It was not a very large room, and it was indescribably filthy. A fire, which seemed the only clean thing, blazed in a rusty-looking stove, which had not known blacklead since its earliest infancy. On the hearth, logs, buckets and dirty boots mingled: a very black kettle and some evil-looking saucepans stood on the stove-top and the hobs. The floor was covered with tattered linoleum, with bare spaces here and there where the ancient covering had worn away, or still lingered in ragged strands. There was a sink in one corner; a large table, the surface of which shone with blackened grease, a dresser, covered with a queer assortment of cracked and stained crockery. The walls had once been whitewashed, but the white had long disappeared beneath a coating of smoke and grime. A black frying-pan hung by the fire-place, with a toasting-fork that had been twisted out of fencing wire. Over all was a reek of vile tobacco smoke, mingled with the smell of dirt and closeness. It was very evidently the sitting-room of Horrors. The mantelpiece held a framed text, its gaudy flowers almost invisible under the speckled and misty glass. It said, "God Bless Our Home."
"Mother!" said Garth, in a whisper. "Is this where we're going to live?"
She looked down at the child's white face, and woke from the disgust and horror that had swept over her.
"Well, it is, sonnie," she said. "But it won't look like this long. You wait until we all get busy at it, and you won't know it. Anyway, we'll forget about it to-night. Come on and explore the rest of the house."
There was only one lamp, and she did not like to take it, since its dim beam was the only guide for the men as they tramped backwards and forwards from the wagon to the veranda. She looked about on the dresser, and found an end of candle stuck into a broken porter bottle, the sides of which were thick with grease. No matches were visible, so she held it to a blazing stick until it was alight. Then they entered their home.
There were four main rooms, with a kind of lobby at the back, off which were bathroom and storeroom. It was a simple cottage, such as you will find in the Bush in hundreds: a big living-room, and three bedrooms of varying sizes, the largest of which would have made a servant's bedroom in the "House Beautiful"—which was, perhaps, a place that gave itself airs. Such rooms they were! The extreme filth of the kitchen had not penetrated indoors; but they were dirty enough, with dust thick in every corner, and an almost unbearable fustiness that cried eloquently for fresh air. After her first sniff of the evil atmosphere Aileen went hastily to each window, flinging them open: all save one, which, apparently, never had been opened, and declined to begin now. She struggled with it for a minute and then gave it up, glancing at her dirt-streaked hands with a little shudder of disgust.
They had sent ahead of them, by steamer, a few articles of furniture, arranging with Mr. Smith to bring them out and unpack the new beds; which stood, gaunt with their naked mattresses, looking painfully clean amid the surrounding squalor. Sheets and blankets were somewhere in the mass of luggage that even now was being flung down on the dark back veranda. The other furniture was rough and untidy, and chiefly home-made: the dressing-tables were old packing-cases draped with dingy cretonne, the washstands were shelves against the wall. Mr. Gordon had evidently been a gentleman with a turn for carpentry: there were chairs made from barrels, and bookshelves composed of old laths from fruit cases, and filled with tattered and dirty books. The walls were boarded and varnished, cobwebs forming their only decoration.
"It's a funny house," Garth said plaintively. "Mother, could I go to bed, do you think?"
"Mother hasn't got a proper bed ready for you," Aileen said. "Never mind, sonnie: I'll fix you up without proper things for a while."
She brought the bundle of rugs, and spread them on the smaller bed: Mr. Smith, with an admirable economy of space, had erected both in one room. Garth was fumbling wearily at his buttons, and she came to his aid quickly.