chambers were wide open, with huge gaps where panels had been, the young
man's servant having carefully shut them after me in our flight,
thinking, I suppose, that the firemen would stand upon ceremony and ask
for the key before venturing in. A river was drying up in our hall, and
the strip of matting down the centre was sodden. Empty soda-water
bottles rolled on the floor, though it speaks well for London firemen
that nothing stronger was touched. Candles were stuck upside down in our
hanging Dutch lamp and all available candlesticks, curtains and blinds
were pulled about, chairs were upset, the marks of muddy feet were
everywhere. I ought to have been grateful, and I was, that the damage
was so small, all the more when I went again on to the leads and saw the
blackened heap to which the night had reduced the young man's chambers.
But the place was inexpressibly cheerless and dilapidated in the dawning
light.
It was too late to go to bed, too early to go to work. I was hungry, and
the baker had not come, nor the charwoman. I was faint, the smell of the
_schube_ was strong in my nostrils, though the _schube_ itself was now
safely locked up in a remote cupboard. I wandered disconsolately from
room to room, when, of a sudden, there appeared at my still open front
door a gorgeous vision,--a large and stately lady, fresh and neat,
arrayed in flowing red draperies, with a white lace fichu thrown over a
mass of luxuriant golden hair. I stared, speechless with amazement. It
was not until she spoke that I recognized the First Floor Back, who had
had time to lay her hands not only on a false front, but on a whole wig,
and who had had the enterprise to make tea which she invited me to
drink with her in Pepys's chambers.
The Housekeeper and the Housekeeper's daughter were already in her
dining-room, the Housekeeper huddled up in a big armchair, pillows at
her back, a stool at her feet. Like her house she was a wreck, and her
demoralization was sad to see. All her life, until a few short hours
ago, she had been the model of neatness; now she did not care how she
looked; her white hair was untidy, her dress half-buttoned, her apron
forgotten; and she, who had hitherto discouraged familiarity in the
tenants, joined us as a friend. She was too exhausted for hysterics, but
she moaned over her tea and abandoned herself to her grief. She could
not rally, and, what is more, she did not want to. She had no life apart
from her house, and in its ruin she saw her own. Her immaculate hall was
defaced and stained, a blackened groove was worn in her shining stairs,
the water pouring through the chambers in the front, down to her own
little apartment, had turned them all into a damp and depressing mess.
Her moans were the ceaseless accompaniment to our talk of the night's
disaster. Always she had waited for the fire, she said, she had dreaded
it, and at last it had come, and there was no sorrow like unto hers.
After the first excitement, after the house had resumed, as well as it
could, its usual habits, the Housekeeper remained absorbed in her grief.
Hitherto her particular habit was to work, and she had been able,
unaided, to keep the house up to her immaculate standard of perfection.
But now to restore it to order was the affair of builders, of plasterers
and painters and paperers. There was nothing for her to do save to sit
with hands folded and watch the sacrilege. Her occupation was gone, and
all was wrong with her world.
I was busy during the days immediately "after the fire." I had to insure
our belongings, which, of course, being insured, have never run such a
risk again. I had to prepare and pack for a journey to France, now many
days overdue, and, what with one thing or another, I neglected the
Housekeeper. When at last I was ready to shut up our chambers and start
and I called at her rooms, it seemed to me she had visibly shrunk and
wilted, though she had preserved enough of the proper spirit to pocket
the substantial tip I handed over to her with my keys. She was no less
equal to accepting a second when, after a couple of months I returned
and could not resist this expression of my sympathy on finding the hall
still stained and defaced, the stairs still with their blackened groove,
the workmen still going and coming, and her despair at the spectacle
blacker than ever.
The next day she came up to our chambers. She wore her best black gown
and no apron, and from these signs I concluded it was a visit of state.
I was right: it was to announce her departure. The house, partially
rebuilt and very much patched up, would never be the same. She was too
old for hope, and without the courage to pick up the broken bits of her
masterpiece and put them together again. She was more ill at ease as
visitor than as housekeeper. The conversation languished, although I
fancied she had something particular to say, slight as was her success
in saying it. We had both been silent for an awkward minute when she
blurted out abruptly that she had never neglected her duty, no matter
what it might or might not have pleased the tenants to give her. I
applauded the sentiment as admirable, and I said good-by; and never once
then, and not until several days after she left us, did it dawn upon me
that she was waiting to accept graciously the fee it was her right in
leaving to expect from me. The fact of my having only just tipped her
liberally had nothing to do with it. A housekeeper's departure was an
occasion for money to pass from the tenant's hand into hers, and she had
too much respect for her duty as housekeeper not to afford me the
opportunity of doing mine as tenant. It was absurd, but I was humiliated
in my own eyes when I thought of the figure I must cut in hers, and I
could only hope she would make allowance for me as an ignorant American.
How deep I sunk in her esteem, there was no means of knowing. I do not
think she could endure to come to her house as a stranger, for she
never returned. Neither did any news of her reach us. I cannot believe
she enjoyed the inactive existence with her daughter to which she had
retired, and I should be astonished if she bore it long. In losing her
house she had lost her interest in life. Her work in the world was
done.
_The New Housekeeper_
[Illustration: THE SPIRE OF ST. MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS]
VII
THE NEW HOUSEKEEPER
It had taken years for the Old Housekeeper to mature, and I knew that in
the best sense of the word she could never be replaced. But the
knowledge did not prepare me for the New Housekeeper.
Mrs. Haines was a younger and apparently stronger woman, but she was so
casual in her dress, and so eager to emulate the lilies of the field, as
to convince me that it was not in her, under any conditions, to mature
into a housekeeper at all. It expressed much, I thought, that while the
Old Housekeeper had always been "the Housekeeper," we never knew Mrs.
Haines by any name but her own. The fact that she had a husband was her
recommendation to the landlord, who had been alarmed by the fire and the
hysterics into which it threw the Old Housekeeper, and now insisted upon
a man in the family as an indispensable qualification for the post. The
advantage might have been more obvious had Mr. Haines not spent most of
his time in dodging the tenants and helping them to forget his presence
in the house. He was not an ill-looking nor ill-mannered man, and
shyness was the only explanation that occurred to me for his
perseverance in avoiding us. Work could not force him from his
retirement. Mrs. Haines said that he was a carpenter by trade, but the
only ability I ever knew him to display was in evading whatever job I
was hopeful enough to offer him. Besides, though it might be hard to say
what I think a carpenter ought to look like, I was certain he did not
look like one, and others shared my doubts.
The rumour spread through our street--where everybody rejoices in the
knowledge of everything about everybody else who lives in it--that he
had once been in the Civil Service, but had married beneath him and come
down in the world. How the rumour originated I never asked, or never was
told if I did ask; but it was so evident that he shrank from the
practice of the carpenter's trade that once we sent him with a letter
to the Publisher--who shares our love of the neighbourhood to the point,
not only of publishing from it, but of living in it--asking if some sort
of place could not be found for him in the office. It was found, I am
afraid to his disappointment, for he never made any effort to fill it,
and was more diligent than ever in keeping out of our way. If he saw us
coming, on the rare occasions when he stood at the front door, or the
rarer when he cleaned the gas-bracket above it, he would run if there
was time, or, if there was not, turn his head and stare fixedly in the
other direction that he might escape speaking to us. As the months went
on, he was never caught cleaning anything or doing anything in the shape
of work, except sometimes, furtively, as if afraid of being detected in
the act, shutting the front door when the clocks of the neighbourhood
struck eleven. He was far less of a safeguard to us than I often fancied
he thought we were to him.
Mrs. Haines was sufficiently unlike him to account for one part of the
rumour. She was coarse in appearance and disagreeable in manner, always
on the defensive, always on the verge of flying into a temper. She had
no objection to showing herself; on the contrary, she was perpetually
about, hunting for faults to find; but she did object to showing herself
with a broom or a duster, a pail or a scrubbing-brush in her hands. I
shuddered sometimes at the thought of the shock to the Old Housekeeper
if she were to see her hall and stairs. We could bring up coal now at
any hour or all day long. And yet Mrs. Haines tyrannized over us in her
own fashion, and her tyranny was the more unbearable because it had no
end except to spare herself trouble. Her one thought was to do nothing
and get paid for it. She resented extra exertion without extra
compensation. We never had been so bullied about coal under the old
regime as we were under hers about a drain-pipe with a trick of
overflowing. It might have drowned us in our chambers and she would not
have stirred to save us; but its outlet was in a little paved court back
of her kitchen, which it was one of her duties to keep in order, and she
considered every overflow a rank injustice. She held the tenants in
turn responsible, and would descend upon us like a Fury upbraiding us
for our carelessness. It would never have surprised me had she ordered
us down to clean up the court for her.
I must in fairness add that when extra exertion meant extra money she
did not shirk it. Nor was she without accomplishments. She was an
excellent needlewoman: she altered and renovated more than one gown for
me, she made me chair-covers, she mended my carpets. During the first
years she was in the house she never refused any needlework, and often
she asked me for more. She would come up and wait for me at table on the
shortest notice. In an emergency she would even cook me a dinner which,
in its colourless English way, was admirable. There is no denying that
she could be useful, but her usefulness had a special tariff.
It was also in her favour that she was a lover of cats, and their regard
for her was as good as a certificate. I came to be on the best of terms
with hers, Bogie by name, a tall ungainly tabby, very much the worse for
wear. He spent a large part of his time on the street, and often, as I
came or went, he would be returning home and would ask me, in a way not
to be resisted, to ring her door-bell for him. Sometimes I waited to
exchange a few remarks with him, for, though his voice was husky and not
one of his attractions, he had always plenty to say. On these occasions
I was a witness of his pleasure in seeing his mistress again, though his
absence might have been short, and of her enthusiasm in receiving him.
Unquestionably they understood each other, and cats are animals of
discrimination.
She extended her affection to cats that did not belong to her, and ours
came in for many of her attentions. Our Jimmy, who had the freedom of
the streets, often paid her a visit on his way out or in, as I knew he
would not have done if she had not made the time pass agreeably; for if
he, like all cats, disliked to be bored, he knew better than most how to
avoid the possibility. One of his favourite haunts was the near Strand,
probably because he was sure to meet his friends there. It was a joy to
him, if we had been out late in the evening, to run across us as we
returned. With a fervent "mow" of greeting, he was at our side; and
then, his tail high in the air, and singing a song of rapture, he would
come with us to our front door, linger until he had seen us open it,
when, his mind at rest for our safety, he would hurry back to his
revels. We considered this a privilege, and our respect for Mrs. Haines
was increased when he let her share it, even in the daytime. He was
known to join her in the Strand, not far from Charing Cross, walk with
her to Wellington Street, cross over, wait politely while she bought
tickets at the Lyceum for one of the tenants, cross again, and walk back
with her. He was also known to sit down in the middle of the Strand, and
divert the traffic better than a "Bobby," until Mrs. Haines, when
everybody else had failed, enticed him away. He deserved the tribute of
her tears, and she shed many, when the Vet kindly released him from the
physical ruin to which exposure and a life of dissipation had reduced
him.
William Penn showed her the same friendliness, but from him it was not
so marked, for he was a cat of democratic tastes and, next to his
family, preferred the people who worked for them. He had not as much
opportunity for his civilities as Jimmy, never being allowed to leave
our chambers. But when Mrs. Haines was busy in our kitchen, he occupied
more than a fair portion of her time, for which she made no reduction in
the bill. William's charms were so apt to distract me from my work that
I could say nothing, and her last kindness of all when he died--in his
case of too luxuriant living and too little exercise, the Vet
said--would make me forgive her much worse. According to my friend, Miss
Repplier, a cat "considers dying a strictly private affair." But William
Penn's death-bed was a public affair, at least for Augustine and myself,
who sat up with him through the night of his agony. We were both
exhausted by morning, unfit to cope with the problem of his funeral.
Chambers are without any convenient corner to serve as cemetery, and I
could not trust the most important member of the family to the dust-man
for burial. I do not know what I should have done but for Mrs. Haines.
It was she who arranged, by a bribe I would willingly have doubled,
that during the dinner-hour, when the head-gardener was out of the way,
William should be laid to rest in the garden below our windows. She was
the only mourner with Augustine and myself,--J. was abroad,--when, from
above, we watched the assistant gardener lower him into his little grave
under the tree where the wood-pigeons have their nest.
If I try now to make the best of what was good in Mrs. Haines, at the
time she did not give me much chance. Grumbling was such a habit with
her that, even had the Socialists' Millennium come, she would have kept
on, if only because it removed all other reason for her grumbles. Her
prejudice against work of any kind did not lessen her displeasure with
everybody who did not provide her with work of some kind to do. She
treated me as if I imposed on her when I asked her to sew or to mend or
to cook, and she abused the other tenants because they did not ask her.
This indeed was her principal grievance. She could not see why they were
in the house if it were not to increase her income, and she hated the
landlord for having led her to believe they would. She paid me
innumerable visits, the object of which never varied. It was to borrow,
which she did without shame or apology. She never hesitated in her
demands, she never cringed. She ran short because the other tenants were
not doing the fair and square thing by her, and she did not see why she
should not draw upon me for help. One inexhaustible debt was the monthly
bill for her furniture, bought on the instalment system and forfeited if
any one instalment were not met. I do not remember how many pounds I
advanced, but enough to suggest that she had furnished her rooms, of
which she never gave me as much as a glimpse, in a style far beyond her
means. I could afford to be amiable, for I knew I could make her pay me
back in work, though my continual loans did so little to improve her
financial affairs that after a while my patience gave out, and I refused
to advance another penny.
It was not until the illness of her husband, after they had been in the
house for some two years, that I realized the true condition of things
behind the door they kept so carefully closed. The illness was sudden,
so far as I knew. I had not seen Mr. Haines for long, but I was
accustomed to not seeing him, and curiously, when Mrs. Haines's need was
greatest, she showed some reluctance in asking to be helped out of it.
Her husband was dying before she appealed to anybody, and then it was
not to me, but to Mrs. Burden, my old charwoman, who was so poor that I
had always fancied that to be poorer still meant to live in the streets
or on the rates. But Mrs. Haines was so much worse off, that Mrs.
Burden, in telling me about it, thanked Our Lady that she had never
fallen so low. It was cold winter and there was no fire, no coal, no
wood, behind the closed door. The furniture for which I had advanced so
many pounds consisted, I now found out, of two or three rickety chairs
and a square of tattered carpet in the front room, a few pots and pans
in the kitchen. In the dark bedroom between, the dying man lay on a hard
board stretched on the top of a packing-box, shivering under his
threadbare overcoat, so pitiful in his misery and suffering that Mrs.
Burden was moved to compassion and hurried home to fetch him the
blankets from her own bed and buy him a pennyworth of milk on the way.
When the tenants knew how it was with Mrs. Haines and her husband, as
now they could not help knowing, they remembered only that he was ill,
and they sent for the doctor and paid for medicine, and did what they
could to lighten the gloom of the two or three days left to him. And
they arranged for a decent burial, feeling, I think, that a man who had
been in the Civil Service should not lie in a pauper's grave. For a week
or so we wondered again who he was, why he kept so persistently out of
sight; after that we thought as little of him as when he had skulked, a
shadow, between his rooms and the street door on the stroke of eleven.
Hitherto everybody had been patient with Mrs. Haines, for the London
housekeeper, though she has not got the tenants as completely in her
power as the Paris _concierge_, can, if she wants, make things very
disagreeable for them. Now that she was alone in the world, everybody
was kind to her. The landlord overlooked his announced decision "to
sack the pair," and retained her as housekeeper, though in losing her
husband she had lost her principal recommendation. The tenants raised a
fund to enable her to buy the mourning which is often a consolation in
widowhood. Work was offered to her in chambers which she had never
entered before, and I added to the tasks in ours. The housekeepers in
the street with families to support must have envied her. She had her
rooms rent free, wages from the landlord, plenty of extra work, and
though this might not seem affluence to people who do not measure their
income by pence or scramble for the odd shilling, it was wealth in
housekeeping circles.
Mrs. Haines, however, did not see her position in that light. She had
complained when work was not offered to her, she complained more
bitterly when it was. Perhaps her husband had had some restraining
influence upon her. I cannot say; but certainly once he was gone, she
gave up all pretence of controlling her temper. She would sweep like a
hurricane through the house, raging and raving, on the slightest
provocation. She led us a worse life than ever over the drain-pipe. She
left the house more and more to take care of itself, dust lying thick
wherever dust could lie, the stairs turned to a dingy grey, the walls
blackened with London smoke and grime. Once in a while she hired a
forlorn, ragged old woman to wash the stairs and brush the front-door
mat, for in London, more than anywhere else, "poverty is a comparative
thing," and every degree has one below to "soothe" it. No matter how
hard up Mrs. Haines was, she managed to scrape together a few pennies to
pay to have the work done for her rather than do it herself. The greater
part of her leisure she spent out of the house, and when I passed her
door I would see pinned up on it a bit of paper stating in neat, even
elegant, writing, "Apply on the First Floor for the Housekeeper," or
"Gone out. Back in ten minutes"; and hours, sometimes days, later the
same notice would still be there. She became as neglectful of herself as
of the house: her one dress grew shabbier and shabbier, her apron was
discarded, no detail of her toilet was attended to except the frizzing
of her coarse black hair. All this came about not at once, but step by
step, and things were very bad before J. and I admitted, even to each
other, that she was a disgrace to the house. We would admit it to nobody
else, and to my surprise the other tenants were as forbearing. I suppose
it was because they understood, as well as we did, that at a word to the
landlord she would be adrift in London, where for one vacant post of
housekeeper there are a hundred applications. To banish her from our own
chambers, however, was not to drive her to the workhouse, and I called
for her services less and less often.
There was another reason for my not employing her to which I have not so
far referred, the reason really of her slovenliness and bad temper and
gradual deterioration. I shut my eyes as long as I could. But I was
prepared for the whispers that began to be heard, not only in our house,
but up and down our street. What started them I do not know, but the
morning and evening gatherings of the housekeepers at their doors were
not held for nothing, and presently it got about that Mrs. Haines had
been seen stealing in and out of a public-house, and that this
public-house was just beyond the border-line of the Quarter, which
looked as if she were endeavouring to escape the vigilant eyes of our
gossips. Then, as invariably happens, the whispers grew louder, the
evidence against her circumstantial, and everybody was saying quite
openly where her money disappeared and why she became shabbier, her
rooms barer, and the house more disreputable. It leaked out that her
husband also had been seen flitting from public-house to public-house;
and, the game of concealment by this time being up, it was bluntly said
that drink had killed him, as it would Mrs. Haines if she went on as she
was going.
I had kept my suspicions to myself, but she had never come to our
chambers at the hour of lunch or dinner that there was not an unusual
drain upon our modest wine-cellar. I could not fancy that it was merely
a coincidence, that friends dining with us were invariably thirstier
when she waited or cooked; but her appearance had been the invariable
signal for the disappearance of our wine at a rate that made my
employment of her a costly luxury. I never saw her when I could declare
she had been drinking, but drink she did, and there was no use my
beating about the bush and calling it by another name. It would have
been less hopeless had she occasionally betrayed herself, had her speech
thickened and her walk become unsteady. But hers was the deadliest form
of the evil, because it gave no sign. There was nothing to check it
except every now and then a mysterious attack of illness,--which she
said defied the doctor though it defied nobody in the house,--or the
want of money; but a housekeeper must be far gone if she cannot pick up
a shilling here and a half-crown there. I was the last of the old
tenants to employ her, but after I abandoned her she still had another
chance with a newcomer who took the chambers below ours, and, finding
them too small to keep more than one servant, engaged her for a liberal
amount of work. She bought aprons and a new black blouse and skirt, and
she was so spruce and neat in them that I was encouraged to hope. But
before the end of the first week, she was met on the stairs coming down
from his room to hers with a bottle under her apron; at the end of the
second she was dismissed.