Sheer female cussedness! But where her own husband couldn’t persuade her Pollock had no chance at all. And then, of course, two years after Ted died she did go and have a fire there. “The Half Moon” was burnt clean out, rafter and railings, and she had to give it up and shift into the little bullseye business where she is now, selling bullseyes to infants and ginger beer to boy scholars on bicycles. And what does it all amount to? Why, it don’t keep her in hairpins. She had the most beautiful hair once. But that’s telling the story back foremost.
Ted was a smart chap, a particular friend of mine (so was Molly), and he could have made something of himself and of his business, perhaps, if it hadn’t been for her. He was a sportsman to the backbone; cricket, shooting, fishing, always game for a bit of life, any mortal thing—what was there he couldn’t do? And a perfect demon with women, I’ve never seen the like. If there was a woman for miles around as he couldn’t come at, then you could bet a crown no one else could. He had the gift. Well, when one woman ain’t enough for a man, twenty ain’t too many. He and me were in a tight corner together more than once, but he never went back on a friend, his word was his Bible oath. And there was he all the while tied up to this soft wife of his, who never once let on she knew of it at all, though she knowed much. And never would she cast the blink of her eyes—splendid eyes they were, too—on any willing stranger, nor even a friend, say, like myself; it was all Ted this and Ted that, though I was just her own age and Ted was twelve years ahead of us both. She didn’t know her own value, wouldn’t take her opportunities, hadn’t the sense, as I say, though she had got everything else. Ah, she was a woman to be looking at once, and none so bad now; she wears well.
But she was too pious and proper, it aggravated him, but Ted never once laid a finger on her and never uttered one word of reproach though he despised her; never grudged her a thing in reason when things were going well with him. It’s God Almighty’s own true gospel—they never had a quarrel in all the twelve years they was wed, and I don’t believe they ever had an angry word, but how he kept his hands off her I don’t know. I couldn’t have done it, but I was never married—I was too independent for that work. He’d contradict her sometimes, for she would talk, and Ted was one of your silent sorts, but she—she would talk for ever more. She was so artful that she used to invent all manners of tomfoolery on purpose to make him contradict her; believe you, she did, even on his death-bed.
I used to go and sit with him when he was going, poor Ted, for I knew he was done for; and on the day he died, she said to him—and I was there and I heard it: “Is there anything you would like me to do, dear?” And he said, “No.” He was almost at his last gasp, he had strained his heart, but she was for ever on at him, even then, an unresting woman. It was in May, I remember it, a grand bright afternoon outside, but the room itself was dreadful, it didn’t seem to be afternoon at all; it was unbearable for a strong man to be dying in such fine weather, and the carts going by, and though we were a watching him, it seemed more as if something was watching us.
And she says to him again: “Isn’t there anything you would like me to do?”
Ted says to her: “Ah! I’d like to hear you give one downright good damn curse. Swear, my dear!”
“At what?” she says.
“Me, if you like.”
“What for?” she says. I can see her now, staring at him.
“For my sins.”