For Better or for Worse

Author Unknown

Content Warning: #2 (explanation)

There was a gentle tap at my door this morning. I said, "Come in."

Thinking my summons had not been heard, I arose and was advancing toward the door when it suddenly opened, and Mrs. Wiltern entered the room. She approached me and threw her arms about me and her head upon my bosom. She clung to me, sobbing hysterically, for a short time.

"I am so happy, Mr. Thurston."

Releasing myself from her spasmodic embrace, I placed her upon a chair, begging her to be composed.

From the fact that I am a bachelor and Mrs. Wiltern a married lady, suspicious people might surmise that there was something wrong between the lady and myself. I assure such people at once that there is nothing of the kind. I am a grey-haired old man—as old as Mrs. Wiltern's father, if the poor old man was now alive; and Mrs. Wiltern, why she is about as pure as her little baby, who died about three years ago and went to Heaven. Then, I have known her from a child. She was a great pet of mine far away to the Eastward, where—ah me!—I was a better and a younger fellow than I am now.

I will tell you something about her. Her father was a well-to-do farmer, a good-hearted and pious man, and liked by all his neighbours. He lost his wife when Mary was about 12 years old, and he was sad for a year or two, and then he began to lean on Mary, his only child. With her hand in his, sitting together on the sofa, I have heard them talking away just as two crickets singing to each other. When her school days were over they seemed to be always together, laughing and romping in the house or in the field.

One Sunday, a young fellow, a neighbor's son, came home with her from church, and from that moment the father seemed changed. He was as kind as ever to his girl, whom he called his sweetheart, but he seemed nervous, and would often look at her in a startled kind of way. I knew how it was all the time, for the old gentleman and I were great friends. He never said anything to me about it, but bless you, I could read his simple character just as easy as a play-bill. The visit of that young man made him think for the first time that somebody else might win away from him the heart of his idol and take her from his side and his heart. They used to talk before me just as if I was nobody.

I went to the house one day and found them both on the sofa as usual; and, what was strange, both were crying like two babies.

"I can't help it, dear papa—I do love you just as much as ever, and George loves you, and we will all live together and be so happy."

"Well, my darling, don't cry any more. We mustn't be foolish before our old friend. You shall have George. There, now, give your papa a kiss. Go and arrange your hair, like a good girl.

I am not going to make myself tiresome by telling what had passed between me and Mary's father. It is enough to say that since he had found out the bent of his daughter's affection he had, in a quiet way, been asking about George, and had found him out to be quite a wild fellow. I knew he never liked his father, and for good reasons. There were whispers about, before he settled in that neighborhood, that he made too free use of a merchant's name, and barely escaped prison for forgery! Those stories will follow a man wherever he goes. But he told Mary nothing of all this. In his foolish way he had only begged her not to marry at all. He loved her too much to say a word against her lover. If he was bad her goodness would make him all right in time. He would listen to nothing I had to say.

"Don't you see," he said, "that it would break my Pussy's little heart to come between her and George?"

He sold part of his farm and bought George a half interest in the village store, and George and Mary were married a few months after.

For some reason or other George Wiltern took a strange dislike to me. I did not know why at the time, nor do I know now. At any rate I saw it very plainly, and for that reason kept away from the house. But I could not help hearing every now and then that George was keeping low company, and was drinking a good deal, and was playing cards late at night.

You cannot think how sorry I was. I could think of no way to help the matter. One night a little boy brought me a note from Mary. She told me in it that her father had had a sudden attack, and wanted to see me right away.

When I got to the house I found him very low with a sort of paralysis. He asked Mary to leave us alone for a while. The moment she left the room he said to me in a hoarse whisper:

"By G—d, he struck her last night!"

We had quite a long talk together. He told me about George growing worse. He had been using foul language to her, but the night before my visit he had dealt her a blow on the temple which stunned her for quite a time. He then left the house, and had not been back since. The poor thing denied all about the blow.

"You see," he said, "I couldn't stand it. I picked up my poor wounded dove, and then fell down myself. I heard the curses, and I heard the blow; and when I saw my sweet little Mary senseless and bleeding on the floor, I felt a cracking of my heart strings. Something, too, broke away in my brain. There he goes, the cowardly beast! Shoot him! Kill him!"

Mary heard the mad shouts of her father and came running into the room with a cry like a wounded hare. She will not admit to this day that her husband ever lifted his hand against her.

The poor, broken-hearted gentleman, Mary's father, died in a few days. I was with him when he died. He got his senses back a few moments before the death-rattle came on. Mary and I were standing by his bedside. With quite an effort he put Mary's hand in mine, turning his glazing eye on me; we could just hear him whisper, "Be a friend to my sweet darling," and then he died.

Now you see how there could be nothing wrong between Mary Wiltern and me, don't you?

George Wiltern came to my house a few days after we had buried Mary's father. He said he had been called off to a distance to attend to some business, but Mary and I knew better than that. We knew why he went away so quick and stayed so long. He knew that Mary's father would have beaten him into atoms for raising his hand against his daughter.

It so happened that I—always a roving, restless sort of a creature—came to this country. Mary had promised to write to me, and so she did, and her letters were as the warble of a bird—of a sad bird, though—of a bird that had lost its mate. Warble is, perhaps, not the word—they were more like the mournful cooing of the wood dove. She was always writing of her dear, dead father. She never penned a hard or harsh word about her husband. Once she thought that she would be very happy if her father was alive and she a girl again, "to pat and kiss him."

Those were the very words, but they were much blurred. I know how it was; she wrote those few words and then paused, while the tears dropped on them. That was what blurred them.

But I had told a friend of mine when I left for this country to let me know how things went with Mary, and through him I found out how badly George Wiltern was acting. It was soon noised abroad how ill he was treating his wife, and the good people around began to shun him. That made him drink the harder. His partner got tired of him and bought him out, and he gambled and drank away all the money he got from his partner; and Mary gave music lessons, and was very busy making tiny little clothes.

Then, a sweet, chubby cherub came along, and when my friend wrote me about it I sent it a coral necklace with a golden cross attached. The thing was not of much value, but I did the best I could. I was poor then in worldly goods. I am poor now, but do not complain.

George Wiltern was not at home when the child was born. He had got in the habit of going away and having long spells of drinking with his bad companions.

You have no idea what a proud girl Mary was—much too proud for her own good. Would you believe it when I tell you that when she and the baby were nearly starving she would make no complaint and spurned everything like aid? God only knows how she eked out a living!

It was about four months after the child was born that she was seen in a neighbor's wagon by the side of a small coffin going to the graveyard.

That night George came home after a week's absence. He was full of liquor. Mary told me all about it, but no one else. He had by degrees pawned or sold everything about the house. He wanted money that night. He began by using foul language and curses. Becoming more angry he raised his arm to strike. It was then that Mary seized a knife.

"George," and she spoke very quietly, but determinedly. "George, you struck me about a year ago, and the blow killed my dear old father. I shall kill you if you strike me again. Go to bed and sleep off your debauch. I buried our baby to-day. You starved the mother, you curdled the baby's milk in its mother's breast. Go to bed; we start on a long journey to-morrow."

The poor woman, after burying the child, had sold what was left of the old farm on which she was born.

When she came to this State and called on me, I asked her how she could live a moment with such a man, and why she did not get rid of him by the law; she said:

"He is my husband. I promised God to take him with all his faults. He did the same thing with me. His father was a bad man and drank hard. George is not as much to blame as you think. He is soft and gentle and loving when not in liquor; and oh! how he has tried to give up drinking! Why he is the father of my poor dead baby. I killed my father by marrying George. I owe a debt to my poor dead father—it is to save George."

How the poor creature lived I do not know. If I offered her out of my poor store she would get angry, and so that I should not see how straightened she was and how she suffered—I think so now, though at the time I was very much hurt—she gave me to understand that she did not wish me to all on her. I know I have given the true reason.

About six months ago a message came to me from a man in gaol; he wanted to see me. No name was given. I went to the gaol, and whom did I see but George Wiltern. He was in rags; his bloated and purple face was a sad sight; he could hardly talk from shivering. He had been picked up as a common drunkard, and, unable to pay his fine, had been sentenced to the chain gang. I thought it very strange that he did not ask me to procure his release, and when I proposed it, he said no—that the chain gang was the lowest infamy and he wished to plumb it. Those were his words, and he said he would serve out his term and then leave the country. Of course, he said, he could never see his wife again. He begged me to help her along and see that she did not suffer too much.

Well, I managed so that he came away from the gaol that very day. But what seemed very strange, from that time till to-day I never heard a word from George or Mary, although I made all kinds of searches and inquiries.

And now I will let Mary tell her story. After I placed her in the chair she had to go through a course of crying. All women do that, you know. She composed herself after awhile, and then began:

"Yes, Mr. Thurston, you can't think how happy I am, and I'll tell you all about it. George never told me, but I knew all the time who rescued him from the chain gang. I don't intend to thank you for the good act. Well, George came to our little hovel that day; and, oh! such a sight. He was shaking like a leaf, and all over filth, and his clothes as ragged as a beggar's.

"He said to me: 'Mary, do not be afraid of me. I killed your baby. I have stripped you of everything you had in the world. Three nights ago I came here and found you asleep; I stole your frock and only chemise and pawned them for grog. You haven't been able to leave the house since. You are starving. See how pinched your cheeks are. I do not come to make excuses. You have never reproached your beastly husband Mary, give me that coral necklace and cross of our dead baby. Give them to me, or I shall kill myself right before you."

"I never saw him look so before. There was a gleam about his eye that made me think he was mad. It may have been from fear, but I took your present from the string by which it hung in my bosom.

"He snatched it as a hungry dog does a bone, and left me without another word. Somebody sent me clothes and food, and got me some sewing to do. I know who it was; God knows, too—I, and God, and he who saved a poor, wretched woman from starving. And a long month passed away.

"I never thought I should see George again I thought he could not live a week, for he left me so haggard and worn and thin, and his eyes were bloodshot. If he lived, I thought he must be mad and in the mad asylum. And then came a letter postmarked far away in the mountains; and the letter was from George—my own dead George, whom I still loved. Here it is; read it.

And the letter was in this wise:

"My own dear, abused, and suffering wife,—If I should fall on my knees at your feet, and remained there for an eternity, I could not pour out sorrow enough for my cruelties to you. I cannot repeat them, for they make me shudder; I cannot ask your forgiveness: I only beg your pity. I have yet our baby's necklace and cross. I took them from you as my only hope. The night I was in prison I thought of them. They were the only things I had not robbed you of. I had a dream, in my filth and rags, that night. Our little baby boy came to me—he was so white, and pure, and smiling!—and he nestled in my dirty arms, and put his little face to mine, and kissed me; and the little sweet thing spoke to me: 'Come along, papa, we will go and see mamma, and beg of her my necklace and cross; and you must were them next to your heart, and God will give you strength to be good.' This was my dream in gaol—in filth and vermin. And when they told me I was free, I ran to our wretched hovel. You know how desperate I looked and acted there. And I tore away a shred of my coat and arranged that the cross should hang right over my heart. A fearful thirst that was burning in my soul drove me along to one of my old haunts, for I was shaking as one with the ague, from my old debauch. An old comrade, as low, and filthy, and ragged and degraded as I, begged me to enter and drink; and I had a full glass of the poison to my lips. Then I felt on my heart the pressure of the chain and cross, and I dashed the glass untasted to the ground, and rushed away into the street; and I walked on, and on, until the first-gray dawn. Wearied, I fell rather than lay, down—and my sweet white baby kissed me again, and prattled to me and told me to hold that dear necklace and cross in my hand, and to pray to God for strength. Awakening, I did pray as I held them in my hands. I am now in the mountains, Mary; am working hard, and good friends have come about me, and I am decently clothed and cleanly. I do not ask you to forgive me yet. I may never ask it. I do not ask you to call me husband. When I feel my strength and courage failing me, as it does sometimes, I put my hand in my bosom and convulsively clutch that coral necklace and that golden cross, and I am brave and resolute again. I have blighted your life, and may the good God forgive me. Do not be afraid to take and use the small sum I send you; it is the honest earnings of a sober man. It is the pittance of the large amount your husband has robbed you. God bless you, Mary! and God forgive the wrongs done you by a drunken husband."

"Well," says Mary Wiltern, as I finished the letter and handed it back to her, "what do you think of that? Did you ever read anything so loving and kind? I did not tell you that I was going away to George; oh no; I intended to wait until my husband had gained the victory. I knew he needed his Mary for solace and strength; and I went to the mountains and found George just as he wrote, working away; but so sad and sorry. And his fellow workmen did not laugh when I ran up to him and kissed him and put my hand in his bosom and took out the necklace and cross and kissed them; so far from it, that his old employer, standing by, turned aside his head; and when he again turned his eyes toward us they were filled with tears. And George has kept his vow to God. And I have woven a chain from my own hair, and it holds our baby's necklace and cross right over his heart. And he is so good and kind to me, and more attentive than when he was my sweetheart before we were married. And he is working so hard, and everybody up in the mountains seems to love us so much. And every night, when we have said our prayers together, George pulls out of his bosom that dear treasure of the necklace and cross, and we kiss it together, and ask baby to beg the Saviour to give poor papa heart and strength for his new life. You can't tell how happy we are, except that George is too sad at times when we are alone. I know what he is thinking about, but I won't let him say anything; I stop his mouth with kisses. He never did me any wrong, poor fellow. It was not George, but the drink that crazed him, that made me shed so many tears. George was innocent.

"And then we could not rest, either of us, until I should make this long trip to thank a certain gentleman for all his kindness to us. You, you saved George and Mary Wiltern. Do not be afraid George will ever drink again, so long as baby's necklace and cross are swinging over his big, good heart.

"I am going away to-morrow. I must hurry back to my dear George. I only came down to see you."

I am afraid I was foolish enough to cry just a little in some parts of Mary's narrative. But, then, she is the child of one of my best and earliest friends. I do not think George Wiltern will ever drink again.

Warragul Guardian, Thursday 7 April 1881, supplement page 2.