Chapter Thirty Nine.
William Revitts is Eccentric.
The dinner we had at the inn was not a success. The waiters evidently settled that we were a wedding-party, and charged accordingly. Mary tried hard to keep Revitts from taking any more to drink; but he said it was necessary on a day like that, and ordered wine accordingly.
He drank slowly, and never once showed the slightest trace of intoxication; but the wine also produced a strange irritability, which made him angry, even to being fierce at times; and over and over again I saw the tears in poor Mary’s eyes.
Ever and again that bigamy case—real or imaginary—of which he had heard as we came down kept cropping up, and the more Mary tried to turn the conversation, the more eager he became to discuss it. The wedding-day, his wife, my remarks, all were forgotten or set aside, so that he might explain to us, with a vast amount of minutiae, how he would have got up such a case, beginning with the preliminary inquiries and ending with the culprit’s sentence.
We had it over the dinner, with the waiters in the room; we had it in culs-de-sac in the maze; and we had it over again in Bushy Park, as we sat under the shade of a great chestnut; after which Revitts lay down, seeming to drop asleep, and Mary said to me, piteously:
“I do believe, dear, as he’s took it into his head that I’ve committed big-a-mee?”
The words were uttered in a whisper, but they seemed to galvanise Revitts, who started up into a sitting posture, and exclaimed sharply:
“I don’t know as you ain’t. I never cross-examined you before we was married. But look here, Mary Revitts, it’s my dooty to tell you as what you say now will be took down, and may be used as evidence against you.”
After which oracular delivery he lay down and went off fast asleep, leaving Mary to weep in silence, and wish we had never come away from home.
I could not help joining her in the wish, though I did not say so, but did all I could to comfort her, as Mr Peter Rowle’s moral aphorisms about drink kept coming to my mind. Not that poor Revitts had, in the slightest degree, exceeded; and we joined in saying that it was all due to over-excitement consequent upon his illness.
“If I could only get him home again, poor boy, I wouldn’t, care,” said Mary; and we then comforted ourselves with the hope that he would be better when he awoke, and that then we would go to one of the many places offering, have a quiet cup of tea, which would be sure to do him good, and then go back home, quietly, inside the omnibus.
Revitts woke in about an hour, evidently much refreshed and better, but still he seemed strange. The tea, however, appeared to do him good, and in due time we mounted to our seats outside the omnibus, for he stubbornly refused to go within.
He did not say much on the return journey, but the bigamy case was evidently running in his head, from what he said; and once, in a whisper, poor Mary, who was half broken-hearted, confided to me now, sitting on her other side, that she felt sure poor William was regretting that they had been married.
“And I did so want to wait,” she said: “but he wouldn’t any longer.”
“Are you two whispering about that there case?” he cried sharply.
“No, William dear,” said Mary. “Do you feel better?”
“Better?” he said irritably. “There isn’t anything the matter with me.”
He turned away from her, and sat watching the side of the road, muttering every now and then to himself in a half-angry way, while poor Mary, in place of going into a tantrum, got hold of my hand between both hers, and held it very hard pressed against the front of her dress, where she was protected by a rigid piece of bone or steel. Every now and then, poor woman, she gave the hand a convulsive pressure, and a great sob in the act of escaping would feel like a throb against my arm.
So silent and self-contained did Revitts grow at last, that poor Mary began to pour forth in a whisper the burden of her trouble, while I sat wondering, and thinking what a curious thing this love must be, that could so completely transform people, and yet give them so much pain.
“It wasn’t my doing, Master Antony dear,” whispered Mary; “for I said it would be so much better for me to go back to service for a few years, and I always thought as hasty marriages meant misery. But William was so masterful, he said it was no use his getting on and improving his spelling, and getting his promotion, if he was always to live a weary, dreary bachelor—them was his very words, Master Antony; and now, above all times, was the one for us to get married.”
“He’s tired, Mary,” I said; “that’s all.”
“That’s all? Ah, my dear! it’s a very great all. He’s tired of me, that’s what he is; and I shall never forgive my self for being so rash.”
“But you have been engaged several years, haven’t you, Mary?”
“Yes, my dear; but years ain’t long when you’re busy and always hard at work. I dessay they’re a long time to gentlefolks as has to wait, but it never seemed long to me, and I’ve done a very rash thing; but I didn’t think the punishment was coming quite so soon.”
“Oh, nonsense, Mary; Bill will be all right again soon,” I said, as I could see, by the light of a gas-lamp we passed, that the poor disappointed woman had been crying till she had soaked and spoiled her showy bonnet-strings.
“No, my dear, I don’t think so; I feel as if it was all a punishment upon me, and that I ought to have waited till he was quite well and strong.”
It was of no avail to try and comfort, so I contented myself with sitting still and pressing poor Mary’s rough honest hand, while the horses rattled merrily along, and we gradually neared the great city.
I was obliged to own that if this was a specimen of a wedding-day, it was anything but a joyous and festive time; and it seemed to me that the day that had begun so unsatisfactorily was to be kept in character to the end.
For, before reaching Hammersmith, one of the horses shied and fell, and those at the pole went right upon it before the omnibus could be stopped, with the consequence that the vehicle was nearly upset, and a general shriek arose.
No harm, however, was done, and in a quarter of an hour we were once more under weigh, but Mary said, with a sigh and a rub of the back of my hand against the buttons of her dress, that it was a warning of worse things to come; and though very sorry for her, I could not help longing for our journey’s end.
“Just you come over here, Ant’ny,” said Revitts suddenly; and I had to change places and sit between him and his wife, of whom he seemed not to take the slightest notice.
“Are you better, Bill?” I said.
“Better?” he said sharply; “what do you mean by better? I’m all right.”
“That’s well,” I said.
“Of course it is. Now look here, Ant’ny, I’ve been thinking a good deal about that there big-a-mee as we come along, and I’ll just tell you what I should have done.”
I heard Mary give a gulp; but I thought it better not to try and thwart him, so prepared to listen.
“You see, Ant’ny,” he said, in a very didactic manner, “when a fellow is in the force, and is always taking up people and getting up cases, and attending at the police-courts, and Old Bailey sessions and coroners’ inquests, he picks up a deal of valuable information.”
“Of course, Bill.”
“He do; it stands to reason that he do. Well, then, I ought to know just two or three things.”
“Say two or three thousand, Bill.”
“Well,” he said, giving his head an official roll, as if settling it in his great stock, “we won’t say that. Let’s put it at ’undreds—two or three ’undreds. Now, if I’d had such a case as that big-a-mee in hand, I should have begun at the beginning.—Where are we now?” he said, after a pause, during which he had taken off his hat, and rubbed his head in a puzzled way.
“You were talking about the case,” I said, “and beginning at the beginning.”
“Don’t you try to be funny, young fellow,” he said severely. “I said, where are we now?”
“Just passing Hyde Park Corner, Bill.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Well, look here, my lad, there’s no doubt about one thing: women, take ’em all together, are—no, I won’t say a bad lot, but they’re weak—awful weak. I’ve seen a deal on ’em at the police-courts.”
“I suppose so,” I said, as I heard Mary give a low sigh.
“They’re not what they should be, Ant’ny, by a long chalk, and the way they’ll tell lies and deceive and cheat ’s about awful, that it is.”
“Some women are bad, I daresay,” I said, in a qualifying tone.
“Some?” he said, with a short, dry laugh; “it’s some as is good. Most women’s bad.”
“That’s a nice wholesale sort of a charge,” said a passenger behind him, in rather a huffy tone.
“You mind your own business,” said Revitts sharply. “I wasn’t talking to you;” and he spoke in such a fierce way that the man coloured, while Mary leaned forward, and looked imploringly at me, as much as to say, “Pray, pray, don’t let him quarrel.”
“I say it, and I ought to know,” said Revitts dictatorially, “that women’s a bad lot, and after hearing of that case this morning, I say as every woman afore she gets married ought to go through a reg’lar cross-examination, and produce sittifikits of character, and witnesses to show where she’s been, and what she’s been a-doing of for say the last seven years. If that was made law, we shouldn’t have poor fellows taken in and delooded, and then find out afterwards as it’s a case of big-a-mee, like we heerd of this morning. Why, as I was a-saying, Ant’ny, if I’d had that case in hand—eh? Oh, ah, yes, so it is. I’ll get down first. I didn’t think we was so near.”
For poor Bill’s plans about the bigamy case were brought to an end by the stopping of the omnibus in Piccadilly, and I gave a sigh of relief as we drew up in the bright, busy thoroughfare, after a look at the dark sea of shining lights that lay spread to the right over the Green Park and Westminster.
Carriages were passing, the pavement was thronged, and it being a fine night, all looked very bright and cheery after what had been rather a dull ride. Revitts got down, and I was about to follow, offering my hand to poor, sad Mary, when just as my back was turned, Revitts called out to me:
“Ant’ny, Ant’ny, look after my wife!” and as I turned sharply, I just caught sight of him turning the corner of the street, and he was gone.