"TO LET, FURNISHED."

Otago Witness, Issue 3293, 25 April 1917, Page 66

"TO LET, FURNISHED."

By E: M. Story.. "It's in, mother. I've jprought you the paper." "Mother" was crouched oyer a trailing geranium, threading her fingers in and out between the couch grass and the long jjtems supporting the pink blossoms. The younger woman repeated the words, her mother having made no verbal answer. On hearing the repetition the elder woman pat down on the uneven path, and, gently withdrawing her fingers from the tangle, she said, " I've not done much at it lately; it's got tangled up a bit." " Look!" said the daughter, holding out the paper to her mother. "It's in that second' column half-way down." Her mother did not take the paper. She Baid: "Oh, my glasses are indoors I la Nellie with you?" "Yes; she's in the pram. The new nig \ does look smart, mother." i " What colour is it?" '* Pale blue. . The shopman said it fade, and they're not guar-atee-ing now, you know." " Blue I" said her mother. "Don't you care for blue?" " Oh, yes; it's all ' right. It was a lovely saimon-pink I had for your pram, end it lasted John as well, and looked nice all the time." * " Just fancy your remembering that.'' ' I remember just the shade; if was as nigh the colour of that geranium as I could get." " But surely that geranium wasn't there then? Do you mean to say it's my age?" y"lt's a slip from that one—a slip of a slip, I should' say.- Why, when we'd no water laid on, as it is now, I used to walk sometimes as far as a quarter of a mile in the dry weather, when the plant was heavy with bloom, to fetch it a drop." " Well, it's repaid you, mother, by all the pleasure you've had out of it." "I'd do it again cheerfully if need ..were. . . , Just look at it, Mary. Isn't it fine?" " Well, my pram's got a blue cover, and it's a change." " Yes," said the mother. " You were always one for change." " Well, I reckon it's your turn now, mother, and you'll soon be hearing of this advertisement." The elder woman's fingers were again busy with the plant, and she made no answer. Her daughter stood watching Jier; but she was thinking of the blue coyer for the pram and wishing that she'd bought buff colour, as her baby was dark, and that would suit her. " Mary, read me the advertisement," said her mother, bending over the flower. Mary picked up the paper, looked down the column, and read in a clear, emphatic tone of voice: "To let, furnished, a threeroomed cottage, with garden; nicely situated. Rent, fifteen shillings." Here followed the address. Mrs Jones said nothing, and Mary asked: "Coming to look ? at Nell, mother?" • , "Yes. Is she asleep?"' She rose and followed her daughter along the narrow, "uneven cement path to the gate. Knowing the weakness of the wicket, she raised it as ..she opened it, taking care not to thrust it on; to the flower of a stray nasturtium. "The mignonette's most over now," she said. "I'll be saving some seed. Why, I never saw before how like your brother little Nell is!" said Mrs Jones. " Yes, I think that," answered her "Have you heard from him, mother?" "Yes; I had a few lines yesterday. "He'll be getting his final leave next week, so I shan't be letting the home until after then." ' ''-' Why ever not? He can stay at my place; there's plenty of room." " He'd like to sleep in his own room ' again," 'she said. "Don't you worry over that to let it lose you a tenant. . . . Jack can sleep anywhere." ' ."I know, that; but I've made up my mind, Mary, to his .sleeping here again before he goes off." Baby Nell was still fast asleep. Her grandmother looked at the cover. "It doesn't seem to " "Match the geranium," asked Mary. Mrs Jones smiled, "IL takes a time to get used to change," she said. " Well, I'm twenty-one and Jack nineteen, and we've not either of us sat in pur'prams for " "It's fourteen years since Jack had.his last rjde in the pram. He was just turned five when father said, 'Nay, mother, I doubt he's too big for that now.' " " Well, mother, surely fourteen years is time enough for you to change from - salmon-pink to blue." " I don't know, Mary. The years don't fade some colours." Mary laughod, hut she was slightly disappointed. She would go back to the shop and get buff. "I shan't keep it," she said. "You don't care about it. I'll get EomethJag nearer the colour of the flower," and with a quick kiss on her mother's left cheek she wheeled the pram away. Her mother watched the departure,

looking fixedly at the pram. "It might be Jack. Nell is like him," she thought. j?At the top of the road she saw a soldier pass, and remembered that Jack, too, was in khaki. She turned to the cottage, and closed the wicket gate carefully, raising its lame side, nor brushed the nasturtium bloom with her dress. Then she stood on the path and gazed at tha cottage as though she were looking into a beloved face to interpret what she saw there. 'After some minutes she went inside and closed the door. *' Twenty-three years ago," she said 6oftlv as though telling the house a Secret —" twenty-three years ago he built

it. I Held the nails. ... At every teventh nail he drove in as he stood on the ground he kissed me. When the roof* was on, my, how proud we were! 'You'll always be sure of a roof-tree,' he .said. 'You'll never need to walk about shily in a house that's not your owr. . . ■ I've mr.de that sure, please God. So if anything happens to me ' —and it did, it did. It was six years we lived here together, he and I, and then —then my husband " She ceased her soliloquy and looked out of the window L oward the small burying-ground beside the tiny church on the hSI. Then she began again. " It's oftenest that you are here, and in your chair, the <fne you made. It's still yours. No other man has ever sat in it; none ever shall. ■ ' To let, furnished,' " she repeated; " but not that chair to go.I'll take that out." She sat herself down in the old chair and looked at the walls of the room. She did not see, though she looked intently, how grimy the paper was, nor how smoke-discoloured, but she saw the pictures that he had framed. "He \vas so particular in setting them exact," she recalled, "and he laughed back at the ' Jolly Ploughboy' there.'' Then she left the pictures and glanced at the table. She lifted one end of the cloth and peered at a table-leg. How many hundreds of times she had seen that leg, in how. many different lights, yet not until now in the light of "To let, furnished"! " It's a good stove.- It bakes well. I've cboked dinner for twelve in it, and everything done to a turn. How the rain came down the afternoon we walked out together to choose it k He was wet through; he'd made me wear his coat. . , . The first dinner we baked in it was a meat pie. He said he'd not tasted any pie he liked as well. ... if I could count the kettles of water" that I've boiled on that stove I wonder what the fmuo-es would be."

She rose and went into the adjoining room. - "Jack's bed-sitting room," she said. "What joy it gave him when I turned it into his own room, where he could study and incite a friend . . . he did well, my Jack." The room was full of "Jack," from the old pair of soft sJippers to the fishing-rod that stood in a corner. There was Jack's clock, that had been bought out of careful savings. It struck the hours, and Jack used to call her to listen when the clock was new. "That note makes me want to he good;" he had said. He was always good, her Jack, even when he told her that he must enlist ... he .couldn't look his fellows in the face if he didn't. "Mother, you have always been for duty. . , , Don't hold me back now . . . and weaken your own teaching,'' he had pleaded, his two hands on her shoulders. It was in this room he had said it, one Sunday evening . . . how long ago it seemed! He must take his "final leave" in this room, no-matter what Mary said. There was one more room, her own bedroom. It had been her young husband's and hers. During all the days of her widowhood her daughter had slept in the room until two years ago, when she had married. For a week or two since then her little grandchild, Nell, had slept in the child's i cot, near her own big bed, the same which baby Mary had slept, and, later, Jack. It was so clean . . . she had taken constant care of it . . .

she had thought that perhaps some day Jack's baby would lie there. , . . Her musings were interrupted by a knock at the door; it was more like a kick than a tap, so loud was it and clumsy. She opened the door, hesitantly, on a burly man. He held a newspaper in his hand., "Is this number eight?" he asked. "Yes." "'To let, furnished,'" he read aloud; "'rent, fifteen shillings..'" "Yes," she said. "May I look in?"

"Yes. You are rather late in the day." "I thought I'd come the same day, so as _ not to miss anything good that was going,'' he replied, and there was a knowing look on his*face. "Is it for yourself?" "Yes. I manage my own affairs. Keep my own place clean, and all that," he said. "How soon do you want to coma in?" "Monday . . . three days." "I cannot let it until my son has had his final leave ..." she answered firmly. "No good to me," said the stranger, and he walked away. " 'Thank God I" exclaimed the widow. That night in her dreams she watched the husband of her early married days fix the clothes line for her use, and admired the way he contrived to raise and lower it by pulleys. It was still on the drying ground, and quite good. In the morning she saw the sunrise through the open window, as she lay in bed and looked across the hills, and it reminded her of the many beautiful sunrises of younger clays that he and she had delighted in together, and of his words on more than one occasion, when he had exclaimed as he saw the radiant dawn in the sky, "The glory which is God !" She breakfasted early, and after "tidying" the little house went outside "to speak to the flowers." She felt that they were living friends of hers. She was caressing the salmon-pink trailing geranium again, when the gate opened slowly and e woman entered. "Good morninar," said the stranger. "What a beautiful day ! Am I right —is this cottage to let, furnished?" Mrs Jones stood up and looked at the visitor. She felt attracted to her "Yes. My daughter advertised it for me." "But you are sorry . . . you have altered your mind, perhaps?" "Oh, no; I've not altered my mind, but I am sorry to . . . have to let it."

"And you must?" "Yes, I must. My eon is in camp now." "Arid you find it too lonely?" "No; oh, no. It's B&t lauely $ z ,

any other place will be lonely; this isn't its . . . well . . . yesterday I had to rake together every penny I could for the rates —over five pounds. It left me . . . penniless ... so my daughter thought." "I see. Does your daughter live with you?" "No. She's married. You must have passed her house on the way from the train." "I passed one large house, with a pretty garden." "That's hers. She's married well." "And you will live with her?" "For a time; while my cottage is let." "And you will like that?" There was no answer in words. The thin frame, of the little woman trembled and then shook with sobs; the old hands, misshapen by the hard work that, had kept herself and her children independent, clutched each other convulsively, the worshipper of her home of twenty-three long years, stood in her heart's shrine utterly unable to control the floods which forced the gates of memory, and overwhelmed her. "Plea'se don't weep any more," said the stranger. "I am so grieved to find you in this trouble! Of course, I had no idea of anything of this kind when I read your advertisement." "I am sorry. Forgive me." "How can I help you?" "By yourself taking the place ... it's so dear ... to me . , .. I must let it . . , there's no other way . . . but you'll let me keep it until my son leaves for the front ... he may never come . . . you' see . . . I want him to take his ' final leave ' here', j He's never known any other home. . Why, before he went to camp . . . before this. war ... he was going to paint it outside and paper it inside, and put a verandah round it. He's all for improvements . . . my boy. . . . We were going to trail the flowers along the verandah . . . you'd scarcely believe, now the garden's so tangled, how beautiful it has been. . . . I've neglected it since he went. ... I miss him so . . . you see, he was keenly interested in all I did. If I moved a plant he noticed it, and he'd tell me where he thought it would look best. 'Leave the digging to me, mother, and the grass-cutting, he'd say; 'it's too hard work for you.' When he left I couldn't garden at all for some time . . . then he wrote me and begged me to keep it up . . ." "He'll come-back to you. Pray for him." "Every room is full of prayer 3. Every Inch of the garden has been prayed over. And if I leave it I leave him . ■. . and everything ..." "But you'd be with your daughter." "But I should leave my husband . . . my son . . . and any daughter when she was all my own . . . my little child,"

"If I take your cottage after your son has had his final leave will you promise me to come here very, very often, whenever you like, and work "in your garden, and sit in your own armchair . . . and look upon the place still as your home? I should be so glad of your friendship . . . your presence."

"Oh . . . may I come? . . . God. sent His angel . . . dear friend.' What can I say?" "Just tell other inquirers that your cottage is.-let to a friend, will you?" " 'To let, furnished, .a three-roomed cottage,' but . . . but my home still 1" whispered the poor old widow. .