Chapter III

"_WOULD IT NOT BE POSSIBLE TO GET RID OF
THE BABY?_"

It was past ten o'clock when Timbs tottered home, and threw himself on the bed. The children, even Molly and Patty, were asleep, tired out. The new baby never stirred; the drunkard lay like a log, and the dead woman rested best of all. The moon shone in on the white face of the dead, on the bloated face of the drunkard, on the evil faces of the children, who might have been looking like little angels just now but for his sin. The moon passed on, and for a short time the room was in darkness; then the twilight before the dawn appeared, making objects ghastly and uncertain; then the dawn, then the full light of day. Contrary to his wont, Timbs was the first to wake. His head ached less than usual that morning, his brain was less confused; in short, he was more himself, and more capable of understanding and taking in the scene he was about to witness. He had been dreaming, in a confused sort of way, of his wife--of his wife as she used to be years ago. A pretty, rosy-faced woman was Sally Timbs in those days, and Timbs was proud of her. In his dream, which only lasted a few moments, he had recrossed the abyss, and stood once more on the old solid ground. In his dream, he was back again in the days when the Dolphin did not know him, nor he the Dolphin. He had a comfortable home, and Molly and Patty were pretty children, with curling hair and bright faces.

He awoke from this dream with the word "wife" on his lips. I think, had she been alive then he would have given her a kind word. Would to God his dream had come to him yesterday! He said "Wife," and then lay still; for a brief half-instant, after awaking, he lay still--he had really forgotten that he was not what he dreamed he was, a prosperous and successful man: when the knowledge returned to him, which of course it did very quickly, he still lay without moving; he was busy sending back the dream, which had been pleasant, but was now hideous, into some far recesses of his memory.

Then he moaned uneasily, said "Wife" in a harsher key: his morning headache was returning to him; she should get up and make him a cup of tea.

Why did not she stir? He saw her outline quite distinct under the thin counterpane. How sound she was sleeping! He was about to give her a push--a push a trifle less hard than usual, but still a push--when something, he knew not what, seemed to stay his hand; he sat up and looked at her.

When Timbs looked at his dead wife, he also looked all his sins full in the face.

He knew instantly what had happened. He darted out of bed, and fell on his knees, not to pray--he had never prayed in his life--but because he trembled so, he could not stand. The dead face, pinched, drawn, and white, had a fascination for him.

He touched it with his trembling fingers; he longed intensely to get away from it, and yet he could not stir. His knees felt bound with irons to the floor; his hands must, whether he liked it or not, touch that cold cheek; his eyes must rest on his wife's dead face. And all the time he was looking also at his sins. He knew that he had killed Sally; that he had finished the work the Dolphin had set him to do. He had committed murder!

His thoughts took no connected form, for his mind was too much gone, and even this shock failed to clear that muddled brain; but he felt horrible, and he knew that he deserved hell. Sally was dead; lying stiff by his side all night a corpse had been, and he had been dreaming of his wife as rosy-faced and beautiful. He had awakened and felt thirsty, and thought that he would order her up to make him a cup of tea. Even in dying that patient woman would have struggled to obey him; but now she was dead. He might storm at her now, but she would not heed him; he might beat her now, but she would not feel his blows. Sally was too great for him at last. She had passed beyond his power--she was dead!

He had killed her; he and the Dolphin had worn her to what she was. She was dead, and he deserved hell.

These, though hardly in sustained thought, but in confusion frightful as a nightmare, were some of the sensations of this poor lost wretch.

After a time his bodily thirst overcame his mental pain, and he stumbled to his feet, and looked about him for something to drink. The kettle, placed by Molly there the night before, still hung over the ashes in the grate.

He took a draught from it eagerly, drinking from the spout.

As he set it down again he heard an infant's cry. The feeble, sharp cry of a new-born baby smote on his ear. A strange look came into his face at that cry--a new expression which he had certainly not worn a moment before. Then he had been at the verge of remorse, of sorrow, of repentance; a word, a touch, almost a look, would have taken the man then into the Valley of Humiliation, through which and the Shadow of Death he might have passed into a new life; but at the baby's cry the agony on his face gave way to an expression of selfishness and cunning.

There was another mouth to be fed, and he must feed it; there was another child to take from the Dolphin's spoils. He pictured the whole state of affairs vividly enough now. The wife who worked so hard, and earned far more than he of late had earned, was gone, and Molly and Patty would persecute him for money to buy milk and food for this fresh and unwelcome mouth.

The older children might manage as they could, but the baby must take from his spoils and lessen his enjoyment.

Would it not be possible for him to get rid of the baby!

Not to take away its life, but to hand it over to the State. He had heard of such things being done. He could carry the new baby to the workhouse--not to a very near workhouse--and leave him there. Just outside the workhouse doors, in a place where he would be certain to be seen, he could leave him. He never thought of a search being instituted--of the missing child being asked for; his brain was too much addled, too much confused, to connect danger to himself in the act.

He considered the idea a cunning and clever one; an idea by which he could get rid of this unwelcome addition to his family.

And the baby would be provided for by the State; much better off too; he rubbed his hands over the thought.

By this time his transient sorrow for Sally had departed, and he was only anxious to take away the baby before the other children should awake.

Molly, stretched on some straw on the floor, slept, too weary to stir; and the new baby lay in her arms and cried. He was hungry, and, deprived of his mother's love and mother's care, life in its first dawning was hardly pleasant to him.

Timbs had no difficulty in removing the baby from Molly's arms. He wrapped a tattered shawl about him, and laid him down, while he fumbled for his own hat, by the side of the dead woman.

The dead mother's face had a smile on it, and even in death she would have welcomed her child; the father, all the heart in him swallowed up by the Dolphin, now in life rejected him.

It was not five o'clock yet, when Timbs, carrying the baby, went out.

There were few people about; he chose unfrequented paths; he was hardly noticed.

The little bundle in his arms, soothed by the motion, forgot its hunger, and went to sleep.

Timbs selected a workhouse quite in the east-end, and a long way off.

Outside the heavy and dreary black doors he laid the baby.