No doubt the man who put in that little window at the back of Arnold’s cupboard chuckled as he did it—recognizing that it also had dramatic possibilities.
Where was I? Oh! Arnold was changing his coat. As he felt for the loop at the neck, he heard someone say softly—it was a whisper of terrified recognition:
“Mother!”
Then he heard another voice, which seemed to come thickly through layers of flesh.
“Law! Then it reely is you, Clara.”
That was all. But you’ll admit that the square, dusty window at the back of the cupboard had justified its existence—doubtless not for the first time, if the paneled walls had been capable of crying out.
Arnold put his eye cautiously to that dim pane of glass. He saw Clarissa in her spring finery; dainty, fresh, from the jaunty little lace hat, with the trembling cornflowers, which was perched on her elaborately dressed hair, to the pointed, shiny shoe sticking out from the frill of her skirt. He saw her beautiful, classic face; her blue eyes, a trifle frightened and guilty and disgusted, but not in the least affectionate. He saw her frown and make a warning movement with her gloved fingers and jerk her head toward the sitting room.
Mrs. Neaves had her dirty hands on her spread hips; her dreadful working dress of brownish-gray wool was slopped with dish water and patched with grease. It had parted from its lining under the arms, at the waist, at the back—everywhere, as her exuberant rolls of flesh broke through. She wasn’t a woman; she was an unsavory bundle of rags which you would take gingerly by one corner and pitch onto a dust heap. And she was Clarissa’s mother. The likeness was unmistakable, even if he had not heard the girl’s quick, frightened word, which gave away the situation. He understood now the uncanny attraction which had lately impelled him to observe Mrs. Neaves. The two pairs of blue eyes, one looking out from a delicate frame of chalk, the other from a shiny band of perspiration, were the same. One pair a little bleared by gin, by labor and years—but that was the only difference.
He didn’t catch the rest of their conversation; he did not want to. He watched them; their gestures (Clarissa’s tragic, the mother’s amazed) were enough. He sneaked away from the cupboard at last and sat down by the window. Sol, understanding, put his damp nose into his master’s loosely doubled palm. His brown eyes said wistfully, “I could have told you so. Why want a woman? Isn’t my devotion enough?”
Arnold wasn’t angry with Clarissa, wasn’t contemptuous of her. He didn’t see the humor of the situation, nor the degradation of it. He didn’t want to put on his hat and get out of the place, leaving the women to squabble over him as they liked. He had none of the sensations that I should have had, that you would have had if you were a man. I know your womanly sensations; boiling wrath and contempt for Clarissa, mingled with intense sympathy and a little irritation with her for being fool enough to give away everything by that one nervous word.