.'

She put out her right hand, and he took hold of it, as he was expected
to do. The finger-ends were frayed and blackened by needle-pricks, but
the hand itself was plump, moist, and not unshapely. She meanwhile
examined Willoughby's fingers enclosing hers.

'It's easy ter see you've never done no work!' she said, half admiring,
half envious. 'I s'pose you're a tip-top swell, ain't you?'

'Oh, yes! I'm a tremendous swell indeed!' said Willoughby, ironically.
He thought of his hundred and thirty pounds' salary; and he mentioned
his position in the British and Colonial Banking house, without shedding
much illumination on her mind, for she insisted:

'Well, anyhow, you're a gentleman. I've often wished I was a lady. It
must be so nice ter wear fine clo'es an' never have ter do any work all
day long.'

Willoughby thought it innocent of the girl to say this; it reminded him
of his own notion as a child--that kings and queens put on their crowns
the first thing on rising in the morning. His cordiality rose another
degree.

'If being a gentleman means having nothing to do,' said he, smiling,
'I can certainly lay no claim to the title. Life isn't all beer and
skittles with me, any more than it is with you. Which is the better
reason for enjoying the present moment, don't you think? Suppose, now,
like a kind little girl, you were to show me the way to Beacon Point,
which you say is so pretty?'

She required no further persuasion. As he walked beside her through the
upland fields where the dusk was beginning to fall, and the white
evening moths to emerge from their daytime hiding-places, she asked him
many personal questions, most of which he thought fit to parry. Taking
no offence thereat, she told him, instead, much concerning herself and
her family. Thus he learned her name was Esther Stables, that she and
her people lived Whitechapel way; that her father was seldom sober, and
her mother always ill; and that the aunt with whom she was staying kept
the post-office and general shop in Orton village. He learned, too, that
Esther was discontented with life in general; that, though she hated
being at home, she found the country dreadfully dull; and that,
consequently, she was extremely glad to have made his acquaintance. But
what he chiefly realized when they parted was that he had spent a couple
of pleasant hours talking nonsense with a girl who was natural,
simple-minded, and entirely free from that repellently protective
atmosphere with which a woman of the 'classes' so carefully surrounds
herself. He and Esther had 'made friends' with the ease and rapidity of
children before they have learned the dread meaning of 'etiquette', and
they said good night, not without some talk of meeting each other again.

Obliged to breakfast at a quarter to eight in town, Willoughby was
always luxuriously late when in the country, where he took his meals
also in leisurely fashion, often reading from a book propped up on the
table before him. But the morning after his meeting with Esther Stables
found him less disposed to read than usual. Her image obtruded itself
upon the printed page, and at length grew so importunate he came to the
conclusion the only way to lay it was to confront it with the girl
herself.

Wanting some tobacco, he saw a good reason for going into Orton. Esther
had told him he could get tobacco and everything else at her aunt's. He
found the post-office to be one of the first houses in the widely spaced
village street. In front of the cottage was a small garden ablaze with
old-fashioned flowers; and in a large garden at one side were
apple-trees, raspberry and currant bushes, and six thatched beehives on
a bench. The bowed windows of the little shop were partly screened by
sunblinds; nevertheless the lower panes still displayed a heterogeneous
collection of goods--lemons, hanks of yarn, white linen buttons upon
blue cards, sugar cones, churchwarden pipes, and tobacco jars. A
letter-box opened its narrow mouth low down in one wall, and over the
door swung the sign, 'Stamps and money-order office', in black letters
on white enamelled iron.

The interior of the shop was cool and dark. A second glass-door at the
back permitted Willoughby to see into a small sitting-room, and out
again through a low and square-paned window to the sunny landscape
beyond. Silhouetted against the light were the heads of two women; the
rough young head of yesterday's Esther, the lean outline and bugled cap
of Esther's aunt.

It was the latter who at the jingling of the doorbell rose from her work
and came forward to serve the customer; but the girl, with much mute
meaning in her eyes, and a finger laid upon her smiling mouth, followed
behind. Her aunt heard her footfall. 'What do you want here, Esther?'
she said with thin disapproval; 'get back to your sewing.'

Esther gave the young man a signal seen only by him and slipped out into
the side-garden, where he found her when his purchases were made. She
leaned over the privet-hedge to intercept him as he passed.

'Aunt's an awful ole maid,' she remarked apologetically; 'I b'lieve
she'd never let me say a word to enny one if she could help it.'

'So you got home all right last night?' Willoughby inquired; 'what did
your aunt say to you?'

'Oh, she arst me where I'd been, and I tolder a lotter lies.' Then, with
a woman's intuition, perceiving that this speech jarred, Esther made
haste to add, 'She's so dreadful hard on me. I dursn't tell her I'd been
with a gentleman or she'd never have let me out alone again.'

'And at present I suppose you'll be found somewhere about that same
stile every evening?' said Willoughby foolishly, for he really did not
much care whether he met her again or not. Now he was actually in her
company, he was surprised at himself for having given her a whole
morning's thought; yet the eagerness of her answer flattered him, too.

'Tonight I can't come, worse luck! It's Thursday, and the shops here
close of a Thursday at five. I'll havter keep aunt company. But
tomorrer? I can be there tomorrer. You'll come, say?'

'Esther!' cried a vexed voice, and the precise, right-minded aunt
emerged through a row of raspberry-bushes; 'whatever are you thinking
about, delayin' the gentleman in this fashion?' She was full of rustic
and official civility for 'the gentleman', but indignant with her niece.
'I don't want none of your London manners down here,' Willoughby heard
her say as she marched the girl off.

He himself was not sorry to be released from Esther's too friendly eyes,
and he spent an agreeable evening over a book, and this time managed to
forget her completely.

Though he remembered her first thing next morning, it was to smile
wisely and determine he would not meet her again. Yet by dinner-time the
day seemed long; why, after all, should he not meet her? By tea-time
prudence triumphed anew--no, he would not go. Then he drank his tea
hastily and set off for the stile.

Esther was waiting for him. Expectation had given an additional colour
to her cheeks, and her red-brown hair showed here and there a beautiful
glint of gold. He could not help admiring the vigorous way in which it
waved and twisted, or the little curls which grew at the nape of her
neck, tight and close as those of a young lamb's fleece. Her neck here
was admirable, too, in its smooth creaminess; and when her eyes lighted
up with such evident pleasure at his coming, how avoid the conviction
she was a good and nice girl after all?

He proposed they should go down into the little copse on the right,
where they would be less disturbed by the occasional passer-by. Here,
seated on a felled tree-trunk, Willoughby began that bantering, silly,
meaningless form of conversation known among the 'classes' as flirting.
He had but the wish to make himself agreeable, and to while away the
time. Esther, however, misunderstood him.

Willoughby's hand lay palm downwards on his knee, and she, noticing a
ring which he wore on his little finger, took hold of it.

'What a funny ring!' she said; 'let's look?'

To disembarrass himself of her touch, he pulled the ring off and gave
it her to examine.

'What's that ugly dark green stone?' she asked.

'It's called a sardonyx.'

'What's it for?' she said, turning it about.

'It's a signet ring, to seal letters with.'

'An' there's a sorter king's head scratched on it, an' some writin' too,
only I carnt make it out?'

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