The double house

A SHORT STORY

NANCY HALE

■ The little hoy, whose name was Robert. used sometimes to think how horrid their house would be if his father did not live in it. It was half a house; nobody lived in the other side. In the middle of the house as you came towards it there were the two front doors set side by side. There were shutters on the window's of their side of the house, and the door was painted green, hut the empty half had blank staring windows and a rusty-coloured door; the low cellar windows, flush with the ground, were broken, and Virginia creepers ran into the holes and disappeared.

Robert used to think, as he came home from school, how ugly the house looked, and how hopeless and sad. He tried not to let his father know he knew it Was not a very nice house because he had an idea that it was the best house his father was able to get for them and his aunt Esther, his father's sister, to live in. He imagined that his father did not think it was very nice either; at least it was so different from that house in the stories his father told him of the days when he had been a little boy. Rut he did not want to speak about it, because it might make his father unhappy, and at the possibility of his father's unhappiness Robert felt a sense of terror. It was only because his father was such a happy man that life was possible at all.

Aunt Esther was always weary and gloomy. She was kind too, but she wept if she listened to the stories of the days when she and Robert's father were children, and that was why the stories were never told when she was around, any more. She wanted to be good to her nephew, hut Robert tried not to be alone with her since the time, about a year ago, when he was ten, that she had looked at him with tears in her eyes, and shaken her head, and said that he was lucky to be a child, for childhood was the only happy time. At that Robert's heart had stood still with fear, for if it were true that he would never be any happier than he W'as now, then he w'as lost.

So when he came home from school every afternoon he could not bear to go directly into the house, but cut off at the side of the house and went around to the back, on the empty side, where a cellar window was so broken that he could get himself through the hole. He would come walking down the street in the late afternoon sunlight, in the crisp autumn air, with a strap around his books and the end of the strap in his hand, alone, small and thin, with his coat buttoned up the front; he would turn and walk up the unsodded ground to his front steps and put his books on the steps and then go around to the hack and slide on his back through the broken cellar window that was the way into the empty, silent, cold half of the house.

He had brought in some of the books his father gave him, and he would sit on top of the old deserted bureau in one of the dead musty bedrooms, in the late sunshine of those afternoons and read the hooks, wearing his coat buttoned up in the cold. He had brought in his paintbox, and with some Water in one of the jelly-glasses and a brush he sometimes coloured the illustrations in the books, or made pictures of his own on the flyleaves or on a pad of school paper. He did not like his pictures. He knew that they were all wrong, and he hoped it was true that, as his father said, people got better at doing things as they grew older. If that Were not true then, he thought, he was lost, for he was weak. and different, and the other boys bated him, and he could not even paint nice pictures. Rut his father had told him that it was true, and that things got much better as people grew older, and Robert believed him, for he could see that his father was a happy man.

" He knew that this late afternoon life in the empty half of the house was the only life he lived on his own resources, and he saw that it was not much of a life to make for himself and that it was lonely and pathetic. He detested himself for his shyness and his queerness and unhappiness and unimportance, but be could not do anything about it any more than if it had been a sickness. He used to think, I must just hang on and get through things until I grow up and then everything will be better.

When the sun went down he would go away from the darkening upstairs room where he had been playing and go down through the cellar to get out. The cellar would be pitch-dark and frightening, and sometimes one of the cobwebby ropes hanging from the cellar beams would sway against bis head as he passed; he was in a hurry to crawl through the broken window and get out of that dreadful cellar, although he loved the place too, because it was the only place he could think of to himself as being his own.

He would go around in the early chilling dusk to the front of the house, and sit on the steps watching the men come up the street from the train. After a while his father would come along, and Robert used to notice that although he walked heavily and stoop-shouldered further down the street, as soon as he saw his son he would straighten up and walk faster, waving his rolled-up paper at Robert and smiling through the twilight.

'"Hello, Robbie, old boy," his father would shout at him. He was a stoutish, thick man with a moustache, and he wore a black overcoat with a velvet collar. He would give Robert a little slap on the back and they would walk up to the house hand in hand, his father already starting on stories of what had happened at the office. Robert would squeeze his father's hand and look up at him, and his father would squeeze his hand back and say, "Don't look so glum, old man. Everything's all right, isn't it?" and Robert would say, "Sure. Fine."

The rest of the day was always happy, once Robert's father had come home. They all had supper in the warm yellow light of the kitchen, and his father would eat a lot of everything and make jokes and josh his sister Esther along, while Robert ate bis supper and listened, and felt safe and gay. His father made such a lot of noise and was so cheerful that everything they did in the evening seemed exciting and successful. Sometimes he read poetry aloud, and at those times Robert could see that he was moved, but there was nothing miserable about it, but a kind of glorious, joyful sadness, and kiss father would say, "Gee. That always gets me," as he laid the book down. Everything was all right; the house was nice, the light was warm, the fire crackled, and the evenings were long and happy, because Robert's father was there. Robert used to kiss his father when he went up to bed, although he knew it was supposed to he sissy; his father's moustache felt big and bristly, and his father would give him another slap and say, while Robert's ear was still very close, "Goodnight, old man. Everything's fine. You're just like me, you know, and all you have to do is just keep plugging along."

■ Robert's father always used to walk to the station via Robert's school, a little out of his way, and leave him at the corner of the school street. It was a nice walk that led through the little graveyard next to the stone church, and along a broad sunny street. It seemed sometimes to Robert that his father walked very slowly, and he worried about that; it made him feel terror to think that perhaps his father was getting old.

One morning as they were going along one of the paths of the graveyard, Robert's father saw a small red flower growing inside one of the iron-fenced inclosures. Robert was in a botany class at school, and his father had been interested in the specimens the pupils were supposed to collect, and had given him tips about where to go to look for them. Now he slopped short. "Let's rob a grave, Robbie, shall we?" He made it sound wicked and exciting. He lay, stout and awkward, down upon the ground and reached in for the flower, and brought it out and got up, red in the face. "There, now, you take that to class and knock all their eyes out," he said. "That's a rare one. They'll all he jealous." Robert took it in his hand, looking at his father and unable to say anything. He was so touched by his father's helping him, and yet he knew so well that he would not knock their eyes out, that if anything they would only find his new flower an excuse for laughing at him.

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They walked on again. At the corner of the street they parted as usual, with a slap on Robert's hack. As soon as he was alone Robert could feel the old fear and desperation come into his heart, and he looked hack for one last sight of his father. He saw his father's heavy hack going down the street, and for a minute he imagined that there was a slump, a tired look to his father's walk now that his father had left him. Then he went on to school, with his face set, holding onto his hooks trap tight, and with the flower in his other hand.

School was a sort of nightmare broken by little intervals of hope. When he went into a class-room he always half-imagined that someone might call out for him to come and sit next to him. But no one ever did, nor was this day an exception. His find of a new flower was praised in botany class by the teacher, and for 1 that half-hour he felt a little rise of pride, and of the interest that his father had made him feel for the subject. The teacher asked him to stay a minute alter class, and talked to him about botany in appreciation of his rcsDonse.

That class was followed by recess, and as Robert walked out into the big dirt yard he passed one of the other hoys in his class. The hoy stared at him. "Hello, Daisy," he said. Two minutes later another group of boys called him "Daisy." "Shut up," Robert said to the hoy nearest him, who was grinning into his face. "Make me," the hoy said. Robert hit him in the face, and a minute later he felt hard, gritty dirt in his mouth, before he realized that he had been knocked down. The other hoy was on him holding his shoulders down. "Daisy, Daisy, Daisy," he chanted. "Robert brought a Dai-sy to Tea-cher." Robert struggled wildly, crazy with rage; then the after-recess hell rang, and the other boy jumped off him and ran off without a word. Robert got up and went in to class.

It was one of the worst days for him. When he came out to the cloak room at the end of school to get his coat, he could not find his cap on its hook. Then he saw that two hoys at the end of the hall were throwing it between them for a hall. "Let's have the cap," Robert called, walking over as he put on his coal. They stared at him for a moment, and then' suddenly laughing, ran out of the door and into the yard with the cap, and Robert ran after them. It seemed to him that he ran and ran and ran, round and round the schoolhouse, hopelessly, never catching up to the two boys, who at length dropped it on the dirt, stamped hastily on it, and ran off. Robert picked it up and started home.

He seemed to feel a little lonelier than ever in the cold, secret playrooms of the empty half of the house. He sat on the old bureau and wondered dully when things would begin to get better for him. He felt a tired, hopeless acceptance of his own queerness, his weakness and difference from other boys. Sitting there, his mind drifted off into one of its dreams, of being strong and powerful and brilliant, of being safe and unassailable. From that it was all the more hitter to come hack into the dim, lonely reality of the barren room, with his hooks, his paintbox and efforts at making pictures scattered dismally about the floor. There was nothing in him that was a reason for his being alive in the world. After a while he went out, and down to the dreadful, black, unthinkable cellar; as a loop of the dusty ropes that hung from the beam slapped against his cheek in the dark he started and his heart stabbed with terror; he hurried out through the broken window and went around to sit on the front steps, wanting his father more than ever.

But his father seemed to he longer in coming than ever before. The other men all came up from the station in a straggling procession which dwindled and ended. His father had not come. Robert felt a kind of panic. He felt burning, wild tears behind his eyes. He felt sure that something horrible had happened to his father. He imagined that heavy, tired form run over by a truck, even run over by a train or fainting in the street, and the visions were too terrible to think of. After a while he could not hear it, and wandered down the street in the darkening twilight, staring and staring ahead of him for the sight of that familiar approaching hulk. But the street was empty. People were having their suppers in their lighted houses on either side of him, hut still his father did not come. Suddenly he turned and ran home as fast as he could, holding hack the sobs in his throat. He fell, and scraped his hands on the dirty pavement, and got up and ran on, into the house, into the kitchen, to Aunt Esther. "He hasn't come," he burst out. "Something's happened to him." His aunt looked at his wild little thin face. "Oh, it's all right, Robert," she said. "He's missed his train, that's all. He's done it before." He sat down on a chair and kept still, listening and listening.

When he heard the front door open he dashed out and hurled himself at his father in the dark hall. "Oh," he sobbed, unable to keep from crying, "I thought something had happened to you." He could not speak any more. His father switched on the light. "Why, you poor old boy," he said in his big, safe voice. "There. There." He cleared his throat, curiously. "I missed the silly old train, that's all, Robbie, old scout. Buck up. You poor old man. Now, then, go upstairs and wash those black hands of yours and come down and we'll have supper." But Robert clung to him for a moment longer, his arms around that large, solid bulk, his heart pounding in him. Then he ran upstairs.

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He washed his hands for a long time while he let his heart stop heating, and his great relief rolled over him in a lovely warm wave. His father was here, and so everything was all right. His father, whom he loved, and who was happy and strong, and his only promise of safety. His father, who said they were just alike, and so held out a reason for living to Robert. Everything was all right. Just keep plugging along. Everything will get better as soon as I get older, Robert thought, in sheer relieved joy. My father says so. He wandered downstairs, and started hack toward the kitchen.

But the voice he heard was so horribly like and unlike his father's that it stopped him short in his tracks. He could not move, he could only listen to hear that dreadful sound again.

"My God, I could almost give up," this voice said.

"But I thought everything was getting along well enough at the office," his aunt's voice said, trembling. "Was this the first you knew, that they were going to let you go?"

"Yeh." Robert heard a long, heavy sigh. "Sometimes I'd wish I were dead, if it wasn't for that poor old hoy. Oh well." There was a pause, and then Robert, shaking outside the door, heard one more sentence. "My God, Esther, how I wish we were children; we were happy then."

Robert turned, with his hands before him as if he were blind, and without will went to the front door, opened it, and found himself in the chilly night. He walked around to the hack of the house and looked up at the sky as he walked, and saw it filled with brilliant and meaningless stars, and shut his eyes against them. He started to get into the hole that went into the empty cellar, and then sat for a moment half in and half out, with his mind throbbing like a wound. It seemed to him that this was the end of all happiness, of all hope. He began to cry, hysterically, and let himself on through the hole into the black, frightful cellar. Terror, and hopelessness, heat upon him like oceans, overcoming him. He stumbled in the darkness until his clutching fingers felt one of the dangling ropes. As he fumbled at the loop he was sobbing crazily.