I peep in with a feeling that I am eavesdropping. There, piled up sideways, is the table round which this unknown tragedy of married life was acted, the solemn, stiff chairs, witness to it all, the pictures which for a little while were gathered for this mockery of a home.
"Why they don't sell it I can't think," says the storeman.
I wonder, too, why they keep it! Neither one nor the other can bear to live with it. Then what queer sentiment, what common memory, retains this split home here in the pathetic silence of lapsed things?
We turn a corner. More avenues, sheeted, deserted.
"Some of these people are dead, we think," remarks my guide, waving his hand towards the dim roof. "This lot was put in at the beginning of the war. We had to sell quite a lot. Payments lapsed, and no one replied to advertisements. It is a mystery to know who it belongs to now, sir, and that's a fact."
* * *
As we turn into another warehouse we meet a man and woman. They have pulled aside the sheeting and are standing among chairs and tables and pictures. The woman comes out and says nervously:
"We've just come to see our things. The manager said that we might."
As we enter the next compartment we hear this man and woman talking.
"Oh, look! There it is, next to mother's writing-table. Do pick it up and let me hold it!"