“Come right up, neighbor,” he volunteered. “I’ll be only too glad to let you see. You’ll have to excuse the looks of the place. My son and I live here alone, bachelor style. I’ve been out in the country today with him hunting. He’s only fifteen years old.”
We ascended the stairs, and he unlocked the door to my old rooms and let me in—the rooms where Ed and I and Tillie (or whichever other brother or sister happened to be here at the time) were separately provided for. It was a suite of three rooms, one large and two small, opening out on the north, east, and south, via windows to the garden below. In summer, and even in winter, these rooms were always ideal, warmed as they were by an open fire, but in summer they were especially cool and refreshing, there being an attic above which broke the heat—delightful chambers in which to read or sleep. We never had much furniture (a blessing, I take it, because of the sense of space which results) but what we had was comfortable enough and ample for all our needs. In my day there was a bed and a dressing stand and mirror in each of these rooms, and then chairs, and in the larger room of the three, quite double the size of the other two, a square reading table of cheap oak by which I used to sit and work at times, getting my lessons. In the main it was a delight to sit here of a hot summer day, looking out on the surrounding world and the trees, and reading betimes. Here I read Shakespeare and a part of Macaulay’s “History of England” and Taine’s “History of English Literature” and a part of Guizot’s “History of France.” I was not an omnivorous reader—just a slow, idle, rambling one—but these rooms and these books, and the thought of happy days to come, made it all a wonder world to me. We had enough to live on. The problem of financing our lives was not as yet distracting me. I longed for a little money, but not much, and life, life, life—all its brilliant pyrotechnic meanings—was before me, still to come.
“It’s not very tidy in here,” said my host, apologetically, as he opened the door. “Take a chair, neighbor. We live as though we were camping out. Ever since my wife died and my oldest boy went into the navy, I stopped trying to keep house much. Me and Harry—that’s my youngest boy—take pot luck here. We do our own housekeeping. I’ve just suffered a great blow in the death of my oldest boy over at the Dardanelles. When he left the navy he went into the Australian Army, and they made him a captain and then when this war broke out his company was sent to the Dardanelles and he went along and has just been killed over there.”
“It’s very sad,” I said, looking about at the beggarly and disorderly furniture. In one room I could see a shabbily gotten up and unmade bed. In this room was an iron cook stove, pots and pans, a litter of guns, saws, fishing poles, and the like.
“Yes,” went on my host heavily, and with a keen narrative sense which was very pleasing to listen to, “he was an extra fine boy, really. He graduated here at the high school before he went into the marines, and stood high in all his classes. Everybody liked him,—a nice, straight-talking young fellow, if I do say it.”
He arose, crossed to an old yellow bureau, and took out a picture of a young fellow of about twentysix or twentyeight, in the uniform of an Australian captain of infantry.
“The way he came to get into the Australian Army,” he went on, looking fondly at the picture, “was—he was over there with one of our ships and they took a liking to him and offered him more pay. He was always a great fellow for athletics and he used to send me pictures of himself as amateur champion of this or that ship, boxing. They got his regiment over there on that peninsula, and just mowed it down, I hear. You know,” he said suddenly, his voice beginning to tremble and break, “I just can’t believe it. I had a letter from him only three weeks ago saying how fine he was feeling, and how interesting it all was.—And now he’s dead.”
A hot tear fell on a wrinkled hand.
“Yes, I know,” I replied, moved at last. I had been so interested in my own connection with this place and the memories that were swarming upon me that I had been overlooking his. I now felt very sorry for him.
“You know,” he persisted, surveying me with aged and wrinkled eyes, “he wasn’t just an ordinary boy. I have letters here”—and now he fumbled around for something else—"from Lord Kitchener and the King and Queen of England and the Colonel of his regiment." (His voice broke completely, but after a time he went on:) “They all said what a fine fellow he was and what a loss his death is. It’s pretty hard when you’re so fond of anybody.”