The trumpet in the dust

by Constance Holme

From her husband her mind passed naturally enough to Tibbie, but she could not persuade it to grasp her for long. Always it seemed to slip away, to move on, to ignore, as it were, her very existence. Neither would it condescend to dwell upon Stephen, or even the children. Hitherto they had all been vividly in her thoughts, but here in her new quarters she couldn’t see them at all. It was just as if something refused to let them come in; as if they couldn’t or wouldn’t—perhaps wouldn’t—come in.... She couldn’t offer to see them against the background of her future home, and presently, though without knowing it, she gave up trying. All the rest of the time she was there she never thought of them once, making her pleasant plans as if they had never been.

She amused herself for a while seeing how easily the cupboards opened and locked, how the drawers ran on a grain of silk and the beds slid on smooth wheels. Sound workmanship throughout—that was the hall-mark of the house; dry walls, firm floors, well-fitting windows, furniture of the best. Again and again she said to herself that it was all exactly what might have been looked for from old Mr. T. And always first and foremost he had thought of the houses as places where old folks would have to live. The windows, therefore, were broad but low, so that no clean-curtain-loving house-wife should be tempted to dally with a pair of “steps.” The foundations were good, but there were no cellars into which shaky old legs, descending daily, could do their best to break shaky old necks. Coal-house and larder were both within easy reach of the kitchen, and there, as everywhere, all the floors ran level. Nowhere was there a sudden step going down or up; not even a passing unevenness that might possibly stub old toes.

Old Mr. T. had known that half the quarrels among women are conducted from the safe standing-ground of their own thresholds; so, as far as possible, he had set the doors of his almshouses back to back. His whole object, indeed, had been to make the old folk feel private, without ever letting them feel alone; and although he had been bound to make the wash-house in common (always a fearful source of anguish of soul) he had hedged it about with terrific instructions which only the thoroughly graceless would dare to break. But, in spite of Mrs. Bell’s intimidating list, the wash-house was almost the only thing about which there was any definite rule. Old Mr. T. had known that you can generally trust a decent woman to look after a decent house, but that, where wash-houses are concerned, no woman living is always perfectly sane.

He had known, too, that old folk usually like to see a “bit of life,” and that nothing bores them so much as to be shut away to look at nothing. So wherever he could he had put the kitchen to face the road, defying the social tenet which says that this is the sole privilege of the parlour. He knew that the old, who had stopped running about on their own account in life, could weave chapters on end about somebody running about with a Gladstone bag. With all their experience, all their knowledge of human nature behind them, it seemed hard to him that they should not use it. Age is the natural harvest-time for the observer and looker-on, and it would have seemed as cruel to him to have denied it its fruit, as to deny dancing and singing to buoyant youth.

But he had known also that the old have their hours of weary withdrawal from life, as if all in a moment somebody hailed them to look beyond. It was then that they wanted wide, tranquil skies, rolling lands and the distant sea—all these spacious country things which speak of a wider country still. So in Mrs. Clapham’s kitchen at least he had set that second window towards the west, the eye that looked to the marsh and the park and the dim blueness of the bay. He knew that sometimes, when the evening came, the old would let down the blind of the window that looked to the road, and sit in the other that looked to the sky in the west. Through the window behind them they would hear hoofs and wheels, voices and young laughter, footsteps and talk; but their eyes would be fixed immovably on the thing “beyond.” At that hour they would not raise a corner of the blind to look at “life,” because they would be looking at something so much bigger than life. Leaning back in one of his easy chairs, with half-dropped lids and quietly-folded hands, they would sit staring at the colour and light, the shining mystery of evening peace. He liked to think that some of them might even pass like that, without any nuisance of doctor and sick-bed; that, soothed and content, alone and yet not lonely, ready yet not afraid, they might step straight out of the house which he had built into those other houses not made with hands.... He built many almshouses during the course of his long life, but it was only when he built the last of them in his old age that he came finally to think of that.

Mrs. Clapham remembered now, as she came back to it again, that it was in that very kitchen he had called her a “d—d good sort.” The almshouses were just finished but had not been allotted, and one morning, as she waited on him at breakfast, he had asked her if she would like to see them. A little later, therefore, they had found themselves walking out, and although she had felt coy and abashed, the old gentleman had not cared a button. “Come along, Jones! Step out!” he had ordered her, when he found her attempting to hang back. “Short life.... Short days. Put your best foot foremost, Jones! Step along; step out!”

He had taken her over each house in turn, jerking out explanations of his ideas, and watching her keenly all the time. He had waited patiently while she lingered and stared, and over and over again he had asked her opinion. Presently she made an effort and ventured a shy hint, and with mixed horror and pride watched him enter it in a book. Finally, she had blurted out that nobody would ever believe the houses to have been planned by a man, and suddenly his eyes had twinkled, his lips parted, and he had chuckled grimly and looked pleased....

It was in the corner-house kitchen that their tour had come to an end, and there he had really started to talk—that is, as much as anything that ever came out of that taciturn mouth could truly be termed talk. It seemed to her that she could see him now, standing in the west window, a still sturdy and square figure, although getting a little bent. At least she was almost sure she could see his clothes, with their bulging pockets and bagged knees—clothes which were yet so full of character that, in brushing them, she had always felt as if she was brushing old Mr. T. And although they were shabby and out of shape, they were made of such stuff that they couldn’t wear out—never did wear out, indeed, as far as the charwoman knew. For years she had traced those clothes, first on the back of one person and then on another, and always, no matter who was inside them, looking exactly like old Mr. T.... His square hands had been thrust behind him under the tails of his square-cut coat, and his square grey hat had been pushed to the back of his square head. From under his thick eyebrows his keen grey eyes had stared at the view, and from between the white whiskers rimming his shaven chin he had jerked the stiff speeches from his obstinate mouth.

“Best of the bunch, eh, Jones?” he had demanded proudly. “Long chalks the best of the bunch! It’s that window makes it ... thought it would ... felt sure. Felt d—d sure, in fact, but the architect wouldn’t have it. Had the devil of a lot of trouble with that architect, taking it all round. You know what a devil of a lot of trouble I’ve had with him, don’t you, Jones?”

“Jones” murmured respectful assent, remembering with awe terrible battles overheard through the study door, together with the lurid comments of old Mr. T. after the architect had gone away.