Even after she had ceased to wonder she could not tear herself away. The low room was not only a room, such as anybody might prepare for a guest; it was a refuge, a place for himself that she had made for a stray. She had stained the floor with her own hands, and washed the knitted quilt on the bed. She had made the white valances with their borders of knitted lace, the cloth rug by the bedside, the white window-curtains with their pleated frills. She had distempered the white walls and polished the chest of drawers so that the brass-bound Bible on its top was reflected deeply as in a pool. All the paint was white; perhaps she was proudest of the paint. The new bedstead was iron, with brass knobs crowning its slender posts. In a crinkly vase on one sill was a posy of coloured flowers.... Surely the old man would be able to rest here?
The windows of the room were so full of sun that they looked like translucent plates of beaten gold. Beyond them, the scene was so bright that it hurt the eye—the river shining and glinting close below the farm, the sands all sparkling as if they were sown with quartz, and the houses across the bay snow-white against the hill. The tide was dead out—at the end of the world it seemed; yet never at any time was it very far. Always, when you had forgotten it, it came stealing back, a thief in the night, a trespasser by day. Even now she had not grown used to the tides, though she did not look out of the windows all the time, as she had done when she first arrived on the marsh. But he, when he came, would look out of the windows all day long.... She stood in the long rays, staring round the room, her blue eyes frowning a little as she looked. Her young, firm figure was full of energy and strength. Her dark hair was ruffled and her cheek flushed with the final effort that was actually the last.
Very soon now the old man would be here, and the room that had once been his for so long would be his again. He would find things a good deal changed, it was true, but how much for the better, after all! No doubt the place had been well enough once, years and years ago, perhaps, when he was first wed, but it had been only a poor spot later on. It had had a neglected look from the outside, and the fields and hedges seemed to ask for a hand. At the last, of course, it had been a desolate place, indeed.... By accident, as it happened, she had seen the room before he left, and the desolation of it still haunted her mind. The old wooden bedstead had been rickety all through, and there was never a mat on the bare, unvarnished boards. In the quilt grown thin as a rag there was a jagged tear, and in each of the ceiling-corners a spider had spun a web. The once blue-washed walls had faded a dirty grey, and the plaster was crumbling away where the damp had driven in. The windows had broken hasps, and one had a broken pane; all dim they were, mysterious with crusted salt ... and by the bed had stood a pair of old woman’s shoes. She remembered the shoes because they had been his wife’s. It was weeks, she remembered—months—after she was dead.
A dismal room indeed it had seemed to the girl, a forlorn place thoroughly in tune with a forlorn human old age. She remembered how she laid hands on it, then as now, mending the quilt and fetching the spiders from their homes, spending a lusty scrubbing on the floor. Even then she had had a vision of what she would some day make of the place, plotting and planning and laughing as she toiled. She had never put her head inside that room, it seemed, but some web of contrival at once began to spin. Of course it was not exactly as she had planned, because every creation meddles with the tools, but it was near enough to satisfy her, nevertheless. It was inevitable somehow ... intended ... definitely right. It seemed inevitable, too, that she herself should be here, although she had questioned and delayed her fate so long. She felt sure, when she looked back, that she had known it to be inevitable all the time; that just the same personal interest had gone to that far-away putting of things to rights. But she had not been ready for Thomas, just then, and the future had had to take care of itself. Thomas’s father, however, had not been able to care for himself. In the midst of her indecision he had had to quit. The trouble had gone further than just an unswept room....
And yet, in spite of the intervening break, her fate and the room’s fate had fulfilled themselves in time. She had come in the end to the place ordained, just as the changes she had meant for the room had come about. Now it was all scoured clean, painted and stained, with a new iron bed that had full command of its legs, and four little knobs like four little globes of gold. Her second scrubbing had been so thorough that it almost seemed as if there was nothing of the old room left. Even the dust and dimness had had a character of their own, and both of them had been swept away. Even the windows looked a different shape now they were frames for those shining plaques of gold. They were like young eyes now, shining and clear, where before they were ancient and blurred with tears ... eyes with a whole world behind them under the sky, instead of blankness staring at nothing without sight.
Yet something lingered that belonged to the old room, something that was perhaps nothing more than a question in the air. That was the reason, perhaps, why she hesitated to call her work complete, since the room seemed to cry upon her for something else. It seemed to be waiting for something to come back; she wondered vaguely if it was the old woman’s shoes. She would have brought them back right willingly if she could, but she had never seen or heard of them since that day. Probably they had gone at the sale, or simply been lost or burnt or thrown away. It was out of the question, anyhow, to think of finding them now. If the room was waiting for that, it would have to do without.
She felt sure that, even in its best days, the room had never looked so fine, even in those far-off days when the house had freshened itself for another bride. There might have been curtains, perhaps—perhaps not upstairs—but almost certainly there had been no blinds. Little need for them, indeed, with windows facing the lone sands, and a white-sailed yacht at the flood the only passer-by. And she was certain that, not for years, if ever before, had roses been set upon the sill.
There was no doubt, however, that rooms, like folks, were growing smarter with the times. Old as he was, the old man would know that, and would feel, if only unconsciously, the finer touch. He would be proud of a son’s wife who had such ways; straight from his present home, indeed, how could he be anything but proud? And progress and new paint had not harried the old-time peace of the room, nor could she herself have done it real harm. The tradition behind her was too pure for that, the abiding spirit of the house too strong.
Rousing herself, she crossed the rays towards the door, but stopped on her way to run her hand along the quilt. The limbs that would lie under it would be snug enough, she thought, the head on the pillow would surely lie still. Stooping, she came on something soft to her foot, and started hastily aside. It was almost as if she had trodden and crushed the worn, old shoes.... But it was only the new cloth rug beside the bed.
Out on the landing she paused again, feeling the evening stillness warm through all the house. There were empty rooms right and left of her, empty, yet full of secrets, as empty rooms always are. When other things went out of the rooms, they filled them for themselves. Yet, in spite of their secrets, they seemed lonely sometimes, consciously waiting, like the room she had left; but to-night they were only full of the sunny peace. She looked into them, one after the other, and shut them up again, and then out in the passage stood gazing at the doors. It was strange to live in a house with so many empty rooms. It was like living with people who never spoke, but were busily thinking all the time. A house with empty rooms could never be at its best. Something might come out of that brooding silence, such things as come from a mind for ever feeding on itself. She was sure that, when the winter nights came, she would start thinking of those empty rooms upstairs, hear voices, perhaps, and steps ... if she left them too long to think things by themselves. She would put apples in one, she determined, when the fruit was ripe; cheeses in another, when she started making cheese. There would be other things after a while to fill the rest—other things, other people, other thoughts—so that the rooms would not have time to grow lonely and queer. And at least one of them would have finished with being lonely by to-night. She found herself turning again to the room where her work was done, and only stopped herself at the handle of the door. Then she heard her husband moving in the kitchen below, and her dreamy mood fell from her and she ran down. There was carpet under her feet, she thought, as she ran. How many years since the old man had seen new carpet on those stairs?