“What?” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Police.”
“It’s nothing to me,” said Tetterby. “What do I care what people do, or are done to?”
“Suicides,” suggested Mrs. Tetterby.
“No business of mine,” replied her husband.
“Births, deaths, and marriages, are those nothing to you?” said Mrs. Tetterby.
“If the births were all over for good, and all to-day; and the deaths were all to begin to come off to-morrow; I don’t see why it should interest me, till I thought it was a-coming to my turn,” grumbled Tetterby. “As to marriages, I’ve done it myself. I know quite enough about them.”
To judge from the dissatisfied expression of her face and manner, Mrs. Tetterby appeared to entertain the same opinions as her husband; but she opposed him, nevertheless, for the gratification of quarrelling with him.
“Oh, you’re a consistent man,” said Mrs. Tetterby, “an’t you? You, with the screen of your own making there, made of nothing else but bits of newspapers, which you sit and read to the children by the half-hour together!”
“Say used to, if you please,” returned her husband. “You won’t find me doing so any more. I’m wiser now.”
“Bah! wiser, indeed!” said Mrs. Tetterby. “Are you better?”
The question sounded some discordant note in Mr. Tetterby’s breast. He ruminated dejectedly, and passed his hand across and across his forehead.
“Better!” murmured Mr. Tetterby. “I don’t know as any of us are better, or happier either. Better, is it?”
He turned to the screen, and traced about it with his finger, until he found a certain paragraph of which he was in quest.
“This used to be one of the family favourites, I recollect,” said Tetterby, in a forlorn and stupid way, “and used to draw tears from the children, and make ’em good, if there was any little bickering or discontent among ’em, next to the story of the robin redbreasts in the wood. ‘Melancholy case of destitution. Yesterday a small man, with a baby in his arms, and surrounded by half-a-dozen ragged little ones, of various ages between ten and two, the whole of whom were evidently in a famishing condition, appeared before the worthy magistrate, and made the following recital:’—Ha! I don’t understand it, I’m sure,” said Tetterby; “I don’t see what it has got to do with us.”
“How old and shabby he looks,” said Mrs. Tetterby, watching him. “I never saw such a change in a man. Ah! dear me, dear me, dear me, it was a sacrifice!”
“What was a sacrifice?” her husband sourly inquired.
Mrs. Tetterby shook her head; and without replying in words, raised a complete sea-storm about the baby, by her violent agitation of the cradle.
“If you mean your marriage was a sacrifice, my good woman—” said her husband.
“I do mean it” said his wife.
“Why, then I mean to say,” pursued Mr. Tetterby, as sulkily and surlily as she, “that there are two sides to that affair; and that I was the sacrifice; and that I wish the sacrifice hadn’t been accepted.”
“I wish it hadn’t, Tetterby, with all my heart and soul I do assure you,” said his wife. “You can’t wish it more than I do, Tetterby.”
“I don’t know what I saw in her,” muttered the newsman, “I’m sure;—certainly, if I saw anything, it’s not there now. I was thinking so, last night, after supper, by the fire. She’s fat, she’s ageing, she won’t bear comparison with most other women.”
“He’s common-looking, he has no air with him, he’s small, he’s beginning to stoop and he’s getting bald,” muttered Mrs. Tetterby.
“I must have been half out of my mind when I did it,” muttered Mr. Tetterby.
“My senses must have forsook me. That’s the only way in which I can explain it to myself,” said Mrs. Tetterby with elaboration.
In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The little Tetterbys were not habituated to regard that meal in the light of a sedentary occupation, but discussed it as a dance or trot; rather resembling a savage ceremony, in the occasionally shrill whoops, and brandishings of bread and butter, with which it was accompanied, as well as in the intricate filings off into the street and back again, and the hoppings up and down the doorsteps, which were incidental to the performance. In the present instance, the contentions between these Tetterby children for the milk-and-water jug, common to all, which stood upon the table, presented so lamentable an instance of angry passions risen very high indeed, that it was an outrage on the memory of Dr. Watts. It was not until Mr. Tetterby had driven the whole herd out at the front door, that a moment’s peace was secured; and even that was broken by the discovery that Johnny had surreptitiously come back, and was at that instant choking in the jug like a ventriloquist, in his indecent and rapacious haste.
“These children will be the death of me at last!” said Mrs. Tetterby, after banishing the culprit. “And the sooner the better, I think.”
“Poor people,” said Mr. Tetterby, “ought not to have children at all. They give us no pleasure.”
He was at that moment taking up the cup which Mrs. Tetterby had rudely pushed towards him, and Mrs. Tetterby was lifting her own cup to her lips, when they both stopped, as if they were transfixed.
“Here! Mother! Father!” cried Johnny, running into the room. “Here’s Mrs. William coming down the street!”
And if ever, since the world began, a young boy took a baby from a cradle with the care of an old nurse, and hushed and soothed it tenderly, and tottered away with it cheerfully, Johnny was that boy, and Moloch was that baby, as they went out together!
Mr. Tetterby put down his cup; Mrs. Tetterby put down her cup. Mr. Tetterby rubbed his forehead; Mrs. Tetterby rubbed hers. Mr. Tetterby’s face began to smooth and brighten; Mrs. Tetterby’s began to smooth and brighten.
“Why, Lord forgive me,” said Mr. Tetterby to himself, “what evil tempers have I been giving way to? What has been the matter here!”
“How could I ever treat him ill again, after all I said and felt last night!” sobbed Mrs. Tetterby, with her apron to her eyes.
“Am I a brute,” said Mr. Tetterby, “or is there any good in me at all? Sophia! My little woman!”
“‘Dolphus dear,” returned his wife.
“I—I’ve been in a state of mind,” said Mr. Tetterby, “that I can’t abear to think of, Sophy.”
“Oh! It’s nothing to what I’ve been in, Dolf,” cried his wife in a great burst of grief.
“My Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “don’t take on. I never shall forgive myself. I must have nearly broke your heart, I know.”
“No, Dolf, no. It was me! Me!” cried Mrs. Tetterby.
“My little woman,” said her husband, “don’t. You make me reproach myself dreadful, when you show such a noble spirit. Sophia, my dear, you don’t know what I thought. I showed it bad enough, no doubt; but what I thought, my little woman!—”
“Oh, dear Dolf, don’t! Don’t!” cried his wife.
“Sophia,” said Mr. Tetterby, “I must reveal it. I couldn’t rest in my conscience unless I mentioned it. My little woman—”
“Mrs. William’s very nearly here!” screamed Johnny at the door.
“My little woman, I wondered how,” gasped Mr. Tetterby, supporting himself by his chair, “I wondered how I had ever admired you—I forgot the precious children you have brought about me, and thought you didn’t look as slim as I could wish. I—I never