THE FORSAKEN HOUSE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19269, 5 January 1931, Page 10

THE FORSAKEN HOUSE.

AN AMERICAN CAMEO. (By ELISABETH KYLE.) A long moss-grown avenue, lined with trees draped in Spanish moss that drops from their arms like folds of grey-green velvet. At the other end, directly in line with the avenue entrance, a group of Corinthian pillars holds up the porch. The plaster has peeled off these pillars, and it is difficult to decide whether they were once white, or warm yellow, or peach-shaded pink—the colour brides chose for their house decoration just about the time of the Civil War. All the green shutters of the house are closed, except one or two round at the back, where live old black Jacob and his wife Eliza; they keep the place aired, and occasionally show it off to favoured visitors. The door-bell, jerked downward, peals hollowly somewhere far in the rear, and Jacob’s felt slippers slip-slop over the bare polished floor as he comes forward to answer it. This is the hall, its great Georgian mantelpiece still showing the rusty iron fireback that was made in England some time during the eighteenth century. when the house was built. The dark panelled walls are hung with por- | traits of the family, and each one is pointed out and expatiated upon by old Jacob. There is the founder of the house, who lived like the English gentleman he was, in spite of his residence abroad. Here is his wife, a little yellower in skin and slower in speech than were the London relatives with, whom she kept up correspondence; but she was sure of her place in Southern society, and as fashionably attired as could be expected, considering the milliners’ sketches of what was being worn at St James’s could only reach her several months late. Here, scattered about the parlour, are the Chelsea figures she so much admired and had shipped to her from time to time. Painted shepherdesses, bright plumaged birds whose colours, undimmed by years, still glow against the painted walls of “pearl” and “lavender” she mentions in her diary of housekeeping arrangements. In that same diary, by the way, are noted down the exact times at which the sun would lie along the fine new Turkey carpet in the hall, fading its glory, unless a maid were sent each day to close the doors and windows still more firmly. We mount the carved oak staircase to inspect the • bedrooms. The bedhangings, wonderfully embroidered, look ready to crumble at a touch. Frpm the windows we can see a courtyard; and there are the old slave-huts, deserted, falling to pieces, where Jacob once played as a boy, when the house was still occupied and full of life and singing. And—“ Times is changed,” sighs old Jacob, openly regretful of the days when, even if life could not be called one’s own, it was at least worth living.