Mrs. Jennings (or Jinnins, as the neighbours would have it) ruled
absolutely at home, when she took so much trouble as to do anything at
all there–which was less often than might have been. As for Robert her
husband, he was a poor stick, said the neighbours. And yet he was a man
with enough of hardihood to remain a non-unionist in the erectors’ shop
at Maidment’s all the years of his service; no mean test of a man’s
fortitude and resolution, as many a sufferer for independent opinion
might testify. The truth was that Bob never grew out of his
courtship-blindness. Mrs. Jennings governed as she pleased, stayed out
or came home as she chose, and cooked a dinner or didn’t, as her
inclination stood. Thus it was for ten years, during which time there
were no children, and Bob bore all things uncomplaining: cooking his own
dinner when he found none cooked, and sewing on his own buttons. Then of
a sudden came children, till in three years there were three; and Bob
Jennings had to nurse and to wash them as often as not.

Mrs. Jennings at this time was what is called rather a fine woman: a
woman of large scale and full development; whose slatternly habit left
her coarse black hair to tumble in snake-locks about her face and
shoulders half the day; who, clad in half-hooked clothes, bore herself
notoriously and unabashed in her fullness; and of whom ill things were
said regarding the lodger. The gossips had their excuse. The lodger was
an irregular young cabinet-maker, who lost quarters and halves and whole
days; who had been seen abroad with his landlady, what time Bob Jennings
was putting the children to bed at home; who on his frequent holidays
brought in much beer, which he and the woman shared, while Bob was at
work. To carry the tale to Bob would have been a thankless errand, for
he would have none of anybody’s sympathy, even in regard to miseries
plain to his eye. But the thing got about in the workshop, and there
his days were made bitter.

At home things grew worse. To return at half-past five, and find the
children still undressed, screaming, hungry and dirty, was a matter of
habit: to get them food, to wash them, to tend the cuts and bumps
sustained through the day of neglect, before lighting a fire and getting
tea for himself, were matters of daily duty. ‘Ah,’ he said to his
sister, who came at intervals to say plain things about Mrs. Jennings,
‘you shouldn’t go for to set a man agin ‘is wife, Jin. Melier do’n’ like
work, I know, but that’s nach’ral to ‘er. She ought to married a swell
’stead o’ me; she might ‘a’ done easy if she liked, bein’ sich a fine
gal; but she’s good-’arted, is Melier; an’ she can’t ‘elp bein’ a bit
thoughtless.’ Whereat his sister called him a fool (it was her customary
goodbye at such times), and took herself off.

Bob Jennings’s intelligence was sufficient for his common needs, but it
was never a vast intelligence. Now, under a daily burden of dull misery,
it clouded and stooped. The base wit of the workshop he comprehended
less, and realized more slowly, than before; and the gaffer cursed him
for a sleepy dolt.

Mrs. Jennings ceased from any pretence of housewifery, and would
sometimes sit–perchance not quite sober–while Bob washed the children
in the evening, opening her mouth only to express her contempt for him
and his establishment, and to make him understand that she was sick of
both. Once, exasperated by his quietness, she struck at him, and for a
moment he was another man. ‘Don’t do that, Melier,’ he said, ‘else I
might forget myself.’ His manner surprised his wife: and it was such
that she never did do that again.

So was Bob Jennings: without a friend in the world, except his sister,
who chid him, and the children, who squalled at him: when his wife
vanished with the lodger, the clock, a shade of wax flowers, Bob’s best
boots (which fitted the lodger), and his silver watch. Bob had returned,
as usual, to the dirt and the children, and it was only when he struck a
light that he found the clock was gone.

‘Mummy tooked ve t’ock,’ said Milly, the eldest child, who had followed
him in from the door, and now gravely observed his movements. ‘She
tooked ve t’ock an’ went ta-ta. An’ she tooked ve fyowers.’

Bob lit the paraffin lamp with the green glass reservoir, and carried
it and its evil smell about the house. Some things had been turned over
and others had gone, plainly. All Melier’s clothes were gone. The lodger
was not in, and under his bedroom window, where his box had stood, there
was naught but an oblong patch of conspicuously clean wallpaper. In a
muddle of doubt and perplexity, Bob found himself at the front door,
staring up and down the street. Divers women-neighbours stood at their
doors, and eyed him curiously; for Mrs. Webster, moralist, opposite, had
not watched the day’s proceedings (nor those of many other days) for
nothing, nor had she kept her story to herself.

He turned back into the house, a vague notion of what had befallen
percolating feebly through his bewilderment. ‘I dunno–I dunno,’ he
faltered, rubbing his ear. His mouth was dry, and he moved his lips
uneasily, as he gazed with aimless looks about the walls and ceiling.
Presently his eyes rested on the child, and ‘Milly,’ he said decisively,
‘come an ‘ave yer face washed.’

He put the children to bed early, and went out. In the morning, when his
sister came, because she had heard the news in common with everybody
else, he had not returned. Bob Jennings had never lost more than two
quarters in his life, but he was not seen at the workshop all this day.
His sister stayed in the house, and in the evening, at his regular
homing-time, he appeared, haggard and dusty, and began his preparations
for washing the children. When he was made to understand that they had
been already attended to, he looked doubtful and troubled for a moment.
Presently he said: ‘I ain’t found ‘er yet, Jin; I was in ‘opes she might
‘a’ bin back by this. I–I don’t expect she’ll be very long. She was
alwis a bit larky, was Melier; but very good-’arted.’

His sister had prepared a strenuous lecture on the theme of ‘I told you
so’; but the man was so broken, so meek, and so plainly unhinged in his
faculties, that she suppressed it. Instead, she gave him comfortable
talk, and made him promise in the end to sleep that night, and take up
his customary work in the morning.

He did these things, and could have worked placidly enough had he but
been alone; but the tale had reached the workshop, and there was no lack
of brutish chaff to disorder him. This the decenter men would have no
part in, and even protested against. But the ill-conditioned kept their
way, till, at the cry of ‘Bell O!’ when all were starting for dinner,
one of the worst shouted the cruellest gibe of all. Bob Jennings turned
on him and knocked him over a scrap-heap.

A shout went up from the hurrying workmen, with a chorus of ‘Serve ye
right,’ and the fallen joker found himself awkwardly confronted by the
shop bruiser. But Bob had turned to a corner, and buried his eyes in the
bend of his arm, while his shoulders heaved and shook.

He slunk away home, and stayed there: walking restlessly to and fro, and
often peeping down the street from the window. When, at twilight, his
sister came again, he had become almost cheerful, and said with some
briskness: ‘I’m agoin’ to meet ‘er, Jin, at seven. I know where she’ll
be waitin’.’

He went upstairs, and after a little while came down again in his best
black coat, carefully smoothing a tall hat of obsolete shape with his
pocket-handkerchief. ‘I ain’t wore it for years,’ he said. ‘I ought to
‘a’ wore it–it might ‘a’ pleased ‘er. She used to say she wouldn’t walk
with me in no other–when I used to meet ‘er in the evenin’, at seven
o’clock.’ He brushed assiduously, and put the hat on. ‘I’d better ‘ave
a shave round the corner as I go along,’ he added, fingering his stubbly
chin.

He received as one not comprehending his sister’s persuasion to remain
at home; but when he went she followed at a little distance. After his
penny shave he made for the main road, where company-keeping couples
walked up and down all evening. He stopped at a church, and began pacing
slowly to and fro before it, eagerly looking out each way as he went.

His sister watched him for nearly half an hour, and then went home. In
two hours more she came back with her husband. Bob was still there,
walking to and fro.

”Ullo, Bob,’ said his brother-in-law; ‘come along ‘ome an’ get to bed,
there’s a good chap. You’ll be awright in the mornin’.’

‘She ain’t turned up,’ Bob complained, ‘or else I’ve missed ‘er. This
is the reg’lar place–where I alwis used to meet ‘er. But she’ll come
tomorrer. She used to leave me in the lurch sometimes, bein’ nach’rally
larky. But very good-’arted, mindjer; very good-’arted.’

She did not come the next evening, nor the next, nor the evening after,
nor the one after that. But Bob Jennings, howbeit depressed and anxious,
was always confident. ‘Somethink’s prevented ‘er tonight,’ he would say,
‘but she’ll come tomorrer…. I’ll buy a blue tie tomorrer–she used to
like me in a blue tie. I won’t miss ‘er tomorrer. I’ll come a little
earlier.’

So it went. The black coat grew ragged in the service, and hobbledehoys,
finding him safe sport, smashed the tall hat over his eyes time after
time. He wept over the hat, and straightened it as best he might. Was
she coming? Night after night, and night and night. But tomorrow….

Simmons’s infamous behaviour toward his wife is still matter for
profound wonderment among the neighbours. The other women had all
along regarded him as a model husband, and certainly Mrs. Simmons was
a most conscientious wife. She toiled and slaved for that man, as any
woman in the whole street would have maintained, far more than any
husband had a right to expect. And now this was what she got for it.
Perhaps he had suddenly gone mad.

Before she married Simmons, Mrs. Simmons had been the widowed Mrs.
Ford. Ford had got a berth as donkeyman on a tramp steamer, and that
steamer had gone down with all hands off the Cape: a judgment, the
widow woman feared, for long years of contumacy, which had culminated
in the wickedness of taking to the sea, and taking to it as a
donkeyman–an immeasurable fall for a capable engine-fitter. Twelve
years as Mrs. Ford had left her still childless, and childless she
remained as Mrs. Simmons.

As for Simmons, he, it was held, was fortunate in that capable wife.
He was a moderately good carpenter and joiner, but no man of the
world, and he wanted one. Nobody could tell what might not have
happened to Tommy Simmons if there had been no Mrs. Simmons to take
care of him. He was a meek and quiet man, with a boyish face and
sparse, limp whiskers. He had no vices (even his pipe departed him
after his marriage), and Mrs. Simmons had ingrafted on him divers
exotic virtues. He went solemnly to chapel every Sunday, under a tall
hat, and put a penny–one returned to him for the purpose out of his
week’s wages–in the plate. Then, Mrs. Simmons overseeing, he took off
his best clothes, and brushed them with solicitude and pains. On
Saturday afternoons he cleaned the knives, the forks, the boots, the
kettles, and the windows, patiently and conscientiously; on Tuesday
evenings he took the clothes to the mangling; and on Saturday nights
he attended Mrs. Simmons in her marketing, to carry the parcels.

Mrs. Simmons’s own virtues were native and numerous. She was a
wonderful manager. Every penny of Tommy’s thirty-six or thirty-eight
shillings a week was bestowed to the greatest advantage, and Tommy
never ventured to guess how much of it she saved. Her cleanliness in
housewifery was distracting to behold. She met Simmons at the front
door whenever he came home, and then and there he changed his boots
for slippers, balancing himself painfully on alternate feet on the
cold flags. This was because she scrubbed the passage and door-step
turn about with the wife of the downstairs family, and because the
stair-carpet was her own. She vigilantly supervised her husband all
through the process of “cleaning himself” after work, so as to come
between her walls and the possibility of random splashes; and if, in
spite of her diligence, a spot remained to tell the tale, she was at
pains to impress the fact on Simmons’s memory, and to set forth at
length all the circumstances of his ungrateful selfishness. In the
beginning she had always escorted him to the ready-made clothes shop,
and had selected and paid for his clothes, for the reason that men are
such perfect fools, and shopkeepers do as they like with them. But she
presently improved on that. She found a man selling cheap remnants at
a street-corner, and straightway she conceived the idea of making
Simmons’s clothes herself. Decision was one of her virtues, and a suit
of uproarious check tweeds was begun that afternoon from the pattern
furnished by an old one. More: it was finished by Sunday, when
Simmons, overcome by astonishment at the feat, was endued in it, and
pushed off to chapel ere he could recover his senses. The things were
not altogether comfortable, he found: the trousers hung tight against
his shins, but hung loose behind his heels; and when he sat, it was on
a wilderness of hard folds and seams. Also, his waistcoat collar
tickled his nape, but his coat collar went straining across from
shoulder to shoulder; while the main garment bagged generously below
his waist. Use made a habit of his discomfort, but it never reconciled
him to the chaff of his shopmates; for, as Mrs. Simmons elaborated
successive suits, each one modelled on the last, the primal accidents
of her design developed into principles, and grew even bolder and more
hideously pronounced. It was vain for Simmons to hint–as hint he did
–that he shouldn’t like her to overwork herself, tailoring being bad
for the eyes, and there was a new tailor’s in the Mile End Road, very
cheap, where . . . “Ho yus,” she retorted, “you’re very consid’rit I
dessay sittin’ there actin’ a livin’ lie before your own wife Thomas
Simmons as though I couldn’t see through you like a book a lot you
care about overworkin’ me as long as your turn’s served throwin’
away money like dirt in the street on a lot o’ swindlin’ tailors an’
me workin’ and’ slavin’ ‘ere to save a ‘a’penny an’ this is my return
for it any one ‘ud think you could pick up money in the ‘orse-road an’
I b’lieve I’d be thought better of if I laid in bed all day like some
would that I do.” So that Thomas Simmons avoided the subject, nor even
murmured when she resolved to cut his hair.

So his placid fortune endured for years. Then there came a golden
summer evening when Mrs. Simmons betook herself with a basket to do
some small shopping, and Simmons was left at home. He washed and put
away the tea-things, and then he fell to meditating on a new pair of
trousers, finished that day, and hanging behind the parlour door.
There they hung, in all their decent innocence of shape in the seat,
and they were shorter of leg, longer of waist, and wilder of pattern
than he had ever worn before. And as he looked on them the small devil
of Original Sin awoke and clamoured in his breast. He was ashamed of
it, of course, for well he knew the gratitude he owed his wife for
those same trousers, among other blessings. Still, there the small
devil was, and the small devil was fertile in base suggestions, and
could not be kept from hinting at the new crop of workshop gibes that
would spring at Tommy’s first public appearance in such things.

“Pitch ‘em in the dust-bin!” said the small devil at last. “It’s all
they’re fit for.”

Simmons turned away in sheer horror of his wicked self, and for a
moment thought of washing the tea-things over again by way of
discipline. Then he made for the back room, but saw from the landing
that the front door was standing open, probably the fault of the child
downstairs. Now a front door standing open was a thing that Mrs.
Simmons would not abide: it looked low. So Simmons went down, that
she might not be wroth with him for the thing when she came back; and,
as he shut the door, he looked forth into the street.

A man was loitering on the pavement, and prying curiously about the
door. His face was tanned, his hands were deep in the pockets of his
unbraced blue trousers, and well back on his head he wore the
high-crowned peaked cap, topped with a knob of wool, which is affected
by Jack ashore about the docks. He lurched a step nearer to the door,
and “Mrs. Ford ain’t in, is she?” he said.

Simmons stared at him for a matter of five seconds, and then said,
“Eh?”

“Mrs. Ford as was, then–Simmons now, ain’t it?”

He said this with a furtive leer that Simmons neither liked nor
understood.

“No,” said Simmons; “she ain’t in now.”

“You ain’t her ‘usband, are ye?”

“Yus.”

The man took his pipe from his mouth and grinned silently and long.
“Blimy,” he said at length, “you look like the sort o’ bloke she’d
like,” and with that he grinned again. Then, seeing that Simmons made
ready to shut the door, he put a foot on the sill and a hand against
the panel. “Don’t be in a ‘hurry, matey,” he said; “I come ‘ere t’
‘ave a little talk with you, man to man, d’ ye see?” And he frowned
fiercely.

Tommy Simmons felt uncomfortable, but the door would not shut, so he
parleyed. “Wotjer want?” he asked, “I dunno you.”

“Then, if you’ll excuse the liberty, I’ll interdooce meself, in a
manner of speaking.” He touched his cap with a bob of mock humility.
“I’m Bob Ford,” he said, “come back out o’ kingdom come so to say. Me
as went down with the Mooltan–safe dead five year gone. I come to
see my wife.”

During this speech Thomas Simmons’s jaw was dropping lower and lower.
At the end of it he poked his fingers up through his hair, looked down
at the mat, then up at the fanlight, then out into the street, then
hard at his visitor. But he found nothing to say.

“Come to see my wife,” the man repeated. “So now we can talk it over–
as man to man.”

Simmons slowly shut his mouth, and led the way upstairs mechanically,
his fingers still in his hair. A sense of the state of affairs sank
gradually into his brain, and the small devil woke again. Suppose this
man was Ford? Suppose he did claim his wife? Would it be a knock-
down blow? Would it hit him out?–or not? He thought of the trousers,
the tea-things, the mangling, the knives, the kettles, and the
windows; and he thought of them in the way of a backslider.

On the landing Ford clutched at his arm, and asked in a hoarse
whisper, ” ‘Ow long ‘fore she’s back?”

“ ‘Bout an hour, I expect,” Simmons replied, having first of all
repeated the question in his own mind. And then he opened the parlour
door.

“Ah,” said Ford, looking about him, “you’ve bin pretty comf’table.
Them chairs an’ things,” jerking his pipe toward them, “was hers–
mine, that is to say, speakin’ straight, and man to man.” He sat down,
puffing meditatively at his pipe, and presently, “Well,” he continued,
” ‘ere I am agin, ol’ Bob Ford, dead an’ done for–gone down in the
Mooltan. On’y I ain’t done for, see?” And he pointed the stem of
his pipe at Simmons’s waistcoat. “I ain’t done for, ’cause why?
Cons’kence o’ bein’ picked up by a ol’ German sailin’-'utch an’ took
to ‘Frisco ‘fore the mast. I’ve ‘ad a few years o’ knockin’ about
since then, an’ now”–looking hard at Simmons–”I’ve come back to see
my wife.”

“She–she don’t like smoke in ‘ere,” said Simmons, as it were at
random.

“No, I bet she don’t,” Ford answered, taking his pipe from his mouth
and holding it low in his hand. “I know ‘Anner. ‘Ow d’ you find ‘er?
Do she make ye clean the winders?”

“Well,” Simmons admitted, uneasily, “I–I do ‘elp ‘er sometimes, o’
course.”

“Ah! An’ the knives too, I bet, an’ the bloomin’ kittles. I know.
W’y”–he rose and bent to look behind Simmons’s head–”s’ ‘elp me, I
b’lieve she cuts yer ‘air! Well, I’m dammed! Jes’ wot she would do,
too.”

He inspected the blushing Simmons from divers points of vantage. Then
he lifted a leg of the trousers hanging behind the door. “I’d bet a
trifle,” he said, “she made these ‘ere trucks. No-body else ‘ud do ‘em
like that. Damme! they’re wuss’n wot you’ve got on.”

The small devil began to have the argument all its own way. If this
man took his wife back perhaps he’d have to wear those trousers.

“Ah,” Ford pursued, “she ain’t got no milder. An’, my davy, wot a
jore!”

Simmons began to feel that this was no longer his business. Plainly,
‘Anner was this other man’s wife, and he was bound in honour to
acknowledge the fact. The small devil put it to him as a matter of
duty.

“Well,” said Ford, suddenly, “time’s short an’ this ain’t business. I
won’t be ‘ard on you, matey. I ought prop’ly to stand on my rights,
but seein’ as you’re a well-meaning young man, so to speak, an’ all
settled an’ a-livin’ ‘ere quiet an’ matrimonual, I’ll”–this with a
burst of generosity–”damme! yus, I’ll compound the felony an’ take me
‘ook. Come, I’ll name a figure, as man to man, fust an’ last, no less
an’ no more. Five pound does it.”

Simmons hadn’t five pounds,–he hadn’t even fivepence,–and he said
so. “An’ I wouldn’t think to come between a man an’ ‘is wife,” he
added, “not on no account. It may be rough on me, but it’s a dooty.
I’ll ‘ook it.”

“No,” said Ford, hastily, clutching Simmons by the arm, “don’t do
that. I’ll make it a bit cheaper. Say three quid–come, that’s
reasonable, ain’t it? Three quid ain’t much compensation for me goin’
away for ever–where the stormy winds do blow, so to say–an’ never as
much as seein’ me own wife agin for better nor wuss. Between man an’
man, now, three quid, an’ I’ll shunt. That’s fair, ain’t it?”

“Of course it’s fair,” Simmons replied, effusively. “It’s more’n fair:
it’s noble–downright noble, I call it. But I ain’t goin’ to take a
mean advantage o’ your good-’artedness, Mr. Ford. She’s your wife, an’
I oughtn’t to ‘a’ come between you. I apologise. You stop an’ ‘ave yer
proper rights. It’s me as ought to shunt, an’ I will.” And he made a
step toward the door.

“ ‘Old on,” quoth Ford, and got between Simmons and the door; “don’t
do things rash. Look wot a loss it’ll be to you with no ‘ome to go to,
an’ nobody to look after ye, an’ all that. It’ll be dreadful. Say a
couple–there, we won’t quarrel, jest a single quid, between man an’
man, an’ I’ll stand a pot out o’ the money. You can easy raise a quid
–the clock ‘ud pretty nigh do it. A quid does it, an’ I’ll–”

There was a loud double knock at the front door. In the East End a
double knock is always for the upstairs lodgers.

“Oo’s that?” asked Bob Ford, apprehensively.

“I’ll see,” said Thomas Simmons, in reply, and he made a rush for the
staircase.

Bob Ford heard him open the front door. The he went to the window, and
just below him he saw the crown of a bonnet. It vanished, and borne to
him from within the door there fell upon his ear the sound of a well-
remembered female voice.

“Where ye goin’ now with no ‘at?” asked the voice, sharply.

“Awright, ‘Anner–there’s–there’s somebody upstairs to see you,”
Simmons answered. And, as Bob Ford could see, a man went scuttling
down the street in the gathering dusk. And behold, it was Thomas
Simmons.

Ford reached the landing in three strides. His wife was still at the
front door, staring after Simmons. He flung into the back room, threw
open the window, dropped from the wash-house roof into the back yard,
scrambled desperately over the fence, and disappeared into the gloom.
He was seen by no living soul. And that is why Simmons’s base
desertion–under his wife’s very eyes, too–is still an astonishment
to the neighbours.