Simmons's infamous behaviour toward his wife is still matter for profound
wonderment among the neighbours. The other women had all along regarded
him as a model husband, and certainly Mrs. Simmons was a most conscientious
wife. She toiled and slaved 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 he had suddenly gone mad.
Before she married Simmons, Mrs. Simmons had been 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 widow woman 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 fall for a capable
engine-fitter. Twelve years as Mrs. Ford had left her still childless, and childless
she 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, and he wanted
one. Nobody could tell what might not have happened to Tommy Simmons if
there had been no Mrs. Simmons to take care of him. He was a meek and quiet
man, with a boyish face and sparse, limp whiskers. He had no vices (even his
pipe departed him after his marriage), and Mrs. Simmons had ingrafted on him
divers exotic virtues. He went solemnly to chapel every Sunday, under a tall hat,
and put a penny—one returned to him for the purpose out of his week's wages—
in the plate. Then, Mrs. Simmons overseeing, he took off his 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 Tuesday 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 cleanliness in housewifery was distracting to behold.
She met Simmons at the front door whenever he came home, and then and there
he changed his boots for slippers, balancing himself painfully on alternate feet on
the cold flags. This was because she scrubbed the passage and door-step turn
about with the wife of the downstairs family, and because the stair-carpet was
her own. She vigilantly supervised her husband all through the process of
"cleaning himself" after work, so as to come between her walls and the possibility
of random 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
