Homes in bondage!
As we wander down the line our eyes are caught by a doll's house, relic of some distant nursery, a child's cot, or a piece of furniture with distinct personality, and we wonder how much heartache and hope this place represents. There are people living in lodgings dreaming of the home that they will build again one day, longing to surround themselves with loved things, to tear off the wrappings and see again those precious ordinary objects that mean so much in every life—those sentimental anchors.
Sentiment—that is the keynote. Without it London's store-rooms would be half empty.
"Yes, sir," says the store-man, as he pulls aside a wrapping, "people don't seem able to bring themselves to part with things. It's mighty queer. Look at this old box, now—what would you think is inside it?"
The box is an ancient nail-studded chest with a curved lid that might have contained all the gold of Treasure Island. I hazard a guess just to please him.
"No, sir. It's just full of little old bits of cloth, the kind of things that women collect and put in old baskets because they may come in useful some day. There's bits of tinsel and lace, and pretty little cases full of red and blue beads and needles by the score. But what's the sense of letting it eat its head off here? That's what I want to know. If they've paid a penny for this old box they must have paid fifty pounds, for it was here before ever I was. O yes, there's funny people about, and no mistake. Now if it belonged to me...."
As he rambles on, I examine the old box with interest. I know why it was put there; and so do you! Memories cling round it—memories so sweet that the heart revolts at the thought of burning those poor fragments.
Most people have a box of this sort. In it are queer trifles, little geometric nets on which beads are strung or sewn. Green and scarlet parrots preen themselves on half-finished trees. It is that note of half completion, as of a task suddenly put down and soon to be resumed, which makes such things so appealing. Perhaps a needle is still sticking in a corner of the fabric, waiting, it seems, for the fingers that will never come again. And when you look you see the hand that placed it there, you hear a voice and see a face bending over the pretty, unimportant thing, and it's ten to one that you are a child again on some slow, lazy afternoon of sun; and the voice is the voice of your mother telling you the same old story you have heard a hundred times as you watch her, fascinated by her brilliance, hypnotized by the growth of the brocade bird and its beaded eye: a masterpiece which fills your mind and stands out as the most marvellous and beautiful thing the world has ever seen. Clever, wonderful mother....
"There's funny people about, and no mistake!" says the storeman again, giving the box a prod with his foot.
We go on. He unties the wrappings round another deposit. All these things, he explains, belong to "a divorced couple." How new they are, he comments. How quickly they must have found out their mistake; no sooner married than divorced and storing their things, and chucking away good money after bad!