“I’m ready to lock up the room, sir.”
He staggered to his feet, thrust the legal envelope in his pocket, went downstairs and into the street.
The sedans rolled up and down the avenue. People stepped out in front of brilliantly lit residences, a happy care-free crowd, or were they like him, a lie?
He moved mechanically, elbowing his way through the mass of theatre-goers, gradually getting down into the business district, quiet, dark. He stood before his old home, huddled together as if shrinking away from the giant buildings on either side, unlocked the door; there was an odor like a crypt. He struck a match, lit the half-burnt candle on the hall stand, held it high, peering into the corners, through open doors, taking in every well-known detail—the straight-back mahogany chairs covered with mulberry velvet, the “tidies.” He could see the shuttle in his mother’s delicate fingers dancing in and out of the white thread—the rag rugs made by his grandmother. People were hunting for them in little country villages; antiquarians were reproducing them by thousands; but these were his rags. He went slowly up the narrow stairs; the creaking of the boards used to anger him when his mother was ill. He looked out at the desolate garden through little glass panes, just large enough for a boy’s face. He saw himself again gloating over the first snow-storm, running down to the cellar for his sled, his feet dancing impatiently whilst Prudence tied the soft warm shawl she had knitted for him about his head and neck.
He stopped at the first landing. The old clock was covered with dust; he found the key inside, wound it, set it right; its ticking echoed through the house; it seemed to him like a human thing whose heart had stopped for fright, then commenced to beat again in glad relief. He opened the door of the bedroom. Here he had brought his bride, here his boy was born, here he had watched Martin holding his wife in his arms. On the dressing-table was a faded rose; it fell to pieces in his hand. He went up to his father’s workshop; the images took on life in the flicker of the candle light—the Negro, the Italian shoe boy, his mother clasping him in her arms, an unfinished bust of his father, Rip Van Winkle with his head smashed—he took it all in; a life picture, the background stretching out in the full sunlight of generations, an old landscape. He was framed in it—he himself—that self, simple, sentimental, ideal, old-fashioned—the self that was not cynical, reckless, material, and all the things we call “modern.” He scented the smell of fallen plaster, felt the shaking of timbers; the wreckers had him under the hammer, destroying his foundations.
The table was littered with old newspapers and rags used in modelling; he stood for a moment motionless, like a man offering a sacrifice on the altar of his domestic gods, then he dropped the candle. Little flames started here, there, grew bigger; the illumination cast a glow over his mother’s face. She smiled at him. He shut the door, groping his way downstairs; at the gate he stopped to listen to the clear chime of the clock as it struck one, two, three....
There was no trace of the night orgy in the Park Avenue mansion. He went up to his wife’s room; she was in bed sleeping quietly. The soft-shaded lamp which burnt through the night—she had a horror of darkness—cast a soft rosy glow. “Was this beautiful creature lying there, his wife? No! No!—a legalized mistress, and he, a sensualist.”
In that moment passion burnt up in him—the body of love, the Idol, fell in ashes. He took the bill of sale from his pocket, put it beside her on the bed, then went slowly up to his room, shut the door, and burst into a loud laugh.