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The Bride
By M. P. Shiel
“He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter”
—Job.
They met at Krupp and Mason’s, musical-instrument-makers, of Little
Britain, E.C., where Walter had been employed two years, and then came
Annie to typewrite, and be serviceable. They began to “go out” together
after six o’clock; and when Mrs. Evans, Annie’s mamma, lost her lodger,
Annie mentioned it, and Walter went to live with them at No. 13 Culford
Road, N.; by which time Annie and Walter might almost be said to have
been engaged. His salary, however, was only thirty shillings a week.
He was the thorough Cockney, Walter; a well-set-up person of thirty,
strong-shouldered, with a square brow, a moustache, and black
acne-specks in his nose and pale face.
It was on the night of his arrival at No. 13, that he for the first time saw
Rachel, Annie’s younger sister. Both girls, in fact, were named
“Rachel”—after a much-mourned mother of Mrs. Evans’; but Annie Rachel
was called “Annie,” and Mary Rachel was called “Rachel.” Rachel helped
Walter at the handle of his box to the top-back room, and here, in the
lamplight he was able to see that she was a tallish girl, with hair almost
black, and with a sprinkling of freckles on her very white, thin nose, on the
tip of which stood collected, usually, some little sweats. She was
thin-faced, and her top teeth projected a little so that her lips only closed
with effort, she not so pretty as pink-and-white little Annie, though one
could guess, at a glance, that she was a person more to be respected.
“What do you think of him?” said Annie, meeting Rachel as she came
down.
“He seems a nice fellow,” Rachel said: “rather goodlooking. And strong
in the back, you bet.”
Walter spent that evening with them in the area front-room, smoking a
foul bulldog pipe, which slushed and gurgled to his suction; and at once
Mrs. Evans, a dark old lady without waist, all sighs and lack of breath,
decided that he was “a gentlemanly, decent fellow.” When bed-time came
he made the proposal to lead them in prayer; and to this they submitted,
 
Annie having forewarned them that he was “a Christian.” As he climbed to
his room, the devoted girl found an excuse to slip out after him, and in the
passage of the first floor there was a little kiss.
“Only one,’’ she said, with an uplifted finger.
“And what about his little brother, then?” he chuckled—a chuckle with
which all his jokes were accompanied: a kind of guttural chuckle, which
seemed to descend or stick straining in the throat, instead of rising to the
lips.
“You go on,” she said playfully, tapped his cheek, and ran down. So
Walter slept for the first night at Mrs. Evans’.
On the whole, as time passed, he had a good deal of the society of the
women: for the theatre was a thing abominable to him, and in the
evenings he stayed in the underground parlour, sharing the
bread-and-cheese supper, and growing familiar with the sighs of Mrs.
Evans over her once estate in the world. Rachel, the silent, sewed; Annie,
whose relation with Walter was still unannounced, though perhaps
guessed, could play hymn-tunes on the old piano, and she played. Last of
all, Walter laid down the inveterate wet pipe, led them in prayer, and went
to bed. Most mornings he and Annie set out together for Little Britain.
There came a day when he confided to her his intention to ask for a rise
of “screw,” and when this was actually promised by His Terror, the Boss,
there was joy in heaven, and radiance in futurity, and secret talks of rings,
a wedding, “a Home.” Annie felt herself not far from the kingdom of
Hymen, and rejoiced. But nothing, as yet, was said at No. 13: for to Mrs.
Evans’ past grandeurs thirty shillings a week was felt to be inappropriate.
The nest Sunday, however, soon after dinner, this strangeness occurred:
Rachel, the silent, disappeared. Mrs. Evans called for her, Annie called,
but it was found that she was not in the house, though the putting away of
the dinner-things, her usual task, was only half accomplished. Not till
tea-time did Rachel return. She was then cold, and somewhat sullen, and
somewhat pale, her lips closing firmly over her projecting teeth. When
timidly questioned—for her resentment was greatly feared— she replied
that she had just been looking in upon Alice Soulsby, a few squares away,
for a little chat: and this was the truth.
It was not, however, the whole truth; she had also looked in at the
Church Lane Sunday School on her way: and this fact she guiltily
concealed. For half an hour she had sat darkly at the end of the building in
a corner, listening to the “address.” This address was delivered by Walter.
To this school every Sunday, after dinner, he put down the beloved pipe to
 
go. He was in fact, its ‘‘superintendent.”
After this, the tone and temper of the little household rapidly changed,
and a true element of hell was introduced into its platitude. It became,
first of all, a question whether or not Rachel could be “experiencing
religion,” a thing which her mother and Annie had never dreamt of
expecting of her. Praying people, and the Salvationist, had always been the
contempt of her strong and callous mind. But on Sunday nights she was
now observed to go out alone, and “chapel” was the explanation which she
coolly gave. Which chapel she did not specify: but in reality it was the
Newton Street Hall, at which Walter frequently exhorted and “prayed.” In
the Church Lane schoolroom there was prayer-meeting on Thursday
evenings; and twice within one month Rachel sallied forth on Thursday
evening—soon after Walter. The secret disease which preyed upon the
poor girl could hardly now be concealed. At first she suffered bitter,
solitary shame; sobbed in a hundred paroxysms; hoped to draw a veil over
her infirmity. But her gash was too glaring. In the long Sabbath evenings
of summer he preached at Street corners, and sometimes secretly,
sometimes openly, Rachel would attend these meetings, singing meekly
with the rest the undivine hymns of the modern evangelist. In his
presence, in the parlour, on other nights, she quietly sewed, hardly
speaking. When, at 7 p.m., she heard his key in the front door her heart
darted toward its master; when in the morning he flew away to business
her universe was cinders.
“It’s a wonder to me what’s coming to our Rachel lately,” said Annie in
the train, coming home; “you’re doing her soul good, or something, aren’t
you?”
He chuckled, with slushy suction-sounds about the back of the tongue
and molars.
“Oh, that be jiggered for a tale!” line said: “she’s all right.”
“I know her better than you, you see. She’s quite changed— since you’ve
come. Looks to me as if she’s having a touch of the blues, or something.”
“Poor thing! She wants looking after, don’t she?” Annie laughed, too:
but less brutally, more uneasily. Walter said: “But she oughtn’t to have the
blues, if she’s giving her heart to the Lord! People seem to think a
Christian must be this and that. A Christian, if it comes to that, ought to
be the jolliest fellow going!”
This was on a Thursday, the night of the Church Lane prayer-meeting,
and Walter had only time to rush in at No. 13, wash his face, snatch his
Bible, and be off. Rachel, for her part, must verily now have been badly
 
bitten with the rabies of love, or she would have felt that to follow to-night,
for the third time lately, could not fail to incur remark. But this
consideration never even entered a mind now completely blinded and
entranced by the personality of Walter. Through the day her work about
the house had been rushed forward with this very object, and at the
moment when he banged the door after him she was before her glass,
dressing in blanched, intense and trembling flurry, and casting as she bent
to give the last touches to her fringe, a look of bitterest hate at the
projection of her lip above the teeth.
This night, for the first time, she waited in the chapel till the end of the
service, and walked slowly homeward on the way which she knew that
Walter would take; and he came striding presently, that morocco Bible in
his hand, nearly every passage in which was neatly under-ruled in black
and red inks.
“What, is that you?” he said, taking into his a hand cold with sweat.
“It is,” she answered, in a hard, formal tone.
“You don’t mean to say you’ve been to the meeting?”
“I do.”
“Why, where were my eyes? I didn’t see you.”
“It isn’t likely that you would want to, Mr. Teeger.”
“Go on—drop that! What do you take me for? I’m only too glad! And I
tell you what it is, Miss Rachel, I say to you as the Lord Jesus said to the
young man: ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven.’ ”
She was in it!—near him, alone, in a darkling square, yet suffering, too,
in the flames of a passion such as perhaps consumes only the strongest
natures.
She caught for support at his unoffered arm; and when he bent his
steps straight homeward, she said trembling violently: “I don’t wish to go
home as yet. I wish to have a little walk. Do you mind, Mr. Teeger?”
“Mind, no. Come along, then,” and they went walking among an
intricacy of streets and squares, he talking of “the Work,” and of common
subjects. After half an hour, she was saying: “I often wish I was a man. A
man can say and do what he likes; but with a girl it’s different. There’s
you, now, Mr. Teeger, always out and about, having people listening to
you, and that. I often wish I was only a man.”
“Oh, well, it all depends how you look at it,” he said. “And, look here,
you may as well call me Walter and be done.”
 
“Oh, I shouldn’t think of that,” she replied. “Not till—”
Her hand trembled on his arm.
“Well, out with it, why don’t you?”
“Till—till we know something more definite about you— and Annie.”
He chuckled slushily, she now leading him fleetly round and round a
square.
“Ah, you girls again!” he cried, “been blabbing again like all the girls! It
takes a bright man to hide much from them, don’t it?”
“But there isn’t much to hide in this case, as far as I can see—is there?”
Always Walter laughed, straining deep in the throat. He said: “Oh,
come—that would be telling, wouldn’t it?”
After a minute’s stillness, this treacherous phrase came from Rachel:
“Annie doesn’t care for anyone, Mr. Teeger.”
“Oh, come—that’s rather a tall order, any one. She’s all right.”
“But she doesn’t. Of course, most girls are silly, and that, and like to get
married—”
“Well, that’s only nature, ain’t it?”
This was a joke; and downward the laugh strained in his throat, like
struggling phlegm.
“Yes, but they don’t understand what love is,” said Rachel.
“They haven’t an idea. They like to be married women, and have a
husband, and that. But they don’t know what love is— believe me! The
men don’t either.”
How she trembled!—her body, her dying voice—she pressing heavily
upon him, while the moon triumphed now through cloud glaring a
moment white on the lunacy of her ghostly face.
“Well, I don’t know—I think I understand, lass, what it is,” he said.
“You don’t, Mr. Teeger!”
“How’s that, then?”
“Because, when it takes you, it makes you—”
“Well, let’s have it. You seem to know all about it.”
Now Rachel commenced to tell him what ‘‘it’’ was—in frenzied
definitions, and a power of expression strange for her. It was a lunacy, its
name was Legion, it was possession by the furies; it was a spasm in the
 

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