Chapter 4

A Night-Piece

There came a night when the husband was alone in that street
waiting. He can do nothing for you now, little nursery
governess, you must fight it out by yourself; when there are
great things to do in the house the man must leave. Oh, man,
selfish, indelicate, coarse-grained at the best, thy woman's hour
has come; get thee gone.

He slouches from the house, always her true lover I do believe,
chivalrous, brave, a boy until to-night; but was he ever unkind
to her? It is the unpardonable sin now; is there the memory of
an unkindness to stalk the street with him to-night? And if not
an unkindness, still might he not sometimes have been a little
kinder?

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to
be a little kinder than is necessary?

Poor youth, she would come to the window if she were able, I am
sure, to sign that the one little unkindness is long forgotten,
to send you a reassuring smile till you and she meet again; and,
if you are not to meet again, still to send you a reassuring,
trembling smile.

Ah, no, that was for yesterday; it is too late now. He wanders
the streets thinking of her tonight, but she has forgotten him.
In her great hour the man is nothing to the woman; their love is
trivial now.

He and I were on opposite sides of the street, now become
familiar ground to both of us, and divers pictures rose before me
in which Mary A---- walked. Here was the morning after my only
entry into her house. The agent had promised me to have the
obnoxious notice-board removed, but I apprehended that as soon as
the letter announcing his intention reached her she would remove
it herself, and when I passed by in the morning there she was on
a chair and a foot-stool pounding lustily at it with a hammer.
When it fell she gave it such a vicious little kick.

There were the nights when her husband came out to watch for the
postman. I suppose he was awaiting some letter big with the fate
of a picture. He dogged the postman from door to door like an
assassin or a guardian angel; never had he the courage to ask if
there was a letter for him, but almost as it fell into the box he
had it out and tore it open, and then if the door closed
despairingly the woman who had been at the window all this time
pressed her hand to her heart. But if the news was good they
might emerge presently and strut off arm in arm in the direction
of the pork emporium.

One last picture. On summer evenings I had caught glimpses of
them through the open window, when she sat at the piano singing
and playing to him. Or while she played with one hand, she flung
out the other for him to grasp. She was so joyously happy, and
she had such a romantic