As soon as we could get together the bare necessities by way of furnishings, I insisted on our moving into unfurnished rooms in which we could cater for ourselves. But the result was not merely that there was never a meal prepared for me, but also that Fanny never had a proper meal. I engaged servants. They either gave notice after a week, or worse, much worse, my wife made boon companions of them. We moved again, this time into unfurnished rooms in a house whose landlady undertook to serve meals to us at stated hours. But the house was too respectable for us, and in a month we were given notice.
No, it was not easy to develop any very warm interest in Mr. Arncliffe's projects for the stimulation of the Advocate's circulation. But I occupied Dr. Powell's old room during most days, and did my best; and, rather to my surprise, when I quite casually said I was not able to afford some luxury or another--lawn tennis, I believe it was, recommended by my chief as a remedy for my fagged and unhealthy appearance--I was given an increase of salary to the extent of an additional fifty pounds a year. I expressed my thanks, and Arncliffe said:
'Not at all, not at all. I'm only too glad. Your work's first rate, and I much appreciate your suggestions. I don't want you to work less; but, in all seriousness, my dear fellow, you should take it easier. Do just as much work, but don't worry so much about it. Carry your whatsaname more lightly, you know. Believe me, that's the thing.'
I agreed of course, and went home to give Fanny the news of the increased salary. I found her helpless and comatose on the hearth-rug.
I had talked to doctors, and gleaned little or nothing therefrom. Now I tried a lawyer, with a view to finding out the legal aspect of my position. Was it possible to oblige my wife to enter a curative institution against her will? Certainly not, save by a magistrate's order, and as the result of repeated appearances in the dock at police courts.
The lawyer told me that our 'man-made' laws were pretty hard upon husbands in such cases as mine. They offered no relief or assistance whatever, he said; though in the case of a persistently drunken husband, the law was fortunately able to do a good deal for the wife. 'But nothing at all when it's the other way round,' he added; 'a fact which leads to much misery, and not a little crime, among the poorer classes. I'm very sorry for you,' he added; 'but to be frank, I must say that the law will not help you one atom; neither will it offer you any kind of redress if your wife sells up your home once a week. Neither may you legally put her out from your home because of that. Under our law a wife may claim and hold her husband's company until she drives him into the bankruptcy court, or the lunatic asylum--or his grave. It is worse than senseless, but it is the law; and if your business prevents you keeping watch and ward over your wife yourself, the only course is to employ some relative, or a professed caretaker, to do it for you. The law shows a little more common sense where the case is the other way round. A wife can always get a separation order to relieve her of the presence of a persistently drunken husband; and, with it, an order for her maintenance, which he must obey or go to prison.'
So I did not get very much for my six-and-eightpence, beyond an explicit confirmation of the impression already pretty firmly rooted in my mind, that the most burdensome portion of my particular load in life was something which nobody could help me to carry.
By this time Fanny had lost the sense of shame and humiliation which had characterised all her early recoveries, and informed all her good resolutions and frantic promises of amendment. She made no resolutions now, and in place of shame, poor soul, was conscious only of the physical penalties which her excesses brought in their train. These made her very sullen, and, at the same time, very irritable. There were times, as I well knew, when she had no other means of obtaining drink, but yet did obtain it, from that misguided woman--her mother, whose craving she inherited, without a tithe of the brute strength which apparently enabled the older woman to defy all consequences.
I do not think it necessary to set down here precisely the miserable ways in which I saw her habits gradually sap all self-restraint and womanly decency from my wife. The process was gradual, pitilessly inexorable as the growth of a malignant tumour, and a ghastly and humiliating thing to witness. In the case of a woman, my impression is that alcoholism reacts even more directly upon character, and the mental and nervous system, than it does in men. Their fall is more complete. At least, for a man it is more horrible to witness than any degradation of another man.