Dick might have come back at any moment and found his room waiting for him, as it had waited on many a spring evening just like this. His capacious armchair was still by the window. The big untidy writing-table, with its many drawers and pigeon-holes, in its place. The piano where he used to sit and strum odd bits of music by ear.
“But it is all just the same,” he said, standing like a man in a dream when Ruth dropped his hand inside the threshold.
“I was offered the furniture with the house,” she said, “and when I saw this room I felt I wanted it just as it is. Before that I had all sorts of ideas in my head as to how I would furnish! But this appealed to me. There is an air of space and comfort and peace about the room that I could not bear to disturb. And now I am very glad, because I feel he is pleased. Of course, his more personal things have gone, and I have added a few things of my own. Look, this is what I brought you to see.”
She pointed towards the west window, where stood an exquisitely carved and gilded table of foreign workmanship which was new to him, and on it burnt a burnished bronze lamp, its flame clear and bright even in the fierce glow of the setting sun. Beside the lamp stood a glass vase, very beautiful in shape and clarity, filled with white pinks.
North crossed the room and examined the lamp with interest.
“What does it mean?” he asked.
“It is a custom of the orthodox Jews. When anyone belonging to them dies, they keep a lamp burning for a year. The flame is never allowed to go out. It is a symbol. A symbol of the Life Eternal. All the years of the war Raphael Goltz kept this lamp burning for the men who went West. You see it is in the west window. And now I keep it burning for him. You don’t think he would mind, although my poor old master was a German Jew, racially?”
She looked up at North anxiously, as they stood side by side before the lamp.
“Not Dick—certainly not Dick!” said North. Ruth heaved a sigh of relief.
“You see, I don’t really know anything about him except what I feel about the farm, and I did want the lamp here.”