On Monday morning I was round again early, taking with me some hot rolls, boiled ham, coffee and butter—in fact, a decent breakfast. I put a clean cloth on the table, a handful of flowers in a vase, saw everything ready, and went outside and watched for him, but did not let him see me. He was soon there, and I have always had a strong belief that he hurried home for a row, for he had not relished his three months. Knowing the man, I had no doubt that he would soon set to work on the breakfast. I had put some tobacco and a pipe ready for him. I waited for the breakfast and pipe to have its effect, and then went in. There sat my lord, monarch of all he surveyed, blowing clouds, with his legs comfortably stretched. He did not seem pleased to see me, and wanted to know what I was after. I told him that I knew he would be discharged that morning, and thought I would like to come round and see him. Might I have a pipe with him? He pushed the tobacco towards me, and I lit up.
The poor drudge, his wife, and his little elfish child did not know what to think of us as we sat there smoking in silence. The fact was, I found myself in a difficulty, for I did not know how much his wife or child had told him about the new home and breakfast. But the brute, having been fed, I ventured at last: ‘What a nice clean little place you have got here!’ He looked round complacently, and said: ‘The showing-up I gave her before the magistrate has done her a lot of good. You should have seen it before!’ I did not know whether to smite him or laugh. He was a big fellow, so I held my peace, for he evidently thought his home, breakfast, etc., were the earnings of his wife. As he clearly counted it to her for righteousness, I played the hypocrite a bit, and to this day the fellow believes it was all his poor wife’s doings, though he takes some credit to himself for showing her up.
What was I to do with this chivalrous gentleman? The misery of that wife and the sufferings of the child appealed strongly to me, so I said at length to him: ‘There’s a friend of mine will be glad if you will work for him, as he wants just such a man as you.’ I put it gently and as a favour, but even then it was a staggerer; it evidently was an eventuality that he had not contemplated. He smoked on and said nothing. I pointed out the condition of his wife, and the impossibility of her continuing to work much longer. I plied him with more tobacco. I told little tales to the little elf, and the little thing first laughed and then cried, but I could not get at him. Presently he turned to his wife and said: ‘Aren’t you going to work to-day?’ She told him it was too late then. He smoked on. I was just thinking of leaving, when he suddenly said: ‘Where is this work?’ I told him. He put on his cap, and said he would go and see what it was. I offered to go with him; but he said he would not have anybody from the police court ‘messing about’ after him, so I gave him a note, and sure enough he went and he worked.
I arranged with his employer not to ‘sub’ him during the week, but every night the brute had a decent supper at my expense. I even prevailed on him to allow me to loan him a few shillings for his current expenses day by day, and so at work he was able to have his pipe and jingle a few coppers in his pocket. He worked all the week, and Saturday (pay-day) came round, about which I was doubtful. I knew what time he would be paid. I had noticed he had some conceit, so I sent up to him at his work a note asking him to see me at his home at half-past two, as I had an important matter on which I wanted his advice. I did not say what it was, but I had saved it up for the purpose.
I found him at home. As the wife let me in at the door, she silently opened her hand and showed me a sovereign in gold and two half-crowns. I could have cried, but I did not: I went in. ‘Here’s the three shillings you lent me.’ I took them as a matter of course, telling him if he wanted to borrow a shilling or two at any time I would lend them to him. He never said that he had given his wife twenty-five shillings, and I never mentioned it. He felt pleased that he did not owe me anything, and I felt pleased that he should think so.
We had a pipe together, and discussed the elf, for I had made arrangements for the little thing to have a few weeks at the seaside, and I thought it better for her to be away during the wife’s coming trouble. We arranged it nicely, and the child heard the voice of the big waters for the first time, and she had another little brother when she came back.
I always had a strong aversion to this man, but I continued to visit the home week by week, for which visits I had always to find some plausible excuse. I could see that he suspected me, and looked at me with a cunning eye. I found afterwards that he thought I was watching him, and believed that I should give evidence against him in case he ill-used his wife again. I encouraged this belief, for it helped to protect the wife, and he kept to his work. He got more comfort and better food, for the way to this man’s brain—I won’t say his heart—was through his stomach. Tracts and good advice, pleading or rebuke, would have been useless with him; I had to take him as he was. He was an animal, as an animal I had to treat him, and, the professor notwithstanding, I did not make a very bad job of him, for he keeps to work and keeps his hands off his wife, for which two things husband and wife are the better.
Such husbands and such wives exist by the thousand. Stand outside our public-houses and take stock. You see a number of men, young and of middle age, loafing about, propping up the outside walls, waiting to be treated. Invariably these have wretched drudges of wives, whose lives and homes cannot be described. Hundreds of such fellows find their way into our courts. In the cells I see and speak to them, and am frequently asked to go to the places where their wives are at work, and get them to raise or borrow enough money to pay their fines. I have some comfort in thinking that I have never helped to shorten by one hour the imprisonment these fellows so richly deserve. This wife-beating among a certain class is so common that I have found plenty of wives who take it as a perfect matter of course, and some do not mind very much unless they are seriously damaged. But there are others with whom it is far different; and this leads me to speak of another class among whom I have found agony and anxiety, suffering and hopelessness, that cannot be imagined.
Their homes are clean, nay, often refined, and comfortable; the women do not go out to work, and, unless absolutely in fear of their lives, they do not charge their husbands. But those husbands get charged for other offences, and I have made the acquaintance of numbers whose homes I have visited, and have found the lowest hell of misery, fear, and despair. I now refer to men who have to live by their brains and not by their muscles, but about whose brain there is something wrong—but what, no living man can tell. They can do severe mental work at great pressure; they are valuable servants, and keep their positions for years; but let them have one dose of alcohol, and their brain is completely unhinged; they become transformed into ‘wolf or tiger, hog or bearded goat,’ and all the devilish passions that can inhabit man are roused into active fury. Smash goes the furniture, sewing-machines and everything; away go the little ones to hide themselves. Woe be to the wife if she interferes! and, if she does not, horrible language, filthy accusations, and murderous threats are heard for hours. I have gone into many houses of this description, and have had to pick my way through the ruins of the home. I have seen the wives—educated women—crouching in a corner, and little ones have crept from their hiding-places and sought shelter behind me. I have stood in front of these men, and have been horribly afraid for my own safety, for with a poker or hatchet in his hand, a man of this kind needs wary dealing. I know these men are mad, but I know that no doctor will certify them as such. I know their madness takes one form—jealousy of the innocent wife. So again and again, when I have been called into such homes, have I had to play the hypocrite and humour his delusion; to have done otherwise would have been madness.
Many a time I have said, ‘What! has she been at it again? Tell me all about it. Will you have a cigar?’ Hour after hour I have sat among the débris of the home, hearing, but not listening to, the accusations of the husband, for I have been thinking of the cowering wife in the corner and the terrified children behind me. But to watch the faces of these men, to see the gradations of passion, and the extraordinary change of facial expression, has not been a pleasant task. Yet I have sat on and on, watching for signs of exhausted nature, or hoping and waiting for some sign that alcohol had done its worst. And they come at length, for the physical strain upon such a man is intense. The wife and her children go to one bedroom and fasten the door. I get the poor fellow to another, see him into bed, leave a little light in a safe place, promise to see him on the morrow, and come away with the words, ‘Mr. Holmes, I won’t kill her to-night,’ in my ears and in my mind; for often have these words been said to me as I have left the room of such a man. On the morrow these men know nothing of what transpired the night before. They feel dazed, ill, and miserable, but memory is to them a blank. God help them and their poor wives, for, alas! no one else can help them. Magistrates and police can do nothing for them, human sympathy is helpless before them. Temperance pledges and tracts are worse than useless, for who or what can minister to a mind diseased? Drink in their case is only a symptom of a deeper-seated trouble. Cruelty in their case is not a natural condition but the outcome of their delusions. From these come the reports of many startling tragedies of murder and suicide. Of these I have saved none, but among these I have given myself, and am glad to think that I have often, at any rate, prevented worse happening.