“Yes, yes,” replied Mrs. Copas, humoring him. “I’m in the next room if you want anything. Doctor said you was to have as much sleep as you could get. Being Saturday night, and you an invalid, Mr. Copas bought you some grapes and sponge-cake, and he wants to know if you’d like some port wine. We thought it ’ud make you sleep.”
He expressed a desire for port, and she bustled into the next room and came back with a tumblerful. He was, or fancied he was, something of a connoisseur, and he propped himself up and sipped the dark liquid, and, as he was wont, rolled it round his tongue. It tasted of ink and pepper. He wanted to spit it out, but, blinking up at Mrs. Copas, he saw the good creature beaming at him in rapt indulgence, and could not bring himself to offend her. With his gorge rising he sipped down about a third of the tumbler’s contents and then feebly, miserably held it out toward her.
“A bit strong for you?”
He nodded, drew the bed-clothes up over his shoulders and feigned sleep. The light was put out and he heard Mrs. Copas creep into the next room. Sleep? The fiery liquor sent the blood racing and throbbing through his veins. The palms of his hands were dry and hot, and his head seemed to be bulging out of its skin. His ears were alert to every sound, and to every sound his nerves responded with a thrill. He could hear footsteps on the cobbles of the street outside, voices, hiccoughs, a woman’s voice singing. These were the accompaniment to nearer sounds, a duet in the next room, a deep bass muttering, and a shrill argumentative treble. The bass swelled into anger. The treble roared into pleading. The bass became a roar, the treble a squeak. It was exciting, exasperating. In his bed Beenham tossed from side to side. He did not want to listen to their altercation, but sleep would not come to him. The bass voice broke into a crackling; then spluttering, furious sounds came. The treble squealed pitifully. Came the thud and smack of a fist on flesh and bone, a gasp, a whine, a whimper, another thud and smack, and growls from the bass, then silence. . . .
Sick at heart Old Mole lay in his bed staring, staring into the darkness, and the blood in him boiled and bubbled, and his skin was taut and he shivered. He had heard of men beating their wives, but as one hears of the habits of wild animals in African forests; he had thought of it as securely as here in England one may think of a man-eating tiger near an Indian village. Now, here, in the next room, the thing had happened. Manliness, that virtue which at school had been held up as the highest good, bade him arise and defend the woman. In theory manliness had always had things perfectly its own way. In practice, now, sound sense leaped ahead of virtue, counted the cost and accurately gauged the necessity of action. In the first place to defend Mrs. Copas would mean an intrusion into the sanctuary of human life, the conjugal chamber; in the second place, in spite of many familiar pictures of St. George of Cappadocia (subsequently of England), it would be embarrassing to defend Mrs. Copas in her night attire; in the third place, the assault had grown out of their altercation of which he had heard nothing whatever; and, lastly, it might be a habit with Mr. and Mrs. Copas to smite and be smitten. Therefore Old Mole remained in his bed, faintly regretting the failure of manliness, fighting down his emotion of disgust, and endeavoring to avoid having to face his position. In vain: shunning all further thought of the miserable couple in the next room, he was driven back upon himself, to his wretched wondering:
“What have I done?”
He had thrown up his very pleasant life in Thrigsby and Bigley, a life, after all, of some consequence, for what? . . . For the society of a disreputable strolling player who was blind with conceit, was apt to get drunk on Saturday nights, and in that condition violently to assault the wife of his bosom. And he had entered into this adventure with enthusiasm, had seen their life as romantic and adventurous, deliberately closing his eyes to the brutality and squalor of it. Thud, whack! and there were the raw facts staring him in the face.
There came a little moaning from the next room: never a sound from the bass: and soon all was still, save for the mice in the skirting board and occasional footsteps on the cobbles of the street outside.
No sleep came to Old Mole until the pale light of dawn crept into his room to show him, shivering, its meanness and poverty. It sickened him, but when in reaction he came to consider his old mode of living that seemed so paltry as to give a sort of savor to the coarseness of this. . . . Anyhow, he reflected, he was tied to his bed, could not take any action, and must wait upon circumstance, and hope only that there might not be too many violent shocks in store for him.
Mrs. Copas bore the marks of her husband’s attentions: a long bruise over her right eye and down to the cheek-bone, and a cut on her upper lip which had swelled into an unsightly protuberance. Her spirit seemed to be entirely unaffected, and she beamed upon him from behind her temporary deformities. When she asked him if he had slept well, he lied and said he had slept like a top.