Arabella Jones ran out of the back door, around the house and into the front door of her flat. Over and over she did it. Each time she rang her own door bell and opened her own front door and walked in with a laugh as if such a delightful thing had never happened to her before.
“It is half like having a house of my own,” she said, and rushed into the garden to gather nasturtiums. She put them into a bowl and dug her nose down among the blossoms. “Bought flowers don’t smell like that, and oh, oh, the kitchen range! and a pulley clothes-line across the garden! my own bath! Nothing shared–no gas plate hidden behind a curtain–no public entrance and no public hall! Oh, it is only the beginning too; presently we shall own a whole house and furniture and our own garden, not rented but our very own!”
It was not Silas Jones but “a home” that had lured Arabella into marriage. When dull, middle-aged Silas said, “I am tired of knocking round, I want a home and a wife inside that home–what about it, Arabella?” she lifted her face to his like a “kiss-for-a-candy” little girl. And they were married.
That was in Eastern Canada–they began to move West. It was fun living in hotels for a bit, but soon Arabella asked, “When are we going to get the home?”
“We have to find out first where we want it to be.”
The place did not matter to Arabella. She wanted a home. They travelled right across Canada, on, on, till they came to Vancouver and the end of the rail.
“Now there is no further to go, can we get our home?”
“There is still Vancouver Island,” he said.
They took the boat to Victoria. Here they were in “Lower West,” while Silas Jones looked around. He was in no hurry to buy. The independence of a self-contained flat would satisfy his young wife for the time being.
Arabella Jones kept begging me, “Do come down to our flat of an evening and talk before my husband about the happiness of owning your own home.”
Mortgage, taxes, tenants, did not make home-owning look too nice to me just then–I found it difficult to enthuse.
Silas had travelled. He was a good talker, but I began to notice a queerness about him, a “far-offness”–when his eyes glazed, his jaw dropped and he forgot. Arabella said, “Silas is sleeping badly, has to take stuff.” She said too, “He is always going to Chinatown,” and showed me vases and curios he bought in Chinatown for her.
One night Silas told me he had been looking round, and expected to buy soon, so I could consider my flat free for the first of the next month should I have an applicant.
The following day I was going down my garden when he called to me from his woodshed. I looked up-drew back. His face was livid–eyes wild; foam came from his lips.
“Hi, there, you!” he shouted. “Don’t you dare come into my flat, or I’ll kill you–kill you, do you hear? None of your showing off of my flat!”
He was waving an axe round his head, looking murderous. I hurried past, did not speak to him. I went to the flat at the other side of the house; this tenant knew the Joneses.
I said, “Silas Jones has gone crazy or he is drunk.”
“You know what is the matter with that man, don’t you?”
“No, what?”
“He”–a tap at the door stopped her. Silas Jones’s young wife was there.
“Somebody wants to see over our flat,” she said.
“Would you be kind enough to show it to them?”
“It would be better for you to do it yourself,” she said shortly. I saw she was angry about something.
“I can’t–your husband–“
“My husband says you insulted him–turned your back on him when he spoke to you. He is very angry.”
“I do not care to talk to drunken men.”
“Drunken? My–husband–does–not–drink….” She spoke slowly as if there were a wonder between every word; her eyes had opened wide and her face gone white. “I will show the flat,” she said.
I stood on the porch waiting while the women went over the Joneses’ flat. Suddenly, Silas was there-gripping my shoulder, his terrible lips close to my ear.
“You told…!”
His wife was coming–he let go of me. I went back to my other tenant.
“What was it you were going to tell me about Silas Jones?”
“Dope.”
“Dope! I have never seen any one who took dope.”
“You have now–you have let the cat out of the bag, too. Did you see the girl’s face when you accused her husband of being drunk? She was putting two and two together–his medicine for insomnia–his violent tempers–Chinatown….Poor child….”
I kept well out of the man’s way. He was busy with agents. His wife was alternately excited about the home and very sad.
I knew it was her step racing up the stairs. “My husband has bought a house, furniture and all. It is a beauty. It has a garden. Now I shall have a home of my very own!”
She started to caper about…stopped short …her hands fell to her sides, her face went dead. She stood before the window looking, not seeing.
“I came to ask if you know of a woman I could get, one who would live in. My husband wants to get a Chinaman to do the work, but I…I must have a woman.”
Her lips trembled, great fear was in her eyes.
She came back to see me a few days after they had moved, full of the loveliness of the new home.
“You must come and see it–you will come, won’t you?”
“I had better not.”
“Because of Silas?”
“Yes.”
“If I ‘phone some day when he is going to be out, please, will you come?”
“Yes.”
She never telephoned. They had been in their new home less than a month when this notice caught my eyes in the newspaper:
“For sale by public auction, house, furniture and lot.”
The name of the street and the number of the house were those of Arabella Jones’s new home.
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