WIDDERSHINS
by
OLIVER ONIONS
1911
"From Ghaisttes, Ghoulies and long-leggity
Beasties and Things that go
Bump in the night -
"Good Lord, deliver us!"
NOTE
I have pleasure in acknowledging the courtesy of the proprietors of
"Shurey's Publications" by whose permission "The Cigarette Case" is
included in the present volume. Also it has been suggested that a
definition should be given of the word that forms the volume's title.
That word means "contrary to the course of the Sun."
O.O.
CONTENTS
I. THE BECKONING FAIR ONE
II. PHANTAS
III. ROOUM
IV. BENLIAN
V. IO
VI. THE ACCIDENT
VII. THE CIGARETTE CASE
VIII. THE ROCKER
IX. HIC JACET
THE BECKONING FAIR ONE
I
The three or four "To Let" boards had stood within the low paling as
long as the inhabitants of the little triangular "Square" could remember,
and if they had ever been vertical it was a very long time ago. They now
overhung the palings each at its own angle, and resembled nothing so
much as a row of wooden choppers, ever in the act of falling upon some
passer-by, yet never cutting off a tenant for the old house from the
stream of his fellows. Not that there was ever any great "stream" through
the square; the stream passed a furlong and more away, beyond the
intricacy of tenements and alleys and byways that had sprung up since the
old house had been built, hemming it in completely; and probably the
house itself was only suffered to stand pending the falling-in of a lease
or two, when doubtless a clearance would be made of the whole
neighbourhood.
It was of bloomy old red brick, and built into its walls were the crowns
and clasped hands and other insignia of insurance companies long since
defunct. The children of the secluded square had swung upon the low gate
at the end of the entrance-alley until little more than the solid top bar
of it remained, and the alley itself ran past boarded basement windows on
which tramps had chalked their cryptic marks. The path was washed and
worn uneven by the spilling of water from the eaves of the encroaching
next house, and cats and dogs had made the approach their own. The
chances of a tenant did not seem such as to warrant the keeping of the
"To Let" boards in a state of legibility and repair, and as a matter of
fact they were not so kept.
For six months Oleron had passed the old place twice a day or oftener, on
his way from his lodgings to the room, ten minutes' walk away, he had
taken to work in; and for six months no hatchet-like notice-board had
fallen across his path. This might have been due to the fact that he
usually took the other side of the square. But he chanced one morning to
take the side that ran past the broken gate and the rain-worn entrance
alley, and to pause before one of the inclined boards. The board bore,
besides the agent's name, the announcement, written apparently about the
time of Oleron's own early youth, that the key was to be had at Number
Six.
Now Oleron was already paying, for his separate bedroom and workroom,
more than an author who, without private means, habitually disregards his
public, can afford; and he was paying in addition a small rent for the
storage of the greater part of his grandmother's furniture. Moreover, it
invariably happened that the book he wished to read in bed was at his
working-quarters half a mile and more away, while the note or letter he
had sudden need of during the day was as likely as not to be in the
pocket of another coat hanging behind his bedroom door. And there were
other inconveniences in having a divided domicile. Therefore Oleron,
brought suddenly up by the hatchet-like notice-board, looked first down
through some scanty privet-bushes at the boarded basement windows, then
up at the blank and grimy windows of the first floor, and so up to the
second floor and the flat stone coping of the leads. He stood for a
minute thumbing his lean and shaven jaw; then, with another glance at the
board, he walked slowly across the square to Number Six.
He knocked, and waited for two or three minutes, but, although the door
stood open, received no answer. He was knocking again when a long-nosed
man in shirt-sleeves appeared.
"I was arsking a blessing on our food," he said in severe explanation.
Oleron asked if he might have the key of the old house; and the
long-nosed man withdrew again.
Oleron waited for another five minutes on the step; then the man,
appearing again and masticating some of the food of which he had spoken,
announced that the key was lost.
"But you won't want it," he said. "The entrance door isn't closed, and a
push'll open any of the others. I'm a agent for it, if you're thinking of
taking it - "
Oleron recrossed the square, descended the two steps at the broken gate,
passed along the alley, and turned in at the old wide doorway. To the
right, immediately within the door, steps descended to the roomy cellars,
and the staircase before him had a carved rail, and was broad and
handsome and filthy. Oleron ascended it, avoiding contact with the rail
and wall, and stopped at the first landing. A door facing him had been
boarded up, but he pushed at that on his right hand, and an insecure bolt
or staple yielded. He entered the empty first floor.
He spent a quarter of an hour in the place, and then came out again.
Without mounting higher, he descended and recrossed the square to the
house of the man who had lost the key.
"Can you tell me how much the rent is?" he asked.
The man mentioned a figure, the comparative lowness of which seemed
accounted for by the character of the neighbourhood and the abominable
state of unrepair of the place.
"Would it be possible to rent a single floor?"
The long-nosed man did not know; they might....
"Who are they?"
The man gave Oleron the name of a firm of lawyers in Lincoln's Inn.
"You might mention my name - Barrett," he added.
Pressure of work prevented Oleron from going down to Lincoln's Inn that
afternoon, but he went on the morrow, and was instantly offered the
whole house as a purchase for fifty pounds down, the remainder of the
purchase-money to remain on mortgage. It took him half an hour to
disabuse the lawyer's mind of the idea that he wished anything more of
the place than to rent a single floor of it. This made certain hums and
haws of a difference, and the lawyer was by no means certain that it lay
within his power to do as Oleron suggested; but it was finally extracted
from him that, provided the notice-boards were allowed to remain up, and
that, provided it was agreed that in the event of the whole house
letting, the arrangement should terminate automatically without further
notice, something might be done. That the old place should suddenly let
over his head seemed to Oleron the slightest of risks to take, and he
promised a decision within a week. On the morrow he visited the house
again, went through it from top to bottom, and then went home to his
lodgings to take a bath.
He was immensely taken with that portion of the house he had already
determined should be his own. Scraped clean and repainted, and with
that old furniture of Oleron's grandmother's, it ought to be entirely
charming. He went to the storage warehouse to refresh his memory of his
half-forgotten belongings, and to take measurements; and thence he went
to a decorator's. He was very busy with his regular work, and could have
wished that the notice-board had caught his attention either a few months
earlier or else later in the year; but the quickest way would be to
suspend work entirely until after his removal....
A fortnight later his first floor was painted throughout in a tender,
elder-flower white, the paint was dry, and Oleron was in the middle of
his installation. He was animated, delighted; and he rubbed his hands as
he polished and made disposals of his grandmother's effects - the tall
lattice-paned china cupboard with its Derby and Mason and Spode, the
large folding Sheraton table, the long, low bookshelves (he had had two
of them "copied"), the chairs, the Sheffield candlesticks, the riveted
rose-bowls. These things he set against his newly painted elder-white
walls - walls of wood panelled in the happiest proportions, and moulded
and coffered to the low-seated window-recesses in a mood of gaiety and
rest that the builders of rooms no longer know. The ceilings were lofty,
and faintly painted with an old pattern of stars; even the tapering
mouldings of his iron fireplace were as delicately designed as jewellery;
and Oleron walked about rubbing his hands, frequently stopping for the
mere pleasure of the glimpses from white room to white room....
"Charming, charming!" he said to himself. "I wonder what Elsie Bengough
will think of this!"
He bought a bolt and a Yale lock for his door, and shut off his quarters
from the rest of the house. If he now wanted to read in bed, his book
could be had for stepping into the next room. All the time, he thought
how exceedingly lucky he was to get the place. He put up a hat-rack in
the little square hall, and hung up his hats and caps and coats; and
passers through the small triangular square late at night, looking up
over the little serried row of wooden "To Let" hatchets, could see the
light within Oleron's red blinds, or else the sudden darkening of one
blind and the illumination of another, as Oleron, candlestick in hand,
passed from room to room, making final settlings of his furniture, or
preparing to resume the work that his removal had interrupted.
II
As far as the chief business of his life - his writing - was concerned,
Paul Oleron treated the world a good deal better than he was treated by
it; but he seldom took the trouble to strike a balance, or to compute how
far, at forty-four years of age, he was behind his points on the
handicap. To have done so wouldn't have altered matters, and it might
have depressed Oleron. He had chosen his path, and was committed to it
beyond possibility of withdrawal. Perhaps he had chosen it in the days
when he had been easily swayed by something a little disinterested, a
little generous, a little noble; and had he ever thought of questioning
himself he would still have held to it that a life without nobility and
generosity and disinterestedness was no life for him. Only quite
recently, and rarely, had he even vaguely suspected that there was more
in it than this; but it was no good anticipating the day when, he
supposed, he would reach that maximum point of his powers beyond which he
must inevitably decline, and be left face to face with the question
whether it would not have profited him better to have ruled his life
by less exigent ideals.
In the meantime, his removal into the old house with the insurance marks
built into its brick merely interrupted _Romilly Bishop_ at the fifteenth
chapter.
As this tall man with the lean, ascetic face moved about his new abode,
arranging, changing, altering, hardly yet into his working-stride again,
he gave the impression of almost spinster-like precision and nicety. For
twenty years past, in a score of lodgings, garrets, flats, and rooms
furnished and unfurnished, he had been accustomed to do many things for
himself, and he had discovered that it saves time and temper to be
methodical. He had arranged with the wife of the long-nosed Barrett, a
stout Welsh woman with a falsetto voice, the Merionethshire accent of
which long residence in London had not perceptibly modified, to come
across the square each morning to prepare his breakfast, and also to
"turn the place out" on Saturday mornings; and for the rest, he even
welcomed a little housework as a relaxation from the strain of writing.
His kitchen, together with the adjoining strip of an apartment into
which a modern bath had been fitted, overlooked the alley at the side of
the house; and at one end of it was a large closet with a door, and a
square sliding hatch in the upper part of the door. This had been a
powder-closet, and through the hatch the elaborately dressed head had
been thrust to receive the click and puff of the powder-pistol. Oleron
puzzled a little over this closet; then, as its use occurred to him, he
smiled faintly, a little moved, he knew not by what.... He would have to
put it to a very different purpose from its original one; it would
probably have to serve as his larder.... It was in this closet that
he made a discovery. The back of it was shelved, and, rummaging on an
upper shelf that ran deeply into the wall, Oleron found a couple of
mushroom-shaped old wooden wig-stands. He did not know how they had come
to be there. Doubtless the painters had turned them up somewhere or
other, and had put them there. But his five rooms, as a whole, were
short of cupboard and closet-room; and it was only by the exercise of
some ingenuity that he was able to find places for the bestowal of his
household linen, his boxes, and his seldom-used but not-to-be-destroyed
accumulations of papers.
It was in early spring that Oleron entered on his tenancy, and he was
anxious to have _Romilly_ ready for publication in the coming autumn.
Nevertheless, he did not intend to force its production. Should it demand
longer in the doing, so much the worse; he realised its importance, its
crucial importance, in his artistic development, and it must have its own
length and time. In the workroom he had recently left he had been making
excellent progress; _Romilly_ had begun, as the saying is, to speak and
act of herself; and he did not doubt she would continue to do so the
moment the distraction of his removal was over. This distraction was
almost over; he told himself it was time he pulled himself together
again; and on a March morning he went out, returned again with two great
bunches of yellow daffodils, placed one bunch on his mantelpiece between
the Sheffield sticks and the other on the table before him, and took out
the half-completed manuscript of _Romilly Bishop_.
But before beginning work he went to a small rosewood cabinet and took
from a drawer his cheque-book and pass-book. He totted them up, and his
monk-like face grew thoughtful. His installation had cost him more than
he had intended it should, and his balance was rather less than fifty
pounds, with no immediate prospect of more.
"Hm! I'd forgotten rugs and chintz curtains and so forth mounted up so,"
said Oleron. "But it would have been a pity to spoil the place for the
want of ten pounds or so.... Well, _Romilly_ simply _must_ be out for the
autumn, that's all. So here goes - "
He drew his papers towards him.
But he worked badly; or, rather, he did not work at all. The square
outside had its own noises, frequent and new, and Oleron could only hope
that he would speedily become accustomed to these. First came hawkers,
with their carts and cries; at midday the children, returning from
school, trooped into the square and swung on Oleron's gate; and when the
children had departed again for afternoon school, an itinerant musician
with a mandolin posted himself beneath Oleron's window and began to
strum. This was a not unpleasant distraction, and Oleron, pushing up his
window, threw the man a penny. Then he returned to his table again....
But it was no good. He came to himself, at long intervals, to find that
he had been looking about his room and wondering how it had formerly
been furnished - whether a settee in buttercup or petunia satin had stood
under the farther window, whether from the centre moulding of the light
lofty ceiling had depended a glimmering crystal chandelier, or where the
tambour-frame or the picquet-table had stood.... No, it was no good; he
had far better be frankly doing nothing than getting fruitlessly tired;
and he decided that he would take a walk, but, chancing to sit down for a
moment, dozed in his chair instead.
"This won't do," he yawned when he awoke at half-past four in the
afternoon; "I must do better than this to-morrow - "
And he felt so deliciously lazy that for some minutes he even
contemplated the breach of an appointment he had for the evening.
The next morning he sat down to work without even permitting himself to
answer one of his three letters - two of them tradesmen's accounts, the
third a note from Miss Bengough, forwarded from his old address. It was a
jolly day of white and blue, with a gay noisy wind and a subtle turn in
the colour of growing things; and over and over again, once or twice a
minute, his room became suddenly light and then subdued again, as the
shining white clouds rolled north-eastwards over the square. The soft
fitful illumination was reflected in the polished surface of the table
and even in the footworn old floor; and the morning noises had begun
again.
Oleron made a pattern of dots on the paper before him, and then broke off
to move the jar of daffodils exactly opposite the centre of a creamy
panel. Then he wrote a sentence that ran continuously for a couple of
lines, after which it broke on into notes and jottings. For a time he
succeeded in persuading himself that in making these memoranda he was
really working; then he rose and began to pace his room. As he did so, he
was struck by an idea. It was that the place might possibly be a little
better for more positive colour. It was, perhaps, a thought _too_
pale - mild and sweet as a kind old face, but a little devitalised, even
wan.... Yes, decidedly it would bear a robuster note - more and richer
flowers, and possibly some warm and gay stuff for cushions for the
window-seats....
"Of course, I really can't afford it," he muttered, as he went for a
two-foot and began to measure the width of the window recesses....
In stooping to measure a recess, his attitude suddenly changed to one of
interest and attention. Presently he rose again, rubbing his hands with
gentle glee.
"Oho, oho!" he said. "These look to me very much like window-boxes,
nailed up. We must look into this! Yes, those are boxes, or
I'm ... oho, this is an adventure!"
On that wall of his sitting-room there were two windows (the third was in
another corner), and, beyond the open bedroom door, on the same wall, was
another. The seats of all had been painted, repainted, and painted again;
and Oleron's investigating finger had barely detected the old nailheads
beneath the paint. Under the ledge over which he stooped an old keyhole
also had been puttied up. Oleron took out his penknife.
He worked carefully for five minutes, and then went into the kitchen for
a hammer and chisel. Driving the chisel cautiously under the seat, he
started the whole lid slightly. Again using the penknife, he cut along
the hinged edge and outward along the ends; and then he fetched a
wedge and a wooden mallet.
"Now for our little mystery - " he said.
The sound of the mallet on the wedge seemed, in that sweet and pale
apartment, somehow a little brutal - nay, even shocking. The panelling
rang and rattled and vibrated to the blows like a sounding-board. The
whole house seemed to echo; from the roomy cellarage to the garrets
above a flock of echoes seemed to awake; and the sound got a little on
Oleron's nerves. All at once he paused, fetched a duster, and muffled the
mallet.... When the edge was sufficiently raised he put his fingers under
it and lifted. The paint flaked and starred a little; the rusty old
nails squeaked and grunted; and the lid came up, laying open the box
beneath. Oleron looked into it. Save for a couple of inches of scurf and
mould and old cobwebs it was empty.
"No treasure there," said Oleron, a little amused that he should have
fancied there might have been. "_Romilly_ will still have to be out by
the autumn. Let's have a look at the others."
He turned to the second window.
The raising of the two remaining seats occupied him until well into the
afternoon. That of the bedroom, like the first, was empty; but from the
second seat of his sitting-room he drew out something yielding and folded
and furred over an inch thick with dust. He carried the object into the
kitchen, and having swept it over a bucket, took a duster to it.
It was some sort of a large bag, of an ancient frieze-like material, and
when unfolded it occupied the greater part of the small kitchen floor. In
shape it was an irregular, a very irregular, triangle, and it had a
couple of wide flaps, with the remains of straps and buckles. The patch
that had been uppermost in the folding was of a faded yellowish brown;
but the rest of it was of shades of crimson that varied according to the
exposure of the parts of it.
"Now whatever can that have been?" Oleron mused as he stood surveying
it.... "I give it up. Whatever it is, it's settled my work for today,
I'm afraid - "
He folded the object up carelessly and thrust it into a corner of the
kitchen; then, taking pans and brushes and an old knife, he returned to
the sitting-room and began to scrape and to wash and to line with paper
his newly discovered receptacles. When he had finished, he put his spare
boots and books and papers into them; and he closed the lids again,
amused with his little adventure, but also a little anxious for the hour
to come when he should settle fairly down to his work again.
III
It piqued Oleron a little that his friend, Miss Bengough, should dismiss
with a glance the place he himself had found so singularly winning.
Indeed she scarcely lifted her eyes to it. But then she had always been
more or less like that - a little indifferent to the graces of life,
careless of appearances, and perhaps a shade more herself when she ate
biscuits from a paper bag than when she dined with greater observance of
the convenances. She was an unattached journalist of thirty-four, large,
showy, fair as butter, pink as a dog-rose, reminding one of a florist's
picked specimen bloom, and given to sudden and ample movements and moist
and explosive utterances. She "pulled a better living out of the pool"
(as she expressed it) than Oleron did; and by cunningly disguised puffs
of drapers and haberdashers she "pulled" also the greater part of her
very varied wardrobe. She left small whirlwinds of air behind her when
she moved, in which her veils and scarves fluttered and spun.
Oleron heard the flurry of her skirts on his staircase and her single
loud knock at his door when he had been a month in his new abode. Her
garments brought in the outer air, and she flung a bundle of ladies'
journals down on a chair.
"Don't knock off for me," she said across a mouthful of large-headed
hatpins as she removed her hat and veil. "I didn't know whether you were
straight yet, so I've brought some sandwiches for lunch. You've got
coffee, I suppose? - No, don't get up - I'll find the kitchen - "
"Oh, that's all right, I'll clear these things away. To tell the truth,
I'm rather glad to be interrupted," said Oleron.
He gathered his work together and put it away. She was already in the
kitchen; he heard the running of water into the kettle. He joined her,
and ten minutes later followed her back to the sitting-room with the
coffee and sandwiches on a tray. They sat down, with the tray on a small
table between them.
"Well, what do you think of the new place?" Oleron asked as she poured
out coffee.
"Hm!... Anybody'd think you were going to get married, Paul."
He laughed.
"Oh no. But it's an improvement on some of them, isn't it?"
"Is it? I suppose it is; I don't know. I liked the last place, in spite
of the black ceiling and no watertap. How's _Romilly_?"
Oleron thumbed his chin.
"Hm! I'm rather ashamed to tell you. The fact is, I've not got on very
well with it. But it will be all right on the night, as you used to say."
"Stuck?"
"Rather stuck."
"Got any of it you care to read to me?..."
Oleron had long been in the habit of reading portions of his work to Miss
Bengough occasionally. Her comments were always quick and practical,
sometimes directly useful, sometimes indirectly suggestive. She, in
return for his confidence, always kept all mention of her own work
sedulously from him. His, she said, was "real work"; hers merely filled
space, not always even grammatically.
"I'm afraid there isn't," Oleron replied, still meditatively dry-shaving
his chin. Then he added, with a little burst of candour, "The fact
is, Elsie, I've not written - not actually written - very much more of
it - _any_ more of it, in fact. But, of course, that doesn't mean I
haven't progressed. I've progressed, in one sense, rather alarmingly.
I'm now thinking of reconstructing the whole thing."
Miss Bengough gave a gasp. "Reconstructing!"
"Making Romilly herself a different type of woman. Somehow, I've begun to
feel that I'm not getting the most out of her. As she stands, I've
certainly lost interest in her to some extent."
"But - but - " Miss Bengough protested, "you had her so real, so _living_,
Paul!"
Oleron smiled faintly. He had been quite prepared for Miss Bengough's
disapproval. He wasn't surprised that she liked Romilly as she at present
existed; she would. Whether she realised it or not, there was much of
herself in his fictitious creation. Naturally Romilly would seem "real,"
"living," to her....
"But are you really serious, Paul?" Miss Bengough asked presently, with a
round-eyed stare.
"Quite serious."
"You're really going to scrap those fifteen chapters?"
"I didn't exactly say that."
"That fine, rich love-scene?"
"I should only do it reluctantly, and for the sake of something I thought
better."
"And that beautiful, _beau_tiful description of Romilly on the shore?"
"It wouldn't necessarily be wasted," he said a little uneasily.
But Miss Bengough made a large and windy gesture, and then let him have
it.
"Really, you are _too_ trying!" she broke out. "I do wish sometimes you'd
remember you're human, and live in a world! You know I'd be the _last_ to
wish you to lower your standard one inch, but it wouldn't be lowering it
to bring it within human comprehension. Oh, you're sometimes altogether
too godlike!... Why, it would be a wicked, criminal waste of your powers
to destroy those fifteen chapters! Look at it reasonably, now. You've
been working for nearly twenty years; you've now got what you've been
working for almost within your grasp; your affairs are at a most critical
stage (oh, don't tell me; I know you're about at the end of your money);
and here you are, deliberately proposing to withdraw a thing that will
probably make your name, and to substitute for it something that ten to
one nobody on earth will ever want to read - and small blame to them!
Really, you try my patience!"
Oleron had shaken his head slowly as she had talked. It was an old story
between them. The noisy, able, practical journalist was an admirable
friend - up to a certain point; beyond that ... well, each of us knows
that point beyond which we stand alone. Elsie Bengough sometimes said
that had she had one-tenth part of Oleron's genius there were few things
she could not have done - thus making that genius a quantitatively
divisible thing, a sort of ingredient, to be added to or subtracted
from in the admixture of his work. That it was a qualitative thing,
essential, indivisible, informing, passed her comprehension. Their
spirits parted company at that point. Oleron knew it. She did not appear
to know it.
"Yes, yes, yes," he said a little wearily, by-and-by, "practically you're
quite right, entirely right, and I haven't a word to say. If I could only
turn _Romilly_ over to you you'd make an enormous success of her. But
that can't be, and I, for my part, am seriously doubting whether she's
worth my while. You know what that means."
"What does it mean?" she demanded bluntly.
"Well," he said, smiling wanly, "what _does_ it mean when you're
convinced a thing isn't worth doing? You simply don't do it."
Miss Bengough's eyes swept the ceiling for assistance against this
impossible man.
"What utter rubbish!" she broke out at last. "Why, when I saw you last
you were simply oozing _Romilly_; you were turning her off at the rate of
four chapters a week; if you hadn't moved you'd have had her three-parts
done by now. What on earth possessed you to move right in the middle of
your most important work?"
Oleron tried to put her off with a recital of inconveniences, but she
wouldn't have it. Perhaps in her heart she partly suspected the reason.
He was simply mortally weary of the narrow circumstances of his life. He
had had twenty years of it - twenty years of garrets and roof-chambers
and dingy flats and shabby lodgings, and he was tired of dinginess and
shabbiness. The reward was as far off as ever - or if it was not, he no
longer cared as once he would have cared to put out his hand and take it.
It is all very well to tell a man who is at the point of exhaustion that
only another effort is required of him; if he cannot make it he is as far
off as ever....
"Anyway," Oleron summed up, "I'm happier here than I've been for a long
time. That's some sort of a justification."
"And doing no work," said Miss Bengough pointedly.
At that a trifling petulance that had been gathering in Oleron came to a
head.
"And why should I do nothing but work?" he demanded. "How much happier am
I for it? I don't say I don't love my work - when it's done; but I hate
doing it. Sometimes it's an intolerable burden that I simply long to be
rid of. Once in many weeks it has a moment, one moment, of glow and
thrill for me; I remember the days when it was all glow and thrill; and
now I'm forty-four, and it's becoming drudgery. Nobody wants it; I'm
ceasing to want it myself; and if any ordinary sensible man were to ask
me whether I didn't think I was a fool to go on, I think I should agree
that I was."
Miss Bengough's comely pink face was serious.
"But you knew all that, many, many years ago, Paul - and still you chose
it," she said in a low voice.
"Well, and how should I have known?" he demanded. "I didn't know. I was
told so. My heart, if you like, told me so, and I thought I knew. Youth
always thinks it knows; then one day it discovers that it is nearly
fifty - "
"Forty-four, Paul - "
" - forty-four, then - and it finds that the glamour isn't in front,
but behind. Yes, I knew and chose, if _that's_ knowing and
choosing ... but it's a costly choice we're called on to make when
we're young!"
Miss Bengough's eyes were on the floor. Without moving them she said,
"You're not regretting it, Paul?"
"Am I not?" he took her up. "Upon my word, I've lately thought I am! What
_do_ I get in return for it all?"
"You know what you get," she replied.
He might have known from her tone what else he could have had for the
holding up of a finger - herself. She knew, but could not tell him, that
he could have done no better thing for himself. Had he, any time these
ten years, asked her to marry him, she would have replied quietly,
"Very well; when?" He had never thought of it....
"Yours is the real work," she continued quietly. "Without you we jackals
couldn't exist. You and a few like you hold everything upon your
shoulders."
For a minute there was a silence. Then it occurred to Oleron that this
was common vulgar grumbling. It was not his habit. Suddenly he rose and
began to stack cups and plates on the tray.
"Sorry you catch me like this, Elsie," he said, with a little
laugh.... "No, I'll take them out; then we'll go for a walk, if you
like...."
He carried out the tray, and then began to show Miss Bengough round his
flat. She made few comments. In the kitchen she asked what an old faded
square of reddish frieze was, that Mrs. Barrett used as a cushion for her
wooden chair.
"That? I should be glad if you could tell _me_ what it is," Oleron
replied as he unfolded the bag and related the story of its finding in
the window-seat.
"I think I know what it is," said Miss Bengough. "It's been used to wrap
up a harp before putting it into its case."
"By Jove, that's probably just what it was," said Oleron. "I could make
neither head nor tail of it...."
They finished the tour of the flat, and returned to the sitting-room.
"And who lives in the rest of the house?" Miss Bengough asked.
"I dare say a tramp sleeps in the cellar occasionally. Nobody else."
"Hm!... Well, I'll tell you what I think about it, if you like."
"I should like."
"You'll never work here."
"Oh?" said Oleron quickly. "Why not?"
"You'll never finish _Romilly_ here. Why, I don't know, but you won't.
I know it. You'll have to leave before you get on with that book."
He mused for a moment, and then said:
"Isn't that a little - prejudiced, Elsie?"
"Perfectly ridiculous. As an argument it hasn't a leg to stand on. But
there it is," she replied, her mouth once more full of the large-headed
hat pins.
Oleron was reaching down his hat and coat. He laughed.
"I can only hope you're entirely wrong," he said, "for I shall be in a
serious mess if _Romilly_ isn't out in the autumn."
IV
As Oleron sat by his fire that evening, pondering Miss Bengough's
prognostication that difficulties awaited him in his work, he came to the
conclusion that it would have been far better had she kept her beliefs to
herself. No man does a thing better for having his confidence damped at
the outset, and to speak of difficulties is in a sense to make them.
Speech itself becomes a deterrent act, to which other discouragements
accrete until the very event of which warning is given is as likely as
not to come to pass. He heartily confounded her. An influence hostile
to the completion of _Romilly_ had been born.
And in some illogical, dogmatic way women seem to have, she had attached
this antagonistic influence to his new abode. Was ever anything so
absurd! "You'll never finish _Romilly_ here." ... Why not? Was this her
idea of the luxury that saps the springs of action and brings a man down
to indolence and dropping out of the race? The place was well enough - it
was entirely charming, for that matter - but it was not so demoralising as
all that! No; Elsie had missed the mark that time....
He moved his chair to look round the room that smiled, positively
smiled, in the firelight. He too smiled, as if pity was to be
entertained for a maligned apartment. Even that slight lack of robust
colour he had remarked was not noticeable in the soft glow. The drawn
chintz curtains - they had a flowered and trellised pattern, with baskets
and oaten pipes - fell in long quiet folds to the window-seats; the rows
of bindings in old bookcases took the light richly; the last trace of
sallowness had gone with the daylight; and, if the truth must be told,
it had been Elsie herself who had seemed a little out of the picture.
That reflection struck him a little, and presently he returned to it.
Yes, the room had, quite accidentally, done Miss Bengough a disservice
that afternoon. It had, in some subtle but unmistakable way, placed her,
marked a contrast of qualities. Assuming for the sake of argument the
slightly ridiculous proposition that the room in which Oleron sat _was_
characterised by a certain sparsity and lack of vigour; so much the worse
for Miss Bengough; she certainly erred on the side of redundancy and
general muchness. And if one must contrast abstract qualities, Oleron
inclined to the austere in taste....
Yes, here Oleron had made a distinct discovery; he wondered he had not
made it before. He pictured Miss Bengough again as she had appeared
that afternoon - large, showy, moistly pink, with that quality of the
prize bloom exuding, as it were, from her; and instantly she suffered in
his thought. He even recognised now that he had noticed something odd at
the time, and that unconsciously his attitude, even while she had been
there, had been one of criticism. The mechanism of her was a little
obvious; her melting humidity was the result of analysable processes; and
behind her there had seemed to lurk some dim shape emblematic of
mortality. He had never, during the ten years of their intimacy, dreamed
for a moment of asking her to marry him; none the less, he now felt for
the first time a thankfulness that he had not done so....
Then, suddenly and swiftly, his face flamed that he should be thinking
thus of his friend. What! Elsie Bengough, with whom he had spent weeks
and weeks of afternoons - she, the good chum, on whose help he would have
counted had all the rest of the world failed him - she, whose loyalty to
him would not, he knew, swerve as long as there was breath in her - Elsie
to be even in thought dissected thus! He was an ingrate and a cad....
Had she been there in that moment he would have abased himself before
her.
For ten minutes and more he sat, still gazing into the fire, with that
humiliating red fading slowly from his cheeks. All was still within and
without, save for a tiny musical tinkling that came from his kitchen - the
dripping of water from an imperfectly turned-off tap into the vessel
beneath it. Mechanically he began to beat with his finger to the faintly
heard falling of the drops; the tiny regular movement seemed to hasten
that shameful withdrawal from his face. He grew cool once more; and when
he resumed his meditation he was all unconscious that he took it up again
at the same point....
It was not only her florid superfluity of build that he had approached in
the attitude of criticism; he was conscious also of the wide differences
between her mind and his own. He felt no thankfulness that up to a
certain point their natures had ever run companionably side by side; he
was now full of questions beyond that point. Their intellects diverged;
there was no denying it; and, looking back, he was inclined to doubt
whether there had been any real coincidence. True, he had read his
writings to her and she had appeared to speak comprehendingly and to the
point; but what can a man do who, having assumed that another sees as he
does, is suddenly brought up sharp by something that falsifies and
discredits all that has gone before? He doubted all now.... It did for a
moment occur to him that the man who demands of a friend more than can be
given to him is in danger of losing that friend, but he put the thought
aside.
Again he ceased to think, and again moved his finger to the distant
dripping of the tap....
And now (he resumed by-and-by), if these things were true of Elsie
Bengough, they were also true of the creation of which she was the
prototype - Romilly Bishop. And since he could say of Romilly what for
very shame he could not say of Elsie, he gave his thoughts rein. He did
so in that smiling, fire-lighted room, to the accompaniment of the
faintly heard tap.
There was no longer any doubt about it; he hated the central character
of his novel. Even as he had described her physically she overpowered
the senses; she was coarse-fibred, over-coloured, rank. It became true
the moment he formulated his thought; Gulliver had described the
Brobdingnagian maids-of-honour thus: and mentally and spiritually she
corresponded - was unsensitive, limited, common. The model (he closed his
eyes for a moment) - the model stuck out through fifteen vulgar and
blatant chapters to such a pitch that, without seeing the reason, he had
been unable to begin the sixteenth. He marvelled that it had only just
dawned upon him.