THE HOME-COMING OF HUGHS
Hilary had evidently been right in thinking the little model was not
speaking the truth when she said she had seen Hughs, for it was not until
early on the following morning that three persons traversed the long
winding road leading from Wormwood Scrubs to Kensington. They preserved
silence, not because there was nothing in their hearts to be expressed,
but because there was too much; and they walked in the giraffe-like
formation peculiar to the lower classes--Hughs in front; Mrs. Hughs to
the left, a foot or two behind; and a yard behind her, to the left again,
her son Stanley. They made no sign of noticing anyone in the road
besides themselves, and no one in the road gave sign of noticing that
they were there; but in their three minds, so differently fashioned, a
verb was dumbly, and with varying emotion, being conjugated:
"I've been in prison." "You've been in prison. He's been in prison."
Beneath the seeming acquiescence of a man subject to domination from his
birth up, those four words covered in Hughs such a whirlpool of surging
sensation, such ferocity of bitterness, and madness, and defiance, that
no outpouring could have appreciably relieved its course. The same four
words summed up in Mrs. Hughs so strange a mingling of fear,
commiseration, loyalty, shame, and trembling curiosity at the new factor
which had come into the life of all this little family walking
giraffe-like back to Kensington that to have gone beyond them would have
been like plunging into a wintry river. To their son the four words were
as a legend of romance, conjuring up no definite image, lighting merely
the glow of wonder.
"Don't lag, Stanley. Keep up with your father."
The little boy took three steps at an increased pace, then fell behind
again. His black eyes seemed to answer: 'You say that because you don't
know what else to say.' And without alteration in their giraffe-like
formation, but again in silence, the three proceeded.
In the heart of the seamstress doubt and fear were being slowly knit into
dread of the first sound to pass her husband's lips. What would he ask?
How should she answer? Would he talk wild, or would he talk sensible?
Would he have forgotten that young girl, or had he nursed and nourished
his wicked fancy in the house of grief and silence? Would he ask where
the baby was? Would he speak a kind word to her? But alongside her dread
there was guttering within her the undying resolution not to 'let him go
from her, if it were ever so, to that young girl'
"Don't lag, Stanley!"
At the reiteration of those words Hughs spoke.
"Let the boy alone! You'll be nagging at the baby next!"
Hoarse and grating, like sounds issuing from a damp vault, was this first
speech.
The seamstress's eyes brimmed over.
"I won't get the chance," she stammered out. "He's gone!"
Hughs' teeth gleamed like those of a dog at bay.
"Who's taken him? You let me know the name."
Tears rolled down the seamstress's cheeks; she could not answer. Her
little son's thin voice rose instead:
"Baby's dead. We buried him in the ground. I saw it. Mr. Creed came in
the cab with me."
White flecks appeared suddenly at the corners of Hughs' lips. He wiped
the back of his hand across his mouth, and once more, giraffe-like, the
little family marched on....
"Westminister," in his threadbare summer jacket--for the day was
warm--had been standing for some little time in Mrs. Budgen's doorway on
the ground floor at Hound Street. Knowing that Hughs was to be released
that morning early, he had, with the circumspection and foresight of his
character, reasoned thus: 'I shan't lie easy in my bed, I shan't hev no
peace until I know that low feller's not a-goin' to misdemean himself
with me. It's no good to go a-puttin' of it off. I don't want him
comin' to my room attackin' of old men. I'll be previous with him in the
passage. The lame woman 'll let me. I shan't trouble her. She'll be
palliable between me and him, in case he goes for to attack me. I ain't
afraid of him.'
But, as the minutes of waiting went by, his old tongue, like that of a
dog expecting chastisement, appeared ever more frequently to moisten his
twisted, discoloured lips. 'This comes of mixin' up with soldiers,' he
thought, 'and a lowclass o' man like that. I ought to ha' changed my
lodgin's. He'll be askin' me where that young girl is, I shouldn't
wonder, an' him lost his character and his job, and everything, and all
because o' women!'
He watched the broad-faced woman, Mrs. Budgen, in whose grey eyes the
fighting light so fortunately never died, painfully doing out her rooms,
and propping herself against the chest of drawers whereon clustered china
cups and dogs as thick as toadstools on a bank.
"I've told my Charlie," she said, "to keep clear of Hughs a bit. They
comes out as prickly as hedgehogs. Pick a quarrel as soon as look at
you, they will."
'Oh dear,' thought Creed, 'she's full o' cold comfort.' But, careful of
his dignity, he answered, "I'm a-waitin' here to engage the situation.
You don't think he'll attack of me with definition at this time in the
mornin'?"
The lame woman shrugged her shoulders. "He'll have had a drop of
something," she said, "before he comes home. They gets a cold feelin' in
the stomach in them places, poor creatures!"
The old butler's heart quavered up into his mouth. He lifted his shaking
hand, and put it to his lips, as though to readjust himself.
"Oh yes," he said; "I ought to ha' given notice, and took my things away;
but there, poor woman, it seemed a-hittin' of her when she was down. And
I don't want to make no move. I ain't got no one else that's interested
in me. This woman's very good about mendin' of my clothes. Oh dear, yes;
she don't grudge a little thing like that!"
The lame woman hobbled from her post of rest, and began to make the bed
with the frown that always accompanied a task which strained the
contracted muscles of her leg. "If you don't help your neighbour, your
neighbour don't help you," she said sententiously.
Creed fixed his iron-rimmed gaze on her in silence. He was considering
perhaps how he stood with regard to Hughs in the light of that remark.
"I attended of his baby's funeral," he said. "Oh dear, he's here
a'ready!"
The family of Hughs, indeed, stood in the doorway. The spiritual process
by which "Westminister" had gone through life was displayed completely in
the next few seconds. 'It's so important for me to keep alive and well,'
his eyes seemed saying. 'I know the class of man you are, but now you're
here it's not a bit o' use my bein' frightened. I'm bound to get
up-sides with you. Ho! yes; keep yourself to yourself, and don't you let
me hev any o' your nonsense, 'cause I won't stand it. Oh dear, no!'
Beads of perspiration stood thick on his patchily coloured forehead; with
lips stiffening, and intently staring eyes, he waited for what the
released prisoner would say.
Hughs, whose face had blanched in the prison to a sallow grey-white hue,
and whose black eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head, slowly
looked the old man up and down. At last he took his cap off, showing his
cropped hair.
"You got me that, daddy," he said, "but I don't bear you malice. Come up
and have a cup o' tea with us."
And, turning on his heel, he began to mount the stairs, followed by his
wife and child. Breathing hard, the old butler mounted too.
In the room on the second floor, where the baby no longer lived, a
haddock on the table was endeavouring to be fresh; round it were slices
of bread on plates, a piece of butter in a pie-dish, a teapot, brown
sugar in a basin, and, side by side a little jug of cold blue milk and a
half-empty bottle of red vinegar. Close to one plate a bunch of stocks
and gilly flowers reposed on the dirty tablecloth, as though dropped and
forgotten by the God of Love. Their faint perfume stole through the
other odours. The old butler fixed his eyes on it.
'The poor woman bought that,' he thought, 'hopin' for to remind him of
old days. "She had them flowers on her weddin'-day, I shouldn't wonder!"
This poetical conception surprising him, he turned towards the little
boy, and said "This 'll be a memorial to you, as you gets older." And
without another word all sat down. They ate in silence, and the old
butler thought 'That 'addick ain't what it was; but a beautiful cup o'
tea. He don't eat nothing; he's more ameniable to reason than I
expected. There's no one won't be too pleased to see him now!'
His eyes, travelling to the spot from which the bayonet had been removed,
rested on the print of the Nativity. "'Suffer little children to come
unto Me,'" he thought, "'and forbid them not." He'll be glad to hear
there was two carriages followed him home.'
And, taking his time, he cleared his throat in preparation for speech.
But before the singular muteness of this family sounds would not come.
Finishing his tea, he tremblingly arose. Things that he might have said
jostled in his mind. 'Very pleased to 'a seen you. Hope you're in good
health at the present time of speaking. Don't let me intrude on you.
We've all a-got to die some time or other!' They remained unuttered.
Making a vague movement of his skinny hand, he walked feebly but quickly
to the door. When he stood but half-way within the room, he made his
final effort.
"I'm not a-goin' to say nothing," he said; "that'd be superlative! I
wish you a good-morning."
Outside he waited a second, then grasped the banister.
'For all he sets so quiet, they've done him no good in that place,' he
thought. 'Them eyes of his!' And slowly he descended, full of a sort of
very deep surprise. 'I misjudged of him,' he was thinking; 'he never was
nothing but a 'armless human being. We all has our predijuices--I
misjudged of him. They've broke his 'eart between 'em--that they have.'
The silence in the room continued after his departure. But when the
little boy had gone to school, Hughs rose and lay down on the bed. He
rested there, unmoving, with his face towards the wall, his arms clasped
round his head to comfort it. The seamstress, stealing about her
avocations, paused now and then to look at him. If he had raged at her,
if he had raged at everything, it would not have been so terrifying as
this utter silence, which passed her comprehension--this silence as of a
man flung by the sea against a rock, and pinned there with the life
crushed out of him. All her inarticulate longing, now that her baby was
gone, to be close to something in her grey life, to pass the
unfranchisable barrier dividing her from the world, seemed to well up, to
flow against this wall of silence and to recoil.
Twice or three times she addressed him timidly by name, or made some
trivial remark. He did not answer, as though in very truth he had been
the shadow of a man lying there. And the injustice of this silence
seemed to her so terrible. Was she not his wife? Had she not borne him
five, and toiled to keep him from that girl? Was it her fault if she had
made his life a hell with her jealousy, as he had cried out that morning
before he went for her, and was "put away"? He was her "man." It had
been her right--nay, more, her duty!
And still he lay there silent. From the narrow street where no traffic
passed, the cries of a coster and distant whistlings mounted through the
unwholesome air. Some sparrows in the eave were chirruping incessantly.
The little sandy house-cat had stolen in, and, crouched against the
doorpost, was fastening her eyes on the plate which, held the remnants of
the fish. The seamstress bowed her forehead to the flowers on the table;
unable any longer to bear the mystery of this silence, she wept. But the
dark figure on the bed only pressed his arms closer round his head, as
though there were within him a living death passing the speech of men.
The little sandy cat, creeping across the floor, fixed its claws in the
backbone of the fish, and drew it beneath the bed.