Page:Across the Stream.djvu/234

224 Then Archie spoke again—there was no more emotion in his voice than if he had been speaking through a telephone.

"Do keep on trying to be friends with me, Jessie," he said. "I'm nothing at all just now; I'm dead, but will you watch by the corpse? It likes to know you are there. There's no complaint if you go away, but when sometimes you have nothing to do, you might just sit with it."

"Archie, dear, don't talk such nonsense," she said.

"I daresay it is nonsense, but it seems to me sense. I don't feel as if I was anybody.… I can imagine what a house feels like that has been happily lived in for years, when the family goes away, and leaves it empty. There's a board up 'To let, unfurnished,' and the windows get dirty, and the knocker and door-handle, which were so well rubbed and polished, get dull. There used to be curtains in the windows, and in the evening passers-by in the street could see chinks of light from within, and perhaps hear sounds of laughter. But now there are no curtains, and the pictures have gone from the walls, leaving oblong marks where they used to hang. And the spirit of the house stares mournfully out, thinking of the days when there was laughter and love within its walls. Haven't you ever seen a house like that? They're common enough."

She pressed the hand that lay loose in the crook of her elbow.

"Oh, Archie, you give me such a heartache," she said.

"Well, I won't again. But if you think me wanting in affection to mother, or you, or anybody, just remember that I'm an empty house for the present. I daresay somebody will take me again."

Jessie felt that this was a truer Archie than he who had stopped so long in the dining-room and come in afterwards with a shout of laughter over something