It was late when we reached the public-house on the occasion to which we now allude, and the evening was dark and rainy. It was then the end of January, and it might have been about six o’clock. We knew that we should not find Mackenzie at the public-house; but it was probable that Mrs. Grimes could send for him, or, at least, could make the appointment for us. We went into the little parlour, where she was seated with her husband, and we could immediately see, from the countenance of both of them, that something was amiss. We began by telling Mrs. Grimes that the Doctor had come to town. “Mackenzie aint here, Sir,” said Mrs. Grimes, and we almost thought that the very tone of her voice was altered. We explained that we had not expected to find him at that hour, and asked if she could send for him. She only shook her head. Grimes was standing with his back to the fire and his hands in his trousers pockets. Up to this moment he had not spoken a word. We asked if the man was drunk. She again shook her head. Could she bid him to come to us tomorrow, and bring the box and the papers with him? Again she shook her head.
“I’ve told her that I won’t have no more of it,” said Grimes; “nor yet I won’t. He was drunk this morning—as drunk as an owl.”
“He was sober, John, as you are, when he came for the papers this afternoon at two o’clock.” So the box and the papers had all been taken away!
“And she was here yesterday rampaging about the place, without as much clothes on as would cover her nakedness,” said Mr. Grimes. “I won’t have no more of it. I’ve done for that man what his own flesh and blood wouldn’t do. I know that; and I won’t have no more of it. Mary Anne, you’ll have that table cleared out after breakfast tomorrow.” When a man, to whom his wife is usually Polly, addresses her as Mary Anne, then it may be surmised that that man is in earnest. We knew that he was in earnest, and she knew it also.
“He wasn’t drunk, John—no, nor yet in liquor, when he come and took away that box this afternoon.” We understood this reiterated assertion. It was in some sort excusing to us her own breach of trust in having allowed the manuscript to be withdrawn from her own charge, or was assuring us that, at the worst, she had not been guilty of the impropriety of allowing the man to take it away when he was unfit to have it in his charge. As for blaming her, who could have thought of it? Had Mackenzie at any time chosen to pass downstairs with the box in his hands, it was not to be expected that she should stop him violently. And now that he had done so we could not blame her; but we felt that a great weight had fallen upon our own hearts. If evil should come to the manuscript would not the Doctor’s wrath fall upon us with a crushing weight? Something must be done at once. And we suggested that it would be well that somebody should go round to Cucumber Court. “I’d go as soon as look,” said Mrs. Grimes, “but he won’t let me.”
“You don’t stir a foot out of this tonight;—not that way,” said Mr. Grimes.
“Who wants to stir?” said Mrs. Grimes.
We felt that there was something more to be told than we had yet heard, and a great fear fell upon us. The woman’s manner to us was altered, and we were sure that this had come not from altered feelings on her part, but from circumstances which had frightened her. It was not her husband that she feared, but the truth of something that her husband had said to her. “If there is anything more to tell, for God’s sake tell it,” we said, addressing ourselves rather to the man than to the woman. Then Grimes did tell us his story. On the previous evening Mackenzie had received three or four sovereigns from Mrs. Grimes, being, of course, a portion of the Doctor’s payments; and early on that morning all Liquorpond Street had been in a state of excitement with the drunken fury of Mackenzie’s wife. She had found her way into the Spotted Dog, and was being actually extruded by the strength of Grimes himself—of Grimes, who had been brought down, half dressed, from his bedroom by the row—when Mackenzie himself, equally drunk, appeared upon the scene. “No, John;—not equally drunk,” said Mrs. Grimes. “Bother!” exclaimed her husband, going on with his story. The man had struggled to take the woman by the arm, and the two had fallen and rolled in the street together. “I was looking out of the window, and it was awful to see,” said Mrs. Grimes. We felt that it was “awful to hear.” A man—and such a man, rolling in the gutter with a drunken woman—himself drunk—and that woman his wife! “There aint to be no more of it at the Spotted Dog; that’s all,” said John Grimes, as he finished his part of the story.
Then, at last, Mrs. Grimes became voluble. All this had occurred before nine in the morning. “The woman must have been at it all night,” she said. “So must the man,” said John. “Anyways he came back about dinner, and he was sober then. I asked him not to go up, and offered to make him a cup of tea. It was just as you’d gone out after dinner, John.”
“He won’t have no more tea here,” said John.
“And he didn’t have any then. He wouldn’t, he said, have any tea, but went upstairs. What was I to do? I couldn’t tell him as he shouldn’t. Well;—during the
