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To lose the old, mournful front room may be no subject for tears, but the loss of the evening family group, about the fireside or the reading-lamp, is a real and sad loss. The commercialized amusements have offered greater attractions to vigorous youth.
The woodwork was oaken and the walls were distempered a discreet and restful shade of blue. There were a central electric fitting and another for a reading-lamp, a fireplace of the latest slow-combustion pattern and a door communicating with an inner chamber. "Oh!" cried Flamby. "What a dear little place!"
The staircase lights were blown out by the wind, and I took my reading-lamp and went out to see who it was. "There is someone there, is there not?" I called out. "What floor do you want?" "The top Mr. Pip." "That is my name. There is nothing the matter?" "Nothing the matter," returned the voice. And the man came on.
Here she sat, in this peaceful room, with all the homely paraphernalia of convalescence about her the fire, the bed laid invitingly open with a couple of books, and a reading-lamp on the little table at the side, the faint smell of sandalwood; and before the fire dozed a peaceful old lady full too of gentle expectation of her son, yet knowing nothing whatever of the vague perils that were about him, that had, indeed, whatever they were, already closed in on him.... And that son was approaching nearer every instant through the country lanes....
A great still darkness had come, and on a littered table in this room a reading-lamp was burning. The room was furnished as a library. Every available foot of wall space was occupied by laden bookcases. The volumes were nearly all old and many of them were in strange, evidently foreign, bindings.
And with these words Briggs betook himself to the library to arrange the reading-lamp and put the room in order for his master's return, and as he did so, he paused to look at a fine photograph of Lady Winsleigh that stood on the oak escritoire, opposite her husband's arm-chair. "No," he muttered to himself. "Wotever he thinks of some goings-on, he ain't blind nor deaf that's certain.
Suddenly he stepped quickly across the room and, lifting the reading-lamp from the table, bore it over to the window which he scrutinized narrowly by its light. Then he dropped on one knee beside the dead body, placing the lamp on the floor beside him. He lifted the dead man's left hand and narrowly examined the nails.
I see, in memory, the small Oxford room, as it was on a winter evening, between nine and midnight, my husband in one corner preparing his college lectures, or writing a "Saturday" "middle"; my books and I in another; the reading-lamp, always to me a symbol of peace and "recollection"; the Oxford quiet outside. And yet, it was not so tranquil as it looked.
At night, this great space was lit by only one light, a battered electric reading-lamp standing on a kind of laboratory table in the center of the floor, and window curtains of dark-blue cambric, waving mysteriously in the night wind, were supposed to hide even this glimmer from the eyes of raiding Zeppelins.
"Yes," he said aloud, for there was no one to hear him, "I will no longer live alone; I will adopt Will as my son and heir. I think he is all I could wish him to be, and I believe he will reflect credit on my choice." And when he closed the window and turned to his book and reading-lamp it was with a pleased smile of content, and a determination to carry out his plans without delay.
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