Window on the Square

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “I will not come weeping to you under any circumstances,” I told him evenly. “And now there is another matter about which I must consult you.”

  His exasperation was clear, but before he could protest, I hurried on. “Jeremy goes nowhere, has no friends, no pleasures. I would like to take both children to a Saturday matinee performance of Cicely Mansfield’s new play.”

  He gaped at me in blank astonishment, and dark blood flushed into his own cheekbones. What an angry-looking, red-faced pair we must have seemed to anyone passing the door.

  “You would do what?” he demanded.

  I could not understand why so mild a request should result in this reaction but I repeated my words. By this time my voice was no longer steady and it broke into a squeak that annoyed me no little. His manner changed with startling suddenness. Without warning he put his head back and allowed hearty laughter to ring through the room. He laughed as he had laughed the time he had flung the orange out a window at me. I waited in amazement until he recovered himself enough to speak.

  “A capital idea, Miss Kincaid,” he said. “You shall have your wish. I’ll get the tickets for you myself as soon as possible.”

  Before I could thank him there was a sound at the door and I turned to see Leslie Reid coming into the room. Clearly she had heard him laughing and there was a question in her eyes.

  “May I see you for a moment?” she asked.

  I said, “Good morning, Mrs. Reid,” and would have gone past her from the room in order to leave them alone, but Mr. Reid touched my elbow, holding me there.

  “Wait—we must tell my wife your plans. Leslie my love, Miss Kincaid feels that it will have an excellent effect on Jeremy and Selina to take them to a Cicely Mansfield matinee. Can I persuade you, my dear, to make one of the party?”

  Mrs. Reid gazed into her husband’s face for a long cool moment. Then she turned without a word and went from the room, not stopping to tell him whatever it was she had intended.

  The smile he turned upon me as she swept away was not altogether mirthful. “You are small to be such a hurricane,” he said. “You have all the devastating results a storm carries with it. Perhaps like a storm you’ll sweep away dry brush, sweep the air clear in this house. Or perhaps you will simply bring the whole structure down about our ears. Which, remains to be seen.”

  I did not know what he was talking about and I asked no questions. I had achieved my aims and was ready to leave. But he spoke to me again, his voice as casual as though he had never raised it toward me.

  “I’ve observed that you sometimes walk alone in the square of an evening. May I advise you not to, Miss Kincaid. The streets of New York are far from safe for an unescorted woman after dark. Even I never go abroad at night without a loaded pistol in my pocket.”

  I could afford not to oppose him on this. “Thank you for the warning,” I said meekly. “I’ll try to heed it.”

  As I went away, I carried with me a picture of Brandon Reid staring again at the Osiris head as if he sought to gain from it some answer that eluded him.

  FIVE

  The next morning, when I saw Jeremy at breakfast, I asked him to come and help me in the schoolroom before lessons started. He obeyed indifferently and informed me without interest where I could get a hammer and tacks when I asked for them.

  In the schoolroom I had him help me hold the map in place above the mantel and keep it steady while I stood on a chair and tapped in the first tacks. When I glanced at him carelessly, I saw that he was reading some of the names on the map. However, he remained indifferent when I turned hammer and tacks over to him and he worked with them so awkwardly that I had to take them back and finish the task myself. It had been my hope that he might ask questions, or show some curiosity, as any other child would have done. But he did not, and I had to make my own opening.

  “I’ve seen that wonderful head of Osiris in your uncle’s library,” I said, “and it has renewed an interest I’ve always had in Egypt. This room is too plain anyway, and I thought it might be ornamental to put this map on the wall. While I’m working I can look at it occasionally and learn more about its cities and rivers.”

  My speech sounded unconvincing in my own ears and I was not surprised by Jeremy’s continued apathy. At least I had placed Egypt in view. If there was any latent interest in the boy, the map might renew it. If there was not, then I must try some other course.

  During the morning Mrs. Reid made one of her rare visits to the schoolroom. She excused herself pleasantly to Andrew and asked if she might have a word with me. I put down my work and went to the door. She was going out this afternoon, she told me, and Miss Garth was coming with her. It was her wish to take Selina as well, and she wondered if I would look after Jeremy for two or three hours while they were gone.

  Her manner was less that of mistress to servant than it had been and she seemed truly grateful when I agreed to take charge of the boy. Nothing could have pleased me more. For the first time Jeremy and I would be left alone and I would have an opportunity to talk to him without interruption.

  In the beginning, however, the chance seemed to promise little. When Selina, gay in her new green frock, had gone off with her mother and governess, we had the upper floors of the house to ourselves. Mr. Reid was out, Andrew had finished with his lessons and gone, and the servants were in their own quarters below stairs. Jeremy settled down to read in the nursery, ignoring me.

  From my room I had brought the book on Egypt and in what I tried to make a cheerful, companionable atmosphere, I too settled down to read. Once I laughed out loud over an amusing paragraph and then read on without explanation. Jeremy gave no sign that he had heard me. At another point I said, “Listen to this!” and read aloud a passage that mentioned the splendid discoveries of an expedition a few years ago, made possible by Mr. Brandon Reid of New York City.

  Jeremy looked up from his book, and I suspected a normal curiosity. But he suppressed it at once and returned to his own reading. Now, however, his book did not seem to hold him as it had. He seemed to be attending to something outside this room. It was as if he listened for some special sound. The house was still and though I listened too, I heard not even a footfall from the floors below.

  Finally he put his book aside and went softly to the door, opened it, and looked out into the hall, his slight body tensed with listening. Still he heard nothing and he came back to his chair without looking at me. I began to feel uneasy and Andrew Beach’s warning about the boy returned to my mind. My uneasiness, however, was not fear. It was more like the feeling one might have with an unsettled companion who listened for—ghosts. Was that what he listened for?

  His restlessness was growing, and he began to roam the room. He poked among Selina’s dolls and dishes, grunting scornfully to himself. He picked up tin soldiers and tops and jacks; he went to a shelf and pulled out a large thin geography from beneath a stack of books. This he brought to the table, placing it before me. Without explanation he flipped open the pages as though he knew exactly where to look and drew out a square of drawing paper. He gave the paper a quick, intent look and then held it out to me, still without speaking.

  As I took it from his hand, I saw that it bore a pen-and-ink sketch of Jeremy’s face. The likeness was excellent, though this was a younger Jeremy. The artist had caught shock and tragedy in the eyes and a mouth that was clenched to suppress emotion. Yet there was nothing here of viciousness or violence. I remembered my own first impression of a dark young angel and found that the artist had seen the resemblance too. In a corner of the paper were the initials, “A.B.”

  “This is very good,” I said. “Mr. Beach drew it, didn’t he?”

  Jeremy nodded. “Uncle Brandon liked it, so he kept it. I took it out of his desk after he married my mother and came here to live. He has forgotten about it by now. It’s not a good picture though. It’s a lie, and Mr. Beach knows it is a lie. He’s painting a portrait of Selina and my mother now, but he doesn’t want me to be in i
t.”

  I felt my way warily. “I don’t understand what you mean. This seems a wonderful likeness to me. Though of course you’re older than you were then.”

  The boy took the picture abruptly and replaced it in the geography. I had a feeling that I had disappointed him in some way. Had he wanted me to deny the likeness, to tell him he did not look like that?

  When the book had been returned to its shelf, he went to the door and opened it once more upon the hall. The air of listening was upon him again, and I knew he was deliberately challenging my attention. This was the opportunity I had waited for. I spoke to him quietly, almost carelessly.

  “Jeremy, would you like to show me your father’s room downstairs?”

  This time I had his full attention as I had never had it before. He turned from peering into the hall and faced me, dark-browed as his uncle, but with a child’s startled fear in his eyes.

  “What are you up to?” he asked rudely.

  “You have a key to the room,” I reminded him. “Though I’ve never told anyone that you have. The other night you wanted to go into your father’s room and you ran away when I surprised you in the hall. Who is to stop you now if you show the room to me?”

  Distrust was visible in every line of his body. When I rose and touched his shoulder I found him as stiff as one of his own tin soldiers.

  “Get the key and come along,” I said as lightly as though I had suggested a stroll in the park.

  His shoulder rejected my fingers. Stirred to sudden action, he darted down the hall to his room and returned a moment later with the key in his hand. When he held it out to me, I reached for it, but he snatched it back at once.

  “You’ll be afraid,” he said. “Everyone’s afraid of that room. Everyone but me.”

  He, I suspected, was the most frightened of all, but I did not say so.

  “Try me,” I told him, and started ahead down the stairs.

  He slipped past me, and in the lower hall we both stopped in mute accord and listened for sounds from the floor below. All was quiet. Yet now irresolution seized him and he stared at the key in his hand as though he did not know where it had come from, or how to use it.

  I spoke to him gently. “I’ve heard what a fine person your father was, and of how generously he gave his help to those who were in trouble or in need. I would like to see the room where he lived. I think it must be a pleasant, friendly place. If you can’t manage the key, I’ll do it for you.”

  “Miss Garth will give you the very dickens,” he said, as though he half hoped I would draw back. “My mother will cry if she knows, and my uncle will be in a rage.”

  I smiled at him. “Your uncle has said I may take you into the room any time you like.”

  He grimaced like a street urchin. “You’re lying to me. Everyone lies to me. But I don’t care. I’m not afraid of my uncle.”

  Gathering up his resolve he attacked the door with the key. That was the very word for the rough, angry way he went about inserting it in the lock and turning it. Then he pushed the door ajar upon the cold stuffiness of a place long unused and unaired.

  Shutters had been closed and draperies drawn so that a thick darkness lay upon the room, scarcely penetrated by thin light from the hall. I will confess to a faint prickling at the back of my neck as if the supernatural had touched me. But I would have none of that.

  “I’ll open the shutters,” I said and started resolutely across the room.

  Jeremy flew after me and caught me by the arm. “No!” he cried. “No!” and there was terror in the syllable.

  I wanted to force nothing upon him that he did not wish. “Would you rather we went back upstairs?”

  That was not what he wanted either. It seemed that it was bright daylight he feared. He went to the place where matches lay upon a bureau and held one out to me in silence. As silently I struck a light and reached upward to a gas jet, turning the cock. With a puff the gas caught and the illumination of evening lay upon the room.

  While Dwight Reid’s personal effects had been put away, it appeared that nothing else had been touched in the room and I looked about it, seeking to know what manner of man Jeremy’s father—Brandon Reid’s brother—had been. There was no austerity here. Two or three small, bright rugs, figured in a mixture of brown, yellow, and green, lay upon the over-all gray carpet. A four-poster bed of walnut boasted a valance of dark gold and a spread of gold-green. The fine old highboy had brass handles to every drawer. A painting hung above the mantel—a hunting scene that picked up the gold and greens of the room, and added a warm splash of red. While Leslie Reid’s room had seemed to indicate a love of ornate luxury, Dwight’s room showed true elegance of taste without severity.

  But it was the boy who interested me more than the room. He was moving almost systematically, opening a drawer here, the doors of a commode there, touching, searching. What it was he looked for I could not guess and I did not ask. I waited quietly for this fever of reacquaintance with the room to wear off. There seemed some purpose behind his actions and if this search gave him ease, I did not mean to obstruct it.

  There was a long carved box on the bureau, and he removed the cover, looked into it, found emptiness, and went on. He even touched the pillows on the bed and groped beneath them. I half expected him to get down on his hands and knees and look under the bed, but he did not. When he had searched beneath the coverlet along one length, he rounded the foot of the bed to the side nearest the door to the adjoining boudoir. Dark draperies of heavy green brocade hid the door, and he thrust them apart and examined the bolt that locked the door from inside the room.

  “They always keep it locked now,” he said over his shoulder. “But my father used to leave it open. I had only to come through the curtains that day. He was standing right there by the bed.”

  He turned and gave me a long, searching look.

  “I can show you something,” he said. There was a gleam of excitement in his eyes, and his usual apathy had vanished. He seemed a different boy—a more frightening one.

  I knew he was measuring me in some way, testing me, perhaps, and I steeled myself against any betrayal of emotion.

  “Very well,” I said. “Show me whatever you like.”

  He bent swiftly and caught up a corner of the small rug on the floor beside the bed. With the air of a magician producing something sure to confound me, he jerked it away. I stared at the faint brownish stain on the gray carpet and felt the finger of horror touch the back of my neck again.

  “I’ll bet you don’t know what that is!” Jeremy cried, his voice chill with an eerie triumph. “You’ll be afraid when I tell you. You’ll be sick!”

  It took all the self-control I could summon to keep from running off to the safety of my small room upstairs. Away from this place of tragedy, from the stain on the carpet, and the suddenly evil child. For the sake of Jeremy’s sanity I fought for control.

  “Of course I know what it is,” I said as calmly as I was able. “It’s a bloodstain, obviously.”

  A little of his wild elation subsided. More than anything else he seemed puzzled by my response. I went on quickly before he could speak again.

  “When a person is shot there is always blood,” I told him in matter-of-fact tones. “It was in this room that your father died, wasn’t it? So this must be a bloodstain.”

  “So much blood,” Jeremy whispered. Then he spoke more loudly, defiantly. “Now you see why it is that you can’t like me. You needn’t try to fool me by pretending to be friends. No one likes me. Mr. Beach knows that picture he drew was a lie, and Uncle Brandon hates me. So does my mother and Garth. And you will too. Only Selina doesn’t because she’s too young and silly to understand what I did.”

  I thought of the bloodstain no longer, but only of the desolation I saw in the eyes of the child before me. I too needed the wisdom of Osiris to deal with this matter, and I possessed so little sagacity. I could only follow my instinct and hope it was sound.

  “How can I know
so soon whether I like you or not?” I asked him. “I never make up my mind about people that quickly. When I do decide, it’s because of how a person is with me and not because of what may have happened long ago. Or because of what other people say about him.”

  Jeremy looked at me without trust, but as though I continued to puzzle him. His next words surprised me.

  “Would you like to see the pistol collection? It’s downstairs in the drawing room. I’ll show it to you if you like.”

  Was I wrong? I wondered. Was I letting him excite himself unwisely? Should I put a stop to this as I knew anyone else in the house would have done? Against reason, I once more gave him the lead. I turned out the gas and he relocked the room, pocketing the key. Together we started downstairs. There was no one about, and he opened the door of the drawing room softly.

  Again there was gilt and damask elegance, and underfoot the rich soft colors of Persia. Though the room was reserved for special occasions and the shutters closed, the shadows here were not so dense. Enough light to see by seeped in. Jeremy went directly to the rear of the room, where a tall glass cabinet stood on spindly carved legs. Upon its shelves lay spread an array of small arms from all over the world.

  Now Jeremy seemed more like a small boy showing off his knowledge. For the moment the horror of the room upstairs had faded into the background. This was a dueling pistol, he pointed out, and there was its mate. That one with the silver fittings had been carried in Napoleon’s army, while this plain one with the bone handle came from our own West. Here was a revolver, there a clumsy, old-fashioned double-barreled pistol. He had learned his father’s hobby well and forgotten nothing. But he could not touch the pistols or take them out, for the cabinet was securely locked.

  “They always keep it locked now and the key hidden,” he said. And added with a meaning that turned my mouth dry, “That’s because of me.”

  As I watched, he counted the guns carefully, then counted them again, and yet a third time.

  “It’s always the same,” he assured me. “They never put it back. I keep looking and looking for it, but I don’t know where they’ve hidden it.”