These glimpses of a better state of things left me on cohabiting with A., and for a time my gloom and black religious mania came on me once more. I now thought of my promise at confirmation, and it seemed to me I had offended beyond pardon. When we came to the next town, however, I openly slept with A. all night, leaving my own bed untouched. When we returned to Adelaide one of our party remarked: "The only man who had any success with the women on the tour was a Bible-reading, praying, and good, pious, confirmed Christian."
A.'s nascent beauty and delicacy and improvement were gradually impaired, too. My own conduct became so morose at times that, besides increasing her misery, I offended the others, and bickerings ensued. I heard the other actress say "He's mad; that what's the matter." And I was so wrapped up in myself and my religious mania that I did not mind their thinking so.
After the tour was over A. asked me to come and see her at her home, and as I missed her very much I went one night to tea. She had a room in her father's house to herself. A. was dressed in her best and we had an affectionate meeting. After tea I asked her if she were married to E. She said "No." Then I said: "Who are you married to?" She commenced to cry then, and told me something of her life, the saddest I ever heard. When only 17 she had been courted by a young man she did not care for, but who prevailed on her parents by pretending he had seduced her, but wished to marry her. Strange as it may seem, A. did not know what marriage meant, her mother being one of those silly women who don't like talking of these things and let their daughters grow up in ignorance, expecting they will learn from some one. In nine cases out of ten this happens, but A. was an exception. It was this, and the fact that she had not a particle of love for her husband, that gave her such a hatred of coition. When her mother saw the sheets the morning after the marriage she burst out crying; she did not like the young man and saw she had been deceived.
A.'s husband soon showed his true character; he was in reality a gaol-bird. He beat her, drank, and even wanted her to go on the streets to earn money for him. She left him and went home; it was then she began her theatrical career by entering the ballet. At intervals her husband, drunk and desperate, would waylay and threaten her in the street. One day after a rehearsal he attempted to stab her. She got on in spite of all, being a born actress, and played small parts in traveling companies. Then E., who had also gone on the stage, courted her and she listened to him, not because she cared for him, but he protected her and offered her a home. She joined him; but his drunkenness and sensuality were so gross that he ruined his health and he attempted to maltreat A. in a nameless way. And whenever she was in the family way he would leave her alone and half-conscious in the cellar for days. To add to her misery she had epileptic fits. Then sometimes they would be out of an engagement and starving. They had been so hungry as to steal raw potatoes out of a sack and eat them thus, having no fire. She would often have had engagements, but E. was jealous and would not let her act without him. And he beat her as her husband had done, and her health became undermined. It was just after one of the forced miscarriages that she joined our traveling company, and that accounted for her yellow and puffy appearance. E. was now away up-country with a circus, but was expected down any time. A. told me a good deal of all this, between her tears, while sitting at my feet, and her tone carried conviction. When I ought to have gone home I persuaded her to let me stay all night. We had been in bed some time when her mother knocked at the door and wanted to come in for something in a chest of drawers there. "Why don't you open the door, A.? Who have you got there? Hasn't that fellow gone?" A. was confused and told me to get under the bed, but I refused, and she covered me up with the bed clothes as well as she could and opened the door. She had hid my clothes, but missed one of my shoes, and her mother saw it. "Oh, A.," was all she said; "you've got that fellow in bed," and went out crying. "Well, Fred" (my stage name), "you've got me into a nice row," A. said. She gave me my breakfast in the morning and I walked out of the front door without being molested. Another night I entered her window by a ladder and stayed all night. In the middle of the night E. came home drunk. She would not let him in and told him she would have nothing more to do with him. He attempted to break in the door, when A. called to me, and hearing a man in the room he went away, saying, as he went downstairs: "Oh, A.! Oh, A.!" as if he thought she would not have done such a thing. He never molested us after that night.
I think it was my intention, at first, to break off with A. gradually. I found, however, I could not keep away from her, and it commenced to be evident to me that a bachelor's life in lodgings again would be dreary and lonely. And all this time the fear that I had offended God troubled me more than I have said, and it occurred to me (there may have been a touch of sophistry in this, or not) that if I were a true husband to her for the future—stuck to her and worked for her for the rest of my days—perhaps it would find favor in God's sight and be an atonement for my sin. Had she been free I would have married her, I believe. But she began to be harassed by her mother and bothered about my incessantly coming there and staying all night. It ended in my telling her I would be a husband to her, and she came and lived with me at my lodgings. We had one room and our meals cost us sixpence each. Cheap as it was, it was a struggle for me to earn money at all. I remember feeling ill and anxious once, and sustaining myself by the thought of my father wheeling the heavy truck up the street when he married my mother. And I decided to wheel my truck, too.
A. seemed happy and her love increased, if possible; at first, though, she must have found me a trying lover, for I made her kneel and pray with me two or three times a day, which she did with such a queer expression of face. Sometimes her feelings got the better of her, and she would say: "Oh, damn it, Fred, you are always praying." And then I would be shocked and she would be sorry.... Coitus was frequent; she commenced to like it now....
A. was not looking well one evening when she came in, and lay down on the bed. Presently she commenced to make a strange noise, and I saw her eyes were closed and her hands clenched. "Ah," said the landlady, who came in to help me; "she has epileptic fits." When her convulsions were over she looked blankly at us, knitting her brows and evidently puzzling her poor brain to remember who we were. For many years it was my fate to see her looking at me thus, at first stony and estranged, like a dweller in another star, then half-recalling with extended hand, then forgetting again with hand to mouth, then the gradual dawn of memory and love, and final full recognition. "It's Fred, my Fred!" I never got used to it; it always moved me to tears.... It was not to be thought that we had no quarrels. I still had fits of bad temper, and sometimes they came into collision with A.'s temper. It hurt my vanity considerably to see how soon she relinquished the respectful, patient, spaniel-bearing she had when we were traveling. I said some cruel things to her and she retorted. One would have thought, to hear us, that all affection was over. But when the mood of rage wore itself out we would both be sorry and make it up with tears, and be very happy in spite of our poverty.
I think it was lust that prevented me from striving to fulfill my ambitions. A. let me do anything I liked, at all times of day or night, although she seemed surprised at my proceedings sometimes, for it was becoming a fever of lubricity with me. She still thought only of her love. I remember her coming in one day, tired, pale, perspiring, and worried—we had hardly anything in the house and she had been to the theater ineffectually—and when her eyes lighted on me the whole expression of her face changed, softened and brightened at once, and she came and kissed me and said: "It is so strange, I was thinking all sorts of nasty things coming along, but as soon as I see my pet's face I feel happy—I don't care for anything—I would sooner share a crust with him than have all the money in the world!"
I commenced to feel libidinous curiosity to examine her—this was mostly on Sundays—and she let me, blushing at first, but laughing. Then I would try new positions in coitus I had heard of. Still she did not enter into my mood.
She was engaged at this time to play in a pantomime and I commenced to lead a miserable, jealous existence. I heard scandal about her, baseless enough, but in the diseased, nervous, anxious state I had brought myself to it nearly drove me mad. I would go with her sometimes to visit her mother, whom I began to like. Her brother I still saluted coldly. It caused me horror and jealousy to see A. kissing him and letting him tickle her. In my rage, when we came home, I even said that perhaps she would let him do something else, naming it brutally and coarsely. I remember her shame, astonishment, indignation and tears. If ever a man tried a woman's love I did. But she forgave me, even that.