The Son

I

SHE had been its sole occupant for so long that she had come to think of the house as her own. Its lofty echoing rooms did not abash her; no terrors disputed her right to mount the grand staircase which through the height of the five stories circled above the marble-paved hall. With her candle — for she was conscientious in her trust, and the little light of a candle seemed more economical than the electric light — she went her last round, peering at the shutter bolts, tweaking the curtains to make sure that no moth lurked there, opening the deep empty wardrobes, turning up this switch or that to see that the bulbs had not perished, sniffing for damp, pausing sometimes to rub a fly stain off the gildings or to lift the dust sheet from a couch and beat up its cushions; and then, descending to the basement again, with its warm inhabited smell of gas, and cooking, and yellow soap, and vinegar, she would scrape together the last coals in the grate, recertify herself of the back door fastenings, stroke once or twice the sleepy cat, and go to her bed — contented, knowing that all was well, all in good order.

For they might come back at any moment, back to the house so long ago and so sweepingly abandoned that now they only existed there as a possibility, as a something of which it had been said, ‘They might come back.’

Twenty-one years ago Lucy Abbott had stood before Mrs. Henriquez, receiving her last instructions.

‘Our solicitors, Cox and Thompson, will pay you your money quarterly. If anything goes wrong, let them know. And if any repairs are necessary, have them seen to and send t he bill to them. Here is the address. And get the parrot’s food from the forage department at Whiteley’s.’

Lucy Abbott, a widow, who went out charing by the day and sometimes looked at a magazine in the evening, was too grateful for her good fortune to speculate as to how and why it had come to her. To be a caretaker — to have a certain wage, and a certain roof over her head, and a position which freed her from the scoldings of cooks and housekeepers, the attentions of butlers and footmen — this was an ambition which she had never even attempted; for as a rule a caretaker is expected to have a husband — and she was a widow, and resolved never to marry again.

‘Very good, madam,’ she had said, too respectful to say more, though afterward she had reproached herself that no word of gratitude had escaped from her reserve. And so she had left the room. Three days later the family started in a fog for the south of France, and she saw no more the figures at all times but obscurely seen — through opening doors, or moving below on the marble pavement while she polished the stair rods high above them: Mr. Henriquez and Mrs. Henriquez, and Mrs. Ezra with her three little girls, and young Mr. Henriquez, dark, florid, romantic — though not quite so young as, imbedded in that family life, he appeared to be, since the glossy head seen from above was beginning to go bald.

She had never been one to gossip with servants; thus, though she had been the charwoman at No. 51 for three years, — indeed, it was from scrubbing the back area there that she had crawled home, one glittering May afternoon, to have her miscarriage, — she knew little of her employers beyond their names and the sound of their voices. Their belongings were more real to her than they.

With the superb nomadic improvidence of their race, they had left the house almost as they had lived in it. The plate and the more valuable knickknacks were sent to the bank, but the pictures still hung on the walls, the medicine bottles crowded the shelf in Mr. Henriquez’s dressing room, the nursery cupboard was full of toys, strings of beads and used kid gloves lay jumbled together on Mrs. Ezra’s bureau, the fifteen divers-colored cushions billowed on young Mr. Henriquez’s divan, and above them the cigar cabinet was still half-full of cigars. The linen press held linen fine and plentiful enough for a palace; in the wine cellar Château Lafite and Château Yquem matured and dwindled from their secret primes. A perambulator stood in the back lobby, and every night the parrot’s cage was covered over with the remains of a wadded satin dressing gown which had been worn by Mrs. Henriquez. A dim, musty, whispering scent still touched the air as the heavy folds settled into place over the silent, gaudy bird.

In London, does one wish it, one can lead as nowhere else a life perfectly separate and unknown. Lucy Abbott did so wish. She was afraid of mankind; but it was mankind in the guise of some close fellow creature who might make her unhappy that she feared — a fear which rendered her insensible to the ordinary womanish terrors of living alone. By the end of six months she had so ordered her life that for days together she was under no obligation to exchange a word with any human being. Her train of life was so regular that even when she went shopping in the back streets that crouched among the mansions of the quarter there was little need for her to open her lips. The woman at the dairy knew that, if it was Tuesday, half a dozen eggs were what she required; if Friday, half a pound of butter. The butcher, the baker, the grocer, the fishmonger, the greengrocer, could tell beforehand when she would appear and what she would want; and, being so regular a customer, she was well served, for all the modesty of her purchases, so that she was seldom obliged to rebuke or remonstrate.

Once a fortnight she visited the forage department of Whiteley’s for the parrot food, and on her way thither she would give threepence to the blind man at the corner; and twice a year she had in the sweep for the kitchen chimney. She never went to church, for the experience of life which had taught her to fear man had not taught her to love God. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons in winter she would walk as far as the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, where she threw a week’s accumulation of crusts and bacon rinds to the ducks and sea gulls and watched for a minute or two the toy yachts lying over under the wind. From these excursions she would walk briskly home, her thoughts gone before her to the clear kitchen fire where, since it was Sunday, she would make toast for tea; and running down the area steps, as the accustomed bulk of the great house reared and darkened above her, she would rejoice with an obscure gladness that she was home again. The gas lit, — for there was no electric light in the basement, — the parrot would begin to sidle toward her on his perch, shrieking and flapping his wings, and the cat, rising with dignity, would stretch itself, and proceed to the corner where its saucer of milk was always set down for it.

In summer she did not even go so far as the Round Pond, for with her regular life she had grown stout, and walking upon hot pavements made her feet ache. Instead, she would go upstairs to the drawing-room and sit by the open window with her crochet lace. The sparrows chattered on the balcony, across the road in No. 46 someone would be playing the piano, and presently the church bells would ring. Behind her the room would begin to darken; in the houses opposite, this window and that would light up, and from the open casements sounds would come of knives and forks rattling against plates, and after that, from the basements, the sounds of washing up. She could see to work no longer, and from the area, where his cage was set out, she could hear the parrot shriek for company.

‘I must go down,’ she would think, making no move. For now the room behind her was completely dark, and the languid voluptuous evening flowed into it like a caress, like an enchantment, so that she seemed to be no longer Lucy Abbott, the caretaker, but some grand sad lady whose satin skirts lay silent around her, whose mind was filled with lofty and impalpable regrets. All was lost, but all was well. Footsteps sounded on the pavement beneath; sometimes the smell of a cigar floated up; sometimes soldiers marched by, for it was war time. The parrot shrieked again, his cry piercing the air like a shaft of light piercing water. There she sat, Lucy Abbott, alone in her great house, hidden, solitary, unsurmised as a thought, waiting for the moon to rise, waiting for them to come back, waiting for she knew not what.

II

So twenty-one years had gone by. The first cat had died, and after a while she had adopted a kitten; and when the kitten had grown to be a cat, and was dead in its turn, another kitten was adopted. During the war she had given up crochet and knitted socks instead; and once a policeman came about the lighting regulations, and the bread was dark, and shopping had been complicated with coupons; and after the war there were fireworks in Hyde Park, but she had not gone to see them. Once she had had influenza, and twice the pipes had frozen. That was all. To look back on, it was not much.

But now’ it was all over, and she knew not what was to come. For the twentieth time she reread the telegram : —

RETURNING TO-NIGHT.

ALBERT HENRIQUEZ

Albert. That was young Mr. Henriquez. The overheard voice of Mrs. Henriquez traveled out of the past, saying contentedly: ‘Albert is a good boy. I have never had any trouble with him.’ Crumbling bread through a sieve for the bread sauce, for a partridge seemed the best t hing to buy for a gentleman dining alone, she tried to recall him, but nothing came back with certainty except the aspect of that glossy head with the little bald circle on its crown. Yet, though she could not recall him, it was he whom she remembered, it was he whom she had expected. He had stood behind her in the obscurity of the drawing-room; it was the smell of his cigar which had floated up to her; dark, florid, and romantic, it was he whom she had waited for all these years, knowing that he would come back. They were all a lovely family, but he was the loveliest of them. Once, when she was scrubbing the front steps, he had come out of the house and, seeing her, he had raised his hat and said, ’How do you do, Mrs. Abbott.’ And now, for one night at any rate, he would be hers, and she should minister to him.

The impulse seized her and, though she was tired with running about ever since the telegram came, she left the crumbs and hoisted her aging body up the three flights of stairs to his room. It was all in readiness — the fire burned nimbly, the curtains were drawn, the fifteen cushions were plumped up, the shaded reading lamp threw a deeper shadow into the lap of the marble woman with no clothes on. It looked just the same as ever; it looked as though he had been there all the time. A thin tarnish of fog was in the warm room — perhaps the windows were not quite closed. She pulled aside the curtain, and the light, striking obliquely upon the pane, showed her a word written in small silver characters close under the crossbar. Jnfelix. She had never noticed it before, and what did it mean? He must have written it, scratching the glass with his diamond ring; for she could remember now that he always wore a diamond ring. Perhaps it was the name of a lady.

Oh, but she could recall him perfectly! From that diamond ring a whole recollection flowered. Only he would not look quite like that now. Twenty-one years are bound to make a difference, even to a man.

But when he came, bringing the fog into the closed house with him, he was so greatly changed that no expectation of change could have preoarcd her for what she saw. He was pale and corpulent, he had false teeth and wore a wig, and his clothes — he who had used to be such a dandy — were slovenly put on, and did not seem to fit him. Under the dark melancholy eyes were great pouches of discolored flesh, such as one sees on the faces of certain birds. But that was not all. Young Mr. Henriquez had been affable and debonair; he had not been the sort of gentleman to trouble himself about anything; an air of sheltered ease, of feline well-being, had clothed all his movements as it clothes the movements of a prospered house cat. But this Mr. Henriquez had a cold in his head, he shivered, and kept on his overcoat, and the match, which he struck to light another cigar, fell from his fingers and charred a hole in the doormat, while he stood glancing about the hall as if something lay in wait there.

‘Well, Mrs. Abbott. You see I remember your name.’

‘I’m sure I’m much honored, sir.’

‘After all these years, what? How long is it?’

‘Twenty-one years, sir, almost to a day.’

“ It’s cold. This floor ought to have a carpet on it, a thick Chinese carpet.’

“I’ve lit a fire in the dining room, sir, and in your sitting room and bedroom. And I have prepared some dinner, sir.’

Three fires and a dinner — in the stress of the last few excited hours it had seemed to her that she was preparing a most lavish and splendid welcome, but now she doubted and was abashed. Three fires could not do much to warm the empty house, and of course a dinner like hers would be no novelty to him. It was a sad home-coming, poor gentleman! It was not to be wondered at if he looked cowed and ill-content. After twenty-one years he had come back alone to the house of his splendid days, and there was no one to welcome him but the caretaker. Her little taper of remembrance, how could it lighten him? How should he warm himself at such a welcome as hers? No wonder he seemed loth to go forward. For he still stood on the large mat, glancing about the hall as though something lay in wait there, peering up at the darkened skylight so high above, following the ascent of the stairs as though he waited for someone to come down them.

She, who for all these years had dwelt alone and unafraid, suddenly began to feel oppressed by the house, opening out its vistas of solitude all around them. It was as though with his coming fear had come too — his fear, his melancholy. And she called back the being of the house in the old days, full of people, full of doings, flowers, lights, company, music and laughter, no expense spared; a glorious order, sustained and dominated by the imperious commands, the untiring, unyielding sway of Mrs. Henriquez — moulded, as it were, and propelled onward by the impulse of her sweet heavy voice. If she, the servant, thus recalled the mistress, how much more acutely must he now be recalling the mother! And he was always such a devoted son — the only son, the apple of her eye. He had never married, he had never broken away as most sons do, he had always retained the dependence and biddable ways of a child. Once more she heard the heavy voice saying contentedly: ‘Albert is a good boy. I have never had any trouble with him.’

‘How is Mrs. Henriquez, sir?’

Oh, she should not have spoken! For he looked wildly at her; for a moment she thought he would strike her. Then, as though he would wipe out her question, drown any echo of it that might still be lingering in the empty house, he walked over to the gong and struck the metal disk a blow which weighed on the air like the toll of a bell.

III

Back in her kitchen, Lucy Abbott tried to fasten her mind to the business of cooking and dishing up. Gravy soup, fillet of sole, the partridge with bread sauce, fried potatoes, and a cauliflower, tinned pineapple, and sardines on toast. When she had ladled the soup into the tureen she climbed on a chair and fetched down from its hiding place on the top of the dresser a bunch of keys. It should have been taken upstairs on a salver, but as all the plate was in the bank she must make shift with a saucer.

He had pulled one of the leather armchairs to the fire and was reading a book. He did not look round as she entered, but at the faint clatter of the keys sliding together as she set down the tray he started.

‘What’s that noise?’

‘I have brought you the keys, sir. This is the cellar key. What will you be pleased to drink?’

‘The keys.’

He took them from her and weighed them in his hand, clinking them together and listening attentively to the sound. Then he went back to his chair, and dandled them in the firelight.

‘Dinner is served, sir.’

‘Oh! Here, take these tilings, and get me a bottle of whiskey.’

During the meal he did not speak, except once when he asked her if there were any olives. ‘He has eaten nothing,’ she thought, staring at. the dishes which covered the kitchen table. Such food was not to be wasted; she must carry it to the larder, and to-morrow she could make rissoles from the partridge and fish pie from the sole. But before she was aware what she did she had shoveled all together and thrown it into the fire. When she had washed up she came back to the kitchen and fed the cat. Then, leaning heavily upon the table, she began to read the newspaper, greasy and blackened with pot marks, which was spread over it. The smell of good food was still in the room, the partridge bones crackled in the flame. She could hear the cat’s tongue rasping against its dish. Poor pussy, she would have enjoyed those bones, and the sardines would have been a treat to her, too.

‘Better the cat,’ thought Lucy Abbott. ‘Then someone would have enjoyed it, at any rate.’ And, rocking her weight upon her hands, she was beginning to cry from weariness and disheartenment when she heard his voice.

‘Mrs. Abbott, where are you? Damn these stairs! They’re as dark as Egypt.’

Before she could wipe her face and run to the door he had come in, carrying the whiskey bottle in one hand and his glass in the other.

‘I’ve come down for a chat, Mrs. Abbott. I can’t sit alone all the evening. Fetch yourself a glass, and we’ll hobnob down here, where it’s cheerful.’

He sat down in the old broken basket chair and stretched out his hands to the blaze. The diamond ring flashed on the twitching hand. It had not aged. Had a lamp been lowered into the sepulchre, those blue and green and scarlet eyes would have been found wakeful among the corrupting flesh.

‘Well, now. Tell me how you’ve been getting on all these years.’

‘It’s been pretty quiet, sir.’

‘Quiet. H’m. No rats?’

‘No, sir. I’ve never seen any rats.’

He raised his melancholy glance and stared at her, as though he were considering her words.

‘Of course there were the Zeps, sir. But they did n’t do any damage here.'

‘Zeps?’

‘Yes, sir. In the war, sir.’

‘Oh, yes, yes. The war. But no rats, you say?'

‘No, sir. No rats.’

He turned again to the fire, and she looked at the whiskey bottle.

But he had drunk very little.

The clock ticked, no word was said. At last he lifted his weight out of the creaking chair and began to wander round the room.

‘There’s the parrot!’

‘Yes, sir. He’s never ailed. But he’s quieter than he used to be.’

The bird woke up, and started to tweak among its breast feathers for lice.

‘Why do you keep it in a cage?’

He spoke with vehemence, but even if she had been able to think of an answer he would not have heard it, for, brushing past her, he was gone from the room. She heard him going up through the empty house, switching on all the lights as he went. A door banged, and then there was silence.

She sat down and leaned her head on her hand. She believed herself to be thinking, but no thoughts came. She sighed, and stared at the cigar ash on the hearth, and sighed again. It seemed to her that she must be going mad. No woman in her senses could feel so daunted and bewildered, so castaway from the common assurances of life. ‘I’ve overdone myself,’ she said, speaking aloud so that her own voice, at any rate, might be real and known to her. ‘That’s what it is — I’ve overdone myself, getting things ready, and the dinner, and all. And then there was that telegram. I’ve got out of the way of such doings, living so humdrum for all these years. And then I’m not so young as I was.’

But her words fell away from her into the silence, and soon she forgot that she had spoken them, wandering in such a maze of bewilderment that when she heard the music she was even for a moment at a loss as to who could be playing the piano upstairs. But the music lulled her, and she listened with a kind of drowsy pleasure, too coarse of ear to know that the instrument was all untuned and frantic, too ignorant to be fretted by the aimless reiterations of the performer. Her eyelids pricked and her body nodded forward. ‘I mustn’t go right off, in case he rings,’ she thought; and the next thing she knew was that the music had ceased and the noise had begun.

‘Let me out! Let me out!’

He was shouting at the top of his voice and hammering on the door. She ran upstairs, stumbling and sick, and because all the lights were turned on she seemed to be running through a strange house. ‘I’m coming, sir.’ But even when she stood at the door, and knocked on the panel, and spoke through it, the shouting and the hammering continued. It seemed to her that she dared not go in, and at the same moment she turned the knob and the door yielded exactly as usual. She heard him catch his breath and leap back.

‘Oh, Mrs. Abbott! It’s you, is it? Come in.’

He was standing behind a chair, as if to guard himself. He panted, and his wig was awry, but otherwise he appeared to be no way discomposed, and his amicable smile forbade any questions on her part. He said no word to release her; and, holding to the door for support, she waited, dazed and blinking before the violent light which streamed down on them from the chandelier. The cut-glass prisms flashed blue and emerald and scarlet, and she knew that they reminded her of something she had seen before. The lid of the grand piano was open, as though after all these years a secret, in hiding there had come forth. The room was icy cold, the empty grate glittered like an armory, the marble mantelpiece looked as though no fire could ever warm it again.

Above it, set in the wall, was the port rail of Mrs. Henriquez, smiling and triumphant, holding a fan and wearing a white satin evening dress with a tight waist from which, like a flower from its calyx, her bosom and shoulders rose full and glistening. She must be an old woman now, if she was not dead; but the former will lived on in the portrait and looked forth its assurance that a servant, would observe its bidding. Lucy Abbott felt herself to be under her mistress’s eye. Her glance waited upon it. her faculties refuged themselves in the old stronghold of submission; she was ready to forget, in obedience to the dead, her fear of the living.

But he had seen the direction of her gaze, and started forward with a shout the furious outcry of one who at long last, beholds and recognizes his fatal enemy, his tyrant, the usurper of his soul, and hails him with such an explosion of malice as abolishes the memory of fear. Shaking and retching, ho snatched up the heavy steel poker, and took aim, and shivered the glass. And then with blow after blow he began to batter and demolish the painted face, the indifferent bosom, till the canvas fell down upon the hearth in shreds; and even then in his hate he st ruck on, beating at the wall behind it, as though he could never come to the end of his hatred.

Lucy Abbott had fallen upon her knees. She pressed her hands over her ears and shut her eyes, but still she could hear the blows and the snarling breath dragged through his nostrils as he struck, and still she saw the reeling figure, and the veins that stood out on the clenched and livid hand, and the hairy wrist that shot, forever from the shirt cuff.

At last, she knew that he had ceased to strike. Slowly she raised her head and opened her eyes. His back was to her; but, as she watched, the madman turned and showed her a face leeringly triumphant and contented—the face of a child that had gained its will. Once or twice he nodded, smiling mischievously, chuckling to himself and pursing up his lips; and then, steering a wide circle as though he would keep out of her reach, he ambled from the room.

Still on her knees, she heard him descending the stairs and crossing the hall, and fumbling with the catch of the front door. And then the door closed behind him, and she heard his shuffling footsteps die out along the street.