Mrs. Raynor saw too clearly all through the winter that things were getting worse in Orchard Street. She had evidence enough of it in Janet’s visits to her; and, though her own visits to her daughter were so timed that she saw little of Dempster personally, she noticed many indications not only that he was drinking to greater excess, but that he was beginning to lose that physical power of supporting excess which had long been the admiration of such fine spirits as Mr. Tomlinson. It seemed as if Dempster had some consciousness of this—some new distrust of himself; for, before winter was over, it was observed that he had renounced his habit of driving out alone, and was never seen in his gig without a servant by his side.
Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch.
The various symptoms that things were getting worse with the Dempsters afforded Milby gossip something new to say on an old subject. Mrs. Dempster, every one remarked, looked more miserable than ever, though she kept up the old pretence of being happy and satisfied. She was scarcely ever seen, as she used to be, going about on her good-natured errands; and even old Mrs. Crewe, who had always been wilfully blind to anything wrong in her favourite Janet, was obliged to admit that she had not seemed like herself lately. ‘The poor thing’s out of health,’ said the kind little old lady, in answer to all gossip about Janet; ‘her headaches always were bad, and I know what headaches are; why, they make one quite delirious sometimes.’ Mrs. Phipps, for her part, declared she would never accept an invitation to Dempster’s again; it was getting so very disagreeable to go there, Mrs. Dempster was often ‘so strange’. To be sure, there were dreadful stories about the way Dempster used his wife; but in Mrs. Phipps’s opinion, it was six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. Mrs. Dempster had never been like other women; she had always a flighty way with her, carrying parcels of snuff to old Mrs. Tooke, and going to drink tea with Mrs. Brinley, the carpenter’s wife; and then never taking care of her clothes, always wearing the same things week-day or Sunday. A man has a poor look-out with a wife of that sort. Mr. Phipps, amiable and laconic, wondered how it was women were so fond of running each other down.
Mr. Pratt having been called in provisionally to a patient of Mr. Pilgrim’s in a case of compound fracture, observed in a friendly colloquy with his brother surgeon the next day,—‘So Dempster has left off driving himself, I see; he won’t end with a broken neck after all. You’ll have a case of meningitis and delirium tremens instead.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr. Pilgrim, ‘he can hardly stand it much longer at the rate he’s going on, one would think. He’s been confoundedly cut up about that business of Armstrong’s, I fancy. It may do him some harm, perhaps, but Dempster must have feathered his nest pretty well; he can afford to lose a little business.’
‘His business will outlast him, that’s pretty clear,’ said Pratt; ‘he’ll run down like a watch with a broken spring one of these days.’
Another prognostic of evil to Dempster came at the beginning of March. For then little ‘Mamsey’ died—died suddenly. The housemaid found her seated motionless in her arm-chair, her knitting fallen down, and the tortoise-shell cat reposing on it unreproved. The little white old woman had ended her wintry age of patient sorrow, believing to the last that ‘Robert might have been a good husband as he had been a good son.’
When the earth was thrown on Mamsey’s coffin, and the son, in crape scarf and hatband, turned away homeward, his good angel, lingering with outstretched wing on the edge of the grave, cast one despairing look after him, and took flight for ever.
Chapter 14
The last week in March—three weeks after old Mrs. Dempster died—occurred the unpleasant winding-up of affairs between Dempster and Mr. Pryme, and under this additional source of irritation the attorney’s diurnal drunkenness had taken on its most ill-tempered and brutal phase. On the Friday morning, before setting out for Rotherby, he told his wife that he had invited ‘four men’ to dinner at half-past six that evening. The previous night had been a terrible one for Janet, and when her husband broke his grim morning silence to say these few words, she was looking so blank and listless that he added in a loud sharp key, ‘Do you hear what I say? or must I tell the cook?’ She started, and said, ‘Yes, I hear.’