LITERATURE. THAT BRUTE SIMMONS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5113, 22 November 1894, Page 1

LITERATURE. THAT BRUTE SIMMONS.

(Pall Mall Budget.) Bimmons's infamous behaviour towards his Trife is still matter for profound wonderment among the neighbours. The other women had nil along regard him as a model husband, and certainly Mrs Simmons was a most conscientious ■wife. Bhe toiled and Blaved 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 lie had suddenly gone mad. Before she married Simmons, Mrs Simmons had lieen 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 widowwoman 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 Ml for a capable engine-fitter. Twelve years as Mrs Ford had left her still childless, and childless ehe 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 — end he wanted one. Nobody could tell what might not have happoned to Tommy Simmons if there had been no Mrs Bimmons to take care of him. He was a meek and quiet man with a boy* ish face, and sparse limp whiskers. He had no •vices (even his pipe went from him after his marriage), and Mrs Simmons had engrafted on liim sundry exotic virtues. He went solemnly to chapel every Sunday under a tall hat, and put a penny— one leturned to him for the purpose out of his week's wages— in the plate. Then,. Mrs Simmons overseeing, he took off Ins 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 Tueiday 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 oleanliness in housewifery was prodigious to beholds She met Simmons at the front door whenever he arrived,

and then and there he changed his boots for

slippers, balancing himself painfully on alternate, .feet on the cold illags. This was because she scrubbed the passage and doorstep turn-about with the wife otthe downstairs family, and because the Btair-carpet was her own. She

vigilantly supervised her husband all through the

process df " cleaning hjmseif" after work, so as ' tocome between her walls and the possibility of Tandom 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 fools, and shop keepers 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 Simmon's clothes herself. Decision was one of her virtue^ ana a~su3fc of ■uproarious chock tweeds was. begun that afternoon from the patters furnished by an old one. More, it was finished by Sunday: when Simmons, overcome by astonishment at the feat, was indued in it and pushed off to chapel ere he could recover his senses. The things were not altogether comfortable, he found; the trousers clung 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 garment 'itself 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 Mre 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 hist he did— that he shouldn't lite her to overwork herself, tailoring being bad for the eyes; and there was a new tailor's in the Mile End Eoad, very cheap, where "Ho, yus," she retorted, "you're very considrit, I deasayj Bittin' there actin' a Hvin' lie before you're own -wife, Thomas Simmon?, 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' an' slavin' 'ere to save a 'apenny; 'and this is my return for it; Anyone 'ud think you could pick up money in the 'oraeroad; 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 mur- | mured 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. fie 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 courae, for well he knew the gratitude he -owed his wife for those same trousers, among .other blessings. Still, there the email devil was ; and the smalt devil was fertile in base suggestions, and could not be kept from hinting at the now crop of workshop gibes that would spring at Tommy's first public appearance in such things.

"Pitch 'em in the dustbin!" said tho smal devil, at last; "it's all they're fit for."

Simmons turned away in sheer horror of his wrecked self, and for a moment thought of washing the tea-things over again hy way of discipline. Then he made for the hack room, but daw from the landing that the front door was standing open, probably hy the fault of the child downstairs. Wow 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 tho thing when 6he came back ; and as ho shut the door ho looked forth into the street. A man was loitering on the pavement, and jjying curiously about tho door. His face was taoned, his hands were deep in the pockets of his unbraced blue trousers, and well back on his head be 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 <tite door, and " Mrs Ford ain't in, is she?" he said. Simmons «t*red at him for a matter of five seconds, and then said "Eh ? " " Mrs Ford a« was, then— Simmons now, ain't it?" He said this with a furtive leer that Simmons neither liked nor understood. " No," said Bimtqons, " she ain't in now. '■'you ain't her 'usbaod, are ye? " "¥tlfl." . The p^an took his, pips from his mouth, and silently and long. "BJiray,"he said at length, £/l yo» look tba sort o' bloke she'd like ;" *nd wjtb that bt .grinned again, Ibao, seeing

that Simmons made ready to shut the door, ho 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 P" he askedj " I dunno you." •

"Then, if you'll excuse the liberty, I'll inter-, dooce meself, in a manner of speaking." He touched his cup with a bob of mock humility. " I'm Bob Ford," he said, " come back out o' Kingdom Gome, so to say. Me as went down with the Mooltan— safe dead five year gone. I come to see my wife."

During this Epeech 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 FordP Suppose he did claim his wife? Would it be a knock-down blow? Would it hit him out— or not P He thought of the trousers, the teathings, 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 a 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 comPtable. Them chairs an' things " —jerking his pipe toward them— "was hers— mine, that is to say, speaking straight, and man to man." He sat down, puffing meditatively at his pipe, and presently: "Well," he continued, "'ere lam again— ole Bob Ford, dead an' done for; gawn down in the Mooltan. On'y I ain't done for, see P "— vai he pointed the stem of his pipe at Simmon's waistcoat; ;" I ain't done for, 'cause why ? Cons'kence o' bein' picked up by a ole 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 comeback 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 P Do she make je clean the winders P"

"iWeD," Simmons admitted uneasily, "I — I do! 'elp 'er sometimes, o' course."

"Ah! . an' the knives, too, I bet; an' the blooming kitties. Iknow. Wy"— he rose and bent to behind Simmons's head — "s 'elp me, I b'lieve she cuts yer 'air! Well, I'm damned; Jos' what she would do, too." :

He inspected the blushing Simmons from diver's 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. Nobody else 'ud do 'em like' that Damme, they're wuss'n wot you've got on.'' : w ,

The small devil began to have the argument all its own way. If this man took his wife back, perhaps he' 3 have to wear those trousers.

Ford pursued, "she ain't got no milder,^ An^myjpavy.wotajore!" .''_... Simmons began to feel that this was no longer his business. Plainly, 'Anner was the other man's wife, and he was bound in honour to acknowledge the faofc. The small devil put it to him as a matter of duty.

"Well," said Ford, suddenly, "time's ahort, an' this ain't business. I won't be 'ard on you, matey. I ought, prop'ly, to Btand on my rights, but seem' as you're a well-meanin' young man, so to speak, an' all settled an* a-livin' 'ere quiet an' matritnonual, I'll"— this with a burst of generosity — " damme, yus ! I'll compound the felony, an' take me 'ook. Come, I'll same a figure, as man to map, fust an' last, no less an' no more— five pound does it !"

Simmons hadn't five pounds — ho hadn't even five pence— and he raid bo. "An' I wouldn't think for 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'Wookit."

" 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 P Three quid ain't much compensation for me goin' away for ever— where the stormy winds do blow, so to eay — an' never as much as seem' 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-'artednesa, Mr Ford. She's your wife, an' I oughtn't to 'a' come between you. I apologise. You stop an' 'aye yer proper rights. It's mo 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 rasb. 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 of the money. You can easy raise a guid — the clock 'ud pretty nigh do it. A quid does it ; an' I'll — ■ — "

There was a loud double knoo 1 * at the front door. In the East End a double knock is always for the upstairs lodgers.

"'Oo's that?" asked Bob Ford, apprehen.

sively,

"Til see," said Thomas Simmons in reply; and he made a rush for the staircase.

Bob Ford heard him open tho front door. Then he went to tho window, and just below Mm, he saw the crown of a bonnet. It vanished, and borne to him from within the door there foil upon his car the sound of a wcll-renioanbered female voice.

" Where yo goin' now with no 'at" aslced 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, bebold, 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, throw open the window, droppod from tho wash-house roof into tho back-yard, scrambled wildly over the fence, and disappeared into tho gloom. He was seen by no living soul ; and that is why Simmons' s base desertion — under his wife's very eye 9, too— is still an astonishment to the neighbours.