“But would anybody take it?”
“Undoubtedly, if the rent were low enough. Leave it to Brodribb and me to manage. You needn’t come into the matter at all beyond signing the lease. Is the house in fairly good repair?”
“Most of it is, but there are one or two rooms that will need redecorating, particularly poor Harold’s. That had to be left when the other rooms were done because he refused to be disturbed. It is in a very dilapidated state. The paint is dreadfully shabby and the paper is positively dropping off the walls in places. I daresay you remember its condition.”
“I do, very well, seeing that I helped Madeline to paste some of the loose pieces back in their places. But we needn’t go into details now. I will go and look over the house and see what is absolutely necessary to make the place presentable. Who has the keys?”
“I have the latch-keys. The other keys are inside the house.”
“And I suppose you don’t wish to inspect the place yourself?”
“No. I do not. I wish never to set eyes upon that house again.”
She unlocked a little bureau, and taking a bunch of latch-keys from one of the drawers handed it to me. Then she went away to put on her out-door clothes.
Left alone in the room, I sauntered round and inspected Barbara’s new abode, noting how, already, it seemed to reflect in some indefinable way the personality of the tenant. It is this sympathetic quality in human dwelling-places which gives its special charm and interest to a room in which some person of character has lived and worked, and which, conversely, imparts such deadly dulness to the “best room” in which no one is suffered to distribute the friendly, humanizing litter, and which is jealously preserved, with all its lifeless ornamentation—its unenjoyed pictures and its unread books—intact and undefiled by any traces of human occupation. The furniture of this room was mostly familiar to me, for it was that of the old boudoir. There was the little piano, the two cosy armchairs, the open book-shelves with their array of well-used books, the water-colours on the walls, and above the chimney-piece, the little portrait of Stella with the thin plait of golden hair bordering the frame.
I halted before it and gazed at the beloved face which seemed to look out at me with such friendly recognition, and let my thoughts drift back into the pleasant old times and stray into those that might have been if death had mercifully passed by this sweet maid and left me the one companion that my heart yearned for. Now that time had softened my passionate grief into a tender regret, I could think of her with a sort of quiet detachment that was not without its bitter-sweet pleasure. I could let myself speculate on what my life might have been if she had lived, and what part she would have played in it; questions that, strangely enough, had never arisen while she was alive.