There seemed nothing wrong but she sighed, weighed down by the perennial sorrow of having no dining room. Number twelve was one of the smallest and cheapest houses in Angel Lane and had only four rooms, the kitchen and parlor on the ground floor and Emma’s and Isaac’s bedrooms above. The two attics in the roof, Polly’s and the box room, hardly counted as rooms because they were so tiny. The poor poky little house was not suited to gentlefolk, and a gentlewoman Emma had been born and a gentlewoman Emma would die, even though Isaac had demeaned himself by becoming a common tradesman. It is the status of the father that determines a woman’s exact position in the social scale, she would tell Polly, who so far as the orphanage could tell her had come into the world with no father at all, and Emma’s father had been a clergyman of the Church of England. She never forgot the great days of the past, but there were those in the city who did. There were many now, she feared, who thought of her as Isaac Peabody the clockmaker’s sister, rather than as the daughter of the Reverend Robert Peabody, rector of St. Peter’s in the market place.
She sighed again and Isaac looked at her in anxious self-reproach, knowing how often he himself was the cause of her sorrow. Though she was three years older than her brother she still had the gaunt remnants of her early dark good looks. She was straight as a ramrod, big-boned, tall and thin, with a long melancholy face and profoundly sad dark eyes. Her clothes were nearly as old as Isaac’s but she looked after them so well, brushing and folding them daily with such care, that there was nothing slovenly about them, and she brightened them with a gold locket and a mourning brooch containing her mother’s and father’s hair. The home that she had created for herself and Isaac was like herself and her clothes, scrupulously clean and neat, sad, saturated with the past. Everything in the parlor had come from what Emma called “the old home,” and she had added nothing new in all the years. The fireside chairs, with seats so slippery and hard that one slid off them if one tried to relax, the prickly horsehair sofa, the faded curtains of dark green hanging at the window that Emma scarcely ever opened, the picture of the Day of Judgment hanging over the sideboard and the enlarged photo of their equally terrifying father hanging over the mantelpiece, were each of them for Isaac a reminder of his miserable boyhood. Wherever he looked it confronted him. On the sofa his adored mother had lain when she was dying. At this same table he had sat for an hour at a time, refusing to eat his congealed mutton fat and suet pudding, and under the picture of the Last Judgment his father had thrashed him. Even the fire on the hearth was the sullen fire he had always known, for they had always had to economize. The only thing his eye lighted upon with any pleasure was the clock on the mantelpiece, a black marble Benjamin Vulliamy clock with two figures of Time and Death standing one on each side of the dial. As a child it had frightened him almost as much as the picture of the Last Judgment, but now it was a comfort to him; though it was ugly it was at least a clock and it kept good time.
The door opened and Polly came in with a heavy tray laden with the pie, warm plates and a large, brown, steaming teapot. Her face was flushed and beaming and instantly the atmosphere of the cold stuffy room was subtly changed because she was happy. Polly’s chief joy in life was feeding people. She was of the pelican breed and would have nourished those she loved with her own flesh and blood had she had nothing else to give them. “There!” she said, dumping the pie down triumphantly in front of Emma, for Emma always served the food, Isaac being far too lavish with it.
“You must place the dishes in silence on the table, Polly,” said Emma wearily. “How ever many more times must I tell you that!”
Polly, having placed the teapot on its stand in silence, tipped Isaac the suspicion of a wink before she went to stand beside Emma with her hands behind her back, while Emma doled out her helping of pie onto a cracked white kitchen plate and cut her a slice of dry bread. The parlor plates had a pink and gold border, and it always hurt Isaac’s feelings intolerably to watch Emma seeing how little she could give Polly. It did not hurt Polly, for the pelican breed do not concern themselves with their own feeding.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Polly briskly, and whisked out of the door with her plate, her voluminous print skirts crackling, her small feet tapping out their quick, vigorous, light tattoo upon the stone floor of the passage. She never slipped on the mats; she had the sure-footedness of the single-minded. The kitchen door clicked behind her and there hung in the heavy air the faintest suggestion of music.
“That girl isn’t singing, is she?” Emma asked suspiciously.
“No,” said Isaac, and began to talk loudly and incoherently about the weather and the people who had come to the shop that day. His sister transferred her suspicions to him and her nose began to twitch nervously. “Isaac,” she whispered, “have you been drinking again?”
That was one of the things that made Isaac such a heavy cross for her to bear. When he was having one of his bad times he did, occasionally, get drunk. Those nights when he came home from the Swan and Duck singing at the top of his voice all the way up Angel Lane caused her a humiliation that was agony to her. Their father had been president of the Temperance League and she and Isaac had both at his command signed the pledge in infancy. After one of Isaac’s lapses she did not go out for several days, for she was too ashamed.
“No, Emma,” said Isaac gently, but now he could think of nothing else to say and became silent. He was as ashamed of his lapses as Emma was. Luckily at this point the Time and Death clock, and all the clocks of the city, struck ten, and the faint music within the house was merged with the music outside.
Supper ended, and the table cleared by Polly, they sat one on each side of the sullen fire, Emma reading her evening chapter in the family Bible that was kept on a small round table with a red plush tablecloth beside her chair, and Isaac holding a newspaper unseeingly before his nose. In their childhood their father had held family prayers after supper, reading the Bible aloud to them and their mother and the little maidservants in a voice of such doom that even when he read of the love and mercy of God it made no sort of sense to his hearers. Only the doom came home to them and the anguish of his conviction of sin and doubt of salvation as he implored the Almighty to have mercy upon them. Broken upon the rock of his stern and joyless character and faith, his delicate wife had failed and died and Isaac had lapsed into unbelief. Only Emma had had sufficient strength of character to take the iron of her father’s teaching into her own body and soul, to revere and imitate him while he lived and mourn him now that he was dead. There could no longer be family prayers with Isaac what he was but Emma always read her Bible at the appointed time, with a faint hope that by so doing she might win Isaac away from his wickedness before it was too late. Isaac was not exactly the object of her affection, for no one had ever taught her anything about love, but to care for his delicate body and save his lost soul was the object of her existence. Isaac knew it was and his worst moments in this house were when Emma was reading her chapter while he sat trembling on the edge of his chair, as obstinately determined not to be saved as he had once been determined not to eat the mutton fat. There was nowadays an integrity about his obstinacy; his refusal to accept his father’s God had in it something of the courage and fire of the true faith. But he was a weak man and it cost him dear. He never read a word of the paper he held before him. He did not even see it. He only saw the face of his father, whom he had hated.
Robert Peabody had been perhaps not entirely sane, brave, utterly uncorruptible, pitiless to himself, his wife and children only because he had to be. Hell yawned for them all and he had not dared to let them forget it. Above all he had not dared to let Isaac forget it, for Isaac had always been a delicate and abnormally sensitive child, prone as the delicate are to seek a little comfort for himself here and there, and dangerously indulged by his equally delicate mother. Never for one moment had Robert Peabody allowed Isaac to forget the wrath of God, and Isaac had spent his childhood in a state of cringing fear of the Deity, domiciled i
n his imagination within the Cathedral. The only time he had ever actively defied his father had been when Robert tried to take him inside the Cathedral. He had fought like a wild beast. Brought home and chastised he still would not go, and the attack of asthma he had had as the result of this battle had been so severe that Robert had let the matter drop for his wife’s sake. Maria Peabody was always worse when Isaac was worse, for Isaac was the only reason why she held to life. But her hold on life was not strong and when Isaac was fourteen she died.
For two more years Isaac had struggled on at the hated city grammar school, mercilessly teased by the boys there, and then he had done a base and terrible thing; he had stolen three pounds from a drawer in his father’s desk and run away to London. He knew that for such a deed the wrath of God was held in store for him, but he was so miserable that he scarcely cared. And there was always the hope that there was, after all, no God. This hope was fostered by his maternal uncle, to whose house in Clerkenwell he betook himself when he reached London. This uncle, his mother’s only brother, was a notary, a stout and jovial person so very much addicted to the pleasures of this life that his brother-in-law, after one visit from him, had felt himself unable to receive him in his house again lest he corrupt the children. The notary, chilled to the marrow by that one visit, had not wanted to be received again, but he had been fond of his sister and had never ceased to correspond with her, and when she died he had written a little letter of condolence to her son to whom through her letters he had taken a fancy. The warm sympathy of that letter had been something new to Isaac. He had carried it for two years in his breast pocket and then had gone to seek the writer of it.
His uncle had been good to him, had taken him into his warm untidy bachelor establishment, taught him to laugh, to swill mild ale, to eat a beefsteak with enjoyment, to disbelieve in God, to take a clock to pieces and put it together again. Then, finding that his nephew took a thrilled interest in his own hobby of horology, was expert at it and excited beyond measure to find himself in Clerkenwell, at the very hub of the clockmaking industry, he apprenticed him to a clockmaker friend of his. It was done only just in time. A few days after the deeds were signed and sealed Robert Peabody managed at last to find his son. There was a sad and bitter scene between them but Isaac, backed up by his uncle and bound in honor to his master, stood firm, and Robert went back heartbroken to the city and never saw his son again.
Those years in London had been the happiest in Isaac’s life, yet his father, and the city on the hill, were never far from his thoughts. He tried to forget them and could not, and they were linked together with the thought of the God from whom he ceaselessly fled. His father, his city, his forsaken God. A man may build as he chooses upon his foundations but he cannot change them or forget them, and if at the last the superstructure of his own building falls about his ears he tends to rediscover them at the end as the only rock he has to cling to. Isaac was still a young man when his father died yet immediately he packed his bag and went back to the city, and when on the evening of the funeral his sister Emma, whom he had never been able to like, told him it had been their father’s dying wish that she should devote the rest of her life to him he did not hesitate.
The tiny sum of money that their father had left her was hardly sufficient to keep her in clothes. She had been trained for no profession and in any case ladies did not work for their living. He must come back to the city and support her until she married, for his foundations demanded it of him. She had never married. The years he had spent with her seemed to him now a long time. The years he had spent in the city seemed timeless. The years he had spent making clocks and watches had upon them the light of eternity.
2.
Half past ten struck and Emma closed the Bible. “Ring the bell,” she said to Isaac. Summoned by the clanging Polly re-entered with three bedroom candlesticks, highly polished brass for Isaac and Emma and cracked china for herself. Solemnly Emma lit the candles, as she did every night punctually at ten-thirty, inaugurating the ritual of bedtime. Then the parlor fire was raked out, the windows firmly latched and the lamp extinguished. Then all three proceeded to the kitchen where the same was done. Emma asked, “Is the cat put out?” and Polly replied, “Yes, ma’am.” Then they went back to the dark passage and Isaac put the chain across the already firmly locked front door, while Emma locked the parlor and kitchen doors upon the outside, lest burglars break into the kitchen or parlor in the night. Then she went slowly up the narrow steep stairs with her candle, followed by Isaac with his candle, Polly bringing up the rear with hers. On the landing above Emma halted and said severely, “Good night, Polly,” and stood watching while Polly climbed up the tiny flight of uncarpeted stairs that led to her attic. When the door of that apartment had been heard to latch behind her Emma said, “Good night, Isaac,” and bent to kiss him. Then she went into her bedchamber over the parlor and shut the door behind her. Isaac went into his room, put his candle down on the table beside his bed and let out a sigh of relief that was almost a sob. He would not see his sister again until the morning.
Safe in his small hard bed, his tasseled nightcap on his head, he pondered miserably for a little while on the pitifulness of the affections and hates of human beings. He hoped he did not hate Emma, but when every tie of blood and duty and gratitude demanded of him that he should feel affection for her she affected him like some disease from which he shrank and cowered. His nerves quivered in her presence. What was the cure for this rasping of one personality upon another that brought one near to desperation and the breaking of the mind? What could one do? There was never any answer to this question, and there was none tonight, except the white radiance of the moon that bathed his bed and the slow rising within him of the waters of peace. Abruptly he forgot Emma in profound astonishment and thankfulness. It was still here. He was still having one of his good times. The unhappy evening with Emma had only been a momentary cloud upon it. He was still safe. He stretched his misshapen little body in the bed, he worshiped the moonlight and fell asleep.
In the large gloomy four-poster which had been her parents’ bed, and which almost filled the room, Emma wept. No one had ever seen her cry, no one knew she could, but the gift of quiet weeping was one that had been vouchsafed to her of late years. She wept because she was tired right out, soaked with tiredness like a sponge with water, heavy as lead. Her exhaustion was not physical, for Polly did all the hard work of the house and Emma was a strong woman; it was the weariness of failure and betrayal. She knew now that she would never change Isaac, never turn him into a sober, businesslike, gentlemanly good man. After all her years of prayerful struggle he remained what he had always been, a bad man. Yes, a bad man; a man who had stolen from his father and broken his heart, a man neither sober, honest nor God-fearing. And yet, and this to Emma was the bitterest thing in all her bitter lot, this bad man was so often happy. She, who had been a woman of exemplary virtue all her life, who had let no day go by without prayer and Bible reading, who Sunday by Sunday attended divine service, who scraped and saved to put money in her missionary box and took no sugar in her tea in Lent, was vouchsafed no reward for virtue. God had betrayed her. She had done her part but He had not done His. Peace. Joy. They were only words to her. She had seen peace in the eyes of the unregenerate Isaac, and joy dancing in Polly’s eyes, but neither the one nor the other so much as touched her with a wing tip in passing. In the face of such injustice it was hard to believe the Bible promise that the righteous shall be rewarded. She wept on into her pillow and sleep came at last, deep and dreamless. She did not know what a blessing it was that she could sleep so well.
Polly always let the cat out at night, as commanded, but as soon as she had gained her small hard bed in the cold attic she let him in again. It was about the best moment in all her happy day when she jumped into bed, opened the dormer window beside her and called, “Sooty! Sooty!” He did not come immediately, even though he had been sitting on the roof waiting for this moment ever since he had be
en put out; he had his dignity to think of. He came when it suited him, slowly and with condescension, somewhat astonished at the last to find himself on Polly’s bed. He stood for a while upon her chest, kneading her disdainfully, his enormous tail twitching, his eyes like green jewels, heartless as beautiful. Polly scarcely dared breathe lest he depart but she never closed the window until he had decided to settle down. She understood his independent pride and knew that to coerce him would be to lose not his affection, for he had none, but the partiality of his tolerance.
Tonight he sat down on her chest, his back to her, his twitching tail tickling her nose, but still she did not dare to close the window. There was a long silence in the room and then a sound so faint that it was more a vibration than a sound. It increased, sending sympathetic tremors through her body, increased slowly and steadily until sound was perceptible, a faint humming, and then a louder humming as of innumerable bees approaching at speed, and then at last Polly’s whole body was shaken by the full glorious organ music of Sooty purring. Then she shut the window and lifted up the top blanket to make a warm cavern beside her body. Into this Sooty condescended to insert himself. For a while the organ music continued beneath the blanket, then it sank to the beelike humming, then to silence. Sooty slept.